Not long ago, my wife and I occasionally went to a Korean restaurant for dinner. During the meal, she mentioned that the restaurant was owned by a Korean man because it was near the place where she used to work, and she remembers the popularity of the business at that time. But because of a contradiction between China and South Korea, now The Gate is a sparrow. I had only a vague impression of the incident, probably missiles or something like that, and I was all in the left ear and out of the right ear under the pretext of this quarrel. I didn't come here to eat to support or oppose anything, just to come as I pleased. But the empty room still brought me a chill.
I noticed that Korean variety shows were playing on the RESTAURANT's TV, and the interface menu was also proverb. Two waitresses in the corner were whispering, and in front of the TV stood a short man, wearing a hat and an apron, watching TV expressionlessly.
He must be the Korean man.
Just as we were about to leave at checkout, I saw that he chose a black-and-white movie and played it. It is the title of this one - "Where the Hometown Returns".
……
When you think of your hometown, what do you think of? Is it snow covering the mountains? Is it a tall poplar tree? Is it a gray day? Or a pile of broken bricks, rubble...
Neither.
Every time I think of my hometown, what comes to my mind is a German Shepherd.
I didn't have any dogs at home, and I was a little afraid of dogs when I was a kid. The other people in the picture, to me, are foreigners, foreigners. The white horse, the house, and the fog were not all I could see in my hometown. But Tarkovsky burned this picture into my mind. I have read various film reviews and philosophers and thinkers' interpretations of Northalgia, but none of them have satisfied me, but they are far-fetched in the field of hermeneutics. Some say homesickness is because of our desire to get back to the Garden of Eden, and sorry, as a cruel atheist, the Garden of Eden, I haven't lived there.
I no longer try to explain it through reason, but to feel it with the body, with the intuition that myth gives us, and perhaps this is the value of art, Heidegger said: "Supposing that the metaphysical concept of art acquires the essence of art, then we must never understand art in terms of the beauty that is seen as our own, nor can we understand art from experience." In turn, then, what metaphysics can express is only a footnote to the essence of art.
In a trance, I carefully held the candle and paced through the pool. A sense of identification with the Korean man is connected through black and white pictures.
I watched the 231-minute movie, but I didn't have any sense of thought. Like having seen Oedipus or Othello, there is no imagination that can be used for "If it weren't, would it be like that...". Everything is natural, real, and empathetic. Both sadness and joy are, as Cordelia said, "in keeping with my name, not much, not much."
The following will be spoilers, because I don't think there is anyone in my circle of friends who can fully watch this movie, perhaps, but I don't have any friends either.
The youngest son, Jacob, was bent on leaving his hometown to search for Indians in Brazil, so he immersed himself in the study of Indian culture through the few books he had. His sister married far away, his father only scolded him, his brother must be superficial and vulgar in his eyes, and the only worry that made him unable to say and go was his mother.
His mother supported his ideals, even if they were to leave her. He reads all day, at odds with his hometown, and looks forward to seeing advertisements for immigrants to Brazil, as if Rio is the "Land of Canaanite with Milk and Honey." This situation is familiar, and there is always this urge to leave home when I am young. As Milan Kundera describes, "there will be a moment in every poet's life when he breaks free from his mother and begins to run away", thinking that if he can "live elsewhere", there will be a completely different world, severed ties with his homeland.
I would say that "elsewhere" has only "other shore value."
If "elsewhere" is really that good, why did Tarkovsky make "Nostalgia", why did Solzhenitsyn suffer so much, and "elsewhere" was so warm and attached to the cold and bone-chilling country roads?
According to the current logic, such people are indeed "stupid". Compare your heart to your heart, change it to me, and definitely don't go back. No way, the "negative view of freedom" has penetrated deep into the marrow. But I know in my heart that "elsewhere" is just the "other shore", and compared with the view used to transform "this shore" or transform myself, the "other shore" is after all unreachable and cannot be visited. The place that cannot be returned is called hometown.
Jacob went to Brazil after seeing an advertisement for "immigration agency." Seeing the faces of those agents and the irresponsible boasting, I sweated from the beginning of the film until finally my brother wrote a letter. Because, unfortunately, I read a Joseph Conrad short story ,Amy Foster.
Amy Foster, the husband of this stupid girl, was a farmer from Eastern Europe on a three-masted sailboat. He was tricked by an agent into emigrating, and as soon as he went to sea, the ship deliberately sank near Britain. He was lucky enough to run to the English countryside and marry Amy because he saved Amy's father. But in the end, the optimistic nature of him also tragically died in the stereotype, died on the "other side".
Jacob, because his brother robbed the woman he liked and had to emigrate first, he had to stay and take care of his parents, while he and his brother mingled in the mud. At this time, I was secretly happy that my brother was going to be a substitute ghost.
Of course, my brother wasn't dead. Jacob eventually accepted his hometown, helped his father improve the centrifugal device of the steam engine, agreed to the marriage introduced by his mother, and, as you can imagine, took on the task of reading letters for people in the village. What many people did not expect was that when the Privy Councillor in Berlin wanted to take him to Paris, he chose to escape.
After escaping, the blueberries he came into contact with turned black and white, and he lost all the bright colors of his life: his uncle's gold coins, women's agate tablets, the German flag on the ship...
Does giving up mean growing up? This is a very childish interpretation. When the Privy Councillor came to pick up Jacob as a scientist, no one could stop him, he was free. He just made a choice, chose his hometown.
In exchange for the safe death of his mother, he also waited for the letter from his brother and sister-in-law, and he forgave them from his heart.
But no matter what era, embarrassment is a devastation to human nature.
I've heard of a secret place hidden in the jungle of the Amazon. The only way to attain this heavenly happiness is to abandon all greed, embark on a journey with a pure heart, and remember your duty to your parents. But the sickness of the mother and the hardships of winter have stifled all our faith in the Ideal Kingdom. He pushes us into the cold mud and suppresses our pure hearts.
It is a story of a young man who made a choice in 1843, when the comet came.
At last
Mutter, gib mir kraft (Mom, give me strength).