After thinking about it for a long time, I decided to say a few words.
There is such a movie.
After 15 days of release, the box office was 1.24 million, and the net increase in the box office per day was only one or two thousand, which was properly small and transparent.
But in contrast, its Douban score is as high as 8.3.
It is the highest score of this year's domestic films.
Something went wrong?
In its body, perhaps, this is a helpless inevitability.
That's right.
Countless people stood up and called for the audience to enter, but there was no improvement:
Take a boat
Its defeat seems to be "predictable": the director is a newcomer, and the most famous in the starring lineup is only Liu Dan, Aunt Guo in "The Beginning".
At a time when traffic is everything.
Such a lineup is released only with the fate of being overlooked.
And more importantly.
Compared with those movies that incite public emotions and rely on short video-style play to compete for the audience's attention.
"Gone by Boat" is more like a private memory.
Such a movie never brings any kind of topic, as well as attention.
But.
As Lu Xun said, "It's always been like this, right?"
Today, Sir has a few words to say.
01
The story of "Going by Boat" is actually very simple, and one clip can tell the story:
in the hospital.
The mother who is over 70 years old has an incurable disease, to save or not to save?
The eldest daughter said help.
As she said, now that science is developed, people may live to be 100 years old, even if they smash the pot and sell iron, they have to do everything possible to save their mother.
But what about the son?
He questioned such a decision very much, why did he not only spend thirty or forty thousand yuan a day for the sake of almost no hope, but also let the old man spend the rest of his life in pain?
The two quarreled over it.
This is actually a classic moral dilemma.
Chinese pay attention to filial piety, and since ancient times, those stories of filial piety have always been filled with extremely tragic self-sacrifice plots, such as cutting meat to save the mother, selling the body to bury the father, selling the child to bury the mother, and so on.
The more tragic it is, the more worthy of praise.
And that's exactly what happened.
The eldest daughter, who adheres to traditional values, still decides to save her mother in desperation despite the failure of her business, she gives up her career, sells her own car, and tries to participate in an unproven targeted drug experiment, using all her strength.
But here's the thing.
Under this heroic act, did anyone really take into account the wishes of the mother?
So one night.
The old lady dressed up, pulled out the needle, and walked out of the ward, where she struggled with the nurse and her eldest daughter: "Why don't you let me go?
Why?
Because of the cold hospital rooms and hanging bottles, snow-white beds and walls, these are all modern facilities that she is not familiar with.
She wanted to go back to the familiar canal and the countryside.
Yes.
Under the story of "Saving the Mother", what is hidden is actually a topic of "home".
The eldest daughter sees the future:
is like the scene of her quarrel with her husband, all she sees in her eyes is what the future may be.
And he doesn't care about the predicament in front of him.
She will do her best for the imaginary future and forget the present.
The son has an eye on the present:
In the story, he is always free to choose the life he wants, and he represents a vague image, with an unknown identity, an unknown profession, and an unknown relationship.
It is a state of spiritual dissociation and spiritual drift of modern people.
It is also because of this that he will choose to let his mother live the life he wants to live in the few days left.
And the mother cares about the past:
A fragment.
At the beginning of the film, we can see that the mother still lives in her hometown by the canal while her children are in various places.
Eating pumpkins and pickling eggs.
She walks in the countryside and lives a quaint and traditional life.
Nostalgia?
No.
As the trailer ends, "Find your home".
The so-called home.
In fact, it is a choice of life, and it is also our choice of the word "home".
The town is my mother's home.
It will also be her final destination.
But the question is, is the film only about home in a physical sense?
Of course not.
What it wants to say, more, is a spiritual home.
02
Director Chen Xiaoyu once said in his autobiography: "Home, a fixed place that sounds like a place that should provide a sense of security, is mobile in modern society." ”
He's not referring to his hometown, of course.
Rather, under the conflict between tradition and modernity, young people who have embraced modernity have left their hometowns to find a spiritual home.
In this story, there is one word that is the crux of the matter:
Identity.
When the mother, who represents the "hometown", dies, how to find their identity has become an urgent problem for the siblings.
Take the eldest daughter, for example.
Her identity is fixed and, at the same time, ambiguous.
Like many contemporary youth.
A cityscaper who left the town and took root in the city, she established her lifestyle in Shanghai and married a husband from the United States.
Looks like a successful person.
But here's the thing.
The more westernized she became, the more blurred her face became.
Is she redneck?
No.
Her lifestyle in the film is actually very far from her hometown.
One detail is.
Even if she moved back to the countryside and accompanied her mother at the bedside.
Her hands.
Or can't do without a notebook all the time.
That's the tool she uses to connect with the world.
So, is she from Shanghai?
Neither is it.
Just like her uncle scolded her, "You think you're really from Shanghai?"
In their eyes.
She's just a part-time worker in Shanghai.
So in such a situation, for her, there seems to be only one root left that can be grasped: she is the eldest daughter in the family.
She needs to use this to determine her identity.
And because of this.
She would drag her family back to her hometown once a month, and even if her mother gave her salted duck eggs that were not pickled, she would eventually throw them away, but she would still accept the gift.
Because it's her connection to the family.
And even more so because of this.
She will cross her mother's personal will, want to force her mother to receive treatment, want to fight hard to save her mother's illness, and want to take responsibility for her mother's death.
She takes on the role of "patriarchal" with a greater sense of responsibility for the whole family.
But here's the thing.
For traditional society, women themselves are marginalized roles.
An example.
When discussing the funeral of his mother, both the elders in the village and the uncle who he had not seen for a long time demanded that the son take responsibility.
And for the description of the eldest daughter.
It is, the water spilled by the married daughter.
So you see.
No matter how successful she is and how hard she tries, in the end, she can't find the confirmation of her identity.
She was always floating in the air.
Unable to find a real, spiritual home.
And this.
It also seems to be a common confusion for many people today.
At present, the tide of young people "breaking off relatives" has become a general trend, and it has become a new habit not to go home during the Chinese New Year and not to interact with relatives.
But the question is, what about after the break?
Where do we go from here?
The movie uses the eldest daughter's son, A Tao's mouth, to tell the answer.
It was a conversation between my grandmother and Tao before her death, and she said to Tao who was traveling far away, "You have grown up now, and your parents' home is not your home." ”
So what is his "home"?
"Home can be far away, but you're going to find your home. ”
Yes.
For Sir, "Going by Boat" is a process of finding "home", in which we can establish our own identity and know our true selves.
And start again.
03
So you can probably see that this movie is actually the director's private memories and what he felt and thought in the process.
Similar to private home images.
And among them, the deepest ink is actually the memory of his grandmother.
As the director said.
"I want to make a movie that remembers my hometown, my grandmother, every tired soul who is looking for a home on the road, their courage, and the relief we need. ”
This movie is actually a gift to my grandmother.
No doubt.
Such a movie can move the audience and infect many people.
But it doesn't resonate on a larger scale.
After all, it was not for the box office and the public.
But.
An interesting phenomenon is that the current box office and film ratings seem to have gone diametrically opposed.
Let's say you open Douban.
There is a high probability that Chinese films are in the Renaissance period, and almost every one of them has achieved high scores, including "Under the White Sun" 8.0, "Youth Diary" 8.5, and "Away by Boat" 8.3.
It's like a paradise.
But if you open the box office software, you will also find that the number of moviegoers of these movies is very small, and the three high-scoring movies are ranked 7th, 16th, and 30th respectively on today's box office list, and they have not been released for 23 days combined, and Bao Bell's "The Villain" with a score of 4.4 is high.
In an instant, it turned into hell again.
Of course, you can say that this is due to the laws of business, after all, there is no traffic without stars, there is no heat without topics, and the current film market is almost supported by traffic and popularity.
But here's the thing.
For us movie fans, is it just for those stars and topics to go to the cinema? Do we watch movies just for the sake of excitement?
Of course not.
Sir feels that no matter what era it is, there is only one demand for fans, that is, to see a "good" movie.
What makes a good movie?
It's a big topic, and everyone's answer is different, and maybe you can't say it in a sentence or two.
But of all the answers, the most important point is that there is actually only one word:
Shin Zhao.
This sincerity can be emotional, or it can be attitude, it can be said to be the emotion injected into the film, or it can be said to be the effort made for the film.
It is a pure way of creating.
So when you watch "Going by Boat", do you think that the film has no chance to become a topic?
There are also.
There is a scene in the film, on a quiet and deserted night, when the mother finally can't bear the pain of illness and takes the breathing mask off her face, the son sees it.
What to do?
If he pretended not to see it at this time and let his mother escape death, it would have caused a lot of discussion.
It's a human struggle.
And what about the film.
The son paused for a long time, and finally silently helped her put the oxygen mask back on.
The director chose to be emotionally dominant.
He doesn't create conflict for the sake of creating topics, nor does he pretend to be suspenseful in order to attract the public, which makes the film seem extremely pure, so pure that it is out of step with the current trend.
And these.
It is precisely beyond the criteria of technical judgment that the most appreciated qualities.
It's a pity.
In the moment, such films are inherently at a disadvantage.
They can't make a sound.
It can't be seen.
Just like "Going by Boat", Sir went to see it twice, both times in a very remote time period, and similarly, both times it was "chartered".
Of course, there is no intention to blame the theater.
After all, commercial organizations make profits first, and they have done their best to still schedule films.
Nor is it intended to blame the audience.
Because for a lot of people, such a movie really doesn't arouse much interest.
But on the contrary.
Such an unreproachable situation has actually triggered a vicious circle, that is, no matter how well small-budget movies are made, there will be fewer and fewer audiences who can see them.
so that he died without a sound.
Finally waited for the day when it went offline, I'm afraid, many people still don't know about its existence.
How to say it.
Maybe sometimes, it's not that there are no good movies to watch, but when we encounter good movies, we always abandon them for various reasons.
And turn a blind eye.
Therefore, Sir doesn't want a good movie to be buried.
More undesirable.
We're back in the back of the day, when traffic was king.
The picture comes from the Internet
Editorial Assistant: Pear
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