Taiwanese films seem to be picking up in the field of vision of mainland audiences recently. Following the box office explosion of "Removing Three Evils Around the Week", another film that won the favor of the Golden Horse Awards has also attracted a lot of attention in the mainland. "Old Fox", which won the Golden Horse Awards for Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Soundtrack and other awards, was directed by Xiao Yaquan, a disciple of Hou Xiaoxian, and supervised by Director Hou himself. At the moment when Director Hou is out of film due to physical reasons, this word-of-mouth work has become the best way for fans to get close to the master.
"Old Fox" is indeed easy to be empathized with by mainland audiences. Compared with "Removing the Three Evils Around the Corner" in the format of a big open and cool film, "The Old Fox" is more in line with the life experience in the background of Confucian culture. The experience of the young Liao Jie finding a way to be a man between his flattering and frugal father and the unscrupulous "old fox" real estate dealer is the only way for many men in Confucian society to grow up. Director Xiao Yaquan presents the entanglement and struggle, and gives a compromise answer at the end, as for whether this solution is too easy and idealized, it is up to the viewer to decide.
In layman's terms, "Old Fox" tells the story of the little boy Liao Jie's unformed values constantly oscillating between rich and poor fathers. Having lost his mother, he grew up in a single-parent family, and his father, Liao Tailai, adhered to the Confucian values of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", treating others with kindness, not fighting or grabbing, even if scarce resources fell on him, his first thought was to give them to those who needed them more. As a hotel foreman, Liao Tailai could not afford to buy a house or open a barber shop for his deceased wife, and the only way for the Liao family to survive was to save money on water and gas bills and to take home hotel leftovers.
It is not difficult to explain why when their landlord, Boss Xie, nicknamed "Old Fox", happened to appear in front of Liao's interface, the latter's worldview immediately experienced a small shock. Boss Xie's way of life is the opposite of Liao Tailai: in his opinion, unfairness is the essence of the world, this essence is unbreakable and will not change, instead of trying to fight it, it is better to make good use of the law of the jungle and tilt the balance towards itself. In the process of telling Liao Jie about this value, Boss Xie output a basket of golden sentences: "Empathy only belongs to losers", "inequality is the map, helping us clearly point out the direction of winning", "Losing without seeing is visible, and losing without knowing is knowing from knowing", and "The world is like this, we can't change it, we can only change positions".
Boss Xie is a successful example of class transition, as a child, like Liao Jie, begged others to improve the situation of his relatives, but the begging was not exchanged for kindness and good luck, and his mother of sanitation worker fell ill and died of debris and garbage. Since then, Boss Xie has embarked on the road of thick blackness, he has cut off empathy, taken advantage of it, continued to climb the social ladder, and constantly created and exploited even greater disparities.
But the film is also designed with many details to show the contradictions of the "old fox". In front of people, he held a banquet in a high-end hotel, but behind him, he ate breakfast and supper alone in a street stall, in front of people, he showed off people in a top hat and suit, but behind him he loved to smoke cheap Xinyuan cigarettes at home. He said in front of Liao that his empathetic mother was a failure like Liao Tailai, but when he was sad, he often wandered around the garbage recycling station where his mother worked before her death.
He despises empathy so much, but he is happy to deal with Liao Jie, precisely out of empathy. Abandoned by his son, feared and despised by his tenants, it's no wonder he sees himself in Liao—in essence, they are strong, stubborn but traumatized children.
The film establishes a year-old connection between Boss Xie and Liao Jie, but it does not become sentimental because of this. The "old fox" admires Liao Jie, but he has never forgotten to seek greater benefits for himself, and Liao Jie has not been blindly bewitched by the thick black science of the "old fox". When Boss Xie instigated Liao Jie to threaten and humiliate his classmates with the secret of the mother of the classmate who bullied him, Liao Jie did not copy the tricks of the "old fox", but left room and did not reveal the secret to his classmates.
Choreographer Xiao Yaquan has a very deep understanding of social rules. He uses lens language and scene design to subtly reveal these unspoken rules, such as information is the way to win, "invisible" will lose to "visible", so "Old Fox" always hides behind the reflective glass that obscures his existence, but sometimes this glass will also be reversed, putting him at a disadvantage in key duels.
Another unspoken rule revealed in "The Old Fox" is presented in the form of space. The path to the upper echelons of society is made up of rooms, and the closer the room, the less information is shared in it, and the easier it is for the people in the room to use this exclusive information to further leverage the lever called "inequality". The high-end hotel where Liao Tailai works and the different specifications of private rooms in it are a microcosm of the entire social structure. But the director did not forget to set up a sense of humor in it: the core private room of this hotel, beyond the wall is the hotel staff lounge, so Liao Jie overheard Boss Xie's trade secrets.
Back to the core thread of the film. Liao's oscillation between a gentle biological father and a cunning surrogate father is easily reminiscent of Robert De Niro's self-directed film "A Bronx Story" (1993), which also features a low-level boy, De Niro as the boy's upright bus driver's father, and Chas Parmintree as a mafia boss who admires the boy and wants to recruit him. Comparing the two films, it is clear that there is a clear difference between Eastern and Western cultures: "The Old Fox" emphasizes empathy, interpersonal responsibility and harmony, while "The Bronx Story" emphasizes personal fulfillment, and De Niro's eloquent line is, "It's much easier to pull the trigger than to be honest for a living." The mafia is not a tough guy, the blue-collar class is a tough guy! Your dad is a tough guy. ”
Xiao Yaquan adds an intriguing epilogue to the story of "The Old Fox". A few years later, Liao Jie has become an architectural designer working for top companies. He retains his father's habit of wrapping the utility blades to be discarded in cardboard shells to avoid scratching sanitation workers, as well as Boss Xie's habit of drinking ice water to keep a cool head, the former out of empathy and the latter out of control of empathy. Every Confucian male who tries to retain his kindness but is unwilling to give up his quest for social status seems to have to balance the contradictory sides of himself. The adult Liao Jie looks successful and seems to be well balanced, but is this really the best answer in life for East Asian men?
Perhaps, but we don't know if it's good or bad.
Contributing writer for Southern People Weekly Wu Zeyuan
Editor-in-charge: Yang Jingru