"Hello, Lee Huan Ying": Sadness and Relief

"Hello, Lee Huan Ying": Sadness and Relief

Zhang Yiwu

"Hello, Li Huanying" has received universal praise in the explosive movie-watching boom of the 2021 Spring Festival. In this Spring Festival when a considerable number of people can only celebrate the New Year in situ due to the requirements of epidemic prevention and control, this movie pours out the infinite affection between mother and daughter with a unique story structure, allowing people to obtain a kind of telepathy. This film with a "sentimental comedy" style touched people who have experienced various challenges in the past year during the Spring Festival, allowing them to obtain a spiritual and emotional sublimation.

"Hello, Lee Huan Ying" was undoubtedly deeply influenced by the 1985 Zamikis film Back to the Future. It can be said that the film's unique crossing of family affection gives the basis for the structure of "Hello, Li Huanying". It's just the opposite of the development. "Back to the Future" is the son who crosses over to his own unborn to promote the love of his parents and finally creates today's reality, while "Hello, Li Huanying" is the daughter returning to her before she was born, trying to make her mother choose again, to break up her own family. It can be said that "Back to the Future" is the son who changed the reality and created himself, and "Hello, Li Huanying" is the daughter who changed the reality and finally created herself. The former is to promote their own birth and eventually succeed, and the latter is to avoid their own appearance, but they are not successful. The former is a fluent fun drama, the latter is a sentimental sadness. The crossing of the former has ingenuity, and the latter is the transmission of feelings. The former is agile, the latter is affectionate.

The basis of the story is all attempts to change reality, and the return to 1955 of "Back to the Future" and the return to 1981 of "Hello, Lee Huan Ying" are both some kind of return to the original point of a certain social process. "Back to the Future" is a fantasy crossing, while the mother-daughter relationship of "Hello, Li Huanying" has more Chinese colors. "Hello, Li Huanying" has more sentimentality, this sentimental feeling is indeed Chinese, of course, the last large section of the run to show the mother-daughter relationship, the depiction of the mother's hidden dedication and so on are typical Chinese sentimentality, and the unfolding of this sentimental "love" is the most common way of expression in the history of Chinese films from the 1920s. And these are really different from "Back to the Future", which is what can impress Chinese audiences.

The "return" here is also the starting point where China began to move towards today, and at this starting point it is reproduced through the "crossing" of the daughter. The daily life of the state-run Victory Chemical Factory, the stirring material needs and spiritual yearning in the early days of reform and opening up, and the memory of that moment from the "original" historical source of today's China are released by this film, and the daughter's deep affection for the mother's better hope and the mother's sincere dedication are all unfolded in the cultural atmosphere of the early eighties. The film deliberately creates and renders such an atmosphere of that moment, which is where today comes from, and we highlight the "simplicity" and "transparency" of that era itself by "returning" to the past, through the mother's purchase of a TV set, a volleyball game, a daughter trying to match a better marriage with her mother, and so on. In the end, the daughter did not change her mother's fate, and in the past, all her efforts have experienced many setbacks as her life.

But it is from that moment that we have our own identity, and it is precisely because of the existence of that moment that Li Huanying's daughter Jia Xiaoling has gained her own life. She tries to go back and change the future, but confirms that the future is immutable. The affection of the parents ultimately gives meaning to the family and leads to the moment when the film begins. So it can be said that this is a movie about setbacks and setbacks. The daughter who travels through the past shows that everything is still chaotic and there is a possibility of all the future, and in that moment when innocence is not necessarily destroyed, Li Huanying's uncertainty about the future is a certain idea in the film's suspenseful ending, a certain kind of equally simple expectation. This expectation was exactly what life gave people at that time. A different future, the opening of a future plasticity, seems to be the temperament of the eighties. Therefore, this film also contains a commemoration of the past where we came from, and it is precisely because of this eighties, with Li Huanying's simple expectation that her daughter will be "healthy and happy", and the process of this daughter's constant setbacks and failures but gaining her mother's tolerance is the attraction of this movie. The mother also has many failures and setbacks, and the daughter also has constant setbacks and failures, but honestly accepting the fate itself and looking at herself with understanding seems to be a kind of simple "simplicity" that moves many viewers. In fact, in the 1980s, which was full of opportunities and temptations, it was a rare temperament, and it was also a consciousness that was connected with some of our expectations in today's society.

The daughter's efforts to change the ending of the whole life and the reality that the ending cannot be changed present a sentimental emotion about life in the contrast between the reality that all this is clear at the beginning of the film and the mother's life is about to die. The mother gave everything for her daughter, who tried to give her mother a better life. This quest for a richer and better secular life, which comes from today, unfolds through a fantasy fragment. As a daughter, Jia Xiaoling drives an elegant convertible car and roams the wilderness with her mother, who shares some kind of wordless happiness. This is a fantasy scene that breaks through the presuppositions at the beginning of the film, and is a "future" of the scene of the celebration of admission to school at the beginning of the film. This, after rendering the mother's devotion, is a possibility that there is no chance to realize in reality, and it is the opening of a real other side of life. The daughter is not only healthy and happy, she also has "more", this "more" thing seems to be Jia Ling's film still has to give us more imagination, a kind of optimism, a good person gets a good reward, the effort will be rewarded, the mother's life can be continued and unfolded in the daughter's commitment, which finally appears in this movie. We got "more" of things that spilled over the original theme of the film. What Jia Ling gave us was to get more value for her mother's life through this movie, and also let her get more rewards in the dark. In the end, in the midst of all the setbacks, the film achieved its own success. And this is what makes us feel a kind of reward for Li Huanying's efforts while watching this movie. The dedication and dedication of that past era is actually meaningful, and a certain beauty today is precisely because of the life of the daughter and the mother's efforts, and finally the reward of life. This film also has the meaning of paying tribute to the past times and the people of the past. This implication makes this film move the audience who watched in the cinema during today's Spring Festival.