"Summer in the West River": Calm, quiet! Zhang Songwen Tan Zhuo's "mid-life crisis" is deeply moving
Text: Tian Jinshuang
This is a work about "ordinary life", and the film describes more of a state of life. Sometimes, life does not have too many big twists and turns, more is the daily small emotions of chai rice oil salt sauce vinegar tea. Zhou Quan's "Summer of the West Creek" is like this.
When watching this film, there are too many emotions. This is a work full of sincerity, every shot, every action, so careful, impeccable. More importantly, it is an insightful, calm and unmoving work.
Gu Xiaoyang in the film, just like you and me when I was a child, was silent and did not dare to resist his father's requirements, and could only ask for help everywhere. Fortunately, the strange grandfather next door entered his emotional world. As an old drama bone, Gu Baoming's old master raised his hands and feet to throw his hands and feet into the drama. After an indulgent yell to drive away the demolition staff, the scene of both legs constantly stomping on the ground instantly made this stubborn and childlike old man jump on the paper. And Xiaoyang, a child with his neighbor, is the replacement of his grandson and his spiritual comfort. So, a child, an old man, is in this lonely courtyard leaning on each other and keeping warm.
However, Gu Xiaoyang seems to never understand the adult world, when he found the footage of his father Gu Jianhua and the new English teacher squatting, the first thing he thought of was to run to find his mother, and then sit under the closet and fall asleep. Then, he seems to have learned to resist, deliberately singing out of tune during the class performance to make the English teacher out of trouble. Just like the book "The Little Prince" said that "adults never understand the world of children", similarly, children can never understand the world of adults, when Xiaoyang asked his father in front of his mother why he and the English teacher went to dance, the potential contradictions between parents and parents broke out invisibly.
In the film, the performance of the couple played by Zhang Songwen and Tan Zhuo is quite wonderful. Obviously, the wife knows her husband's careful thinking and pretends to be indifferent. Sometimes I can't help but say a few words of hard needles in the cotton. Then, it all fell back into the Cold War. For the husband played by Zhang Songwen, he seems to be a decent teaching director. But when he reaches middle age, he also has his own passion and vitality. Therefore, when the female English teacher who tried to teach him inadvertently touched him with frankness and talent, the passion and warmth of young people gushed out in his heart. It seemed that something in his heart had quietly revived and could not be contained.
There is a classic bridge section in "The Summer of the West Creek": before going out, Gu Jianhua sorted out his clothes in the bathroom, wanted to go out, suddenly looked in the mirror, and used a wooden comb to dip water to tidy up his messy hair. This seemingly inadvertent action instantly reveals all the secrets in the heart of Gu Jianhua, a married middle-aged man.
Looking at Gu Jianhua, played by Zhang Songwen, there are many such micro-actions in the film. He did not easily express his love for his son Xiaoyang, but only pinched his shoulder; when he met a female teacher friend in the small tea bar, in order to hide his embarrassment, he laughed awkwardly, and then patted the other person's shoulder. The awkward situation of a married middle-aged man can be seen at one end.
Pay attention to micro-expressions and action details, and accurately grasp the real state of the characters, which is where the skills of good actors lie. Zhang Songwen performed the love and sadness, bitterness and helplessness of a married middle-aged man, and it was a drama between the hands and feet. After marriage, midlife crisis, cold and silent, confronting each other in the invisible, but seemingly silent, the actor's grasp of the role and the tension in the performance can never be underestimated.
At the end of the film, Gu Jianhua painfully lost his position as vice principal, sat alone by the river and smoked silently, and then coughed uncontrollably. When his wife asked him what was wrong, he leaned on her lap and cried bitterly. At this moment, there are not too many words and confessions in the film, and in this instant, the two finally achieve love reconciliation in their own way. This oppressive and calm bright color is also the finishing touch and classic of the film.