The original text @MOViE Wooden Guard is written in the Middle Reading App
The production of Taiwanese films has undergone tremendous changes in the past decade or so. The characters depicted by a new generation of young directors seem to be more marginal, remote, and hidden in the dark corners of the invisible light.
The individual pain and despair of "Isle of Rivers" is comparable to "Termite" in the style of social news documentary. The desperate mother played by Yin Xin is anxious, helpless, and has no exit to escape. The image of the struggling middle-aged woman has also been connected by many people to director Qian Xiang, helping Chen Xiangqi win the "Back to the Light Sonata" after the Golden Horse Film.
The title of the film is the Island of Rivers, which is easy to awaken small and fresh pictures such as rivers. In the movie, it is not beautiful, it is a metaphor for the toll station of the traffic, from the picture vision to the core theme, it is constantly deepened.
Big cars and small cars, with emotionless speed and noise, ran like a flood and rumbled like beasts.
This toll collector job is poorly paid and mechanically boring. Ah Wen, a single mother, obviously has no social life, and has been dealing with steel machinery, cage kiosks and cement roads all day long, and her ability to cope with social affairs has been greatly degraded.
Poor mothers have bear children, and bad things always come to their own doors. Dealing with money, she did not know how to be good in front of a huge amount of money.
The film begins with the bear child's contrived and unbiased sister asking, "Do you believe that life is beautiful?" "Deliberately creating dramatic contrasts. This age-old puzzle that is difficult to solve has successfully planted the weak saplings of "The Island of Rivers".
The dismal life that the audience is going to see, it is very bad.
The bear child is not educated, but it is not a crime of adultery, and it is not called incurable. Looking back at the bitter fruit of this early love, according to the normal treatment in reality, it is obvious that it will not make the mother lose her dignity so much and wash the floor on her back.
However, film directors always like to live with the audience.
The sense of cage set up in "The Island of Rivers" seems to block the mother's retreat and also seal other escape routes. She had to consider turning to The energetic, heartless and lungless driver Zhihao.
Zheng Renshuo, who is unforgettable in "Drunken Life and Death", appears as a big truck driver with a crazy performance and rich feelings.
This Zhihao, "When he saw the fish and meat, he didn't even want his life." This Taiwanese-style character can be said to be quite unpleasant, shouting loudly, swinging loudly, and eating in a big mouth.
Looking at the movie, you will find that he is shaking almost the whole time, and the wandering image of the elderly child who chews on the brother and the loser is a strict personality contrast with the stupid bear child, which is a mirror image of each other.
They all grabbed rice with their hands, devoured it, and ate it ugly. The bear child couldn't hook the clothes outside the window, and he took them back. Not to mention, his arrival did change the tension in the family— even if the process was so brief. He assumed the dual role of incompetent: friend and father.
Live fish and biology classes also appear in the film. It is like the image of a middle-aged woman with dry hair and monotonous clothes, and it seems that she no longer regards herself as a fresh and attractive woman of the opposite sex.
With the relationship between Ah Wen and Zhi Hao reached, the film appeared to be raining heavily. However, throughout the film of "Island of Rivers", there is still a constant water loss trouble, and an increasingly strong drying crisis.
The scourge of "The Island of Rivers" is the bear child, and the bear child leads to money. The mother committed herself to the truck driver for the money, thought it was a transaction and acting, and slowly reached a physical and emotional tacit understanding, which was finally due to the interruption of money and money.
The reason is also very simple, the truck driver is the adult version of the bear child, and the money he relies on for survival is still saved by the handouts of his brother. He is not a big money, and he has no ability to help and change the life of his lover. His love is sincere, but his love is incompetent.
Zheng Renshuo, who has lost his lover, and the bear child who is crying outside the parents' car, the image is once again integrated.
Powerless, lacking in responsibility for love, slowly rising from adolescence to another age, once again spawned the same tragedy.
At the end of the movie, Ah Wen's mother and son tear their faces and are about to be completely destroyed. The son suddenly walked back from off-camera. The two men sat down on the ground, took their own drinks, and drank heavily.
They got water for the time being, and it seemed as if they could escape it. But look at these rutted fish. It was as if something had been washed away by the noise and running water.
"In fact, the film was filmed to explain to the audience."
Interview: Cat Nine | big strange
Director: Zhan Jinglin
(hereinafter referred to as Zhan)
Starring: Zheng Renshuo
(hereinafter referred to as Shuo)
Q
The story of The Island of Rivers looks a bit like the stories we often see on the news about some bear children pit parents. Have you been inspired by anything during the whole creative process, such as social news?
JEN: No. It was pure thought of. Inspiration, no, I actually just want to express the pressure of daily life, and then through a fictional drama film, write out the pressure of life. And then I'm actually not particularly concerned about the pressure, but how people under the pressure face that pressure, and I think that's more fascinating.
If the movie just states how that stress is, I think everybody is stressed, everybody is stressed, and there's pressure to get up every day, but you have to find a way to live with that stress, and then maybe you'll find some small happiness in it, though it may be short-lived. What I care more about is how people find a little happiness in stress, and find a little bit of happiness that belongs to the spirit.
The metaphor of the fish and the island in the film may be well understood by everyone after watching the film, but in addition, do the birdcages and badminton balls like Xie Zhao also have this symbolic metaphor?
Jen: Yes, I don't know how to elaborate on the symbol of this birdcage, but that birdcage is indeed specially placed. Of course, badminton is also true, in the beginning, I just wanted to use badminton as a kind of penetration of the film, it may symbolize relationship, it may symbolize power.
At the beginning, Ah Wen and her colleagues play badminton together, which may be a kind of friendship establishment; but when badminton comes to Zhihao and Ah Wen, it is a class metaphor for the gender rights of men and women, like the act of stuffing badminton into Ah Wen's mouth, which is a very violent expression, but what is special is that this violence is finally transformed into a beautiful love fantasy.
Including Ah Wen's dream, the door of the underground passage she woke up from the dream, in fact, there were badminton balls on both sides of the door. And the back, Zhihao and Superman play badminton and so on. It is to feel that there must be something that can run through and symbolize the change of the entire relationship between the characters.
In addition to badminton, the dress outside the window in the film, probably what is going on?
Jen: Actually, it's hard for me to say what the dress is or why it is, but this part is in the script. In fact, that piece of cloth was not taken very clearly, I was asking the art to find a Hawaiian style material, maybe with a section when they were going to go to the river picnic, Zhihao told Ah Wen that we were going to Hawaii, there was a relationship between the two, but I said it was not accurate, it may represent a fantasy in the heart.
In the film, the clothes hang outside the window, Superman has not been able to touch, so what can he not get? Maybe it's love, maybe it's the father; Zhihao got it, maybe it's just a temporary love fantasy. When I was creating, I had such a feeling very roughly, so I put this thing in.
The scene where the three main actors (Zhihao, Ah Wen, and Superman) eat at home in the film is very impressive, do you have any special design and arrangement when you conceive and grasp the relationship and state of this scene?
Jen: That dinner scene was actually very interesting, and the instruction I gave to Shuo was to eat all the time. I don't know what the scene will be like, but when the three of them sit together, there is a very unexpected chemical change - there is a wonderful sense of balance.
When the person ate violently, the reaction of the other two, and the state brought about by the exaggerated behavior of the person, were the surprises that the three of them gave me. I didn't actually think about what the scene would be like at that time, and I remember that we actually shot this part very many times, because when we first started shooting, the whole state was very funny.
Shuo: Because in fact, at that time, we thought that a lot of funny points were our taiwanese language, there were some phonetic semantic changes, like scrambled eggs with tomatoes, I said egg nutrition (pronounced "fuck your mother") has become the kind of swear words. Because my role itself is the kind of illogical, for example, the dish is garlic puree white meat, I will say that it is a garlic pig.
And after I said that, people kept laughing. The cinematographer is also, in fact, the photography has always been handheld, and then I heard the director say to the photographer, how can you keep shaking, of course, the director is also laughing, so in fact, the scene is quite interesting.
This film is exactly two scenes where there are family dinners, the other is where Zhihao is eating with his brother and sister-in-law, but it is obvious that in that scene, Zhihao is like a superfluous role in a family, and in this one of Awen's family, it is more like a part of the family.
Jen: Yes, I think in retrospect I think that scene was particularly important. That's when he (Zhihao) enters the family as if he becomes a father, which is an important entry point for the whole story. I was pleasantly surprised by the chemical change they presented to me. Although I laughed at that time, that laugh was actually with excitement.
The details of Zhihao's role of eating with his hands are a natural interpretation of Ren Shuo's behavior in the process of speculating on the role, that superman in the movie, there is also a shot of eating with his hands, is there a special setting for this performance of children?
Shuo: Actually, it should be said that I and Superman are two opposite images in the play. I should be in a state like Superman, and Superman should be like me.
Jen: I'm actually particularly interested in the kind of people who are "little adults" and "big kids." Because I think these two kinds of people, especially, are not in the social norms.
We say that the "little adult" is a small child who is particularly like an adult, and he shows that he does not conform to his true age, which is a very peculiar state in itself; the "big child" is even more so, he is an adult, but he behaves like a child. I'm really fascinated by these two kinds of people, who are not in a norm of social etiquette, so there will be a certain spirituality.
In the final part of the movie, Ah Wen and Superman have been sitting on the side of the road with a box of drinks, will there be a hint at this time of design, as if it will get better next? It's like relieving thirst and relieving stress?
Jen: I don't think there's a final solution to things in the world. Nothing, including Ah Wen's relationship with his children, or his relationship with Zhihao, has no final resolution. Maybe only the middle suddenly soothes, which is more like the real state of the world.
Ups and downs like this.
Jen: Yes, I think there is no eternal reconciliation in the relationship between people, there is no eternal reconciliation, people are fighting against others, against themselves, to find a balanced way to live together. Whether it is for friends, relatives, or lovers. In fact, the last scene was also given to me by the two actors.
Taiwan is actually a very hot place, but when we were shooting, it was very cold, and when we were shooting, we encountered the most terrible cold current in Taiwan, and it was snowing, and it was really a very incredible thing to snow in Taiwan. So that day when I was shooting on the road, I was sitting in front of the rover and shivering. I wanted to finish filming us quickly, but I couldn't stand it.
I didn't know what was going to happen, I just said we'd have drinks, and I didn't know how they'd drink. But these two people are very inexplicable, as if there is a tacit understanding, and the feeling of drinking drinks has a rhythm.
Wondering how you presuppose Ah Wen's personality traits, the Ah Wen presented in the film even feels a little bit like a social disorder, including little communication between her and her son.
Jen: Speaking of this, I also heard a very surprising thing yesterday, a friend from the mainland told me that the social status of the toll collectors on your side does not seem to be too bad. Seems to belong to the civil service too? But Taiwan's toll collectors, their social status is very, very poor.
This is also why there is a struggle to rebuild the toll booth in Taiwan, that is, the toll collectors in them have worked for twenty or thirty years, but they have no official status at all, so if you leave today, you will have to leave. It is precisely because of this that there will be resistance, and they are a very low class in the socio-economic status of society.
Then, you just asked Ah Wen's personality, which is actually the status of the general toll collector. Because they work twenty-four hours a day, they don't have much social relationship, they don't have a complete social circle, and then most of them are middle-aged women, so there are almost no opportunities to contact the outside world, and they are particularly closed and not good at communicating with people.
When I really went deep into the life of toll collectors, I found that the social circles of Taiwan toll collectors are basically solidified, for example, I want to find a partner today, most of them are truck drivers, especially truck drivers who deliver goods, because they travel to and from the same road for a long time. The second is the highway police.
At the end of the film, Ah Wen sees two little girls walking by, is she lamenting the innocence and happiness that she can no longer find? That Yin Xin's eyes were particularly gripping.
Jen: Yes, the last scene is when Yin Xin has to stand up and watch the little girl across the road walk past. I had a lot of discussions with Yin Xin in advance, and she also asked me why Ah Wen stood up and why she was staring at the two girls.
Yin Xin will feel that at the beginning, Ah Wen did not think that LiYa had returned, then consider the abstract, is it like you said, that represents a kind of reminiscence of the past after aging, that kind of unrestrained and happy state may be the past of a certain stage of her growth.
I gave her a lot of possibilities, she may think of that good and will be sad, may feel good because of it, may also have disappointment in the present. I didn't limit Yin Xin to any of this, and after I told her about it, she knew it and mastered that state and degree herself.
Zhihao and his brother hugged and cried, and Superman bought a drink for his mother, all of which is a kind of growth, right? What do you think is the growth of the character of Ah Wen?
Zhan: Ah Wen's growth, I think it is she who finally recognized that she still has love in her heart, which is a kind of inner growth. She thought she didn't need love, she thought her relationship with Zhihao was all a real money relationship.
She herself was not aware of the qualitative change that had taken place under this money relationship, and it was about her heart. So her growth is very intrinsic. She suddenly realized that in this state of her middle age, she still needed love. Sure, maybe it wasn't love anymore, maybe it was just reliance, it was a piece of driftwood, but she needed it.
The last question, at the beginning of the movie, Superman asks "Do you believe life is good?" What is your answer to this question? We'd love to know what you think as creators?
SHH: Do you think life is good?
Cat Nine: Hahaha I may still have a pessimistic view in my heart, but sometimes I feel that it is not so bad.
Big Strange: I used to think that life was not good, but then I felt that it was very beautiful.
Shhh: It's actually a real state, and everyone can't say when it's beautiful or what's not. I think it's all right. Because everyone's mental journey and growth process are different, whether they are very happy or not, you yourself tell others whether this is beautiful or not.
I don't know if I'm going to continue to work like this all the time, or if everyone will continue to be so beautiful. I think it's like what I just said, because we have to take responsibility for our own lives, and we're always looking for a balance that may be good or sometimes not, and no one knows or can't be sure.
But we have to live well, live happily. Try to do what you love to do, and of course there must be a bad experience in between. I think that the thing in the film is originally a role that wants all the audiences to have a great emotional commonality with the people in the movie.