The Land of No One: The Quest for a Lost Inner Life

Fern only has one motorhome, and too many people "have everything but don't seem to have anything", because they dare not or are not willing to give up, and many people will not leave the same place in their lives.

In September 2020, Chinese director Zhao Ting's work "The Land of No One" won the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the 77th Venice Film Festival. This news has made the name zhao ting remembered by more people, and it has also helped her get out of the circle of movie fans and enter the public's vision. In the past six months, various news and discussions about "No Man's Land" have not been interrupted.

Highly valued for winning awards, Zhao Ting's popularity seems to have entered a familiar routine - because of scarcity, her preciousness has been valued beyond imagination. At the level of public psychology, Zhao Ting won the award as a Chinese director, which seems to once again confirm the strength of Chinese creators, and also witnessed that after a certain prejudice was broken, the creativity and competitiveness of the new group of Chinese directors are worthy of high hopes.

Before Zhao Ting, the Chinese directors who won the Golden Lion Award, including Hou Xiaoxian, Zhang Yimou, Cai Mingliang, Ang Li and Jia Zhangke, Zhao Ting was the "sixth person", but from the perspective of the speed and strength of the rise, the strength and development prospects shown by Zhao Ting had a "back wave" like a surging wave.

The western and road films of "The Land of No One" are characterized by anti-urban elements such as emptiness, loneliness and desolation, while also having a quiet, free and casual individual life attitude. It is an independent film that holds the attitude of "road back to the road, bridge to bridge", but it makes audiences in different cultural backgrounds inside and outside the local area feel that the "on the road" lifestyle shown in the film is likely to be a mainstream of the future society.

The collapse of the economic pillar of a place, in exchange for the displacement of people in this place, once a bustling gathering place, has become a temporary place for passers-by, and the story of the small town (small town) told in "The Land of No One" is being staged in many places in the United States. In Fern, starring Francis McDormand, the audience saw that this generation of middle-aged and elderly people were tired of industrialized, modern urban life, the ancient nomadic way of life of "living by water and grass", and regained its charm, a motorhome, enough to accommodate a person's body and soul, life and far away.

Fern is a person whose experience is full of scars, she has lost her beloved husband, she also has a very different concept from her sister, she meets the man Dave who likes her, but when she finds that Dave is once again trapped in a comfortable and boring family life mode, she chooses to say goodbye quietly... After watching "The Land of NoBody", many viewers felt familiar and thought that driving alone on the road was her best choice.

As for whether he will be like Fern? I believe that many people just have a vague consciousness in their hearts and are not willing (dare not) to think seriously, because it will really bring real pain.

Fern wasn't just herself, but a lot of people. She is a middle-aged person trapped on the road or in the office, a person who is as anxious as a trapped beast even in the family, a person who lives in a traditional, heavy evaluation system, a person who lives for her identity and responsibility... The difference is that Vern has gained inner peace—even temporarily—through her nomadic life. But the vast majority of people in reality can't walk away as dashingly as she did. Fern only has one motorhome, and too many people "have everything but don't seem to have anything", because they dare not or are not willing to give up, and many people will not leave the same place in their lives.

In "The Land of No One", it actually contains very old Oriental values. When watching this movie, I think of Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Origin" from time to time, as well as the Chinese philosophy of "the unity of heaven and man". In the movie, Zhao Ting likes to shoot dusk, light halo, flowers and plants, although she does not deliberately present the poetic atmosphere of the film, she can still see her fascination with the environment. The car camp where she lives temporarily, her caravan full of debris, and the unknown road in front of the car window are her peach blossom sources, "the flowers are gradually charming, and the asakusa can have no horseshoes", and her state of mind is very consistent with these two ancient poems.

Fern can no longer easily establish intimate relationships with others, and the death of her husband is one of the reasons, but the bigger reason is that she has discovered herself, found a more appropriate way to get along with herself and nature, and no longer needs to establish intimate relationships with people to obtain happiness and presence. In The Land of No One, Fern's time with people is short- and his time with nature is rich. In nature, she will always show a sense of freedom like "spreading her wings to fly", she wanders between barren rocks, shouts in front of the Grand Canyon, carries a lantern to the depths of the grassland, swims naked in the lake... With this kind of self-identification and intimate relationship with nature, everything that modern civilization has to offer is instantly lost its appeal.

A few days ago, I saw on a short video website the content of a northeastern traveler, showing the caravan traveler he met in Xishuangbanna. This group of travelers, about the same age as Fern, chose to park in a safe place, cook their own meals, walk their dogs, and live a life without restraint in a strange place. There are not many such people, they either retire or terminate their careers early, living more than half of the year on the road life, if you follow them, the documentary produced, will it be another story of "No Land"?

From this, I thought that the reason why "No One Land" has been nominated for hundreds of individual awards in nearly thirty film awards around the world is not without reason. Because what it shoots is not a broken story of the "American Dream", in fact, it has little to do with the "American Dream", it just focuses on a general confusion after the development of modern civilization to a new stage, and some people's active or passive choice in the face of this confusion. Vern didn't have a clear understanding of her motivations for her actions, nor did she give any special meaning to her wandering journey, and she and them did the simplest thing—following her heart.

Roman Roland, the author of "John Christophe", believes that human life is divided into two kinds, one is daily life, the other is inner life, and in comparison, inner life is more important, because inner life is the real life. For modern people, daily life has been alienated, and the trivial beauty of the surface of life and the beauty of rituals are squeezed by the ever-accelerating time and super high labor intensity, and enjoying daily life has become more of a satisfaction of the desire to fill dissatisfaction. It is precisely because of the "explosion" of daily life that the space of people's inner life is compressed to a very small extent. People cannot understand themselves from the inside, and what should be an open heart becomes a narrow path, which is the main source of many tragedies.

Therefore, the value of "The Land of No Man" is not that it portrays what kind of character it portrays and what kind of story it tells, but that it indirectly expresses the suffering that countless people in this world are experiencing. Returning to the self and returning to nature is certainly a way and channel to liberate the heart, but after all, the price paid is somewhat large and not suitable for most people. Is there a third possibility? While people are pushed forward by the times and trends, can they have more time and space for inner life?

Zhao Ting or Vern can point out the problem, but they are only narrators and film characters, they are only inspirations rather than guides. There are many ways to choose from, there are already people walking the road, we can take, but those still sparsely populated but full of interesting new roads, but also waiting for us to discover and explore.