Edited ∣ Cao Zhen
"Silent Wind Chimes": A cloud of smoke and water
Director: Hong Rongjie| Plot, Same-Sex | Hong Kong, Switzerland, China| 2009
Starring: Lu Yulai, Bernhard Bulling
Miss Cicada Column
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Director Hong Rongjie lost three important people in 2003, and then after six years, he gave birth to this film with a certain degree of autobiographical color. Hong Rongjie said that this is a movie about letting go, but in fact, this slightly dull movie does not give people much of a feeling of light wind after letting go, but like a chaotic smoke, it has been haunting the bottom of the heart. Scattered, but unable to really scatter. Only because of this "letting go" that directly faces life and death, it is more or less filled with helplessness and compulsion. Perhaps, the living person is the one who is really said goodbye.
The interlacing of time and space in the film is extremely complicated, Beijing, Hong Kong and Switzerland, the frequent switching of scenes, so that today's story is cut apart by the memory of the past, and even sometimes people can't distinguish the boundary between the present and the past, and with this, there are also differences between gender and race.
Such a narrative method will undoubtedly bring some obstacles to the viewing of the film, and some small details that are quite out of the ordinary are easy to be ignored and omitted in the continuous conversion. However, from the expression of emotions, the fragmented and intricate chronological order tightly twists the past and the present into an inseparable hemp rope, which gives the film a heavy emotional quality. As a result, the story is no longer a well-crafted script, but more like a whisper of the protagonist Yongjian in a dream-like non-dream. When he wakes up, he knows that his lover Pascal is gone forever, and he is looking for a clue about him in his hometown of Switzerland. When it is misty, it can only allow itself to fall in the abyss called the past. But he always fell back to the same place— drunken but out of place in Hong Kong, where he lived a life of destitution and the people he loved most.
The chaos caused by the complicated interludes and the chaotic timeline is just like a knot in Yongjian's heart that cannot be dismantled. Unexpectedly encountering him, and then sending him away unexpectedly, everything came and went in a hurry. Pascal stole Yongjian's wallet, and their encounter was so bad. After living together, the two became suspicious because of Pascal's derailment. Just as they were about to reconcile, Pascal was one step ahead of him and left forever.
Even if it is a story of life and death, the emotional carrier in the film is not a boat overturned in the turbulent ocean, but a remnant leaf floating on the stream in the forest. With silence, with the sound of the piano, with the long journey instead of the collapse and collapse, the grief of those teeth and claws never broke out, but always remained in the vertebrae with the same intensity, as the one who will live in the future... Another pillar.
The story of dependent origins and extinction, life and death, should be told by the parties themselves, and the seemingly messy interludes in the film create a feeling that is sometimes interrupted and sometimes continued confession. Even if it is a few words and intermittent narration like the film, there are always people who feel the same way. After all, what the film wants to convey is not the story itself, but the emotional journey as a whole. Alas, there is such a kind of mourning in the world, we have all experienced it, we can understand it, but we just can't comfort each other. Because of words or not words, let go or not to let go, it is always there, like smoke and fog, soaked in the cold of winter mornings.
"I'm looking for a friend... He often cried and smiled. ”
Years later, Yongjian stood alone between the empty valleys on the outskirts of Switzerland, the snow on the top of the mountain had not yet melted, and the decadent old house was empty. Yongjian told a Swiss man who resembled Pascal that he had come to find a friend, a "friend" who was long gone... Look for what Pascal does, whether to say goodbye or remember, or to do nothing... I'm afraid that even Yongjian himself can't say it clearly for a while. We are all like this, or we always are like this, and there are things that cannot be understood at the time, and it is too late to understand them.
"After death, the soul reaches the other shore and then returns after seven days, like a bird, or a moth..."
"Why come back?"
"To say goodbye one last time, and then... Ready to start the next life. ”
Yongjian told the Swiss man about the legend of The First Seven in China. In the legend of this reincarnation, there is Chinese aesthetics, crossing the boundary of yin and yang, seeing each other again in thousands of rivers and mountains, not for attachment, not for the continuation of the frontier, just for a goodbye, goodbye.
Just as we are convinced of fate, whether it is good or bad, there is already a definite number on the three living stones. What is owed to each other in the previous life, this life repays each other, and once it is repaid, the fate is also exhausted, as if the task of this life is temporarily over, and the rest is the love of the next life. Cause and effect arise from this, and if good roots are planted in this life, in the next life it may bear good results. Therefore, even if there are thousands of things that cannot be tolerated, on the seventh day, the day when the soul returns to say goodbye, the living people must also give a suitable response, because this goodbye is also a fate.
Such a legend of life and death does not carry the slightest anger, nor does it see a sadness that cannot be dissolved, but it is only stained with a little smoke and water, a thin coolness. I thought it was beautiful. Compared with the thick ink, only the great events of death and life are gently outlined as the beauty of a reunion, wet but light, as if the breeze is left behind, and the moon is missing. More importantly, the legend not only beautifies the departure of the deceased, but also has a deeper meaning that it also gives the living the courage and understanding to let go.
Another commendable aspect of the film is that the dialogue is simplified and reduced as much as possible. After all, Yongjian and Pascal are two people of different races and different nationalities, just like the filming in the film, the crowded and noisy Beijing and the empty and peaceful Switzerland, the sense of difference is very strong. In the film, the interaction between the two is more body language and expression, a look, a silence, a little laughter... As a result, the sense of difference between the two people when they get along is quietly reduced, and the emotional communication is more fluent and coherent.
The story of silence, whether sweet or sour, fortunate or unfortunate, is indeed like a silent wind chime, indeed like the confession of Pascal's soul at the beginning of the film--"Silence is the voice I miss the most, so nostalgic that I have forgotten what kind of voice it is." ”
Pascal is gone, to the distant shore, to the next life of reincarnation. But for Yongjian, his only place to go is the place where he is at this moment. He still has an unfinished fate, and will say goodbye to more dear and beloved people... If the person who will be separated, the dependent arising, will surely be destroyed.