The Chinese drama film Elephant Sits on the Floor, released in 2018 and directed by Hu Bo and written by Hu Bo, tells the story of the film that links a series of biographies of different protagonists, tells the story of a single, tense day from dawn to dusk, and depicts a society marked by selfishness.
I spent a whole night watching the movie, and yes, all night, because the movie was 230 minutes long. Although the film is very long, the story is very simple, in these 230 minutes, the four characters are connected by different things, walking through an ordinary day of their lives, but because of a story that is difficult to distinguish between true and false, they have made this day the most extraordinary day. At the Manzhouli Zoo, there's an elephant that sits there all day, and maybe someone sticks a fork at it, or maybe it likes to sit there, I don't know, and then a lot of people run over and hold the railing to see, and someone wants to throw something to eat, and it doesn't pay attention. Yu Cheng sat there, telling this ridiculous story with no head and no tail, and in the story of "the elephant sitting on the ground", several characters in the film also appeared one after another, like the elephant in the story, sitting there in shock. The last to appear is the protagonist Webb. There are four characters in the film: Yu Cheng, Webb, Huang Ling and Wang Jin. The four people include old age, youth and youth, but also men and women, but no matter what the large group, they are the most marginal kind of people, they are dust, they are scum, in this world, no one will give them pity and love, even the most beloved relatives, friends, parents and children, they are also treated with bad words and punches and kicks.
The whole movie feels to me like the song "100,000 Hippies" from the Universal Youth Hostel, which sings that "there is no way before, and there is no way back after", and the same is true of the people in "The Elephant Sits on the Ground". Although the four characters in the film are all bottom edge characters, the reason for their edge is not because they are at the bottom, but because although they are at the bottom, they have a certain degree of sobriety, which is very painful. In the film, we can also see other low-level characters, they are not as painful as these four characters live, because their desires are very simple, in order to eat, to earn money, for women, not to think about the meaning and truth of life, to live for the instinct to survive. But what about the four of them? Wang Jin needless to say, people who live to that age will naturally see everything in life, and then look at the other three people, Yu Cheng, Webb and Huang Ling, you will find that the words they say are not like the words that and students can say, they seem to be philosophers, poets, who see through the essence of the mechanical repetition of life, but they are powerless to break free from reality, and can only numbly but unwillingly live. The Golden Horse Awards' evaluation of this film is "roaring but full of poetry", which I think is very good. This movie is like a long obscure poem, through four people in an embarrassing, entangled, helpless day, finally show us the pain of life, this pain is not the difficulty of living, but you are aware of the problems in life, but powerless to change, can not change others, can not change yourself. "You're scum, you're shit, you're going to die, you're going to die," Webb shouted with all his strength in the face of the empty, dry riverbed, which was not shouted to others, but to himself. Or rather, this is also the director's own inner monologue.
I really can't talk about this movie in many words, and after watching the whole movie, it feels like a fog is stuck in your chest, you feel filled with something, but you can't tell in detail what it is. Romain Rolland said that "there is only one kind of true heroism in the world, that is, to love life after recognizing the truth of life", but what we see in this movie seems to be a group of cowards in life, they are numb, they evade, and they take the "elephant" that sounds ridiculous as their life sustenance, but are they really such fools? I don't think so, Lao Wang said to the two children in the station, "You don't go, you can solve the problem here", but why did you still go? Because of Webb's words "go and see." Lao Wang also said a paragraph: "You can go anywhere, you can go, when you get there, you will find that there is nothing different, but you have spent most of your life, so before, you have to lie to someone", when Lao Wang said this paragraph, I think it is just fucking a poet. This sentence also seems to say a lot of small city youth like me, we have seen the outside world, but because of their own ability problems and various reasons, nestled in this small place, over thirty years old, know that their life may be forever repeating this day's life, but the heart is still unwilling, the north is our "Manchuria", those work they yearn for is "elephant", but we are soberly aware that after going there, life will not become so good. However, who has to deceive, who is who, is themselves, because only by deceiving themselves can they let themselves "go to see" desperately, Webb, Huang Ling and Lao Wang desperately marched to Manchuria, and more people like me could only curse loudly by the river, and then silently go home.
To be honest, I personally think that although the movie "Elephant Sitting on the Ground" is excellent, it is still a bit unworthy of the name to win the "Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film". However, after watching the award ceremony, I think that the award of this film is more significant than the content, because just like the director Hu Bo's teacher said at the award ceremony, "This award is for the entire generation of young directors, and it is the best inspiration for young filmmakers", we all know that there are all kinds of phenomena in the mainland film market that make people powerless, and it is difficult for young filmmakers who really work hard to make movies, but perhaps from this moment on, the Golden Horse Awards have also become the "elephants" in the hearts of countless young filmmakers. Let them find a breakthrough direction for themselves in the fog of no way forward and no way back.