The First Parting: The Film and Reality Are Once Again Approaching

Directed by Wang Lina and produced by poet Qin Xiaoyu, the film "The First Parting" tells the story of the troubles and sorrows of Aisa, Kaili and Kaili's younger brother who live in Shaya, Xinjiang, and their attachment to their families and hometown in the face of repeated changes in life and parting in life.

"Film is the asymptote of reality", the film "The First Parting" reinterprets the relationship between film and reality, brings the distance between film and reality closer again, and timely distances away, making a new narrative and attempt for the blurred area of "asymptote", recreating reality with a recorded posture, and reconstructing reality in a way that sets up dramatic conflicts. Thus constructing the same space between film and reality, the film is not only limited to the documentary of shooting methods, but also manifested in the visual presentation of character actions and character backgrounds and the unity of logical narrative.

Isa and Kelly's life experience of the "first parting" becomes a potential dramatic conflict in the film's narrative, why are they parting, and what are they parting? Isa lived in a poor family, her mother was deaf and mute, and often left home like crazy, which became the biggest distress of Isa's childhood, and it was also the responsibility that Isa's father could not bear, and he could only send his wife to a nursing home. So Isa parted ways with her mother. Compared with the loss of Isa's mother, Isa desperately searches for her mother in the night, and the endless black and unstable lens picture in the lens shows Isa's inner fear and worry, but when her mother is sent to a nursing home, Isa and her mother no longer live together, but he can only bear this helpless separation in silence. The conflicts in Isa's life are gradually shelved in the details of daily life, unable to bear parting, and the background of refusing to part is often reflected in Isa's life. At the end of the film, Isa is looking for the lost lamb in the snow, the camera is also unstable, as the figure that Isa is looking for rises and falls, but the black that can't see the five fingers has finally become the vast white between heaven and earth, the color of separation has changed, and Isa still learned to "leave" this lesson.

Similarly, for Isa's good friend Kelly, Kelly appears in a red dress, she is warm, full of wildness, like a desert flower with extreme vitality. Kelly lives in a harmonious family, with a lovely brother, a grandfather, and parents who do their best to create happiness. But Kelly left her hometown to go to school in the county in order to improve her grades, and Kelly left her friends, left the lamb, and even more left her hometown. The Kelly family, in contrast to the Isa family, is another narrative line in the film, and this dramatic conflict is resolved naturally with the Kelly family's move, leaving only Kelly's silent and affectionate look back at her hometown.

Adapting to the dramatic conflicts that are constantly being set up and weakened in the film is the documentary nature of the form and content of the film, and the real life expressed in the film is more heavy and textured. The film took 4 years to create, including half a year of fieldwork, a year to track the actors (the characters in the film are real people), the accumulation of documentary material, and the filming and research of this documentary contributed to the script concept of the film "The First Parting", and finally after two years of shooting and post-production, the film was achieved. It can be said that the creator enters the world of images from the documentary and enters the space of film art creation, which determines the relationship between the documentary nature of the image and the drama of the narrative, which breaks the rules of linear narrative, focuses on telling real life with the language of the film, and finds the twists and turns of the film to reality.

In addition to the documentary, the shooting method also makes a poetic treatment of the background of the characters, which is mainly reflected in the visual presentation of the film. Just like in the first shot of the film, the leafy trees in the wide-angle shot, stretching out the green without boundaries, the sheep make a clanging sound, and Isa comes from a distance, wrapped in a natural life. Under the prominent and magnified scenery, the characters are small, sometimes the little Isa, Kelly and Kelly's brother are three small people standing on the thousand-year-old poplar tree, sometimes the three are silhouettes in the vast desert under the sun, Kelly's brother rolls forward in the desert, as if merging with the desert, this nature and the innocent, free child is the beauty of harmony and balance. And between the big and the small, the quiet and the moving, the light and the dark constitute the spectacle of southern Xinjiang, and also constitute "my" sweet dream about the hometown. "I" is Isa and Kelly immersed in the scenery, "I" is also the countless "Isa" and "Kelly" who will miss this beautiful dream when they grow up, for them this dream is childhood, it is distant, only remember the vastness between heaven and earth at that time, and forget the existence of "I", "I" will always be small. At this moment, childhood, adulthood, hometown, reality and dream correspond to different personal names and tenses, the poetry created by this is transformed into a continuous emotion, and the poetic character reconciles the cruelty and nakedness of reality, closer to the warmth of reality.

Second, replace the outbreak of dramatic conflict with documentary images. After Isa's mother "ran away from home", Isa and her brother struggled to find her mother, and the two sat on the edge of the bed without saying a word; when Isa's brother was preparing to leave home for college, Aisa and his brother brushed her mother's hair without a sound; when Isa's father and relatives discussed sending his wife to a nursing home, the crowd was silent. It can be said that at the explosive point of the mood of the characters in the film, the camera records everything in a bystander posture, watching people who are experiencing parting from a distance, whether adults or children, they are silent in the panorama or in the close-up, the picture is sometimes still, or the camera just moves people's wrinkled faces, so that the emotions of the characters slowly flow, that is the appearance of time, the details of life. If this film observes reality from the perspective of a child, it cannot completely divide the boundaries between children and adults, because they often show the same appearance.

It can be said that reproducing the realism of life and showing the conflict of reality has become the way of expression of the film to construct the film and reality, and the two have created a poetic atmosphere in the visual presentation, the restraint and implicit expression in the narrative logic, the use of the details of life to connect the actions of the characters, constituting the texture of reality, thus realizing the asymptotic approach of the film and reality again: between the choice between the truth and fiction of life, the subtlety and truth of life, the natural nature of life. Just like Isa's mother, who fell ill because she was bitten by a poisonous spider in the desert, this is a natural pain that is inevitable, and it is also a natural state of life that must be experienced.

The film "The First Parting" undoubtedly responds to the reality under the current epidemic, and the film needs the warm return after a long absence - touching the pain points of reality, but should not forget the poetry and romance of reality, this warmth will give people hope and space for thinking. What cannot be ignored is that the natural features of the wonders of southern Xinjiang in "The First Parting", the customs and customs with unique regional characteristics and the presentation of the Uyghur language constitute the defamiliarization of watching the film, generate infinite charm, and depict emotions with the details of life, but to a certain extent, it does not deeply explore the deeper impact and influence of family and modern civilization on people.

Film and reality need to go hand in hand, support each other, look at it as equals, and maybe when you look up or look down at reality, film may become your art.

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