Text | Ray Ying
The "First Incense" released some time ago triggered ridicule in the industry, and this kind of free-fall rout has encountered many times in Xu Anhua's life, but each time he can be painfully thought about and go up to the next level. The emergence of "The First Burning Incense" as a tragic failure of the career is just a sign, let us review the elderly theme film directed by Xu Anhua.
Under the development trend of the global aging population in the 21st century, Hong Kong director Hui Anhua has earlier devoted himself to the filming of films on the theme of the elderly, from "Auntie's Postmodern Life" to "Day and Night in Tin Shui Wai" and "Sister Tao", all of which reflect the poverty, loneliness and death threats suffered by the elderly women at the bottom.
She explores the current survival situation and way out of elderly women, reflecting the thoughtfulness of women and the humorous insight into the world. Although most of her works are rooted in Hong Kong, they are not limited to local experience, but directly refer to the feelings of life, with a transparent and idyllic conversation that has passed through thousands of sails, and without losing compassion and compassion, presenting a warm humanistic landscape.
One
The threat of poverty, loneliness and death
Xu Anhua stressed that he is not a feminist, the film has never been able to depict the problem of women's equality or feminism, perhaps because she is a woman herself, it is easier to touch, and what she most hopes to shoot is a female experience different from the perspective of male directors.
Because of this, her works do not have a sharp gender orientation, and even the sense of sex is very thin, really photographing the reality of women, cherishing women's identity in addition to "sex", and also reflecting the hidden or hidden problems of survival and death in the current society, and exploring the path of "active aging" in their own way.
Xu Anhua's films are often full of affection, especially in her elderly theme films, most of the stories take place in the family context, focusing on elderly women, most of them have a relatively low-level occupation, widowed or alone on the edge of the city, there is no hero to save the story of beauty, the foothold is the individual's own redemption, that is, women's self-help.
A'e in "Woman Forty", aunt in "Auntie's Postmodern Life", Guijie and Huanjie in "The Day and Night of Tin Shui Wai", and Sister Tao in "Sister Tao" are all like this. Xu Anhua frankly said: Women themselves are vulnerable groups, old women are even more vulnerable groups, and retired people are also vulnerable groups.
In "Auntie's Postmodern Life", the aunt lives alone in an old-fashioned residential building in Shanghai, she has received a good education, thinks she is very strategic, and looks down on the residents of the building, even the female water wife of the same age who seems to have a good relationship, and the aunt has not recognized each other in her heart, saying that she is clean. But Qinggao's aunt was rejected for her Outdated English pronunciation, lost her job as an English tutor, and lost her source of income.
When the aunt was sent to the northeast of Shanghai Zhiqing, when she learned the news that she could return to the city, she abandoned her husband and daughter, preferring to stay alone in the city, and after experiencing the collision of two generations of values, the resistance of women of the same generation, and the failure of getting along with the two sexes, so that the aunt had to return to the former home of Dongben with her daughter after years of savings.
The old radiant, firm-tongued aunt is gone, replaced by an earth-colored, numb-looking aunt who, in the noisy and chaotic, more low-level family life, is more like a sinner, repaying her husband and daughter with her physical labor. My aunt used to be afraid of not catching up with the times, afraid of being despised by others, and unwilling to accept defeat, but now in the face of reality, she had to bow her head. She chooses to forget the past, remember her mistakes and make up for them, and the self-sufficiency behind this courage is implicit.
In contrast, the dilemma faced by women in "The Day and Night in Tin Shui Wai" and "Sister Tao" is more specific and more active, while women's self-sustainment is more obvious. Tin Shui Wai is one of the areas with the greatest concentration of social contradictions in Hong Kong, and the living space of small people is cramped and narrow. Single mother Gui sister in the supermarket hard work, middle-aged widowed, raised alone is in adolescence of the son, the son will be tested in the list is imminent, where to go has never landed. In her early years, guijie was the biggest contributor in the original family, supporting her two younger brothers to study, and when she reached middle age, although respected, she became the most economically embarrassed one.
Comparatively speaking, Sister Huan is older, widowed in her old age, and after her son-in-law remarried, Sister Huan lost the reason for savings to live in, moved into a new home that forced her, refused all the care and friendliness around her with an indifferent look, and living alone also meant that the threat of illness and death was greater, and she was particularly depressed after sending gold to her grandson.
If the women in "Auntie's Postmodern Life" and "The Day and Night of Tin Shui Wai" can still control their own destiny, then Sister Tao in "Sister Tao" is somewhat incompetent. She is old, paralyzed, childless under her knees, and can only choose whether to stay at home or go to a nursing home.
Sister Tao has taken care of the Liang family for more than 60 years since she was 13 years old, and the fourth generation of young master Roger has taken on the obligation of serving the elderly without hesitation. For many years, the identity of the servant has made Sister Tao develop a "sensible" personality, unwilling to add trouble to people, and Sister Tao, who pursues perfection in everything, cannot face the various unbearable conditions of the nursing home, she superficially wants to live in a nursing home, but inside she is resistant.
Sister Tao did not sink because of this, she could not change the environment nor become a burden on others, she could only change herself, trying to integrate into this group also gained friendship, and in Roger's frequent visits and exchanges, she obtained a spiritual comfort that was better than family affection.
Judging from these 3 films on the theme of the elderly, the main dilemma faced by women comes from the pressure of survival and death, and they uphold the clear sense of boundaries of modern urban people and are unwilling to break through emotional boundaries at will. The elderly women in Xu Anhua's films, in the double dilemma of the outside world and self-construction, how do they break through and regain their peace of mind?
Two
"Eat" the scene and let the characters vent
The women in Xu Anhua's elderly films don't even have the opportunity to realize the binary opposition to women in mainstream culture: career, family, strong women, and the choice of xiannei help. They are old enough to live in high school, widowed or alone, living on meager incomes, with low sense of accomplishment and mobility from work. Real life has ruthlessly taken away a lot, they still have to face the threat of poverty, loneliness and death, the director is based on women, and crosses the gender, and finally rises to the human level to face the ultimate proposition.
"The Day and Night of Tin Shui Wai" relies on the tandem of daily life dramas, and a large number of them are promoted by "eating", and there are as many as 13 eating scenes, and the "eating" scene has become a cathartic point for the characters in the movie, and also bears the important responsibility of the entire film narrative. This life-like scene is not only in line with the overall narrative style of the film, but also the main scene of the transformation of character relationships and emotional communication.
Coincidentally, The Peach Sister in "Sister Peach" pays attention to the excellence of ingredients, strives to present every dish perfectly, and she dedicates her best cooking skills to the young master Roger. The first half of the film is very cold, the two do not talk much, try to abide by the rules of the master and servant, when Sister Tao fell ill and lived in a nursing home, the relationship took a turn.
Roger took Sister Tao to a restaurant for dinner, and Roger's mother returned from the United States to visit Sister Peach at a nursing home with her own bird's nest. Although these two foods are not as good as Sister Tao's intentions, between the transmission of food, two generations of feeding and feeding have been constructed. Although Roger is not biological, he and Sister Tao have been getting along longer and more intimately.
In "Auntie's Postmodern Life", Pan Zhichang ate the taste of his mother in his aunt's braised meat, so that the aunt's hidden motherhood was instantly stimulated, and because of the long-term state of emotional desertification, the distance between the two was suddenly shortened.
Three
"Social participation" drama, let the characters out of the "home"
"Home" is women's survival belonging, for elderly women, Xu Anhua knows that in order to let them dissolve their inner loneliness and improve their survival situation, they must come out of the "home" and participate in the social crowd. Although most of them have reached retirement age, they are still willing to participate in social work.
They have changed from "people in the family" to "people in society", but it is not enough to have jobs, the female images in the film are in the situation of the death of relatives and friends, and their emotions have been in a state of lack for a long time, and they especially need to establish a real "old age" and "old age" in the emotional activities of people.
The aunt who plays tai chi in the park in "Auntie's Postmodern Life" is moved by Pan Zhichang's song "Suolin Capsule" and has since fallen into twilight love. Although it is not timely, through a series of "social participation" plays in the process, her aunt not only finds herself as a woman, but also returns to her youthful state. Even if the good times are not long, the aunt's "postmodern" life experience has opened up a possibility of life for older women.
In "The Day and Night of Tin Shui Wai", Sister Huan goes to the supermarket where your sister is working, so she and your sister gradually walk together from two independent individuals, establishing a relationship between close neighbors and distant relatives. At the end of the film, when the Mid-Autumn Festival is over, Guijie moves the dining table to the same table as the "three grandchildren" of Huanjie's house and sits happily and harmoniously. The realization of mutual infiltration and mutual dependence between people and me, and the increasing blurring of the boundaries between people and me, can lead to the mutual assistance spirit of "watching out for each other" and the phenomenon of "sharing blessings and sharing difficulties", which also gives the guarantee of the life of the elderly living alone, and the living state of exile and wandering is temporarily stopped here.
Sister Tao's real sense of "social participation" begins from the identity of a patient, entering the strange field of the nursing home and living with a group of elderly people. After roger lost the care of Sister Tao, he found that his feelings for Sister Tao had long been superimposed in the accumulated three meals a day, and he did not understand it until after the loss. So he went to visit the nursing home, pushed the wheelchair to take Sister Tao to the park for a walk, went to the restaurant to eat, went to watch his own movie premiere, etc., although the time was short, but Roger did his best to accompany the elderly.
At the end of the film, Sister Tao's years of efforts allow her and Roger to establish feelings beyond the master and servant, and also harvest the friendship in the nursing home because of kindness and thoughtfulness. It constructs an ideal interpersonal relationship of "the old and the old, the young and the young", which promotes the important "supreme good" side of human nature, and makes the audience think about "who we are" from the definition of human beings.
The women in Xu Anhua's elderly theme films are some of the characters who are "trapped" or even "drowned" by the times and themselves. The director's bringing such an elderly group to the screen is a feat in itself in the wave of Hong Kong commercial films. If "Woman Forty" is the beginning of Xu Anhua's attention to women, "Auntie's Postmodern Life" and "Days and Nights in Tin Shui Wai" are "Women Fifty", and "Sister Tao" is "Women Sixty".
In these films, director Xu Anhua not only stays on the daily catharsis of "eating", but also lets the characters go out of the "home". Socially accepted. Being liked by others has such great power is because they can block the imminent feeling of loneliness. Whether from a realistic point of view or from an artistic point of view, the elderly theme films directed by Xu Anhua have opened up some models for the reality and stability of small people, which are undoubtedly worth learning and learning from in terms of universality and insight.