Film and television word-of-mouth list (WeChat ID: yingshikoubei): Movies are not only an artistic feast of light and shadow, but also a true presentation of fantasies shining into reality.
A movie can show an era, a country, a person's life. It teaches you to look at problems from different levels from a rational point of view, analyze contradictions, and resolve crises that have or have not yet existed in life.
It teaches you to feel different emotions from different perspectives from a perceptual perspective, sometimes you wash your face with tears, sometimes you laugh with tears, sometimes you are stunned, sometimes you are amazed.
There is such a film full of resentment and pathos: "Miyang", which means secret sunshine.
The plot of "Miyang" is like this: a woman named Shen Ai, after the death of her husband in a car accident, brought her son from Seoul to the small town of Miyang to open a piano academy, her son was killed soon after, she chose to surrender to Christ in extreme pain, and then slowly chose to forgive the criminal, but when she visited the prison, she heard the criminal calmly tell her "I have been forgiven by God", she began to doubt God's fairness, so she embarked on the extreme road of revenge against God and self-harm...
The heroine constantly seeks redemption in the tragic fate, and the road is full of ups and downs and sorrows. But we will always see that there are still some secret sunlight that fades the darkness of the road.
(1) Reality and pride
The protagonist, Shen Ai, is a woman with strong self-esteem.
Why did she come to Miyang? She told others that this was the hometown of her late husband, the place where her husband dreamed of returning. However, in her heart, in Seoul, it means that she has to face the fact that her husband had other women outside before he died, and her own life after his death.
Life in Seoul tortures her self-esteem every day, and she prefers to come to Miyang to start over, where no one knows her husband's change of heart, and no one knows that she has been neglecting her piano skills for many years, and she can proudly live with the aura of coming from Seoul and graduating from the Seoul Conservatory of Music.
Yet reality quickly hit back at her pride and self-esteem. In the barbershop, she heard several women in the neighborhood gossiping about her, and at that time she began to realize that in the eyes of others, she was just a nervous woman.
In order to maintain her self-esteem, she announced to her neighbors that she wanted to buy land – but she didn't have so much money. At the same time, she enthusiastically participates in the women's dinner in Miyang, partying with them in the KTV, full of joy that her new life in this town is on the right track.
On that night of the great carnival, a great tragedy happened: the son Jun'er, who was alone at home, was kidnapped. Moreover, the reason for the kidnapping of his son is unacceptable to Shen Ai - the murderer has targeted the money that Shen Ai is going to buy land. Shen Ai certainly couldn't come up with that much money, so soon after, she saw her son's body.
In fact, Shen Ai is essentially a naïve woman. At the beginning, I came to Miyang without human feelings, refused the help of others, refused to hang a false certificate for my college, suggested others to renovate the storefront at the first meeting, and left her six-year-old son alone at home when carrying out public relations activities with others, and panicked after being threatened by gangsters, all of which reflected the woman's immature self-esteem.
This immature self-esteem continued after her surrender to Christ. The prisoner was brought to justice, and she decided to promote God's love and go to the cell to express her forgiveness to her face. Perhaps in her heart, this visit to prison should be that the prisoner was very painfully begging for forgiveness in front of her, and then she affirmed to him with the teachings of Jesus, I forgive you, so as to show her love and greatness.
However, reality dealt a blow to her naïve thoughts. Across from her sat a man with a calm face, who slowly said to her, "I also believe in God" and "I have received God's forgiveness."
Has God forgiven the prisoner in front of him? So what is the value of such forgiveness? Why did God allow Himself to suffer endlessly, but let this criminal calmly tell me, "He has been forgiven"? I haven't forgiven him yet, so why should God forgive? Why is God so unjust?
So this immature self-esteem slowly evolved into hatred of reality, and attacks on the world slowly evolved into resentment and depravity.
(ii) Resentment
Shen Ai, who had lost her son, was completely alone.
She resented, resented the criminal who killed her son, and she resented the world for why it had hit the pride of this weak woman so much.
The backlog of resentment in the heart always has to have a channel to resolve, or she chooses revenge in exchange for inner balance, or she chooses faith to dissolve the hatred in her heart.
At first she chose the second option, using God's fraternity to dissolve the hatred in her heart. However, it is clear that she did not dispel the resentment in her heart because of this. When she saw the criminal's daughter being bullied by the hooligans, and saw the criminal's daughter handing her the look of distress, she walked away with a fierce heart. So on the last trip to the cell, she completely collapsed.
So she took revenge. The target of this revenge is God. Because this time, the object of her resentment had become God.
She was hysterical and spared no effort. She slapped tables in churches so that believers could not pray; she stole CDs from video stores and ran to the sound-activated sheds of large missionary events to replace them with hymns and sabotage missionary activities; she even lured priests into the wilderness to commit adultery; she threw stones into the homes of believers who prayed for her late at night...
Hysterical revenge, in a sense, is actually begging for mercy to the world.
Finally she used a fruit knife to cut strips of blood on her wrist. But at that moment, she ran out and called for help from the people in the street. At this time, she has become a beggar.
Resentment meets self-esteem, and finally becomes begging, this development line, probably many of us have experienced it.
(iii) God
Many people may read the story and think that this film is an anti-religious movie. The film is not only directly involved in religion, but also directly shows missionary activities. And religion is the protagonist's unavoidable life course.
However, did the heroine Shen Ai really understand god's teachings?
Admittedly, the resolution of resentment can be warmed by faith. But Shen Ai's conversion to Christ was not because she had sincerely believed in the teachings of Christ, but because she regarded Christ as a refuge to place her own suffering, but also as a righteous judge to return herself.
So, when she saw the criminal's daughter being bullied, she did not reach out, and perhaps the happiness that arose in her heart because the criminal was punished. Although this is the common sentiment of man, it is by no means a doctrine of God.
Therefore, she must insist on forgiving the criminal in person, although the believers around her discourage her. Because of this, she stood on the moral high ground and had the joy of victory.
Yet the doctrine of God is not a cheap gospel, and De'ai did not understand the spirit of fraternity, the essence of salvation, or the true acceptance of the belief that God is above all else. She saw God as a judge, not a god high above. Her belief in Christ was simply using Christianity as a Band-Aid to cover up her pain.
Therefore, it is not the fault of religion that suffering cannot be relieved. All painful things are unpredictable "God's will," and all painful sensations come from a strong sense of self. You are willing to believe in God completely and surrender your sense of self to God so that you can attain doctrinal spiritual salvation.
(iv) Secret sunshine
The film is full of depression and mourning. But if that were the case, the film became a work of critical realism. The main theme of the film is not religion, but human nature. And the film does not seem to be focused on the critique of human nature throughout the film.
The film is called "Secret Sun", the secret of the sun. On the heroine's road to redemption, there are still some secret sunshine that warms the story.
The first is the Jin Zongcan who loves Shen Ai. He was attracted to Shen Ai's unique temperament from the beginning and has always been by Shen Ai's side to help her to the best of his ability. Moreover, when Shen Ai was extremely crazy and seduced him, he did not push the boat along the water, but tried his best to wake up Shen Ai. This was the only person who had been silently accompanying Shen Ai after coming to Miyang, and this ordinary middle-aged man had finally become the patron saint of Shen Ai.
Then there was the criminal's daughter. After her father entered prison, she was bullied by hooligans, dropped out of school, entered a juvenile correctional center, and became an apprentice in a beauty salon several times, and the misery of her fate was not much worse than Shen Ai, and it all came from his father, but she had no complaints.
When she later met Shen Ai again at the beauty salon, there was a hint of guilt in her eyes, even though none of this was her fault. Judging from the film, her personality is weak and kind, and she does not have such a strong self-esteem as Shen Ai, she lives a depressed life, but she is at ease.
There is also a person, the lady of the clothing store next to Shen Ai's piano academy. When Shen Ai first arrived, she suggested that she repaint the storefront to a bright color, and at first the hostess scoffed at this.
However, later when the business of the clothing store was sluggish, the hostess did as Shen Ai suggested, and sure enough, the business improved. At this time, Shen Ai heard this, and his heart must feel a strong comfort, it turned out that his inadvertent kindness could also give others such a secret sunshine.
(e) Redemption
God can't redeem anyone. Man can only save himself.
Just like the murderer said, "I have been forgiven by God," it wasn't really God forgiving him, he just forgave himself.
Judging from the film, Shen Ai has been looking for self-redemption. At first she ran away, thinking that she could hold up a new world, and then she fled under the aura of God to pray for liberation, and then she retaliated against the world for passive mercy, in fact, she was always looking for the end of redemption. At the end of the film, she faces the daughter of a criminal, unable to face it and flees into the wilderness, and she has not completely completely redeemed herself from the pain.
But we can also see that the secret sunshine has begun to play a key role in the road to redemption. We can see that the lady of the clothing store who once gossiped about Shen Ai behind her back was very praisive of Shen Ai's suggestion, and Mr. Jin Zongcan, who has been with her, has not left. In front of the mirror held up by Mr. Kim Jong-chan, she trimmed her long hair as if to cut off the painful past.
What will happen to Shen Ai in the end, will she live well in Miyang, will she be with Mr. Jin, and finally can she forgive the enemy for laughing at the world? There's no single answer to this open-ended ending, but the last shot, a ray of sunlight shining on an inconspicuous corner, seems to herald a promising future.
May everyone find their own path to salvation in the joys and sorrows of life.