There are two roads in front of my house, one is a railway and the other is also a railway.
This is my childhood memory, just like the two jujube trees in front of Mr. Lu Xun's house, I still remember it vividly, not far away there is a small station abandoned by the times, which was transformed into a small factory many years later, like the scene in The RailwayMan in the movie "RailwayMan" by Ken Takakura.
Life always passes, turning into a tall figure, an abandoned platform, a city in decline. Everyone works normally day after day, seemingly without any change to withstand various changes, such a life, more than the halo of the sunset can infect everything, this is the charm of the movie "Railroad".
"The Railroad Man" is based on a short story by Jiro Asada. The original won the 117th Naoki Prize and was the best-selling representative book in Japan in 1997.
The novel mainly depicts the station manager who is about to be abandoned, who ushered in a happy story after experiencing an accident, and was adapted into a movie in 1999, directed by the well-known director Yasuo Chin, starring the film emperor Ken Takakura.
In March 2000, the film won the Best Picture and Best Actor awards at the 23rd Japan Academy Awards, and the Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actor and Actress awards at the Japan Film Awards. Until now, it is an irreplaceable masterpiece in Japanese films.
To this day, I remember the last figure of the railwayman Sato Oshimatsu, played by Ken Takakura, at the Horo dance station.
When Sato Otomatsu lifts his head, the snow is falling, he is about to retire, and the homai station that has been guarded all his life is about to close, and the town will disappear; back to the way it was before the railway opened. At this time, he still carefully determined every link before the departure, and he wrote in the work log: Everything is normal today, although everything is impermanent.
What Sato Oto insists on is a "normal", a normal that symbolizes the operation of society. You may care about what disappears, but after you disappear, you realize that there is no eternity in this world.
This movie strings together these insignificant little things and makes your tears fall unconsciously.
The snow in the small town of Hokkaido is constantly falling, the most insignificant of daily life, and often the most memorable after loss. You even believe that it is difficult to have such a lyrical masterpiece of "The Railroad" in the future, so quietly commemorating the death of an ordinary person and leaving his faith in ordinary life.
In the eyes of outsiders, Sato's persistence is like a chewed gum, but such a belief is sometimes felt by even himself.
His work once represented the glory of Japan's economic recovery, but now that value is fading with the abandonment of the station.
The people and things associated with his memory also gradually disappeared, and everything he believed no longer existed. Sato Otamatsu represents a small person under the change of times, when you are young, you will feel that life is long, but when you are old, time will become a parabola, but it is you who are thrown away.
But why would such a story of a small person take you far away? Leave you at the snowy little station in Hokkaido, like the figure of Station Chief Sato Ethamatsu, like a signal light swaying in the evening, let you follow closely.
Sato Oshimatsu's figure appeared at the Hokumai Station as usual, he shouted that the rear was normal, the signal was normal, even if he knew that the station would be closed tomorrow, his heart was still standing with the Hokumai, stopping in that scene, as if the Hokage Dance Station would not be closed, insisting on what he wanted to do.
His neighbors moved away one after another; Sato Otomatsu was cooking red bean soup in the glowing hut; someone Chinese New Year's Eve a meal, drinking with an old colleague who was about to change careers, but the more he drank, the more sober he became, and his eyes flashed with confusion and loneliness, and he said: I don't regret it, but I feel powerless.
The narrative of the film is very calm and soothing, like telling a time that is about to be erased.
The town had thrived on mining, and Othamatsu and his colleagues nearly died of gas poisoning while digging coal mines.
Sato Oto said in rags: "We are carrying more young people from the town out to work.
It was a non-negotiable time, the town was prosperous due to coal mines, but the mine accident made you see the precursors of things, people who were smoked by coal fought in restaurants, and Sato Etomatsu complained that he could not wash away the smell of coal in his lifetime.
A miner died, there was no photo before he died, and his son painted a portrait of him and pasted it on the wall to commemorate it, and the sun was shining on that day, and the child was alone in this coal mining town, and did not shed tears.
It was an era without tears, Sato's wife was seriously ill, there was no sadness and tears, she laughed more, just laughed tiredly, and most of the people there were just alive.
When Sato Oto said goodbye to his wife, he looked at his haggard wife with his hand against the glass window, and for a second, his wife's eyes changed, but he still started according to time, and even the bus that his wife finally took shouted: Go ahead.
All the losses are taken for granted in this movie, and the elimination of the D51 train, which once shouldered a heavy responsibility, made everyone panic.
An old colleague who has found a job bows to the resort, he inquires about the work of Sato Oto, but age is a big threshold, and this group of railwaymen who were once regarded as honors are now facing an era of rapid development like middle-aged and elderly people.
But Sato Otomatsu's look up reminds people that he still loves this job, no matter how the times eliminate himself, one day there will be a day of pride as a railway man.
Ordinary life is not enough to be a tragedy, Sato Otomatsu died of his infant daughter, turned into a little girl to visit him.
That in the almost deserted town, in the dim light, the girl appeared three times and twice, which made Sato Oshimatsu, who was less involved in fireworks, feel happy, he thought it was the neighbor's child, until Ryoko Hiromi appeared in school uniform, they ate hot pot together, Sato Otomatsu's life was unobstructed under the ice and snow, the girl appeared, he began to cry bitterly.
Sato Otomatsu later discovered that the girl was his daughter, and after a gap of 17 years, it may be Otomatsu's fantasy, or it may be a real occurrence.
The appearance of the little girl makes him put aside his self-blame for his wife and daughter, and the little girl wears his stationmaster hat, salutes Sato Otomatsu, and says that she is very happy when he cries bitterly, whether the "daughter" has really come or not, and relieves Sato Otomatsu of all kinds of involuntariness.
In the last few days when the horomatsu station was about to be abandoned, Sato was still shoveling snow on the slopes, making sure that the signal after the departure was normal or not, just as he did it day after day when the population of this coal mining town was still very prosperous more than a decade ago, regardless of the ebb and flow of the outside world.
As a railroadman, he guarded the normalcy of others, so in the work log, every night he carefully wrote: Today everything is no abnormal, even if his wife and children died that day.
Sato Otomatsu's figure standing in the snow, unchanged for nearly twenty years, whistled: Go forward, watch the train that no wanderers go home again, until the station is closed.