Zhong Menghong actually made a general-level movie, which I only found out after watching this movie.
Many people say that "Waterfall" is Zhong Menghong's most "people-friendly" work, in fact, from the beginning of "Sunshine", Zhong Menghong has tried to tell a story that everyone can understand, "Waterfall" is less than the past fights and killings, specific and clear events and plots, many things happen in the living room and dining table. Although the story has become more intimate, the narrative is actually bolder.
When "Waterfall" was promoted, I don't know why I have always heard that this is a mother-daughter "love and kill each other" movie, and the movie trailer is also cut like this, which makes me think that the focus of the movie is the conflict and tension between mother and daughter, but after actually watching it, I found that it is not the same thing at all. However, there are still "love" and "killing" parts, and each has its own surprising points.
At the beginning of the movie, the mother (Jia Jingwen) urges her daughter Xiaojing (Wang Jing) to go to school, and the 2 people have an argument in the car. Then Xiaojing's classmates were diagnosed, and her mother was forced to go to the hospital to pick her up and take her home, and then received a notice from the company not to come back to work for the time being. The 2 were forced to stay at home, and the conflict intensified. One day, her mother thought that Xiaojing was missing and rushed out of the house to look for it, and the whole person suddenly collapsed.
At first glance, the mother suddenly fell, in fact, according to the clues given by the movie, the mother did not pay the management fee and housekeeper fee from 2 or 3 months ago, almost the time when the building began to be repaired by blue canvas and just broke out; plus Xiao Jing said "I don't know how many times I have apologized to my mother for the attitude problem", it can be seen that the 2 people have been arguing during this period. Little by little, my mother slowly collapsed.
There are two important scenes that help us understand the state of a sick mother:
One is when the mother sees the little sit-in the living room saying that she is sick but tells her nothing; the other is the mother dreaming of the parents who have fallen off their own feet in order to save the child. These 2 scenes tell us that she is not only a sick mother, but also a sick mother who is worried about her daughter, a mother who is worried that her daughter feels that she is not valued by her daughter, and she is aggrieved and resentful.
There is another incident that caused the mother's schizophrenia to develop, which is later told by the movie.
When her mother was hospitalized for the first time, she met a mental patient played by Wei Ruxuan and told her that pitching certainly does not make mental illness better, but as long as people have something to do, they will not think so much. After the mother was discharged from the hospital, she went to work at the store on the first day, and the TV news behind her reported that the market unblocked the busy look of the stall vendors, and the anchor said "busy is happy" with the narration.
This sentence is the point of view given by the movie, and it also explains the first time the mother has a disease, it is when the daughter has to stay at home with Xiaojing during the isolation at home, but she cannot contact her, so there is nothing to do.
When her mother was hospitalized for the second time, Xiaojing asked the doctor what to do, the doctor said that the most important thing is to understand the mother, Xiaojing asked how to understand, the doctor replied", "Don't deny her, think more from her point of view." It was also at this time that Xiao Jing saw through the window the state of her mother's slow and confused state in the mental ward. After this scene, Xiao jing suddenly grew up, and through her subsequent actions, we know that she really listened to the doctor's words.
The mother who returned home from the hospital hallucinated that there were guards outside the door watching, Xiao Jing did not refute, but went out the door to drive the guards away for her mother, which is to see things from her mother's point of view. Later, Xiao Jing dialed her father and asked her father to tell her mother when he would come home, and her mother snatched the phone and hung up, saying that her father should not tell others about going home, otherwise she would not forgive Xiao Jing; although Xiao Jing was in pain, she still followed her mother, promised not to tell others, and asked her mother to go for a walk after breakfast. During the walk, her mother apologized to Xiaojing. Mother has changed.
Then, Xiao Jing saw her mother who had not slept all night sitting in the living room and said that there was a snake crawling into the house, she was still the same practice, and this time she even took the initiative to ask her mother what to do and help call a fire truck. When the fire brigade really caught the snake, Xiao Jing herself should be relieved.
Mother really got better.
However, Did Xiao Jing really understand what her mother was thinking, in fact, not necessarily, but she herself understood the doctor's words and took action with her own understanding.
The adults in the movie are divided into 2 types, Xiao Jing likes and dislikes.
Like the housekeeper (Yang Liyin) and the store director (Chen Yiwen) who have served their family for many years, they don't like it, like their father (Li Liren) and the director of the foreign company (Song Shaoqing).
If the person who supports her mother in the movie is Xiao Jing, then it is the housekeeper who supports Xiao Jing when she is at her worst. In a scene where the housekeeper eats with Xiao Jing, the housekeeper says that he has not read any books and does not understand how a good family (referring to Xiao Jing's family) can become like this. This seemingly abrupt sentence is actually of great help to our understanding of Xiao Jing.
Xiao Jing, who is only 18 years old, faces the world in a very simple way, that is, "don't tell me something I don't understand."
Just like she went to her father to talk about moving, her father mentioned that things between adults are very complicated, Xiao Jing directly replied that she didn't rip a bunch of adult bullshit reasons, and then said that she would leave her father's things in the old home, asking him to find time to get them by himself, the implication is that we have nothing to do with you anymore; or Xiao Jing went to a foreign company to help her mother leave her job, questioning the supervisor who obviously knew that her mother was in a bad condition why she didn't help, and the supervisor also did some strange reasons, which also made Xiao Jing puzzled and angry.
So we know why Xiao Jing has such a good feeling for the store director played by Chen Yiwen? Because this old-school gentleman, completely unable to hide any thoughts, let people understand at a glance.
If you extend the concept of "not understanding", as to why the mother suffers from schizophrenia, in fact, the audience and Xiao Jing do not understand, except for knowing that the mother has an unhappy marriage and missing her husband abnormally, no one can say how a person has become a patient. This disease is so "incomprehensible". However, in the face of this "incomprehension", Xiao Jing did not make excuses, but kept doing the same thing repeatedly, helping her mother find herself little by little.
From "busy is happy" and "understanding is from the other person's point of view" to "don't say something I don't understand", the film advocates a rough and straightforward force, not meticulous or complex, simple but powerful.
From the mother's illness to the daughter helping the mother, the alternative mother-daughter relationship is interpreted in "Waterfall".
According to the mother's condition, the whole movie can be split into 2 halves from the mother's second hospitalization, and the second half is the process of gradual improvement. Although it has improved all the way, the film has not forgotten to remind us of the fragility of people with schizophrenia and the condition that can deteriorate at any time.
In the scene of "Snake", when Xiao Jing found her mother sitting on the sofa for one night, the audience should feel very uneasy after watching the screen, worried that her mother was sick again, until she saw that her mother was really okay. The same is true of the drama in the room, when the manager walked in to congratulate the buyer on the purchase of the original home that belonged to Xiao Jing's mother and daughter at a super low price, the atmosphere was extremely tense, and we were all worried that Xiao Jing was deceived by the house and lost money would make the mother's condition worse again, until the manager came back to the carbine, and the seeming crisis was successfully passed.
The last and biggest crisis was when the stream was discharged without warning and Xiaojing was washed away, the mother stared at the TV and watched the news broadcast, and finally saw the rescue team rescue Xiaojing...
While reminding us of the instability and difficulty of mental illness, without letting the characters really get into trouble, this is a rather bold narrative strategy and the gentleness of the film. Because I understand that once I lose my footing, it is difficult to get up again, and I am reluctant to let the character really fall.