Director Yang Lisen 's new film "Mom! 》 continues the keen tentacles of the first two parts of the "Female Trilogy" and has taken deeper care of the dependence between mother and daughter. The sudden accidents in life and the lingering regrets are like shadows, like a password that opens in the family affection connected by flesh and blood. The main and hidden lines of the
video are intertwined, and a poetic journey is completed with dedication and redemption.
Love is the only ignited
Strictly speaking, "Mom! 》 did not consider digging out new ideas on the theme of mother-daughter family affection. Judging from the clues of the daughter's guilt towards her late father, there is an unresolvable shadow behind the warm color. In fact, more than half of the film is night scenes, and the day is mainly rainy. But no matter what, the film adds a new film and television sample to the mother and daughter’s affection: this mutual support between family affection is given to the brilliance of human nature.
The contrast between the two roles of mother and daughter is strong. The mother has a background in liberal arts and is suddenly released from strength; the daughter is a science student and endures in the guilt that she cannot break free. The two starring actors, , Wu Yanshu, , and Xi Meijuan, , fully demonstrated their superb acting skills, especially conveying such a turbulent emotional flow in such a small indoor space. There are many slow and slow processing of mother and daughter in the film, such as reading Petofi's poem: "You love spring, and I love autumn." This is an allusion to the difference in the psychological state of mother and daughter.
What is interesting is that when the daughter finds out that she suffers from Alzheimer's disease, the role changes in an instant, completely changing the balance of life dependence between mother and daughter. At the beginning of the film, when the 85-year-old mother climbed up a ladder to get books on the bookshelf, the 65-year-old daughter wrote a note that "Climbing high will cause death" and posted it on the bookshelf. The mother replied, "If you don't climb high, you will cause death." Obviously, my daughter has not communicated with her mother in words for a long time. They have sign language codes and three fingers that represent "I love you". However, her unmarried daughter has always been in the closed world she has built up. She only respects her filial piety when serving her elderly mother. Her inner focus has always been on her dead father, from sorting out archaeological manuscripts for her father to constantly hallucinating the appearance of her father.
"Mom! 》What moved the audience was the maintenance and reconstruction of love. When the daughter found out that she had Alzheimer's disease, the burden of doing housework fell on the old mother. The severe damage caused by Alzheimer's disease to humans lies in amnesia. Amnesia not only cuts off the future, but also blocks the past. The daughter wanted to settle her mother before she started to get sick, but all this seemed to be futile. Perhaps, someone will compare the film with "Had in Time" starring Anthony Hopkins two years ago, including the acting "acting". But "Mom!" 》What is surprising is that it is not the mother who is sick, but the daughter. Moreover, Yang Lisen debuted as a documentary director. Her previous drama style always had a strong documentary flavor, looking directly at the cruelty of life and the uneasiness of human nature. Her "female trilogy" includes the final "Mom! The protagonists of 》 are shrouded in deep anxiety. In "Mom! In 》, the two female leads Xi Meijuan and Wu Yanshu play their respective roles very three-dimensionally, especially Xi Meijuan is almost the first time she "destroys her image" and presents the embarrassed side when she is on the disease to the audience without reservation. The second half of the mother-daughter rivalry broke the initial dullness. They re-know each other, like an undercurrent slapping each other. This is the most primitive and sincere love.
This film is a film in which Yang Lisen works hard to create a watershed with her previous work. She understands that the integration of time and space is a necessary way to create art. If the first two parts of the "Female Trilogy" restore the real side of reality, then "Mom! 》 is a work of art that has entered the spiritual world of intellectuals, so the title of the film changed from "Spring Song" to "Mom! 》 can be regarded as a powerful step towards the market without losing artistic persistence.
Tolerance to young girls is a redemption to their father
"Mom! There are two scenes in 》 that are full of joy, as if washing away the tears of tragedy for the youth that has not bloomed.One of them was a daughter running wildly on the street in a wedding dress, and the other was a daughter running on the left side of the bridge and the mother chased on the right side of the bridge. Running here has become a symbol of breaking free and also a compensation for the life goals you yearn for. It seems that in recent years, Yang Lisen is looking for a meaningful vocabulary.
is more symbolic. The scene where the daughter pulls her mother and hides under the bed when she gets sick. This fear is deepened by her guilt. In the hallucination, the father appears in the room, especially standing under the tree outside the door, which is the source of the mistake that his daughter cannot avoid for the rest of her life. This is a pain that will occur late at night. Although the director did not focus on the fate of the times that an intellectual family once encountered, the lack of male roles is precisely a gap between this pair of mother and daughter who are supporting each other. This hidden thread is treated in a looming way in the movie, but it always lays the turning point of life for touching love.
The arrangement about the young girl Zhou Xia was to loosen the tight rope for redemption. For her daughter, she seemed to have rescheduled her life. This is logical and also an interesting plot in this movie. When Zhou Xia was framed and even stolen from her home, her daughter was full of kindness and tolerance because she knew that the tragedy of life would eventually have that fuse. Many years later, she could only save a fragile life by extinguishing the fuse to make up for the damage caused to her father. "Mother! 》The brightest point is here. In the end, Zhou Xia walked on the right path and came to visit them with her hungry daughter.
Director has a good grasp of the rhythm, and the rich details make this film not overwhelmed by poetry. This is a script with a rather complex structure, with a theme of love and a clue about the burial of guilt. There are also mutations in life, irreparable diseases and amnesia, which create greater room for excavation for the movie. The image of water (including rain) in
is worth discussing. It washes away life and is a kind of undercurrent echo. The daughter was lying on the boat in the lake. The picture of the manuscript was sprinkled with the beautiful scenery, and Xi Meijuan fitted the calmness that broke out from the shell. The end of the
video pursues the colorful effect. The mother pushed her daughter in a wheelchair and came from the beach sanatorium by the sea to the beach where the waves were beaten. There could be different treatments and foreshadowings here, but the dancing of life and the bright colors of heaven and earth are like the surging tide of love, and life is completely freed.
The theme of women in hallucinations and the exploration of the essence of life
Yang Lisen’s “female trilogy” always runs through her care for the female group. First of all, it is an analysis of the anxiety state of women entering middle-aged and elderly people. "Spring Dream" uses the relationship between the two sides of the sexes as the entrance to grasp the whirlpool of women being involved in the helpless whirlpool of life; " Spring Tide " depicts such a long-standing mental state in the conflict between mother and daughter; "Mom! 》It seems that the colors are brightest, but it enters wider. It is a contrast and microcosm between groups and individuals. Women in the trilogy all have one common characteristic - aphasia , "Mom! The daughter in 》 was in a state of aphasia for a long time, and it was the tenacity shown by the mother at critical moments that awakened her soft consciousness.
hallucination is also a common technique used by Yang Lisen’s “female trilogy”, “Mom! 》 uses hallucinations to pave the missing dark thread of father and daughter. The most unforgettable hallucination in "Spring Tide" is that the mother is like a tied sheep, thereby strengthening the daughter's opposition. It is gratifying that Yang Lisen tried to "Mom! 》 solves this opposition, and its bridging is based on the mutual support of three generations of mother and daughter and young girls. Between hallucinations and reality, it is probably the essence of life that the director wants to link to.
She doesn't like to use lyrical or imagery to conceal the hardness in her work, just like the director's own personality, she would rather be dry than wet. With her characteristics of mixing documentaries and dramas, I sometimes feel that if she leaves more blank space, she will be more powerful - the details in the second half of the film are even too full. But for a person's style, what is more objective is this understanding: she is still on the road to expression.
The first time I met Yang Lisan was in the movie " Platform " by Jia Zhangke . She played the second female lead. At that time, she used the stage name Yang Tianyi . The Spanish dance in the film is still impressive. It is a character who yearns for freedom, but it has the pleasure of Yang Lisen as a Northeastern person. On the screen, she is very young and energetic. No one would have thought that she would soon express women's pain so stubbornly, and show it from middle age to old age.
I was a little surprised when I read an interview with her. In the late 1990s, she bought a DV editing machine for more than 200,000 yuan. In order to edit the materials of "Old Man", which had been filmed for more than 200 hours by herself, this work that has a place in the history of documentaries has a good intuition about the real world, and it also has some connection with her later drama films. A group of old people used the sunset to relieve their destiny until they watched one by one look at the gradually fading figures.
Yang Lisen approached the elderly with impulse, but when filming "Family Video Cassette", she approached the truth about her parents' divorce with trauma. When the "private movie" was last edited, all the extra outdoor shots were deleted, leaving only the direct look of the shot and revealing some kind of real and fake that was difficult to restore.
A person's life will definitely be perfected in the defects, and Yang Lisan is also looking for an outlet in the pain he feels. Movie "Mom! In 》, the daughter said to her mother: "You have never been mentioned in her dad's diary." The mother replied: "He is only interested in women 5,000 years ago." It can be seen that the mother had let go of everything at the end of her life, but her daughter had not let go.
"Mom! 》 has different dimensions, including caring for elderly people with Alzheimer's disease. Reminding a scene in a movie about this disease, "HTM2 Still Alice ", the heroine reads the sentence of the famous female poet Elizabeth Bishop in public: "A lot of things seem to be full of meaning after being lost, but it is not a misfortune." In
"Spring Tide", the last monologue of the daughter played by Hao Lei in her mother's ward highlights the fact that the opposition relationship has not been bridged. And in "Mom! In 》, Yang Lisen's character has become much gentler. Unfortunately is not entirely misfortune, and there is also a peaceful joy at the end of life.
Author: Sun Mengjin (famous literary critic)
Editor: Fan Xin
Planning: Shaoling
