Author: Yin Yiyi
At the just-concluded Beijing International Film Festival , Wu Yanshu won the movie "Mom! "The wonderful performance won the Tiantan Award Best Actress Award. The film was then released on the Mid-Autumn Festival, drawing people's attention again to screenwriter and director Yang Lina , which is another discussion of women's reality and mother-daughter relationship after her " Spring Tide " in 2019.
starts from the subtle and specific character relationship between the "senior" mother and daughter. The film focuses most of the writing on the shaping of the two main characters. There are many moving points, plus Wu Yanshu, Xi Meijuan The two old The blessing of the play bones makes the mother-daughter relationship sincere and touching. However, the film is slightly weak in terms of play, and the relationship between mother and daughter is too specific. Instead, mother and daughter become only "mother" and "daughter", almost divorced from the real social relationship and social role, so that mother and daughter become only "mother" and "daughter". The transposition story of female characters seems to be an emotional drama that takes place in a crystal ball.
The Image of "Water": Absent Male and Present Gaze
In the end, "Mom! "The core theme is about the emotional redemption between women. On the one hand, Feng Jizhen, the daughter suffering from Alzheimer's disease, returned to her childhood mentally and spiritually, while her mother took on the "responsibility" of taking care of her daughter while her body was aging. The role of being taken care of, thus achieving emotional reconciliation and liberation of life obsessions.
On the other hand, Zhou Xia, played by Wen Qi and , "breaks into" Feng Jizhen's daily life three times, which seems abrupt, but actually helps Feng Jizhen to complete his spiritual atonement. Facing the girl who went astray, Feng Jizhen, the victim, chose to forgive again and again and gave her a chance to repent and live anew. This is the "salvation" that Feng Jizhen has been pursuing all his life and can never get. Only when Zhou Xia reformed and suddenly returned to them with the newborn, Feng Jizhen's atonement was truly completed in the sense of behavior. It was also when Zhou Xia returned that the emotional core expressed in the film really jumped out of the "mother-daughter" relationship. "Three generations" of women and a newborn formed a new emotional connection beyond the kinship family.
At the same time, men who seem to be absent from family and mother-daughter relationships are always "present" as ghosts, lingering in the spiritual world of mother and daughter. There are three relatively important male characters in the film: one is the doctor played by Zhu Shimao , who appears interspersed in an ambiguous relationship, basically becoming the only outlet for the two to contact "society". As a doctor, he connected mothers and daughters with hospital institutions; as a friend, he connected mothers and daughters with publishing institutions. The second is that the mobile phone was stolen on the bus. Since then, the male supporting role who is full of prejudice against Feng Jizhen, a typical "evil" person, is also the bearer of one of the few "external drama conflicts" in the film. The most important male character of
is his father who seems to be absent but is actually always present. After suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Feng Jizhen cried for the first time when he met a father and daughter who were the mirror images of his father and himself by the ancient bridge. The arrangement and publication of the father's archaeological diary by the mother and daughter was a key to maintaining The relationship between the two and the core events that promote the development of the plot are also one of the concrete manifestations of the daughter's "redemption" obsession in the narrative. It can be said that the "ghost" of the father was always present, shackled the body and mind of the mother and daughter.
At the same time, the film is relatively obscure in dealing with grand propositions. It is embodied as the father, and expressed through the image of the lake attached to the daughter's guilt towards her father and the life of "redemption". The image of water is common in women's films, in its meandering flow, but also in its depth and impact. Yang Lina was also used extensively in the previous work. In "Mom! ”, water is given a more specific symbolic meaning and perspective. In addition to the relatively common disorder of mental state, which is represented by water waves, there are also many underwater perspectives. The mother and daughter, like the gaze of the father who threw himself into the lake. In the end, when the mother and daughter embraced and played in the water at the high tide, the underwater subjective shot that appeared again seemed to be a kind of inspiration. At this moment, the line of sight comes from both the "ghost" of the father and the "ghost" of the times, pointing to the final destination of the mother and daughter, both physically and mentally.
Socialization and Desocialization: The "Dilemma" of Women's Reality Writing
In a sense, "Mom! " and "Spring Tide" are indeed the sameThe preciousness of the stories produced under the context is that the mother-daughter and the intergenerational relationship are unfolded as the core story without unnecessary dramatic decoration, and at the same time, the specific grief of the individual is skillfully linked with the grand grief of the era. "Mother! "focuses on the difficulties faced by middle-aged and elderly women and mutual support, and brings out issues such as aging and Alzheimer's disease in a more daily narrative way. It is a rare and precious theme in the Chinese film market.
In fact, with the changes in social reality as the background, in recent years, many Chinese-language films have begun to focus on family, especially mother-daughter relationships, and many films have begun to focus on the spiritual difficulties faced by urban women, especially middle-aged and elderly women. Including " Goodbye Nanping Evening Bell ", " Waterfall ", etc., many works are from the hands of young directors, which are both topical and artistic exploration.
However, from these films, it is not difficult to see the "difficulty" of women's realistic film and television writing: the reality faced by women is so heavy and complex that the author wants to discuss every topic seriously. It should be said that this is not only the value of young directors, but also the problem of young directors - too much to talk, too much talk, so the sense of design is too heavy, and the characters tend to be functional and lose the "human" texture. Without the context of life, one can only write argumentative essays on a case-by-case basis.
"Mom! "The difference is that it simplifies the complexity and focuses on the emotional changes, conflicts and mutual support of a mother and daughter. "Emotion" is the only core. It can be said that the film almost consciously strips away everything that may affect The "social" element of emotional narrative: the nursing home is comfortable and considerate, the doctor is considerate and caring, and the small building where the mother and daughter live is basically spotless even after Feng Jizhen's illness, with occasional broken glass. Windows, soiled floors and ripped duvets leave no trace in the home. Even if the sick daughter ran wildly on the street with her wedding dress on her head, the "main event" that her mother chased behind her happened in a "vacuum" narrative space, without any other characters' perspectives and words intervening in the whole process. Zhou Xia played by Wen Qi, the doctor played by Zhu Shimao and the man who lost his wallet on the bus functionally serve the narrative and the expression of the theme, and are occasionally interspersed between the mother-daughter relationship, which neither constitutes an effective social relationship. Nor does it constitute a valid social reality. The effect of
's treatment is remarkable. Although the lines in the film are full of literature, there is indeed little sense of argumentative preaching. The emotions between mother and daughter flow naturally and powerfully, which makes it difficult not to be moved. At the same time, all the isolation from "social reality" in the film is rationalized by the protagonist's intellectual middle-class family background, and does not make the audience feel outright false. Compared with "socialized" female-themed works,
"Mom! does take care of the emotional side of women's topics in a purer and more emotional way. However, such "purified" desocialized writing is also prone to fall into another stereotype: the sense of distortion brought about by the separation of spiritual space from daily life seems to be unable to be completely filled by sincere emotional expression and performance. When the social and living spaces in which the characters are located are always orderly and tidy, and only the spirit and emotions are disordered and chaotic, the context in which these strong emotional expressions are located will inevitably become a set dramatic space, which is also in harmony with reality. From a distance, it is not difficult to see the dramatic fatigue brought about by this "distortion". The desocialized mother-daughter relationship is moving, but the development of the relationship between the characters almost stopped after the daughter became ill and the mother took care of the daughter. Duan Zai pulls the audience's emotions, and it can't help but seem lengthy.
has to say, "Mom! "The attempts and explorations are invaluable. However, how the pure emotional detail writing and structural realistic expression can be truly and effectively reflected in the creation of female-themed films is still worthy of the creators to think about. (Yin Yiyi)
Source: Beijing Youth Daily
