This era needs more such works!
After watching this peaceful movie, I think of some recent events around us and in the news, and I can’t calm down for a long time.
Speaking of the differences in values between China and the United States, from our mainstream perspective, this can even be said to represent the differences between the entire Eastern and Western cultures. And such differences, in this era, show no signs of diminishing, and some abstract concepts in these differences have become excuses for many people to resort to violence.
We have many films focused on this, such as the "Family Trilogy" directed by Ang Lee in the early years, Wang Ying's "The Joy Luck Club" and Zheng Xiaolong's "Gua Sha". Of course, there is also this year's Wu Hao's documentary "We "Family" and Zhu Haowei's flamboyant "Pink Romance" last year, and Okafina, who had a role in "Pink Romance", played the leading role in the film "Don't Tell Her". The role is Billi who is based on the director Wang Ziyi himself.
"Don't Tell Her" is directed by Chinese director Wang Ziyi, starring Okafina (playing Billi), Zhao Shuzhen (playing grandma), Lin Xiaojie and well-known Chinese actor Ma Zhi. The plot is adapted from the real experience of the director Wang Ziyi. .
The film has unexpectedly exploded in the North American market. The box office of the single library reached 87,900 US dollars, breaking the 19-year US single studio box office record set by "Avengers: Endgame", and it has won praise from all walks of life. , Can be described as a double harvest at the box office. So far, it has a score of 8 on IMDb, and the freshness of Rotten Tomatoes is as high as 99%.
Of course, this film is not perfect, especially in the polishing of the lines, the rigidity of many lines even destroys the already created atmosphere. For example, when Billi and her Japanese uncle were at the night market, Billi’s countless pale "I know" sounds even made people feel a little joyful, destroying the entanglement and haziness that I wanted to say but couldn’t say before. Such deliberate and long-winded lines are not uncommon in this film, which is in sharp contrast with the director's full-sounding shots. It is no wonder that Wang Ziyi himself said in an interview that she cannot read and write Chinese just like Billi in the film.
But these shortcomings are not enough to conceal the light of the film, which means that the long lens and the deep intention are the biggest surprises this film has given me, and it is also the reason why I cannot calm down for a long time. The first scene of the
movie is Billi calling grandma. Billi is in the streets of New York at 7 o'clock in the evening, and grandma is in Changchun Hospital at 7 o'clock in the morning. Billi's career was blocked and his grandmother was terminally ill. After that, the story is about the family reunion in the name of the wedding after the family learned that the grandmother was terminally ill.
Touched in a Silent
After learning about his grandma's condition, Billi still attended a friend's birthday party. At the subway station on the return journey, he saw an old man who was about the same age as his grandma, standing alone between the fast-moving trains. After
returned to his hometown, the 30-year-old Billi was struggling, but the time-less grandmother insisted on practicing every day and was full of energy.
was supposed to be a relaxing massage, but it turned into a painful cupping. Billi looked at the red mark in the mirror, but couldn't tell.
Billi, who said that he hadn't played the piano anymore when eating at the restaurant, used the piano to relieve his troubles when his family had a dispute.
The hotel staff who made a bold statement to witness the happiness before the wedding began to lie lazily on the sofa playing with their mobile phones during the wedding.
Billi rushed to the hospital desperately after learning that her grandma's examination report came out, and she already knew the answer.
When returning to the United States to go to the airport, Billi was sitting in the taxi, looking at the receding scenery outside the car window. The BGM was no longer as intense as when he returned home.
The most touching part of this film is not in those fierce scenes, but more in the details of the director's slowing down of the footage. It is true that the quarrel between the United States and China at the dinner table is very fierce, and it is true that Japan The eldest son’s oriental complex is moving, but in the author’s opinion, these hardly spoken things are not as true as the language implicit in the lens, and it is such language that tells everything that happens silently around us.
We are just different, there is no right or wrong zAnother surprise of 2z
’s film to the author is its profound intention. Compared with the films mentioned at the beginning of the article, the uniqueness of "Don’t Tell Her" is also reflected in this. The director wants to show a deeper and more harmonious A more essential point of view is not limited to highlighting the differences between Eastern and Western cultures.
Of course, some people will stand from their own perspective and make various interpretations of the large number of shots listed above without lines. The author is very happy to comment on such a thing, and I believe the director hopes so.
is like the bird that appeared in Billi's room twice, once in New York and once in Changchun. What does this mean? Or what does the director want to express? Maybe this is like the question throughout the film, should I tell grandma about her condition? Everyone in the family has their own answers and their own reasons, and none of them is wrong, just different.
has an empirical interpretation of truth in the classic cognitive linguistics "Metaphors on which we live". George Lakoff believes that the concept of humans corresponds not to the inherent attributes of things, but to the interactive attributes, which can be due to culture and environment. Different for different. People who have a completely different conceptual system from ours understand the world completely differently from ours. Therefore, we have different truths, even different truths and standards of reality. Just like Billi said to the service brother who desires the truth in the hotel: not the same, not the same, just not the same.
We are always looking for something that can unify our various experiences in order to give continuity to our lives. Therefore, we create a variety of rituals and give them structure and meaning to make our Experience achieves repetition, coherence and unity. While we are struggling to constantly seek the continuity of our own experience, we may subconsciously exclude those practices and viewpoints that are different from ours. In my opinion, this is also the conflict between people in the film when paying homage to grandpa and holding weddings. s reason. It is precisely because of this that the author really likes the words that my aunt's wife said during the wedding photo. It seems sleek, but in fact it is full of wisdom. There is no right or wrong in many things. The key lies in how you see it and whether you want to see it that way.
Some digressions
It is worth mentioning that the producer of this film, A24, has a director, Barry Jenkins, the director of the 89th Oscar's Best Picture "Moonlight Boy", and he is now the director of the film. Wang Ziyi's boyfriend. Two directors, one is black and the other is from China; two films, one focuses on the same sex, and the other tells about Chinese families; from directors to works, they are not mainstream in the United States, but they have gained mainstream American influence one after the other. Attention and recognition, in this era of populism, it seems so commendable, this era is in need of more such works. Director
brings his delicate observations of the life around him to the whole movie, and presents it to us in the same delicate lens. Many scenes without lines require the audience to interpret and substitute with their own experience, and the director just presents them. In my opinion, what "Don't Tell Her" is not limited to the differences between Chinese and American values and Eastern and Western cultures. What the director wants to show is the difference between each of us. We have different views and understandings of everything that happens every day around us, there is no right or wrong, just different. At the end of the
film, Billi returned to the United States. She practiced the qigong taught to her by her grandmother on the streets of New York. At the same time, beside her grandmother's house in Changchun, the birds scattered all over the tree.
