(Warm reminder: this article contains spoilers)
When the biggest tear-jerking scene of "The End of the Sea of is the Prairie " appeared, the sobbing in the theater became louder, but I really couldn't empathize with .
quicksand, this natural trap that has paved the way for nearly 100 minutes, is also the most powerful plot of this movie, and it is still disappointing after all.
The old plot and the immature handling of several young actors make it difficult to give people a sense of crisis and shock, and it looks rough.
director Er Dongsheng described the shooting of this scene as "steel-making by native method" in an interview, which was extremely difficult and difficult.
But actually, my bigger disappointment is that it's disastrous for the characters. When Du Siheng first arrived in Inner Mongolia, he lacked the most basic understanding of the dangers of nature, and even experienced the thrilling moment of "referring to a wolf as a dog".
Unexpectedly, more than ten years later, the little girl has become a big girl, but the logic of her actions is still stuck in her childhood. She intends to "escape" back to Shanghai without saying hello to her family, and there is no quicksand to talk to the locals. The slightest precaution. Not only her, but also the male companion who has also lived in the grassland for more than ten years.
is a shame. Because in the first 100 minutes of this film, although it was criticized as a "running account narrative", it really let me into it.
Looking for and identifying relatives
In the late 1950s, New China suffered serious natural disasters, and a large number of southern orphans faced the crisis of "abandonment". In this context, the less affected Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region extended With help, nearly 3,000 orphans (there are tens of thousands of orphans according to historical sources) were brought to the prairie and adopted by herdsmen.
Er Dongsheng is not obsessed with writing grand propositions, but explores the emotions of characters from the fate of individuals. Du Sihan's ( Chen Baoguo )'s family search line and the young Du Siheng (Luo Yichun)'s family identification line intersect in Inner Mongolia. The narrative, though bland, has a punch.
Du Sihan's mother is running out of time, talking about his sister every day, and he himself is terminally ill and has only a few months left to live. In order to fulfill his mother's long-cherished wish and to unlock his own heart, he went to Inner Mongolia , embarked on the road of seeking relatives.
Family love is always the most sacred emotion in the world. It needs no whitewashing or hypocrisy. Therefore, when Du Sihan becomes the audience's eyes, the audience also becomes a part of his body, nervous and anxious for him.
"I'm running out of time, and you're still late, wasting my time." The details of his anger at the lateness of the tour guide are poignant.
Du Siheng was sent to an orphanage by his mother and embarked on an unknown journey since then. This sensitive and delicate little girl knew that she was abandoned by her family. So, the hustle and bustle is no longer with her, only loneliness accompanies her.
Er Dongsheng did not forget to use images to portray the characters and create the atmosphere while photographing the magnificent scenery of the prairie. The lonely scene of this little girl squatting in a corner alone in a foreign land is enough to make people feel distressed and cry .
There is also Du Siheng's "Escape". Every time he stops halfway to watch the sheep or picks flowers, this is clearly the little girl who has nowhere to go after getting angry, but she has to find something to hide her embarrassing emotions. It's very accurate.
So I said that the bland plot is not a flaw. Since people can appreciate the slow life in " Hidden in the Dust ", they can naturally be moved by the interesting grassland life.
Unfortunately, in order to leave enough room for reversal in the later plot, Du Siheng's growth experience on the grassland is mostly told by outsiders, that is to say, they are not witnesses.
This means that either the story has been beautified, or the creator has blurred it to advance the plot, whichever reduces the realism of the story. The purpose of the reversal was achieved, but the story was twisted.
Natural disasters and land disasters
There is no villain in "The End of the Sea is a Prairie", soThe ups and downs of things depend entirely on natural and earthly disasters.
"Murphy's Law" says that if there is a chance that things will go bad, no matter how small the chance, it will always happen.
On the first night of Du Siheng's stay in his new home in Inner Mongolia, he wanted to go out to the toilet because of the urgency of urinating, and he was confronted by a wolf attacking the sheep pen, which made him very worried. Fortunately, the adoptive mother soon appeared behind her, and a crisis disappeared.
She was not used to the dairy products from Inner Mongolia. She ran out of the house in a fit of anger with her adoptive mother. On the way, she mistook the three wild wolves for huskies. Brother
taught her how to ride a horse, waved his hand, and the horse started to run wildly after being frightened, and soon disappeared from everyone's sight.
She has tasted the feeling of being "abandoned" by her father, so on the day her adoptive father left home and returned to the army, she was alone and chased after him on horseback. As a result, she encountered a sandstorm , and her small body was swallowed by the sand. Fortunately, the white horse has a spirit, and miraculously found his adoptive father and guided him back to his daughter.
When luck always runs out, quicksand is an ingenious trap created by nature, and it is also a big killer that the creator has been paving the way for. .
One life for another life, Du Siheng's adoptive father also experienced it. When he and his companions encountered a fire, the companion gave him the horse and died in the fire.
The locals fear fire like a tiger, but intriguingly, they also regard fire as a god. The film specially arranged a plot: Du Siheng put her feet on the stove when she slept, and her adoptive mother corrected her sleeping position, because this behavior was disrespectful to the fire.
I don't know if these plots have other hidden meanings, but what is certain is that natural disasters and man-made disasters have really tried their best to add some interest to this story.
Heartache and peace of mind
"The End of the Sea is a Prairie" is essentially a story about redemption. After watching the whole film, you will find that the people in this film are not as friendly and harmonious as they seem.
Du Sihan is a "hidden" character. He is not married, has no children, and is obviously capable, but he has not taken the initiative to find his own sister for decades, and even when he first received the wrong information that his sister had already encountered an accident, he did not lose control.
When he was a child, he heard on a rainy night that his mother was going to give away one of his siblings, and he captured the key message: keep the weak by his side. So, Du Sihan rushed into the rain, forcibly "drenched" himself. He had to bear half the responsibility for what happened to his sister.
Du Siheng's adoptive mother is simple and kind, and loves her adopted daughter in every possible way. Does she have any selfishness? It is not stated in the film, but her son burned his throat due to a fever when he was a child, and no woman is willing to marry him. Judging from the later plot, this adoptive brother is not just a simple brother-sister relationship to Du Siheng.
's adoptive brother died in quicksand trying to save her. Since then, she has changed her adopted brother's name to live for him.
Her adoptive parents behaved like a child to an orphaned old man in the area because the old man's son saved her adoptive father's life.
Even though her biological parents were helpless, it is an indisputable fact that they abandoned their children. Therefore, Du Siheng is the heart disease of their whole life.
Everyone is redemption, everyone is seeking peace of mind.
At the end of the video, the siblings reconcile, and Du Siheng's 100-year-old adoptive mother appeared to pray for the deceased biological mother of the Du brothers and sisters. Under the same starry sky, two mothers who had never met before raised the same daughter together. The film elevates the theme to the level of great love, but it is never just love that treats their pain, but also time.
[Text / Xu Xinqiang]
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