Preface

This is the first time I have written a film response without being forced by a teacher. It cannot really be called a review, because it is nowhere near that level. The thing that impressed me most throughout the film was how incredibly accurate women’s sixth sense is!!! (Laughs.) There are mild spoilers, so please be careful.

About the Film

So Long, My Son (in Chinese) was directed and written by Wang Xiaoshuai and stars Wang Jingchun (Silver Bear for Best Actor) and Yong Mei (Silver Bear for Best Actress). At one of the world’s three major film festivals, the Berlin Film Festival, it won both the Best Actor and Best Actress awards. As of 2019-03-23, it had a Douban rating of 8.0. The 170-minute film mainly tells the story of two families over thirty years.

Film Characteristics

The film’s details are excellent, including the precision of its dialogue, its timing, and subtle movements. When the young Liu Xing runs away from home, Wang Liyun merely leaves the door loosely locked every night; together with her expression, this captures the emotion perfectly. The bloodstains left when Liu Yaojun punches the wall continue until the scene in which Wang Liyun has an abortion, showing just how deeply the production attended to detail.

The sets are especially striking too. Everything is full of period atmosphere. Special praise goes to the makeup artist, who captured the marks of time on the actors’ faces with extraordinary precision.

Lines and conversations such as “Meiyu, this is really good, so appropriate—may friendship last forever” and “Actually, time stopped back then. What remained was slowly growing old” are timed perfectly, highlighting the central conflict and making the helplessness of extreme joy and sorrow burst out at once.

The two leads are consistently excellent, including in crying scenes and scenes without dialogue. This was my first time watching Wang Yuan act. You can tell he worked very hard, and there is truly nothing to criticize about his performance here. He reminded me of being egged on as a child to steal melons and getting caught, or being urged to climb a wall and ending up in hospital. Sometimes I felt he was playing me, but then I looked at his face—never mind, sorry to bother you.

The film uses flashbacks and intercutting. Moving among multiple timelines lets viewers gradually understand the causes and consequences without noticing. Like time itself, the story advances quietly and slowly, making it exceptionally true to life.

There is a great deal of silence throughout the film. Jianjun’s affair, Liu Xing running away, Liyun’s suicide, and the final phone call with Sonny—all these emotional breaking points are expressed through silence. Wordless shots always create ripples in the heart.

What the Film Expresses

Over 170 minutes, the film records the experiences and changes of two families during the country’s most turbulent thirty years. They live through the Cultural Revolution, educated youth going to the countryside and returning, the “strike hard” campaigns, layoffs, entering business, family planning, reform and opening, and other national changes. It tells the story of several ordinary families while asking: What does “lasting forever” mean? Can the beautiful hopes, friendships, love, things, and ideals of youth remain beautiful forever? The film carries a sadness that is not the affected complaint of a young intellectual, but something piercing: a compromise that cannot be resisted.

Wang Xiaobo wrote in The Golden Age: “That day I was twenty-one, in the golden age of my life. I had many ambitions. I wanted to love, to eat, and to become in an instant a half-bright, half-dark cloud in the sky. Later I came to understand that life is a slow process of being hammered; people grow old day by day, ambitions disappear day by day, and in the end we are like cattle that have taken a blow.” Life always likes to joke with people. Things we think indestructible will one day either break or become covered in rust; in any case, they can never return to what they were.

Many people are ordinary, but ordinary people cannot change their fate in the face of life. They cannot live the ordinary lives they hoped for; they can only be arranged and spend their long lives according to that arrangement.

People say China took fifty years to achieve what took other countries two hundred. The film focuses on this old couple, whose son has died, and the helplessness and compromise crushed by the times between family affection and friendship. Faced with fate, people can only compromise and escape. But after compromising and losing everything, there is nothing left to lose.

In a life that is both short and long, does anything truly last forever? Like the vows of lovers, does “until the seas run dry and the stones crumble” really exist? My discrete mathematics teacher said that “the seas running dry and stones crumbling” is a false proposition, so the statement is always true. Family, friendship, and love are all false propositions in the face of time.

Life is a long farewell, but we will still meet again. So Long, my son.

Flaws

The ending is somewhat abrupt. It makes sense logically, but still feels slightly out of place. The director’s kindness is both a commercial necessity and a consolation for the audience, as though fate took pity on these families and brought them back together. But you and I know that fate never pities anyone in real life.

Afterword

Apart from writing a diary, I have not put pen to paper in a long time. This time I clearly felt a kind of powerlessness in my thoughts. Many people say—or rather, I cannot say it out loud; all my words remain in my stomach. I still need to study steadily. But who can fully explain fate? There are always exceptions. Perhaps something as good as lasting forever really will happen to me (laughs). At my current age, I am the kind of person who thinks, “I’ll stay vigorous forever; nothing can hammer me.” Done :)