更新时间:2010-09-26
picnic • 归途列车:Where is the train going? Where is the home?
I am very glad that this documentary is not an over-melodrama of the the livelihood of migrant workers. Unlike China Blue which, from an Eurocentric point of view, describes young Chinese migrant women as if they are people with no agency, but unfortunate victims of oppression and exploitation, this film provides a more balanced picture of the work and life of a migrant family. Besides showing without reservation the hardship and difficulties rural migrants experienced, especially the horrible travel condition during the chunyun period, the film demonstrates the humorous, loving, caring, vigorous aspects of the migrants. They are full human beings with joy, pain, love, hatred, tears and laughter. They curse, but they also pray. They (some of them) are aware of the exploitation they are subject to, but they try to make the best out of the worst. They have full control of their own lives. They know what they are doing.
The camera lens extends beyond the sweatshops to the inner family conflicts, especially the parents-daughter relationship and the psychological trauma of left-behind children. What touches me most is when Qin (the daughter), before leaving home to become a migrant worker, burned paper money and joss sticks in front of the tomb of her grandpa, the one who, she believed, had loved her more than her parents. From here, the film reveals step by step the family history, the inharmonious relationship between left-behind daughter and the migrant parents.
What you want is just money! You will never stay and take care of us (her and the younger brother)! The daughter angrily yelled at her parents when they came back home for the spring festival. Hearing the F word in his daughter's mouth, the father beat her down to the ground; the mother scolded her and had no intention to stop the father...Yet in many other scenes, the parents sincerely showed care and love about the daughter. They were also very worried about her future. After the daughter dropped out of school and became a migrant worker in Guangdong, the father, despite of his bus sick, made a trip in bus to go to the daughter's workplace and tried to persuade her to continue her education. And the mother tried to tell the daughter the "truth face" of life, the bitterness of migrant life, and the dark side of the "Freedom" of the "floating population." But because she does not know how to communicate with the child, and because of the deep-rooted misunderstanding and detachment between them, she failed. Her harsh tone sounded almost like giving an order to the daughter. No wonder the daughter resisted when she reached the adulthood. And she resisted by curse, violence, and self-exile.
The film does a great job showing the devastating consequences that migration brings to rural China, to the families, and to the children of migrants. The lack of communication between migrant parents and left-behind children, as the unavoidable consequence of migration, has become the cancer of Chinese family harmony and happiness. Qin's reaching adulthood and leaving home also reminds us this inconvenient truth -- the left-behind children, with all their uncured wounds inside, are becoming next generation of migrants. Are they going to leave their own children behind too? Is history repeat itself so conveniently here? Can we rely on these angry, wounded, and traumatized adults to produce a happy, loving, self-confident next generation?
I've been observing the daughter's face expressions throughout the film watching. Her hair style, her clothes, and her height were changing over the three years. Yet her face expression doesn't change that drastically, especially when she was alone. Her eyes, big and round, had this emptiness and hollowness deep inside. She didn't smile much. The most relaxing moment for her is when she lied down and talked to her best friend, a rural young migrant woman in her age. At the end, she stopped going back home for the spring festival. Seeing she dancing disco along among hundreds of youngsters (God knows how many of them had the similar childhood like Qin's!) under the bizarre ballroom lights, and seeing her hollow eyes and motionless expression, my heart ached.
It also struck me that, the parents wanted both the daughter and the son to continue education, despite of the family's financial difficulty. The daughter, Qin, dropped out of school and became a migrant not because she was forced to, but because she chose to. And she chose it not because she wanted to save money for her younger brother's college education (although that's one possibility in the future), but because of her traumatic childhood experience which gave her strong desire to leave home and to be independent. This is an aspect of rural life that has not been paid much attention to by independent documentaries. Given the tremendous Western scholarly and media attention and critique to China's son preference, esp. in the countryside, such an unusual representation of parents' favor toward daughter's education is indeed precious.
My critiques -
1. when it describes the daughter's life back in the countryside while her parents worked in Guangzhou (in 2006), it doesn't state that the scenes were shot in the summer (of 2007?), instead of winter (as it is supposed to be). It means that the film crew had no usable footage of Qin's life back to 2006. The honesty here is a concern. But how much this "dishonest" effect the whole film is hard to say. (China Blue has the same problem in intentionally mixed summer and winter in order to tell a story of "going home").
2. the translation (Chinese to English) is not careful enough. The film sometimes ignore the implications and crucial meanings in people's chat and conversation. Sometimes what the Chinese people said in the film do not match the subtitle very well. It is a shame that such a well-shot film comes out with such a rough translation.
3. There wasn't much about the first spring festival at Zhang's home, except the first day. The film jumped to the Guangzhou factory right after the "first day" scene without stating what had happened in between. This lack of full story somehow caused the shock and confusion later on when Qin confessed that she didn't get along with her parents.
4. The song at the end came out of nowhere.
5. I didn't get some shots, esp. the spider's net in front with an old peasant man walked through the rice paddle at the background, and the wild grass with flowing water in the brook, etc. What do they want to say to the audience? Are they helping anything except showing the rural pastoral beauty?
6. Certain parts of the film are not very engaging, a bit slow in rhythm and a bit flat.
The camera lens extends beyond the sweatshops to the inner family conflicts, especially the parents-daughter relationship and the psychological trauma of left-behind children. What touches me most is when Qin (the daughter), before leaving home to become a migrant worker, burned paper money and joss sticks in front of the tomb of her grandpa, the one who, she believed, had loved her more than her parents. From here, the film reveals step by step the family history, the inharmonious relationship between left-behind daughter and the migrant parents.
What you want is just money! You will never stay and take care of us (her and the younger brother)! The daughter angrily yelled at her parents when they came back home for the spring festival. Hearing the F word in his daughter's mouth, the father beat her down to the ground; the mother scolded her and had no intention to stop the father...Yet in many other scenes, the parents sincerely showed care and love about the daughter. They were also very worried about her future. After the daughter dropped out of school and became a migrant worker in Guangdong, the father, despite of his bus sick, made a trip in bus to go to the daughter's workplace and tried to persuade her to continue her education. And the mother tried to tell the daughter the "truth face" of life, the bitterness of migrant life, and the dark side of the "Freedom" of the "floating population." But because she does not know how to communicate with the child, and because of the deep-rooted misunderstanding and detachment between them, she failed. Her harsh tone sounded almost like giving an order to the daughter. No wonder the daughter resisted when she reached the adulthood. And she resisted by curse, violence, and self-exile.
The film does a great job showing the devastating consequences that migration brings to rural China, to the families, and to the children of migrants. The lack of communication between migrant parents and left-behind children, as the unavoidable consequence of migration, has become the cancer of Chinese family harmony and happiness. Qin's reaching adulthood and leaving home also reminds us this inconvenient truth -- the left-behind children, with all their uncured wounds inside, are becoming next generation of migrants. Are they going to leave their own children behind too? Is history repeat itself so conveniently here? Can we rely on these angry, wounded, and traumatized adults to produce a happy, loving, self-confident next generation?
I've been observing the daughter's face expressions throughout the film watching. Her hair style, her clothes, and her height were changing over the three years. Yet her face expression doesn't change that drastically, especially when she was alone. Her eyes, big and round, had this emptiness and hollowness deep inside. She didn't smile much. The most relaxing moment for her is when she lied down and talked to her best friend, a rural young migrant woman in her age. At the end, she stopped going back home for the spring festival. Seeing she dancing disco along among hundreds of youngsters (God knows how many of them had the similar childhood like Qin's!) under the bizarre ballroom lights, and seeing her hollow eyes and motionless expression, my heart ached.
It also struck me that, the parents wanted both the daughter and the son to continue education, despite of the family's financial difficulty. The daughter, Qin, dropped out of school and became a migrant not because she was forced to, but because she chose to. And she chose it not because she wanted to save money for her younger brother's college education (although that's one possibility in the future), but because of her traumatic childhood experience which gave her strong desire to leave home and to be independent. This is an aspect of rural life that has not been paid much attention to by independent documentaries. Given the tremendous Western scholarly and media attention and critique to China's son preference, esp. in the countryside, such an unusual representation of parents' favor toward daughter's education is indeed precious.
My critiques -
1. when it describes the daughter's life back in the countryside while her parents worked in Guangzhou (in 2006), it doesn't state that the scenes were shot in the summer (of 2007?), instead of winter (as it is supposed to be). It means that the film crew had no usable footage of Qin's life back to 2006. The honesty here is a concern. But how much this "dishonest" effect the whole film is hard to say. (China Blue has the same problem in intentionally mixed summer and winter in order to tell a story of "going home").
2. the translation (Chinese to English) is not careful enough. The film sometimes ignore the implications and crucial meanings in people's chat and conversation. Sometimes what the Chinese people said in the film do not match the subtitle very well. It is a shame that such a well-shot film comes out with such a rough translation.
3. There wasn't much about the first spring festival at Zhang's home, except the first day. The film jumped to the Guangzhou factory right after the "first day" scene without stating what had happened in between. This lack of full story somehow caused the shock and confusion later on when Qin confessed that she didn't get along with her parents.
4. The song at the end came out of nowhere.
5. I didn't get some shots, esp. the spider's net in front with an old peasant man walked through the rice paddle at the background, and the wild grass with flowing water in the brook, etc. What do they want to say to the audience? Are they helping anything except showing the rural pastoral beauty?
6. Certain parts of the film are not very engaging, a bit slow in rhythm and a bit flat.
