The piano of steel
Hourglasses can be reversed, but time cannot be reversed. So memory becomes a precious anchor in life, and what you remember, whether happy or painful, at least proves that you once had it.
"The Piano of Steel" is originally about a laid-off employee of the Northeast Steel Mill, Chen Guilin (Wang Qianyuan), whose wife is separated, but the film itself is full of absurd freedom and black humor. If you don't think deliberately, you may not be able to read the desolation and pain in the story. After all, Chen Guilin still has a skill, perhaps in the encounter of thousands of laid-off workers in that year, Chen Guilin was just ordinary and could not be more ordinary, and what qualifications did he have to sell misery?
01
Chen Guilin and his wife Xiaoju
Chen Guilin originally had a well-off, happy family - he was humorous and funny, his wife was beautiful, and he had a lovely daughter.
But the wave of reform of state-owned enterprises suddenly pushed him and his family from the revolutionary road under the leadership of the working class to the gap of the change of the times, and they were still stained.
In order to make a living, Chen Guilin combined his own strengths and formed a wedding and funeral band, running all day long in the business of weddings, funerals, weddings, and shop openings. However, his wife Xiaoju (Zhang Shenying) is overwhelmed by the burden of life, empathizes with others, and goes to the south with a boss who sells counterfeit drugs.
A few years later, Xiaoju Returned, demanding a divorce from Chen Guilin and fighting for custody of the children. The child makes a request, who can buy her a piano, she chooses who to go with, the piano becomes the focus of the film.
Chen Guilin originally hoped to train his daughter to become an excellent pianist, and in the case of extremely difficult life, he still tried his best to train his daughter to learn piano, but now "learning piano" and "owning piano" have become the main reasons for Chen Guilin to lose his daughter.
Is even a daughter so realistic? This kind of helplessness and irony that transcends family affection is precisely from one side to reflect the sadness and helplessness of the laid-off workers in northeast China.
Chen Guilin's first thought was to "borrow money" to buy Xiao Yuan a piano. But the brother who can "insert a knife in both ribs" in ordinary days would rather steal for him than have anyone to lend him money. This reinforces the implication that money is more important and scarce than anything else.
Yes, these friends would rather take a risk with Chen Guilin and go to school to steal the piano, but the piano was not stolen, and everyone was caught. In the film, after Chen Guilin was arrested for stealing the piano, there was a virtual environment, and it was he who sat in front of the piano in the snow and played "To Alice", which was absurd but full of affection as a father.
Finally, desperate and unwilling to give up, Chen Guilin stumbled upon a Russian document on piano manufacturing, so he took friends and former technical backbones (now reduced to former thieves,, big brothers, butchers) and began to struggle to make pianos by hand in a long-dilapidated factory.
In the process of making the piano, the police came to take Ji Ge away, and Ji Ge said that he would wait for me to finish the work. There are many analyses that believe that through "making the piano", Ji Ge has been reborn. Is it a new student? In fact, I just found myself who was an excellent worker in a steel mill.
Chen Guilin's second brother-in-law was a carpenter in the factory before he was laid off, but after he was laid off, he had nothing to do, an important principle was "can't put down the shelf", Chen Guilin said: "Afraid of bumping you can still earn money!" "
The reason why Chen Guilin is called "Guilin" is because his father hopes that he can "a world under the heavens". During the piano-making period, his girlfriend Shuxian (Qin Hailu) actually got mixed up with one of his brothers. This made Chen Guilin suffer a lot, and the disheartened Chen Guilin and Xiao Ju said, let Xiao Yuan follow you.
In the movie, you can't read Chen Guilin's hatred for "Xiao Ju" for abandoning her husband and abandoning her son. This should truly reflect the deep inner life of the laid-off workers at that time. They hate their incompetence even more, and they hate their life full of holes, a life that has achieved nothing.
The "steel" piano must be built successfully, which symbolizes the final dignity of the "laid-off men" like Chen Guilin and him who have achieved nothing in life.
At the moment when the "piano of steel" was created, Chen Guiji's father died. That's another metaphor, right? The father represents the older generation of steel mill workers, and what does the "piano of steel" represent?
At the end of the film, when Xiao yuan talks about the "piano" they made in the workshop, Wang Guilin does not have any expression of love or satisfaction on his face. He just watched expressionlessly. For him, after playing the piano, his former wife is leaving, his only child is leaving, and the piano will return to the fate of scrap iron, how should his life continue?
At this time, he has forgiven Shu Xian who "cheated" on his good friend... This kind of forgiveness seems strange to me at the moment, but is Shuxian's "cheating" itself a very dark humor? Just because Wang Kangmei (Tian Yu), the story told is funny.
This tells everyone that for a group of laid-off workers in that year, although the material poverty is painful, the spiritual emptiness and anxiety caused by the confusion and expectation of the future are even more urgently needed to comfort and vent.
There were also the chimneys of the two huge steel mills, although all of them signed and asked to keep them, but in the end they had to be demolished by directional blasting.
At the end of the film, the daughter asks Chen Guilin what she wants to hear, and he says, "The simpler the better."
02
The chimney is an important intention in "The Piano of Steel", and the lens depicts the chimney of the steel mill from multiple angles. The chimney is a symbol of the opening of the factory and symbolizes the prosperity of the industrial base in the northeast.
Although a large number of workers are laid off, they may not realize that in their subconscious, there is always a glimmer of hope that one day the factory will restart the machine and they can return to the factory to work and resume their former life.
So whenever Chen Guilin is confused, the camera always places him in a place with a huge chimney, highlighting the helplessness and loneliness of the laid-off workers, as well as their complex psychology of both attachment and resentment toward the factory.
Therefore, the chimney is bound to be demolished in the movie, and all the efforts of Chen Guilin to keep the chimney symbolize the "past"
The obsession with the "planned economy" must be tolerated by the times.
The process of "making the violin" is itself a metaphor. When they cut steel from factory scraps and read books left behind by the Soviet Union to draw their own drawings, they unconsciously found the "anchor point" of their lives—in the process, everyone found the energy and passion of the former factory glory. Therefore, in the process of making pianos, they changed their usual confused and lost state, and making a piano became their obsession and a memorial to their lives.
03
In April 1979, the central government issued the "Several Provisions on Expanding the Autonomy of State-Owned Industrial Enterprises in Operation and Management" and other documents, marking the launch of enterprise reform focusing on decentralization and profitation nationwide. On August 3, 1986, Shenyang Explosion-proof Equipment Factory officially declared bankruptcy, becoming the first state-owned enterprise in New China to declare bankruptcy.
Northeast China has a strong industrial base, is known as the eldest son of the republic, and has played an irreplaceable role in the development of new China. It is accompanied by millions of industrial workers, and it can be said that workers are the main body of northeast society. Symbols such as workers, mentor-apprentice relations, collective canteens, workshop factories, steel, coal, and trains were synonymous with Northeast China at that time, and they were the inherent impression of Northeast China in people's minds.
"The Piano of Steel" sets the background of the story as the northeast under the reform of state-owned enterprises, telling the reality of the laid-off workers.
During that period, a large number of factories were shut down, restructured and closed, and with it came changes in the face of society as a whole. "Dilapidated factories and dormitories, crumbling plaques, overgrown waterways, abandoned steel, sparsely populated restaurants, small billiard halls packed with laid-off workers, and trains, railways, and chimneys" are the basic elements that can be found everywhere in the film.
Countless ordinary workers and families have lost their jobs and dependents at the same time, some of them have been forced to move to other places as labor, the individual economy has become a helpless choice for most people who are unable or unwilling to leave their hometowns, various miniature shops and restaurants are lined up on the street, many middle-aged men even include a small number of strong women, pedaling "upside down donkeys" to become the main means of transportation in the town, and a small number of people, and finally being pushed into darker corners of society.
Outsiders, no matter how compassionate and empathetic you have packaged yourself, you cannot understand the misfortune of this generation of laid-offs. While I will rebuke some people for "not trying", I know better, where do I have this qualification?
In Jia Xingjia's teacher's text about northeast China, a story was once told:
A couple, both laid off, want to find a job, but they don't have skills outside the factory, and society as a whole has no needs.
Again and again, I hit a wall and had to go to the home of my retired parents to rub rice. After fed up with the white eyes of their loved ones, on that day, the couples got up very early, bought pork, and made a fragrant meal.
Children who have not tasted meat for a long time eat a special fragrance, and their childish little faces are full of happiness. Her parents didn't tell her that the meal hadn't cost the family's last penny, and that Dad and Mom had little money left to buy a packet of rat poison, which their beloved daughter had been waiting for for a long time.
The next morning, the city was still a white expanse, people were looking for their own way of life, and no one had time to shed a tear for the death of three people.
Along with the problem of corruption caused by the imperfection of policies, laws and supervision systems in those years, as well as the problem of official-business collusion among some private entrepreneurs, this has become an amplifier of the "unfortunate encounter" of laid-off work to a certain extent.
But we must also understand that a very important background to the misfortune of that year was because of the "poverty" of the state and the individual. The blood and tears of a generation of laid-off workers are as precious as the sacrifices of our martyrs for the founding of New China, and the fruits of reform and opening up exchanged for their efforts need to be doubly cared for!
Is it true that some people are in tears and tears are really because of how much love and compassion he has? If so, did he donate a penny to laid-off workers or write an article?
These people have not paid a minute of effort for laid-off workers for decades, but they are performing so loudly and exhaustively at the moment, why is it better to live than to die?
The current external hostile forces are very clear that there is no market for "how good the West is" in China. The work they are doing in China now has been transformed into packaging "how good China was before reform and opening up", which is a new trend of "peaceful evolution" in the new era, and we must strengthen our vigilance!
General Jin Yinan has a video that says: "The fortress has always been breached from the inside, and it is often our own people who give us the fatal blow." "
So I say:
- "It doesn't make sense to complain about the past and to be dissatisfied with the present. What we should pay more attention to and work is how to more effectively, fairly and reasonably promote the implementation of the goal of common prosperity, so that you can rely on the elderly, do not worry about medical treatment, live a happy life in the days to come, and share the dividends of reform and opening up and national prosperity! "
- We cannot engage in "liquidation", but we can carry out "prosecution" under the guidance of policies that meet the "three public" standards, in accordance with the provisions of the law, and under the premise of complying with the procedures.
- Our China today is not the first in the world, our family foundation is not as strong as many people think, and we must continue to work hard today under the premise of ensuring stability!
- One of the signs of social maturity is that most people can "tolerate today, tolerate yesterday".
Only in this way will tragedies such as "The Piano of Steel" not be repeated!
No matter what kind of past you have had, I hope that we will work together: do not remember the past, do not live up to the present, do not forget the original heart, and do not fear the future
If you agree with grassroots, "follow, like, retweet"! Let the voice of reason be transmitted more widely!
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