Introduction: Life is fighting. - Korolenko
The 2020 Berlin Film Festival Panorama Audience Award feature film "A Father's Way to Find a Son" tells the story of Nikolai, a low-level zero-hour worker in a small Serbian village, who trekked to the capital 300 kilometers away to file a complaint after his wife tried to commit suicide, two children were left by the social welfare center, and lost the child's support conditions.
Nikolai, a character on the fringes of society in the film, has lost his individual and self-identity, and he is silent and lonely and has no support, still longing to reunite his family and get rid of this dilapidated life. Forgotten by society, Nikolai has always hovered on the margins. Through individual identity, collective identity, self-identity and social identity, the film reflects nikolai's missing identity from these aspects, reflecting the pain of individuals struggling on the fringes of society and the ruthlessness of fate.
The film's narrative begins with Nikolai first losing the identity of a qualified husband. In the film, the mother comes to the door of a factory with two children, spills gasoline on her body and self-immolates to beg for a salary, and the mother's disappointment with Nikolai, who is the identity of the father, is the breakdown of the marriage between the two. The breakdown of the relationship between husband and wife was followed by the collapse of a home. Faced with the loss of raising a child, Nikolai needs to be a father and acquire his self-identity as a "father". In the film, Nikolai, because he has no formal job and his family is surrounded by disciples, is rejected by the director of the village social welfare office, believing that he does not provide a good living environment for his children. The taciturn Nikolai decided to go to the Ministry of Social Affairs in the capital, Belgrade, to lodge a complaint.
On the walk to the capital, he met the help of many well-meaning people, who published his incident in the newspaper and helped Nikolai expand his influence to attract the attention of the authorities; there were citizens who drove to deliver food to Nikolai outside the government building in the rain; police officers who were kind enough to carry Nikolai all the way in police cars; supermarket waiters who secretly let Nikolai spend the night. With the help and encouragement of well-wishers, Nikolai gained a certain collective identity, support from the ordinary rush.
Nikolai's path of rights defense above the collective identity, under his self-seeking identity and collective encouragement, seems to have embarked on a trend full of hope. But this collective identity is also a small person at the bottom of society, whether it is the government or officials, the attitude of rejection of Nikolai is always. Nikolai went to the government building, and for ordinary people, he was brave, persistent, and worthy of encouragement and recognition. But for government officials, "you are interfering with the normal work of the government here" and "you are not allowed to enter the restroom here." As a temporary worker, Nikolai is not allowed to have a social voice, and with mobile phone arrears and no place to live, Nikolai is deprived of social identity. He could not be unable to become a father, a full member of society, ostracized by society, marginalized by the city and the countryside.
When he flipped from the country road to the highway, he was stopped by the traffic police who passed by, and was told that "walking on the highway is not allowed." In contrast to the muddy dirt roads and clean asphalt roads, Nikolai tries to leave the countryside and enter the city, but at the beginning is told that it is not the way he should take, and is forced to return to the country lanes that belong to him.
On the way to maintaining his custody, Nikolai has never been able to obtain a new identity and a place for him in the high-walled city of reinforced concrete. Along country roads, a backpack and a bottle of tap water kept hungry on foot, hiding in an abandoned gas station with stray dogs on rainy days, sharing their only dry food. Spent the night with the stray dog to draw warmth from each other, and the next morning the stray dog was knocked to death by the side of the road. The city's product car kills the stray dog, reminding Nikolai, who is trying to enter the city, and he is out of place with everything.
The countryside outside the city, for Nikolai, is also a precarious place where identity cannot be obtained. When Nikolai, who failed to defend his rights, returned from the capital to his home in the village five days after leaving home, the only furniture in the dilapidated home was removed by the neighbors, and Nikolai in the movie silently took his "home" from the house of each family. The interpretation of "home" in the film is always incomplete and unhappy, Nikolai's empty home, no wife and children, no breath of life, no warmth and hope that a family should have.
Nikolai eventually becomes a homeless individual, representing a lone wanderer on the edge of the city, deprived of all meaning in being alive. At the end of the film, Nikolai, who returns home, has seen hopelessness in his search for a son from four aspects: individual, collective, self and society. On the whole, the film is not only a drama film, but also a reproduction of the difficult life of the contemporary marginalized people, with a realistic creative method, through the protagonist Nikolai's difficult "rights protection" picture in the film, presenting the social group portrait of the lowest level of Serbian society.
The director points out Nikolai's repressive and hopeless ending through introverted real emotions, just as the film throws out a question from the beginning to the end, why is Nikolai alive? When all identities are lost, survival becomes a problem, and inequality becomes universal, how do we face the world? The film "A Father's Way to Find a Son" has enough power to knock on the door of the industry's attention to the current situation of the lives of marginalized groups in society, which is the attitude that a good film should have.
The social attributes that people possess make even people on the margins of society equally self-possessed and an important part of the social composition. The character of Nikolai is constantly breaking through the predicament line along the way, and society cannot let them drift to zero and indifferently ignore their existence. Along with Nikolai's search for a child, the film brings deep thoughts and confronts the root causes of social problems. For Nikolai, life is a battle, and even if you lose, you still need to continue to embark on the road ahead.