The Academy Awards, which ended a few days ago, although they were sparse, still pushed a good film in front of our public.
It's "Under the White Sun."
The film received 16 nominations, which is the most of all films, and finally won several awards with high gold content for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.
Including Lin Baoyi's failure to become emperor, the outside world is also a pity.
The Douban score is stable at 8 points, which is called the best of the year in 2023 by many viewers.
As early as last year, Er Dongsheng, who served as a producer, told the media that he hoped to pass the trial in the mainland.
Why?
Because the film is adapted from a true story, it has the nickname of the Hong Kong version of "The Crucible".
There are physiologically uncomfortable plots, and the topics discussed are taboo on the screen.
The good news is that just this month, it was finally released in the mainland!
Under the White Sun
Well...... The bad news is that the number of films in theaters is quite "pitiful".
Not only is there a small number of scheduled films, but the time is also arranged very "tricky", the factory director went to watch it after work, and he didn't have to pick at all, only that one.
However, after reading it, I was shocked and worth the ticket price!
The story is not complicated -
In today's era when everyone can be self-media, traditional newspapers and magazines have been "squeezed" a lot.
Due to economic difficulties, many newspapers have laid off staff and closed down.
In order not to downsize her department, reporter Xiaoqi wanted to report an explosive news.
She received revelations that a welfare home called Caiqiao Home had mistreated its residents and other unbearable behaviors.
For this reason, Xiaoqi disguised herself as a family member of the resident and infiltrated the Caiqiao House......
In the next plot, following Xiaoqi's perspective, we will see the daily life that happens in the welfare home.
The house is very dilapidated, with rooms connected by a corridor that resembles a sleeper car on a train.
In a small room, it was overcrowded.
The people who live here include the elderly who have poor legs and feet, and there are also minors with intellectual disabilities, who are either sent here because their families do not have time to take care of them, or because of poor economic conditions.
Here you can spend the least amount of money in exchange for food, housing, and 24-hour caregivers.
At first glance?
Do you think it's a benefit?
However, institutions collect money but do not do things well.
In order to save money, the residents in the hospital are frozen, and expired siu mai is piled up in the freezer, cooking one pot at a time.
After the food was cooked, the residents carried their rice bowls and waited in line for the staff to serve the food.
Yes, there is no service here, and you can see the old man with limited mobility waiting tremblingly, feeling like he is going to faint in the next second.
When someone is dissatisfied with the garbage food, they throw the food on the ground and protest.
Everyone didn't seem to see it, only the supervisor Sister Fang quickly put the food spilled on the ground back into the lunch box, and then warned-
Eat it or you don't.
The residents were so frightened that they silently left with their jobs.
As you can see, in the welfare home, the residents are at the bottom of the food chain, and Sister Fang represents authority.
When the mentally retarded boy was noisy and disobedient, she dragged him into a small room, yelled at him, hit him, and stapled his arm with a stapler.
Emma, I can't bear to watch this scene.
You must know that even if he does not have the cognition of an adult, he is kind-hearted, knows the warmth and cold, and can perceive good and bad.
I still remember the scene where he and Xiaoling, who is also only 7 years old with an IQ, playing together and laughing together, is so distressing.
Xiaoling is also a cute child, likes to play with stickers, will go to each room to give stickers to the residents, and the first time I met Xiaoqi, I also gave a small flower.
For her, the people in the hospital are all friends, and the dean Zhang Jianhua is her favorite.
Zhang Jianhua himself is a disadvantaged patient, who has been discriminated against by the people around him since he was a child, and he knows that it is not easy for the disadvantaged groups, so he gave them a home.
He has a kind smile on his face every time he appears, especially in a few scenes where he and Xiaoling are in the same frame-
Zhang Jianhua accompanied Xiaoling to play hide and seek, which made Xiaoling laugh non-stop.
He played with her toys, gave her ice cream, cut her nails and plucked her ears.
Unexpectedly, in the closed office, Zhang Jianhua's body was getting closer and closer to Xiaoling, and his eyes were getting stranger and stranger.
His hand couldn't control Xiao Ling's body, and in the face of Xiao Ling's resistance, he still did it!!
At this point, we realized that Zhang Jianhua, as the big boss of the welfare home, is actually Sister Fang's umbrella, not only conniving at the evil deeds in the welfare home, but also harming the innocent with his own hands.
I can feel that compared with the mainstream high-grossing popcorn and family carnival genres, it is quite heavy as a realistic theme.
However, after it was released in Hong Kong last year, it still exploded at the box office.
The reason is very simple, as the comment at the beginning of the article wrote, the director was already very explosive if he could shoot it.
Because on the one hand, the story presents the contradictions of the news media itself.
They want to expose the darkness of the welfare home, not only for the sake of justice, but also for the sake of traffic, out of interest considerations.
On the other hand, the problems brought about by the subsequent aging of society are put on the table.
It's unimaginable that the shocking scenes in the film all happened in real life-
In 2016, "Hong Kong 01" found that the Mulan Nursing Home in Kowloon City employed unlicensed black workers, and in a disabled home, some residents were tied up for a long time, and the main meals were roasted wheat, green vegetables, and rice;
In 2015, Ming Pao reported that residents of the Cambridge Nursing Home in Tai Po were stripped naked and showered on the rooftop;
In 2014, the director of Kangqiao Home was suspected of indecent assault and was involved in a number of cases;
......
Similar institutions continue to explode, but they still haven't stopped.
Why?
It turns out that although this kind of institution has the word "welfare", it is not a public organization, but is contracted by private individuals.
Correspondingly, these institutions will receive relevant subsidies, and this money happens to become the target of some unethical people, taking advantage of the opportunity to make a fortune.
As a result, they did not manage their business well, and it was not uncommon for them to have two caregivers take care of nearly 100 residents.
Compared with living with dignity and quality, most of the residents can eat enough and have a place to sleep.
Seeing this, you may wonder why residents are still willing to enter welfare homes, and even the supply of beds exceeds the demand.
The reason is very simple, one is cost-effective, and the other is that if you don't live here, many people will become lonely and widowed old people, facing the wind and food and sleeping in the open.
In view of the rapid increase in the elderly population every year, public welfare institutions are overwhelmed, and the average waiting time for a bed is about 15 years.
Judging from the current situation, the "welfare home" is a society that knows that there is a problem, but there is nothing to be done.
Correspondingly, Zhang Jianhua faced the accusation, and he said confidently-
It was their families, their societies that abandoned them.
He, on the other hand, gave them a home.
The words are cruel, but they are reality.
In the film, Xiaoqi, out of a journalist's sense of justice, put all kinds of welfare homes on the front page of the news, setting off a storm in society.
But what about after the storm?
The orphanage was shut down, and the residents waited like dolls in the heavy rain to be reassigned to the new orphanage again.
Xiaoqi suffered from the accusations of thousands of people.
At this moment, the director expressed the meaning of this film through the mouth of the old homemate played by Jiang David.
"Don't feel guilty about doing the right thing, just do it. ”
The director said that many people will ask if there is hope in the world, and his understanding is that when people say "hope", they want an outcome, such as winning or losing, but for him, hope is an action.
In the most helpless time, when there is the most powerless, what people can do is to believe, and they can still hold hope, which is an attitude;
When you have that attitude, you have a chance to change.
We may not be able to do anything, but at least we should care about them, just as movies may not solve problems, but at least they should ask the world questions so that more people can think.
PS: Just this year, after more than ten years of impunity, the prototype dean in the movie was finally punished by the law, and he and the disabled home "Kangqiao Home" were sentenced to compensate 1.19 million for the victimized women.