Another World

A Home Cooked Meal

It is a long, narrow, rutted road; lined with trees, whose branches stretching out and interlacing with one another, revealing the sky in a mosaic of black and white. Actually, the sky is grey, a very stifling grey, heavy, deep, with a sense of oppression. It somehow matches the color of the brick houses, and the crimson roofs. Smoke comes from kitchen chimneys, forming a vertical line and disappearing in the endless, expansive grey. There is always white snow, quietly falling down from the sky, decorating the tedious view with a bit of vitality. It is a picture of a typical winter day in Beijing, the city where I grew up.
The grating noise of a teakettle boiling dragged me back to reality. Knowing that I had been staring into space in front of my laptop for quite a long time and only a blank page in sight, I put on my flip-flops and ran into the kitchen. A note on my refrigerator caught my eye, saying, “To Do List: Bring rough draft to writing class.” It was not until then did I realize my feet were set on another continent thousands of miles away from home. And it felt like summer, in California.
At times like these, I asked myself: Why am I here?

Art works all comes from an intertwined emotion that tangles the heart. And art is the best way to soothe the soul. At the time when I was struggling with myself, I created a 10-min short film called “Another World”, as my little way out.
I was extremely homesick, because I could not seem to involve in the new environment, and I had been living in a contradiction. I came to the States voluntarily. I was studying things I was most interested in with strong support from my family. There was nowhere else on earth I would rather be. But I longed for other places; another world where I could escape from the one I have, a place like a sanctuary where I was always under the sweetest protection, a place like… home.
How many people are indulging in their own world, so absorbed in avoiding true connection with the people around them? We want to break free, but we find ourselves blocked by emotions like we are stuck in a spider net. Is this feeling reminiscence, or just a beautiful excuse for weakness? Whatever it was, it was indeed something I could not run away from at that time. With all these questions rushed into my mind, I felt an urgent need to make a film. I turned my homesickness to a process of filmmaking, during which I was allowed to immerse myself in nostalgia; and out of the deliberation came my strength to face the reality. The film was not for a class or under demand. I made it simply because inspirations overwhelmed me.
Visions are important to films; one successful vision may speak more than words. My film idea started with a vision in my head, and then my burning desire was to make this vision visible to everyone else. I created a world in which my characters are besieged within their invisible walls. In my mind, nothing could illustrate and reflect the force of resistance inside a person’s complex mindset better than a grey, dry, cold winter dusk in Beijing. To capture the vision and prevent it from slipping away, I drew it down to paper. It was a powerful force. I saw the picture and I heard the voice within myself, then I brought them from my imagination to reality as if God was holding my hand, and leading the way.
On the other hand, a film with solely beautiful images does not satisfy the audience. I needed to come up with a compelling story. A question triggered me, “What would happen on a long, rutted road in suburban Beijing?”
There are bikes, definitely. It was once reported that there are ten million bikes in the city of Beijing. A lot of people, mostly students, use bikes as daily transportation. I used bikes in my film, in memory of my high school life when I used to bike to school everyday. The time I spent on the road was most enjoyable. Like the “Bed, Bath, and Bus” adage screenwriters usually talk about, it was true that those were times I could be completely alone with myself. I used the time to dream. Feeling the wind on my face and riding the bike without holding the handle bar, it was the moments I felt so close to the word “freedom.” Once I decided to incorporate this scene, the figure of my main character appeared in front of me.

Duan Ning, a pathetic kid in high school, introvert, confused and uncommunicative, struggling just like my counterpart. Poor guy, he has just ended a meteoric love to which he was devoted, with a girl who left him to pursue a different future. No one alienates him more than himself. The girl used to be his friend and now he has none. He is lonely inside and out. Memory is his only companion, which revives at the sight of every familiar place he used to go with the girl.
Italian poet Cesare Pavese speaks my favorite quote, “We don’t remember days; we remember moments.” Duan Ning is drowned into his episodic memory. I chose to demonstrate them in flashbacks in color of vintage gold, because they were the closest visions I had when talking about memory. Memories are always fragmented, and they flood in people’s mind in possible moment. With pieces of memories, Duan Ning’s delusions distort his reality. He is trapped in his own world. As life goes on after love, he encounters the crossroad where he needs to choose between departing for a new life and continuing rotten in vanity.
We always want to be understood, or to simply have someone to witness the process of agony we go through. It is a comfort to the lonely hearts. To offer Duan Ning a comfort, to me, as well, I want his inner struggle observed by a third person. Ai, a girl in his class, notices him in school and shares the same road with him everyday after school, because they live close to each other. Too absorbed in his thinking, Duan Ning never notices Ai while she sees him lingers the road, walking alone on campus, and looks into his mailbox, anticipating letters from his ex-girlfriend.
I looked for a point where Duan Ning’s constantly constrained emotion bursts out, where my movie comes to a turning point. When I could not think of anything to forward the story, I related the character to myself, and looked into my personal experience for the tiny little moment that might be ignored in life. I found an interesting trivia of mine, which would be great to give Duan Ning an opportunity to change. There was one traffic light at an intersection I passed by everyday in high school. Seeing it from far away, I used to set up a challenge for myself. “If I can ride pass the traffic light before it turns red, I will…” It could be “I will pass the exam tomorrow”, or “I will tell the boy I like him.” It was an interesting battle between me, myself and I. I would pedal at a fast speed, and use all my strength to ride past the traffic light before it turned red. It was like handing my destiny to an invisible power, letting it take control and help me make my decision. I was never too serious about this game. The results did not change my actual decisions. But, in “Another World”, Duan Ning needs a force to change his life. It is not an outside force; it comes from within. Only he can help himself pull him out of this unrealistic life before he loses more of his reality.
A letter from his ex-girlfriend, which he has been expecting, triggers the action. In the letter, she informs him of her new life with her new companion. At the climax of the film, when Duan Ning goes home from school as usual, he gazes at the green light, speeds up from yards away. He gets faster and faster. His mouth is murmuring; his eyes seem to be blazing with determination. He is betting his life on this light, whether or not he could regain his normal life. In his own battle, he makes choice. He wants to break free; he is saying goodbye to his world, out of which he could not break. There are many possibilities in life. One single choice may be powerful enough to change a life. The important part is that we all have the mobility to choose.
Are we going to mark time or move on, to stay the same or to break through? Now Duan Ning needs a resolution. At the time, I also needed to make decision of my own. However, the movie speaks from Ai’s perspective, so she cannot know what Duan Ning is thinking when he rushes pass the traffic light. Besides, I do not want to explicate whatever Duan Ning ends up with, because it is a person’s process of psychological struggle that really fascinates me; the result is not my concern. I would rather preserve the decision Duan Ning makes at the end, and leave the audience to fill in their belief.
With a grating sound of the brake, Duan Nings stops right before the line at the intersection when the traffic light just turns red. His bike is thrown away by inertia. He falls and rolls to the ground, stumbles and gets on his knees. He cries silently, in depression, and in relief. For the very last time, I would like to put him in plague again. No matter what demand he gives himself, the audiences witness he falls the challenge. This may sub-consciously reveal my point of view on the impossibility of life. However, having been through the thinking process, there is a point I try to make as my decision for myself. Indeed, I want to light up the ending, with a hope frail, but better than nothing. While he is on his knees, hands hold the crying one from behind. It is Ai, connecting Duan Ning to reality. She witnesses everything, and she holds Duan Ning when he is in need of love. The love does not happen in his memory; it is as real as Ai is. If Ai represents reality, then Duan Ning has reached on a safe base of reality.
I decided to make Duan Ning disappear, and let Ai took the memory relay. He may be gone to win his former love back, or transferring to another school to start a new life, or defeated by his cowardice and lives in pain forever. But Ai demonstrates another way to face memory, and the besieged self. She possesses the ambiguous love she has for him with satisfaction. In the last scene, as she bikes on the road alone where she used to bike with Duan Ning, she narrates in a positive tone, “I tried every way to figure out what he was thinking when he rushed passed the traffic light. But where can I find the answer? What I have now is this long, rutted road, painted with memory.” There is a positive way to look at reminiscence. It is not something to escape to, nor is it a reason to hide from reality. The past is the elements that contribute to who we are today, and it is the motivation to take ourselves to the future.
Thoughts kept flooding in my head that were so strong I could not resist. It was like the moment when you find a piece of puzzle that fits, and then every other piece fills in one after another immediately. The script was completed in a short period of time, and then I turned to the filming process, which happened during the winter break of my freshman year. I went back home and found the road in my memory. The initial idea coming from my depression turned out to be a real film, which I ended up spending four weeks preparing, three days shooting, and two months editing and color correcting to match the vision with the one in my head. Indeed, compared to my previous works, I managed to upgrade the quality of visions. The film looked good, because I did my best capturing the essence of winter in Beijing. But I am not nearly satisfied. Critically speaking, “Another World” was still a failure, a total experimental piece. I shot it in such a short period of time with my amateur friends and it put almost everything in a rush. And there was compromise, and a constant battle between the intuitive brain and the critical brain. Technical problems and other issues limited the realization of my intuitive ideas, and I could not achieve directing my amateur actors to infiltrate the emotions through their acting. There were a lot of things I wished I could have amended. It was not better or worse than works I did afterwards, but what seems more important to me in this little piece of garbage was something that led me to a process of self-realization; something that led me out of desperation. Home is indeed the sweetest place on earth, but homesickness should never be the reason of running away from reality. Everyone has the strength to break away from their little corner, from the comfortable bed upon which they dream, and to stand up to face the truth, to fight, if they desire to do so. “Another World” resembles a meditation to me, out of which I regain my strength to face my reality, and the will to welcome the world around me.
No one can lie in front of art. Looking back, I am convinced that I would not have come up with anything else than this piece at that time. I wanted to be cool and be strong but I was unable to. It was where I trapped myself. And the only way to get up on my feet again was to make this film. “Another World” was my salvation, and an opportunity for me to take time to think. I have always believed in art as a way to heal. My wish is that this piece of art brought hope to its audience the same way it comforted me.

Everything else... :)

My uncle helped me rent the equipment, and he drove.

Basically the whole crew...

...

Setting up.

Fan is my best friend! We grew up together. :)

I had to switch shoes with Fan because he forgot to wear the boots he wore the day before in the same scene...

And we didn't forget to play basketball after a day's shooting.
The background is the teaching building in my high school!

:)

Movie Review, the Hours

I watched Stephen Daldry’s the Hours recently, and finally. This movie was always referred to in my film classes, but I had never got to watch the entire movie. I once bought the DVD when it was just released. I let it run for 30 minutes before I stopped it because I could not bear the depression. Almost six years later, I sat through the movie. I enjoyed it, felt the atmosphere of it lingered around me a long time after it ended, and then I rated five stars on my Netflix account.

It was hard to say that I liked the story. The movie includes three stories in different time periods and different locations. Although the stories seem irrelevant, they all depict women’s desperate mental condition. In 1923, England, Virginia Woolf’s husband took her from London to a small village, where he thought would be good for her writing. It was a good intention of his but Virginia suffocated in her lonesome country life. In 1951, Los Angeles, Laura Brown could not bear the daily routines a housewife had to do so she left her family and ran away in pain. It was a similar depression for Clarissa, who took good care of her former lover Richard, but watched him commit suicide.

It was so desperate that it took almost the most negative look on life and especially lives of women. Female was pictured fragile and lost. Their feelings were hard for me to relate to, because they all seemed to be troubled in their own fairs and ignoring the bright side of life. However, I could understand their feelings as a different view point towards life. I believed it was the sentiment inherited from works of Virginia Woolf, and especially her novel Mrs. Dalloway, which was referred to throughout the movie.

For a movie like this, which I cannot quite appreciate the story but can’t help falling in love with, I think I would give the credits to the directors. I have to admit the Hours is a good movie, an unique and unforgettable piece, only because it achieves an extraordinary narrative that takes me along with it in every minute, gives me surprises and keeps me wondering what is going to happen in the next scene.

In films, there are some parts that seem to be the indirect approach of the filmmakers’ that the filmmakers may not be aware of the impression it gives the audience by making it intentionally. They may realize that after the parts are done, or even later when they realize from reviews. But everything in the Hours is strictly precise and coherent that it must had been extremely well planned before even a small scene was shot. Objects like flowers and cake, simple movements like opening a door, and lines like “I’ll be the flower myself” connect three different stories in three periods. The movie is shot in such a delicate way that accurately captures the complex psychological states of women. The style matches the content perfectly, and the combination of the two creates a tone of the movie that narrates the story smooth like stream flowing, tender like women themselves.

The dispute scenes were most enjoyable to me, including the one with Virginia and her husband at the train station, and the one with Clarissa and Richard’s friend in the kitchen. The scene where Laura sits in the bathroom and her devoted husband waits in the bed calling her name was also a highlighted moment in the movie. They presented the tremendous confrontation in the characters’ inner life, and how they struggle with it, and with the burden of obligation and their own salvation.

The movie would not make to its point without the amazing performance by three marvelous actresses, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman. The scoring by Philip Glass is also a remarkable aspect that contributes to the success of the movie.