"Youth" made in Hong Kong: suicide saving and "earth-shattering" courage

"Made in Hong Kong" in 1997 and "Youth" in 2021
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In 1997, Chen Guo's "Made in Hong Kong" filmed the story of a "deviant boy". The mentally handicapped A Long picked up the bloody suicide note of a strange woman A Shan jumping off a building on the street. Since then, the male protagonist "Mid-Autumn Festival" was entangled by A Shan's ghost. Calling it sexual harassment, because he would wake up sweating violently after dreaming of Ashan at night, it turned out to be the underwear after cleaning the wet dream. The setting of the story seems to be joking, but the Mid-Autumn Festival also worked hard with the bullied A Long and the terminally ill girl A Ping to find the recipient of A Shan's suicide note. Shan's name, and that simple friendship and justice, make a place with a death atmosphere like a cemetery, like a picnic outing, and become the brightest and most open scene in the whole film.

In 2021, in Ren Xia and Lin Sen's " Youth " that cannot be released locally in Hong Kong, the male protagonist Anan also sweated profusely at night, but after waking up in the morning, he saw that his back was severely bruised by a police baton in the mirror. When Anan woke up, it was also when the heroine YY's suicidal idea was written into a letter; the same young YY was the sibling of Anan who had been evacuated in the street and was knocked down by the police and arrested by the police. Therefore, Anan and other Hong Kong people worked hard to rescue YY who wanted to commit suicide. In the concrete jungle, they found someone by chance and coincidence. At the moment of jumping off the building, the brothers and sisters fighting on the rooftop and in the streets were all on a symbolic picture, extending many helping hands, becoming the most powerful among the realistic despair (this film is interspersed with real protest images from time to time). An image claim.

How does society drive young people to a dead end, and how will young people respond to this society? "Made in Hong Kong" gave a complex and layered answer, bringing a smoky smell; "Youth" gave a simple answer, the camera almost only followed people at close range, and the rest were real images is enough to explain. The reality of our city no longer needs further interpretation. The initiative of the teenagers in the film must go back and guide this society. This awareness specifically echoes the phrase in "Revolution of the Times", "It is not the times that chose us, it is we who choose to change the times." The things that are not seen are "acted out" and thus have irreplaceable work value.

In Hong Kong movies in the past, there were many policemen who were full of justice and diverse faces. Now, whether in reality or in movies, our memory is deeply rooted in the brutal black police who suppressed the protests. Just like a fifteen-year-old boy who played a police family in "Youth", when asked by a social worker if he was worried about meeting his parents when he was "fighting a dream" (resistance), he said, "It's better to be beaten to death. In such a simple scene as the whole family”, the lines are precise and do not need to be repeated, the social meaning of the police has been fixed, and the regime has no room for heterogeneity. Not only the image of the police has changed qualitatively, but the image of the juvenile is also changing. In "Made in Hong Kong", Mid-Autumn Festival originally wanted to use a knife to blame the father of the "concubine", but he ran into another uniformed boy in the toilet and chopped up his father. It turned out that the father had sexually assaulted the uniformed boy's sister for a long time. Mid-Autumn Festival lamented, "It was not It's just me, and everyone has a story behind them." Under totalitarianism, the stories told by the teenagers tend to be the same, because they need to face the more tense "plots" such as violence, prison terms and life threats, and family and intimate relationships will also be linked to political intentions and struggle. Can empathize and agree; and compared to the past to collect debts and revenge, to fight fiercely, bravely stacking bricks and throwing petrol bombs are the actions of contemporary teenagers. The object of struggle has changed from a powerful and powerful enemy to an entire regime.

The pros and cons, justice and injustice in the narrative of the film are more clearly expressed. By juxtaposing the works, rather than seeing these characters from a single perspective, we will see the creators placed in their time and space, and the work is meant to be a response to the entire social situation.

Starting from the theme of "death", A Shan jumped off the building at the beginning of "Made in Hong Kong". After suffering setbacks in the Mid-Autumn Festival, he found out that Aaron was killed by the boss. When he said that he was going to do something "earth-shattering", he would shoot the boss and finally commit suicide next to Ah Ping's grave. At the beginning of "Youth", YY was on the screen of his mobile phone, excited to take a selfie from a high-rise building to see the prosperous Nathan Road, like an ordinary child with no worries; however, she also learned that the Hong Kong teenager fell from the building due to the powerlessness of the struggle, and she brought Greeting with flowers, after he was arrested on the street, he felt hopeless in life and decided to go to a dead end. At the end of the movie, a friend shouted to YY on the rooftop, "Hong Kong will not change because of your death alone." She nodded in tears and said indifferently, "I know." Then she turned around.

For young people of different generations, the essence of cruelty and despair has not disappeared, and everyone wants to be immune from this terrible disaster, but now more young people are getting up and taking action, unwilling to just grow up and compromise, and wipe it away. Destroyed ideals. The "earth-shattering" protests of the young and middle-aged in the anti-extradition campaign were a water-like struggle that lasted for months, forcing the regime to reveal its ugliness and writing the next page in history.

And the theme of "help" is also a feature of the anti-extradition movement, whether it is "to die with a clear ambition", "to awaken with more drastic means" or "to stir up" the will, just like the fate of Hong Kong's sovereignty, the rich and the poor are at a high level. In a competitive society with unequal and cramped living conditions, most young people have uncertain futures and are full of restlessness and anxiety. The lines of "Youth" often point to the local context of Hong Kong, just like Anan said to his girlfriend who is going to study in the UK, "You graduated from CUHK, unlike me who can't go to university, Hong Kong leaves us with no choice. That's good." This setting also quickly highlights the class conflict. YY's father worked in China for many years and did not return home. After being arrested by the police station, the lawyer also told YY and other young people the legal cost and the risk of going abroad. Hong Kong teenagers who can't see the choice of "leaving the city" are more likely to have to stand up to fight for freedom, even at the expense of sacrifice. The proposition of "to go or to stay" extends from the reality of the July 1st occupation of the Legislative Council and the desperate situation of being blocked by the police during the siege of PolyU, to the mass arrest and the immigration wave under the National Security Law. People may not be able to Overturning the system, but still trying to hold on to those siblings who want to "leave" with their personal lives.

Because time does not always stand on the side of teenagers, teenagers can only naively hope that they will not grow up, such as the English title "May You Stay Forever Young". In the movie, the characters met on July 21, 2019. YY said that on that day, people started shouting in the streets "Recover Hong Kong, the revolution of our times". The film length of "Youth" is only half of that of "Revolution of the Times". As its title, it may deal with a part, and it may be "popular and simple", which seems small in the current history, but it will encounter a very pure emotional core, Especially the core of young people. Maybe it will be ten or twenty years before "Youth" will be amazed because future audiences "can hardly tell which segments are real images and which are specially filmed", or because it shows the police that cannot be captured in documentaries. The scenes in the department, the grievances of the raped, the struggle of the children of the black police, the pictures of passers-by and elderly people holding mobile phones to save people on the street, etc. were also "acted" before they were recognized. I hope that this movie will be like the classic Hong Kong movies that we have seen on TV. The story of teenagers fighting against the black police will be sung, and the courage to never die without death will inspire the next generation of teenagers.

Original link: https://readmore.com.tw/article/20220413/?fbclid=IwAR2sB3tI9sofmGIGEPSg6tqTeMOpYEfw4Y8k_LIR_-xZoBJQ_Uz47DwpG3M