Second brother related content

As the representative of a new generation of mainland directors who appeared in 1990s, Wang Xiaoshuai's sixth work "Second Brother" can see three fundamentally different film elements: a theme, a story and a director's style.

When the mainland actively strives to join the World Trade Organization, some people in the mainland, especially young people strongly influenced by the United States, try their best to sneak out of the country, which has become the theme background of this film.

In this small town along the coast of Zhejiang, a large group of people want to immigrate to the United States illegally, but few people succeed. The protagonist of the story is one of these examples, but when he was in California, he had sex with the daughter of a boss in China. The boss got angry and accused him of smuggling. He was deported. His successful experience in the United States made him a star in a small town, but he was pitifully separated from his newborn son by a Pacific Ocean, and the woman's family refused to give up custody.

A touching reunion

The story of this film became a popular family drama. With the strong support of his family, the young father tried to meet his children. The values of two different societies have deepened the distance between the two families, and at the same time, the script uses the tension techniques of traditional movies: conflict, hope and touching reunion. In the touching moment of happy but short-lived father-son reunion, it is inevitable to match sentimental music.

This soundtrack is the only accident of the director's shooting style. The director always keeps a distance, space, time and people consciously, as if representing a spiritual distance.

Obviously, the director was influenced by Hou Hsiao-hsien's long-shot vision, and at the same time, he avoided the simple causal relationship of dramatization of characters, making it a natural force of the universe and a trace of the subconscious of an ethnic group. No law (China or the United States) can prevent it from happening.

Wang Xiaoshuai deepened his themes and stories with his stylized methods. What he finally accomplished was to give them an open possibility, which surpassed this sentimental family popular drama, just like a social record, and reached a heavy film style with rich, profound and compassionate feelings.