The thief of the years is a semi-autobiographical story directed by the director. The protagonist is Luo Jiasi and several rich girls, Fangfei. On the whole, the story looks a bit trite, but it can still make people feel deeply. The biggest reason is because of true feelings.
This story is based on Alex Law's own story. The younger brother Luo Jinji in the film is the director himself, and the prototype of the older brother Luo Jinyi is the director's brother who died young.
So, what role did my brother Luo Jinji play in the story?
He is a participant, narrator and witness of the story.
Participants: the concretization of thieves
"Stealing" itself is not a glorious verb, but "stealing" adds a halo to shame.
At the beginning of the movie, my brother steals things, and then the picture becomes a transparent fish tank above my head, from which I can see the world.
In his perspective, the world is like an ancient landscape, everything is slowly distorted with the reflection of time, and what he participates in is like his own past.
In the name "Thief of the Years", the years themselves are intangible things, which always pass away quietly, and the thief is a concrete action, played by the participants of the story, which is really a lot.
Compare the thief to the years, then the younger brother is actually a figurative "thief of the years."
My brother is a thief. He has been naughty and clever since childhood, but he has some bad habits.
For example, in the picture in front of him, he always takes "stealing" actions, from stealing fish tanks to stealing monkey statues, to stealing luminous cups and flags. These things are metaphors of the treasures stolen by "years".
The younger brother is the embodiment of "the thief of the years". In the story, there are many circumstantial evidences besides the metaphor of "stealing".
For example, at that time, for ordinary people at the bottom, moon cakes were the luxury of the moon cake party, which was equivalent to what children now do with huge sums of money. Where did the money come from?
It was my brother who deliberately imitated other people's signatures on the star photos and then resold them.
There is also an interesting story about my brother's favorite Feng Baobao. My brother said he would marry Feng Baobao when he grew up, but in the blink of an eye, his mother made fun of him and sold his wife.
What does all this mean? NPC?
No, it shows that my brother is more inclined to adults in the choice of things, that is, the choice of the future. It is to participate in the memory of the past from the perspective of future people and concretize the past years to yourself.
Narrator: first-person storytelling
This is the most obvious feature in the film. My younger brother is a participant in the story, but he is also the narrator.
The film tells the story in the first person of the younger brother, and looks at it from the perspective of a bystander, almost in a voice-over way.
The Luo family characters in the story, what kind of personality and life state each one is, are all spoken through my brother's mouth. In the first half of the story, my brother was full of ignorance, slapstick and laughter.
Especially in the movie, Luo Jin took part in a knowledge contest after his illness, and his memory gradually lost, which led to the defeat of the game. Then there is a picture of his brother telling a story, and his parents have been looking for someone to answer.
In children's ignorant understanding, parents are asking about the answers to these questions, but we know that they are not asking about these topics, but asking about treatment methods.
But this time, however, slowly went away, and "leaving" became the memory of his second half of the story, which changed the primary color of his childhood.
So, who left?
The first one to leave is wheatgrass.
When I introduced wheatgrass, my brother mentioned that he liked wheatgrass, and so did he. At this time, wheatgrass is a big sister, and he is really always behind his brother and sister.
But when wheatgrass's family was discovered, the gap between the rich and the poor at the bottom became out of place. She subconsciously stayed away from wheatgrass and even dared not answer the phone.
The arrival of typhoon signal 10 also indicates that the storm belonging to their family is about to begin. In this case, the two people leave.
One is my brother, and the other is my grandmother.
Luo Jinyi's leukemia and grandma's aging have changed the color of this originally poor but warm story.
There is no pen and ink for grandma in the movie, but what grandma said to her brother implies that she is getting old. Luo Jinyi's funeral without grandma was also a foreshadowing.
In the process, grandma was either sick and couldn't attend, or she was gone. Of course, as a movie audience, she may prefer the former. After all, leaving here is accompanied by the growth of my brother. If grandma counts, it must be after my brother. A few years after Luo Jinyi's death, their father also died.
Of course, apart from the story of my brother's intimate character leaving, there are two unknown characters, one is Feng Baobao, and the other is anonymous in the hospital.
Let's start with Feng Baobao.
Feng Baobao was a child star at the beginning of last century, but her life was bumpy. 10 years old, she went abroad to study and fulfilled her dream of studying.
My younger brother told a story about my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s. The Nocturnal Cup was published by Feng Baobao 196 1. There is a scene in the movie where a luminous cup falls into a fish tank, which seems to imply that it is also an inevitable result for Feng Baobao to leave the film and television circle to study in his younger brother's story line.
Besides, John Doe in the hospital.
When my younger brother and my younger brother followed their mother to the north, they said they were visiting relatives, but they stayed in the hospital in the end. It is snowing outside the window. Through the window, he and his brother clearly heard the cry for help and the piercing cry for help.
Later, it was the fact that the doctor announced that the other party sent it too late to save it.
The figure on the stretcher didn't even see his/her face clearly, but his/her pool of blood in the snow and the sound of death made my brother clearly realize that death represents complete departure and all fear of the unknown.
Witness: He is my brother's reflection.
Why is the younger brother the reflection of the older brother?
In the whole story, he is synonymous with practical jokes, while his brother is an excellent image of the children next door. Under the aura of my brother, my brother who loves to lie and steal is easily overlooked.
In the movie, Luo Jinyi once mentioned the concept of "double-shadow rainbow" with his first girlfriend Fang Fei, and claimed that one rainbow is the reflection of another rainbow, one bright and one dark, and the color sequence is opposite, which is rare for many years.
In the ending, this double-shadow rainbow appeared after my brother and mother walked through the cemetery. The rainbow appeared, but my brother, like my brother, didn't see it, which means he was in it.
But this is not enough to prove that he became the reflection of his brother and lived like his brother.
Therefore, in the story, in order to prove this conclusion, countless preparations have been made.
First, Yam Tat-wah's father asked him three times what he had learned in his brother's school. The question is the same: What did he teach today? What is taught in Chinese? What about English?
But my brother's answer is completely different.
The first time: teaching Chinese and English, Chinese teaching Chinese, English teaching English;
The second time: teaching Chinese and English, Chinese teaching English, and English teaching Chinese;
The third time: teaching Chinese and English. Chinese teaches simple words and sentences such as "Say what you say, Mulan knits at home, just sighing for women, asking women what they think and asking women what they remember", while English teaches "Man, pot, I am a man, this is a pot …".
These three answers are progressive from the younger brother's point of view. At first, he was honest, ignorant and true. Then, he began to realize his father's inquiry. It was just easy to say that his father changed it no matter what the answer was, but in the end he honestly told what he had taught at school one by one. This is his ideological growth and change under the influence of his brother.
In addition, throwing away those things that my brother stole twice is also a sign of moving closer to my brother.
In the hospital, he learned hurdles from his brother, then sat under the big tree and sulked, but in the blink of an eye, he took out his favorite things one by one and coaxed Luo Jinyi, which was the first time he discarded them. But at this time, Luo Jinyi was still there, and it was unsuccessful to abandon it.
After Luo Jinyi left, he listened to what his grandmother once said and threw things into the sea of suffering, hoping to fill the sea of suffering in exchange for his brother's return. This time, his abandonment succeeded, but he did not return to his brother's reunion, but he proved a truth: the sea of pain is boundless, and turning back is the shore.
In addition to these, in the story, my brother gave up the thief's behavior, recited 26 English letters backwards, entered the school where his brother took the exam, learned hurdles from his brother, sang "Longing for Freedom" that his brother loved to hear, yearned for the double rainbow that his brother said, and even looked exactly like his brother ... All this tells us one thing, that is, after Luo Jin's death, his brother gradually became the reflection of his brother and survived.
He witnessed his brother's sudden death from a flash in the pan, and also witnessed his experience of gradually becoming "another person".
When I was young, my brother stole a lot of things and became a "time thief", but he stole not only his brother's years, but also his own time.
Thus, "when I grow up, I will become you" became the end of the thief.