I watched "After This Our Exile" with elsa, mbun, my bro, and mbun's fren, Initially, as the movie ended, we were gobsmacked and were wondering if we had just kinda wasted two hours on a rather pointless movie. Much as I admired Aaron Kwok's acting, I was not really satisfied with the whole story. elsa said it was kinda draggy and I thought it was kinda eventless.
Which is so much like real life.
Which got me thinking now that.. it was really a good movie.
You would wish to fastforward many parts of the movie, you think you got the point, it's not fun and let's move on to the next interesting event. But sometimes in life.. you just have to endure those moments. Fastforward is never an option. Not everyday is fairytale. The son would wish to fastforward the part where he had to wander around while his father leisurely spent good time with a woman who was not his mother. But he can't, can he?
And most of us are just as anonymous as the father and son in the movie. Many of us are so much like Aaron's character. He was but a mere man struggling with his addiction to gambling. He loved his wife very much but he wasn't strong enough to fight his weakness. His wife left him to run away with a man who looked exactly like him. The only difference was that this third party wore a suit, knew how to make his wife felt secure.
So the story was trying to tell you that in a nutshell, a woman just wants to find security in a man first and foremost, everything else is secondary and compromisable. It's up for debate of course, this statement.
Aaron would not change despite his wife's leaving him. He lost his job and was pursued by loansharks. He forced his son to steal and ended up causing his son to get caught, beaten badly, and jailed. He just didn't have the courage to help his son. A man who always beg others to give him "two more days" will never have the ability to come good.. another point the movie was trying to make.
The father cried twice in the movie. THe first time was when his wife left him. That was the cry of anger and desperation. The second time he cried was when he got his ear bitten by his son when he went to visit his son in the jail. This was the cry of regret and realisation. He finally understood that it was not that the world wasn't fair to him. It was that he was not treasuring what he had. He finally understood that he didn't deserve anything after all. When the tear of regret and understanding fall.. someone will certainly be able to see clearly.
So the movie finally fastforwarded. The kid grew up and went back to his village to find his old memory. The rich father of his ex-schoolmate was now an old and poor man. The useless father he had, according to his neighbour, was now a decent man who remarried and settled down peacefully.
He thought he saw his father. He certainly missed his father. But he was his father's past. The dark past that his father's current family may not want to know anything about. So he never went over to meet his father. And the movie ended.
We didn't like the conclusion. We thought that the story deserved better ending after all the pain that the father and son endured. But in life.. just because you devote much and endure much pain doesn't mean you will get the ending you wish for. Sometimes things have to end abruptly, people have to part ways abruptly.
Abruptly.
Which is so much like real life.
Which got me thinking now that.. it was really a good movie.
You would wish to fastforward many parts of the movie, you think you got the point, it's not fun and let's move on to the next interesting event. But sometimes in life.. you just have to endure those moments. Fastforward is never an option. Not everyday is fairytale. The son would wish to fastforward the part where he had to wander around while his father leisurely spent good time with a woman who was not his mother. But he can't, can he?
And most of us are just as anonymous as the father and son in the movie. Many of us are so much like Aaron's character. He was but a mere man struggling with his addiction to gambling. He loved his wife very much but he wasn't strong enough to fight his weakness. His wife left him to run away with a man who looked exactly like him. The only difference was that this third party wore a suit, knew how to make his wife felt secure.
So the story was trying to tell you that in a nutshell, a woman just wants to find security in a man first and foremost, everything else is secondary and compromisable. It's up for debate of course, this statement.
Aaron would not change despite his wife's leaving him. He lost his job and was pursued by loansharks. He forced his son to steal and ended up causing his son to get caught, beaten badly, and jailed. He just didn't have the courage to help his son. A man who always beg others to give him "two more days" will never have the ability to come good.. another point the movie was trying to make.
The father cried twice in the movie. THe first time was when his wife left him. That was the cry of anger and desperation. The second time he cried was when he got his ear bitten by his son when he went to visit his son in the jail. This was the cry of regret and realisation. He finally understood that it was not that the world wasn't fair to him. It was that he was not treasuring what he had. He finally understood that he didn't deserve anything after all. When the tear of regret and understanding fall.. someone will certainly be able to see clearly.
So the movie finally fastforwarded. The kid grew up and went back to his village to find his old memory. The rich father of his ex-schoolmate was now an old and poor man. The useless father he had, according to his neighbour, was now a decent man who remarried and settled down peacefully.
He thought he saw his father. He certainly missed his father. But he was his father's past. The dark past that his father's current family may not want to know anything about. So he never went over to meet his father. And the movie ended.
We didn't like the conclusion. We thought that the story deserved better ending after all the pain that the father and son endured. But in life.. just because you devote much and endure much pain doesn't mean you will get the ending you wish for. Sometimes things have to end abruptly, people have to part ways abruptly.
Abruptly.
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