Out of control "front wave"

2024-07-21

Author of this article/ Gu Zheng and Jiang Tianya

What is the documentary "Front Wave" about? The stories of Shanghai's elderly (front wave). What stories are they about? It can't be explained in one sentence.

Even if they are not very familiar with European and American music, as long as the music of "My heart will go on" is played, Shanghai people should know that it is sung by Celine Dion. After all, when "Titanic" was released in 1998, the Grand Theater and Shanghai Film City were almost packed.

The documentary "This Is Me: Celine Dion," released last month, chronicled her diagnosis with Stiff-Person Syndrome, a rare condition that causes loss of control of one's voice and body.

Celine Dion recalled one night when she had an attack: “I was falling, falling, falling.”

This feeling of being out of control, and the feeling of falling that comes with it, is also being deeply experienced by Shanghainese people of different ages, identities, and life experiences, thousands of miles away.

The elderly have their own sense of “loss of control”

Xu Wei, 95 years old, wanted to learn how to drive, but when he started to turn the steering wheel with “one, two, three” to reverse into a parking space, he was always half a beat late. Another biggest difficulty was that he could not distinguish between parallel parking and reverse into a parking space. The instructor practiced on the spot, drew pictures on paper, and explained it over and over again, and he wanted to throw the pen and run away;

Grandma Shen, 82 years old, wanted to take care of her husband who suffers from Alzheimer's disease at home, but the old man stayed up at night to go out to get glasses, which made her body unable to bear it;

Wang Minhua, 75 years old, has a bulge in her spine and has difficulty walking. She likes to watch her "godson" and "goddaughter" selling things online. She bought a Longines watch for 699 yuan, but her daughter said it was fake. She was helpless, "Isn't this a benefit given by the anchor on Valentine's Day?"

Mr. Gong, 92 years old, wanted to apply for a notarization of his own guardianship, but he could not get it done because he had to prove that he had "full capacity for civil conduct" as a prerequisite. He was stunned by the assessment question "name as many fruits as possible within one minute" and thought, "Cucumber, cucumber, that's it."

These are the characters in the documentary "The Front Wave" which is currently being broadcast on Dragon TV. The documentary has a total of 7 episodes, and each episode tells the story of one or a group of elderly people.

Documentary poster of "Front Wave"

It is an indisputable fact that there are many elderly people in Shanghai. According to the latest data, the city's registered population aged 60 and above accounts for 37.4% of the total population, 65 and above 28.8%, and 80 and above 5.4%.

Shanghai is the first city in China to enter an aging society, and it is also the largest city in China with the highest degree of aging. This sentence has been mentioned countless times in our articles. Even though I have done so many topics related to grandpas and aunts, I was still shocked by the depth of Shanghai's aging in the documentary.

It is not uncommon for a 75-year-old uncle to go on a blind date at IKEA. But a 78-year-old uncle and an 81-year-old aunt broke up after dating for 9 years, and went on a blind date at IKEA on the same day of the breakup. This is a bit newsworthy. What else? A 92-year-old uncle wants to get his certificate, and a 95-year-old uncle wants to learn how to drive and take his wife out to play...

95-year-old man starts learning to drive

There are many such elderly people in Shanghai, but they are also hard to find. When determining the characters for each episode, the chief director Fan Shiguang has a clear requirement: "The elderly issues must be fully reflected in this person."

Fan Shiguang is a middle-aged man, about to turn 40, who previously filmed the documentary "The Human World". He decided to take the elderly as the theme this time because he saw the plight of the elderly in his previous filming.

"There was a scene where the old man was sick, and his children were not around. They were anxious and could only 'instruct' his mother through the surveillance camera: 'Stand up, hold him tight.' But the old lady walked shakily and could hardly take a step, but she had to drag the old man up and take him to the hospital."

"That shoot touched me deeply. I felt that using the elderly as the subject of the shoot would be enough to tell a story, and it is also a true proposition of contemporary society."

After the general direction was determined, the episode directors were sent out to the streets and alleys of Shanghai to look for stories about the elderly.

Take work photos

Most of the directors were born in the 1990s, and the youngest were born in the 2000s. In their previous lives, they had the most interactions with the elderly in their own families. "But when they are out of sight, we don't know what our grandparents are doing, let alone their living conditions," said Xu Yiling, a 2000s episode director.

They could only rely on their social experience to go to places where the elderly gathered, such as Luxun Park, People's Park, No. 600 Geriatric Psychiatry Department, IKEA Restaurant, etc. They filmed small clips one after another and brought them out for discussion at the topic selection meeting.

Based on his years of experience in documentary production, Fan Shiguang has identified some false propositions. "It's nice to shoot a one- or two-minute short video of grandpas and aunts singing or doing Tai Chi in the park, but it's not worth following them for a year."

What makes a documentary worth following is that it has to have people and stories, and that people and things are changing, and these changes help the audience understand the plight of the elderly. "If the plight is there and there is no change, it is not a plight, but just the status quo."

To capture the plight of the elderly

Fan Shiguang is clear about what to shoot and how to make it. "Don't make a documentary about interpreting pension policies; don't make a sad documentary or indulge in emotional content. It's absurd to empty praise of aging. It's just emotion, not fact, to blindly say that the elderly are miserable."

After the directors had identified elderly characters with stories and personality traits during their repeated field trips, it seemed that everything could be carried out step by step and the daily shooting could be carried out smoothly. However, the directors of Fan Shiguang Studio all felt that everything seemed a little out of control.

It is understandable that the elderly lose control of their bodies as their body functions decline with age.

The sixth episode of "Front Wave" "Going with the Current" is about 75-year-old Wang Minhua, who has just lost her spouse, lives alone, and has been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment.

The episode's director, Jin Xiang, wrote in his director's notes: "Having lost the self-confidence of their youth and middle-aged years, and the authoritative position in the family, the elderly gradually seem to have returned to their childhood selves: needing care, dependence, and recognition."

Wang Minhua's grandmother is addicted to online shopping

But it is precisely this understandable loss of control that brings great uncertainty to the filming of the documentary.

Some people died during filming due to accidents; some planned travel shoots had to be abandoned due to illness; some elderly people signed a "breakup agreement" with the director due to misunderstandings and stopped communicating with him...

"It's particularly difficult, everything is open and uncontrollable."When Fan Shiguang first introduced the content of the second episode of the documentary to the producer, he said: "The director went to the hospital to shoot. The father of a family suffered from Alzheimer's disease. What might the story be about..."

After a few months, when the film was roughly cut, Alzheimer's disease became the starting point for the old man's family to meet the director, and the story became completely different.

There are two scenes in Love

The episode was eventually named "Lovers", with the screen split into two parts, with 82-year-old Grandma Shen at home alone on the left and her 83-year-old husband Grandpa Cheng in a nursing home on the right. Halfway through the episode, the audience would mistakenly think it was another typical story about Alzheimer's patients and the love between the elderly.

As we were watching, Grandpa Cheng passed away unexpectedly. This news was a huge blow to the family and director Jin Xiang. "Our generation believes in scientific theories. We are always sure that scientific methods can make a difficult thing easier and can guide a bad thing in a good direction. But when the good thing we all think does not seem to have a good result, we will be stunned, unable to move forward and unable to face it."

During the filming, Grandpa Cheng was suddenly admitted to the hospital

And when people thought Grandma Shen would be trapped in the grief of losing her lover, on the fifth seventh day after Grandpa Cheng's death, when the filming team came to her house again, Grandma Shen revealed a secret: "She looked down on him at first." Through her narration, the story of how a traditional Chinese woman spent her life is presented.

If a Chinese teacher were to grade this documentary, he or she might give it a low score, thinking that it is unfocused and cannot be explained clearly in one sentence.

but,Real life and real people are difficult to describe in one sentence.

Xu Yiling had watched a Taiwanese documentary called "The Ageless Knights" before, which tells the story of a group of elderly people in their 70s and 80s riding motorcycles around the island. She wanted to see if there were such elderly people in the mainland. Hey, there really are. On October 15, 2022, the "Xinmin Evening News" had a report titled "95-year-old Shanghai man signs up to learn to drive."

At the beginning, Xu Yiling and the cameraman entered into the life of this old Shanghai man, to film 95-year-old Xu Wei taking the subway for 20 stops to go to the driving school to learn to drive every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, accompanying the morning rush hour crowd. What they wanted to film was whether this old man could pass the second and third subjects and finally get a driver's license.

Learning to drive, patting

Many more stories of family care emerged

But as I was taking pictures, I didn’t know what to take pictures of anymore.

"Because life is always changing. His daughter is in her 60s and in poor health. She can't take care of her parents. Their family has changed five nannies, so our focus has gradually shifted to the issue of changing nannies. Later, Grandpa Xu fell ill and vomited blood. His wife, the nearly 90-year-old grandmother, also collapsed in bed. This became an issue of elderly care. We have been wondering where our focus should be."

The final episode was named "Tomorrow Will Be Better". It was difficult to summarize the theme and write a plot summary. "It seemed to be about an old man learning to drive, and it also seemed to be about the life philosophy of an old man and his wife."

Sometimes Fan Shiguang was so anxious that he almost went bald. Things were on the verge of getting out of control, and accidents always came unexpectedly, but gradually, he learned to go with the flow. "Front Wave" was not a theme-first film. It's not like I wanted to shoot old age diseases or old age difficulties, and then look for materials.Instead, we follow what is happening in reality to understand how the elderly view and deal with unexpected life changes and how they rebuild their lives.。”

Xu Wei practices hard

It’s just like when children face elderly people “losing control”, they initially want to help them get control and not let their lives fall into decline.

Xu Wei went to learn to drive three times a week, and practiced "alternating hands" with his bare hands at home, which eventually led to a frozen shoulder. His daughter repeatedly advised him not to learn to drive; Wang Minhua watched Douyin and bought things day and night, and received 38 express deliveries a month. Her son and daughter persuaded her earnestly, "'Longines' always starts with L, you can take the things to the pawn shop to see if they will accept them."

However, these disciplines were of no use.

Just as parents now gradually understand that each child is an independent individual, children need to gradually understand that every elderly person has his or her own self, even if he or she is 95, 88, or 75 years old, even if his or her body and mind cannot stretch and express freely, but“In difficult situations, they still want to find their own choices, and their own choices are the establishment of their self-awareness.”。

Grandma Shen has her own spiritual world. After her husband passed away, she went to the library and read Du Fu's poem: "The gains and losses of chickens and insects are endless, and I look at the cold river and the mountain pavilion."

Grandma Shen has her own spiritual world

She explained this poem like this: "When the chickens and insects gain and lose, there is no saying when this problem will end, but the ultimate goal is to look at the cold river and see farther. After seeing farther, your mood will be more open."

Xu Wei's motto is "Tomorrow will be better." This slogan, which sounds a bit old-fashioned to young people, shows its power as he repeats it over and over again.

Xu Wei learns to drive

I want to take my wife out to play.

"For a while, their family kept changing nannies. What we filmed every day were quarrels, useless quarrels. The problem seemed unsolvable."

But just like walking in a dark tunnel and gradually seeing light, after a quarrel, Xu Wei would say to his daughter: "Although this is the case, we still have to unite and tomorrow will be better."

Because no one has ever been old, we have stereotypes about the elderly and their lives in old age.

However, after keeping the same biological clock as the old man, eating and living together, and shooting for more than half a year, with a total of more than 100,000 minutes of footage,These young directors recorded the living conditions of some elderly people in Shanghai today, allowing the audience to see that "there are no standard answers in life, especially in old age."。

There is no typical old man.

Wang Minhua is very cute

But the lives of the elderly can still form a strong connection with those of the young. Regardless of their age, everyone is thinking about how to establish their own existence.

To be honest, even if the Ministry of Public Security abolished the age limit for applying for a small car driver's license, it is not realistic to drive a car at the age of 95. But Xu Wei has always wanted to do this, because he constantly proves that he is alive on this earth and constantly realizes that he exists by learning to drive, taking care of his wife, and constantly saying "tomorrow will be better".

They still exist on Earth and have needs beyond survival. It is very important for these elderly people, and it is the same for us.

For more Shanghai stories, click below

Written by: Gu Zheng and Jiang Tianya/

Editor: Xiao Niba/

Photo: Provided by the interviewee/

Writing brush: Yang Zhuo/

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Out of control "front wave"

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