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among them, "determination to leave" broke through the siege with a high score of 8.6, becoming the top 3 in the reputation of theater movies so far in 2024.(the first is the documentary "the sinking of the lisbon maru" with a score of 9.3, and the second is the thai drama "grandma's grandson》）。

before watching the movie, kk thought it was another empty and pretentious movie that was trying to cash in on the feminist movement. after watching the movie, she cried and made a long phone call to her mother, recommending her and her aunt to watch it as well.

it is not a thrilling story about a woman’s awakening and transformation, nor is it a true record of the evil deeds of men. it is wonderful!

"the decision to run away" is adapted from a true story. su min, a 56-year-old aunt from zhengzhou, travels on a budget relying on her retirement salary of just over 2,000 yuan. she insists on taking videos of her self-driving tour life.

the video that made her famous was about the reasons why she ran away, including how she and her husband had been paying for their expenses aa for 34 years and how she was a free babysitter but was criticized every day.

compared to "what will happen after leaving", the film "cowherd and weaver girlyin lichuan, the director of sharp works such as "the park", focuses on how the heroine "makes the decision to run away".

thus, a bloody and tearful history of women in chinese families unfolds.

today, kk wants to approach the movie from the perspective of a zhengzhou native, and talk about the heroine and her family portrayed in the movie, what characteristics and commonalities they have, and why they are so real and tear-jerking.(ps: previously, few cameras were focused on zhengzhou.)

living like this for thirty years

“is the story of ordinary women like us worthy of being made into a movie?”

just like what su min said, she is an "ordinary woman" and the city she lives in is also ordinary enough. if su min was not from zhengzhou, henan, few creators would focus on such an "ordinary" city.

"half of the history of china is the history of henan." henan condenses the typical national characteristics and economic situation of china. there is a large population and even more poor people. even though the gdp in 2022 has ranked fifth in the country, the per capita gdp is still at a medium-low level.

as the provincial capital, zhengzhou has never been favored by movies. compared with beijing with its hutong culture, chongqing with its jianghu culture, guangzhou and shenzhen with their rapid development, and suzhou and hangzhou with their misty rain, zhengzhou, located in the central plains, has no geographical features or unique landscapes.

therefore, director yin lichuan selected the three most representative images of old zhengzhou.

one is road construction.

the city's infrastructure is endless, with clanging and banging, and the smoke and dust are everywhere."zhengzhou, zhengzhou, digging ditches every day. if you don't dig ditches for one day, it's not zhengzhou."

the film opens withyongmeithe heroine li hong, played by the son-in-law, asked her son-in-law "why did you come back late?"（zhang benyu decoration)the mouth points out the characteristics of the city: "there is a traffic jam, and the road is being repaired outside."

this is not idle writing."congestion and difficulty"this is not only the characteristic of this city, but also the dilemma that li hong has faced for half her life.

as a free nanny, i spent the first half of my life giving way and waiting for my family.

she has been in zhengzhou for thirty years and has never seen the outside world.

director yin lichuan uses a lot of daily details to show her busy life: getting up, cooking, cleaning the house, going to the supermarket to work, helping at the express station after get off work, going home to cook, and taking care of her grandchildren.

he wanted to change his fate by taking the college entrance examination, but ended up being trapped in the factory to "subsidize his family."

she wanted to change her fate by getting married, but ended up being trapped in household chores by the rule that "women should listen to men."

she wanted to change her fate after her daughter grew up and got married, but ended up being stuck in the indefinite quagmire of her "motherhood" identity.

outside, she is an aging old lady who takes up the seats of young people; at home, she is a "crazy woman" who blocks her husband from watching tv.

after half a lifetime of serving others, the path to self is blocked.

the second place is the city’s bridge.

due to frequent road construction, zhengzhou’s bridges are as dense as a spider web, connecting the entire city.

li hong pushes her electric bike up and down bridges every day to run around for her family.

it is really difficult to push an electric bike onto the overpass. you need to walk very steadily with each step, and lean your body to keep your balance when leaning against the slide. i have seen countless times women with their bikes full of rice, oil, and noodles flip over and fall down several steps.

in the heavy rain, the couple holding an umbrella on the overpass had a better reason to snuggle together, but this became li hong's sad place of frustration.

mingming had just moved into the new home after getting married, and li hong was carrying the heavy load of oil, salt, vegetables and fruits in her hands. sun dayong, holding an umbrella, was on his own way, leaving li hong behind on the steps, his clothes half soaked.

subconscious neglect and inherent selfishness are the most terrifying.

as the sun sets, li hong sits on the bus, her head resting tiredly on the window frame. she is very familiar with the criss-crossing overpasses, it is the same every day, and she cannot escape from the cycle.

the third place,director yin lichuanthe window and door frames of old residential quarters are used to create a claustrophobic sense of confinement.

there are many anti-theft windows in the old buildings in zhengzhou’s old residential areas, and almost every household has installed anti-theft doors.

the camera always outlines li hong's figure from the window and door frames. on the balcony, through the anti-theft railings, she looks at the flower pots on the opposite balcony, which have also turned black and white.

after sending her daughter and son-in-law off to work, the outer security door was closed, as if trapping her in prison.

outside the kitchen, husband sun dayong sat quietly on a chair, knocking quickly on the glass window to give orders: the food is always the same, the dishes are not tasty, the rice is not fresh enough...

the deafening knocking on the window and the complaints were so domineering, revealing strong contempt and disdain.

the small family in the 1980s was very cramped, and li hong's status and position could be seen through the door curtain.

she is not a wife, not a lover, but a cook, a servant, and a waiter. if sun dayong's relatives come, is she still a "hostess"?

the dinner table was filled with smoke. the men praised the ability of sun dayong from the water conservancy bureau. she went in and out of the kitchen. eight or nine delicious dishes were placed on the table. the men turned up their noses at the ashtray she handed them and forced her to drink to show respect.

i lived like this for thirty years until the building collapsed completely.

in this solitary confinement, she had already suffered from moderate depression.

the long-awaited departure

"escape is an epic carved into the female body."

li hong’s original family was the first “home” she wanted to escape from.

henan’s “preference for sons over daughters” always gives people the painful feeling of being cut by a blunt knife.although it is the same combination of an authoritarian father and a silent mother, the girl is always given the illusion that "you are very free" on weekdays.

the same is true for li hong. she can read and write, participated in the down to the countryside movement, worked as an educated youth, and has a group of good friends. she seems to have the power to freely control her life.

this illusion of freedom is always shattered by the moment when “supporting my younger brother is more important”.

li hong, who had excellent grades and was preparing to take the college entrance examination, was suspended from school by her father and ordered to work in a factory to supplement the family income. the chain reaction caused by this was that she could not find a good job after being laid off, and she spent half her life doing odd jobs.

in order to escape, she chose a seemingly simple but thorny path - marriage.

and sun dayong, an employee of zhengzhou water conservancy bureau(played by jiang wu)for li hong, marriage is a bondage for the sake of the wedding house.

people were generally poor at that time, and people in the system got married early because they could use their marriage certificates to exchange for internal housing purchase quotas. some even got the marriage certificate for the quota, only to find out that the man’s family had no money, so they had to pay out of their own pockets or take out loans to fill the gap.

if you can move out of the factory dormitory and have your own home, what does it matter if your marriage is a bit hasty?

the "sense of belonging" she longs for is almost a common emotional appeal of the previous generation of women who lacked love and had limited job opportunities since childhood.

the film is very restrained in portraying men, as many netizens believe, "jiang wuthe acting is not good, my dad should play the role, my dad can win the golden rooster! " "jiang wu's acting is still too subtle."

but while they are restrained, their character can be revealed from the details.

sun dayong is a mediocre henan native. he was born in a rural area, was admitted to university, and was very proud of working in the water conservancy bureau in the provincial capital.

also because he was in the system, he did not visit prostitutes, gamble, or beat his wife, and was a "good husband"; he was also unable to have a second child during the era of family planning, which led to his idea of ​​not favoring boys over girls, and he was even a "good father" who loved his daughter.

his way of showing love is to buy candies for his daughter whom he has not seen for a long time, which is the cheapest and most effective material satisfaction.

this detail struck kk in almost an instant. when he was a child, he naively believed that his father who bought him candy was the best person in the world. until he had a toothache so severe that he couldn't sleep, his mother took him to the dentist and he had a pit and fissure sealant done.

sun dayong wants to save face, and he is good at pretending——

outside, he is a real good guy; at home, he vents all his bad emotions on his wife.

he is stingy in his bones. he haggles over every penny with double standards. he thinks it is reasonable for him to spend money on fishing and playing ball, but he scolds li hong if she doesn't pay a few cents for vegetables.

this is not a fabricated dramatic conflict. in su min's case, "interrogating" her about the whereabouts of every penny of her money is commonplace, and using her husband's medical insurance card to spend 75 yuan on medicine is a felony.

after two years of wandering outside, she returned home during the mid-autumn festival in 2022. the first thing her husband said when he saw her was, "you still remember to come back? are you unable to make it out there?"

their method of torture is a typical "boiling frog in warm water" in the central plains.

he does not hit or curse at his wife, but uses belittling and hitting her as a way to elevate himself; he establishes his authority by overturning the table; he puts the label of "you are crazy" on his wife's head as a reference to his own "rationality and reason."

there is a plot in the movie: li hong made her own chili sauce and sold it to her neighbors, but no one bought it, so sun dayong laughed at her for "messing around".

in reality, su min grew up in tibet and loves to eat chili peppers. however, her husband asked her to follow his habit and said to her: "you eat spicy food every day, which will affect the children. we don't eat spicy food, so you should be patient."

li hong, who was in the middle of it, was "sucked" by the sauce jar and was gradually devoured and drained of her marrow by sun dayong.

on the surface, li hong is a good wife and mother who gives her husband enough face in public, but she also has the rebellious spirit of women in the central plains.

she will never accept things passively. retorting and refutation are her stress response and also her survival instinct.

she wanted to escape from this second "home" by getting a divorce.

unfortunately, my daughter xiaoxue was already five years old and her younger brother was married. she had no place to live in her parents’ home. she was even questioned by her father on the spot: “i told you not to marry him, but you refused to listen. now look what’s happening!”

family opposition and financial constraints forced her to submit again.

li hong understands that without money there is no way out, so she has been cultivating the "ability to run away".

financially, she has long been divorced from her husband, and they share daily expenses. even if she had to sweep the streets, sell vegetables in the mall, help out at the courier station, and work odd jobs from dawn to dusk, she wanted to be financially independent.

even at her advanced age, she still wanted to learn how to drive, and she used homemade chili sauce to show her goodwill to the instructor, asking him to "teach her."

she was no longer bound by the brother-sister relationship, and pushed her brother to hand over the money she had earned from working for him for two years, otherwise she would "see you in court" and save up the down payment for a volkswagen polo.(my daughter and son-in-law also supported me in buying the car)。

she was ready for her third trip.

it's the right time to run at night

"i am the same person as you! i can't wait any longer!"

late one night, when her husband won a table tennis competition, her son-in-law got a promotion, and her daughter found a job, the three of them were celebrating and drinking together. at this time, li hong, who had just finished cooking and was sent to take care of her grandson because of her sore waist, jumped up from the sofa.

her anger, depression, and pain poured out. amid her daughter's panic and her husband's scolding, li hong overturned the table and ran away like lin chong running away at night.

perhaps li hong did not expect that running away for the third time would be so difficult, as her daughter was among those who tried to stop her.

sun xiaoxue and her mother had a similar dilemma. in zhengzhou, where there is only one 211 university, it was not easy to get out of the family by passing the college entrance examination. she even returned to live with her parents after graduation.

before this, she was the only person in the family who sympathized with li hong's pain.

when li hong wanted to go to sichuan to see her old classmates, she bought her a bright red dress; when li hong was buying a car, she suggested to her husband to help her mother and encouraged her to move forward.

when sun dayong kept belittling li hong, it was she who shut her father up; when sun dayong wanted to snatch the fruit of li hong's car purchase, she snatched the key from her father and returned it to her mother.

but after getting married and becoming pregnant, she became the person who prevented li hong from running away several times.

history has begun a similar cycle. every hard-working mother has a father who only talks but does nothing.

if sun dayong is the representative of the old patriarchy version 1.0, then the son-in-law xiao xu in the movie is the successor of version 2.0, who sings praises to women but does not provide substantial help in solving the underlying problems.

xiao xu tries to understand his wife on the surface, but his actions always expose his subconscious indifference. he buys his wife new clothes that are more suitable for the child's skin; instead of taking care of his wife's emotions, he spends his rest time playing games.

his hymn-like empty talk can no longer fool the new generation of women.

xiaoxue points out the hypocrisy of patriarchy and its lack of any substantial help (money and time):

"what do you want to do? kidnap me? make me stay at home and take care of your children for the rest of my life?"

although he was angry at xiao xu, under the kicking cat effect, people will always choose to exploit the most selfless and kind person.

it is impossible for sun dayong to take care of the child, and xiao xu is still in the rising stage of his career, so the only person who can exploit him is his mother li hong.

in order to return to the workplace and restore her financial ability, she needs li hong to make the same sacrifices as usual.

at that moment, she had subconsciously become an ally of the blood-sucking men, and only by joining them could her exploitation seem justified.

the film not only captures the layers of the mother-daughter relationship, but also highlights li hong's subjectivity as a woman.

after li hong postponed her departure several times, she said, "girl, i can't wait any longer. you figure it out yourself."

xiaoxue tried to keep her mother, but when she turned around, her two sons came out of the bathroom and called her mother. she had no choice but to stop. she had to face a new cycle.

when li hong left, the family did not fall apart. her son-in-law xiao xu was transferred to another job, and his salary was reduced, but he could take care of the children in his free time; her daughter xiao xue did the laundry and cooking, and she understood how difficult it was for her mother to run a family.

no one can live without the other.

only by making up your mind to be "selfish" can you have the determination to pursue yourself.

the "ordinary woman" who ignited hope

as a zhengzhou native, kk was pleasantly surprised when he watched the trailer for "determination to leave". before this, it was rare to see a movie set in such a mediocre and featureless city.

even the henan dialect has disappeared with the promotion of mandarin. unlike sichuanese and cantonese, henan dialect does not have the sense of pride that dialects bring to the region. on the contrary, its "rusticity" is a symbol of country people, thieves, and liars in film and television dramas. even dialects can be stigmatized to this extent, let alone people.

as the provincial capital, zhengzhou has a sense of intentionally "getting rid of" the inheritance of dialects. my parents rarely speak dialects at home, and i speak henan dialect terribly. every time i visit relatives during the spring festival, i try to blend in with the conversations of the elders in dialect, but i am laughed at for being so awkward.

the truth of "determination to run away" lies in this. there are few long sections of dialect in it, but dialect vocabulary is added in some sentences. li hong and sun dayong rarely use dialect to their children, and they will burst out with dialect when they quarrel with each other, such as "don't you...（bái）give（gē）this(son)blind（xiá）busy（máng）live".

yongmei also fully demonstrated the tenacity of henan women.(stereotype)sichuan women are not aggressive enough; nor are they as good at business as women from hunan and hubei; but they are definitely not cowardly. just like yongmei, even after being belittled by sun dayong, she insisted on making chili sauce and did odd jobs at the express station after get off work, just to have money in hand and stand up straight.

after reading the comments online, i realized that it is this “ordinariness” that resonates with millions of women.

“it’s not about magnifying suffering, but about igniting hope.”

in reality, su min travels all over the country, climbing mountains and diving into the sea.

in july 2024, she reached a divorce agreement with her husband for 160,000 yuan. she used "bankruptcy" to buy freedom.

"160,000 is indeed a lot. i am just working hard. i don't have to worry about him blackmailing me in the future."

at the end of the movie, li hong put on a red dress and traveled through time and space to meet her former self who wanted to travel around the world. she sang the interlude of "handsome boy": "there is no more flower to accompany her side."

just like the english title of the film, like a rolling stone,“like a rolling stone”, taken from the song by bob dylan.

she is not only an ordinary woman, but also a microcosm of millions of women.

she can muster up the courage to hit the road, because she is not a flower in a greenhouse, but a stubborn stone rolling forward. she is on the road, running towards her own expansive and broad life.

in conclusion: it has been several days since i watched the movie, but i always think of the clips, lines and invisible power of this movie consciously or unconsciously. i think this is what a good movie should be like. to be honest, it is becoming increasingly clear whether a film or tv work really respects women or pretends to take advantage of them.