So Long, My Son (movie, 2019), directed by Wang Xiaoshuai

An extravagantly told melodrama with violent political undertones, which goes to the heart mainly thanks to the great performance of its two main actors.

"Three decades of three families in three hours."

It all starts on a beautiful summer day. A young boy drowns in the retention basin of a dam, his best friend remains shivering and will blame himself for the incident for a long time to come. Liu Yaojun (Wang Jingchun) and Wang Liyun (Yong Mei), the dead child's parents, live with their adopted son Liu Xing in a strange city, where they now run a small repair shop. But also to Li Haiyan ( Ai Liya ) and Shen Yingming ( Xu Cheng), the parents of the living child, are still guilty even after half an eternity. When Li Haiyan is diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor, Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun return to the place of their greatest grief after decades of repressed feelings ...

Wang Xiaoshuai has written this film with constant swings back and forth between the different time levels, to add a little detail here and there. In this way, he gradually unfolds a tangled web of guilt and repression that seems to keep all his protagonists trapped in their constant mourning - and which, of course, also stands as a metaphor for the China of the past 30 years, in which people are only under suffer the oppressions of communism and, ultimately, the excesses of capitalism.

The political and the private are inextricably intertwined here. The focus is not on direct engagement with politics or social pressure. Instead, Wang is primarily concerned with people and what that does to them. There is no shortage of negative effects. China experiences a great boom, there is always a bitter note, a questioning. Was it worth it? How much did we win? How much lost What has actually become of us? Glimmers of hope are rare. Even in the happy moments, we know how fleeting that happiness will be. 

The drama, on the other hand, draws its tension primarily from the constant jumps between the time levels and the associated skilful withholding of information. With regard to the true identity of the adopted son Liu Xing, wrong traces are repeatedly laid.

The entire film is laid out like a puzzle, its structure is reminiscent of a crime thriller. It is possible that Wang wanted to keep the tension high in this way so as not to make the three hours too long. And he succeeds because the little incomprehensibility and irritations arouse curiosity. Some things actually have a stronger effect this way.

Also despite the deep sadness that the film carries, I also felt an energy that seems to consist of pure humanity and which even lets hope shimmer through it very easily when Liu Yaojun states at one point, completely unsentimental and not a bit bitter: “For us time has long stood still. Now we're just waiting to get old."

"So Long, My Son" for me is a fantastically played film about two people who have experienced great misfortunes several times in their lives and were unable to cope with the pain tried to save an escape, also with a comfort that is as strange as it is sad. The accumulation of accidents is of course already concentrated, this could easily have turned into a kitschy melodrama. But Wang holds the balance and prefers a reserved tone, speaks very quietly of events that are at the same time the end of the world for it's protagonists and yet completely insignificant for the rest of the world it takes place in.