Article/Sina Special Column Boiled and Entertained Independent Fish
What do you think of when you mention Bulgaria?
It's milk, roses, or the Bulgarian demon king who makes Chinese netizens hot to the eyes.
Or is it the recent tragic case that Bulgarian female journalists were raped, killed and abandoned?
It is hard to imagine that this ancient and unrestrained country has actually been devastated.
In fact, as a small country on the Balkan Peninsula, known as the "powder keg of Europe", the turbulent historical fate seems to have been doomed.
Before recommending movies, Uncle Yu briefly introduced the modern history of Bulgaria.
Bulgaria, no doubt a pathetic and hateful country, stood on the wrong side in both world wars, attached to Germany, as a defeated country, and became a bargaining weight between major countries.
After the war, Bulgaria was classified into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union and became a socialist country.
Later, we all know that during the long Cold War, the Soviet Union finally disintegrated.
Bulgaria, unable to grasp its own destiny, has lost itself in the ruts of history again with many scars.
The movie Uncle Yu wants to talk about today comes from this pathetic land——
Direction
Bulgaria, with a population of only 7 million, has few films every year.
However, there is no shortage of high-quality products, and they will be seen at the International Film Festival almost every year.
The film director Steven Komandarev's last film, Meet Love at the Corner of the World, swept all major international film festivals and won dozens of international awards for him.
And this latest masterpiece, Direction, was shortlisted as a concern unit of last year's Cannes Film Festival.
The director pointed a very sharp shot at his country, which is full of holes.
However, the final destination of a country's tragedy is often the suffering of civilians.
In Bulgaria after the turbulence, domestic social contradictions and livelihood problems are becoming more and more serious.
The film begins with a shot in the morning.
The shooter was a taxi driver with integrity.
He ran his own small business, but the capital chain was broken and he had to apply for a loan from the bank.
However, the bank consultant asked for high bribes.
In desperation, he wants to solve the problem through legal means and complain directly.
Who knows that the inspectors in charge of complaints also want to extort money, and the bank consultant doubled the amount of bribes.
Even brawling wildly,
'Write to the Bishop to complain?
It's no use. In this country, we are God!
Go to law?
The law is for us, not for you! '
On such an early morning, in the face of the aggressive bank consultant, the taxi driver knocked the trigger, killed him, and shot himself.
Before all this happened, he had just sent his daughter to school and prayed piously;
He promised his daughter that everything would be fine today and that he would return home on time tonight.
Such a desperate shooting case triggered a heated debate among the whole people.
As night fell, the evening radio program was full of discussions about the case, and the audience kept calling to express their views.
The important audience of the night radio is the night taxi drivers.
Taxi drivers are undoubtedly representatives of the bottom of society.
And because of the professional characteristics, in a small space like a taxi, it naturally forms a closed small theater.
Every day, every section of the road, there will be all kinds of people with their own story powder.
Therefore, there are a lot of classic movies featuring taxi drivers——
The Taxi Driver, starring Robert De Niro in 1976, is a famous film history;
In 2015, the Iranian film Taxi also won the Golden Bear Award;
Last year, South Korea's "Taxi Driver" also scored 9.1 points in Douban, triggering a wave of movie watching.
Back to today's "Taxi Driver" in Bulgaria, which is different from the film just mentioned, it is a group portrait film.
It is also worth mentioning that each group image consists of two stories;
Every story is a mirror to the end.
It is composed of six taxi drivers and their passengers.
The shooting just mentioned is the first story of the first group portrait and the beginning of the whole story.
The murder in the morning became the talk of the taxi at night.
With the news repeatedly broadcast on the radio, the real story outside the radio is being staged.
The first one appeared to be a gentle female driver.
Her passenger is a skilled heart surgeon. He is going to have a heart transplant, which is the last operation he will have in his motherland, because after that, he and his wife will immigrate to Germany.
With Bulgaria's declining economy and increasingly acute social contradictions, nearly one third of people choose to immigrate, most of whom are high-quality talents like doctors.
The doctor joked, 'Bulgaria is a country full of optimism, because both realists and pessimists can't see it anymore, and they either go or die.'
He himself was a runaway realist, and this morning he killed himself by swallowing a gun, which was clearly what he called a pessimist.
More coincidentally, the heart of the operation he is going to perform comes from the man in the murder case.
After the doctor left, we locked the camera on another car. The driver was actually a teacher.
Teach sports at school during the day, and drive a taxi at night to subsidize household expenses.
When he passed the bridge, he saw a suicide. This is the 15th one he met this year.
The suicide was a middle-aged uncle, wearing an old coat, which was his only winter coat. He hung himself on the outside of the bridge, standing on the narrow edge, waiting for the final decision.
He is a doctoral student in the Department of Philosophy of a famous university. He can speak seven languages and now teaches in high school.
It seems to be a decent job, but the salary is very small, barely able to support two children and a full-time wife.
In order to save money, when a person is at home, he will never turn on the heater or buy clothes. He will also eat sandwiches brought from home for lunch.
Such frugality has become a laughingstock in the eyes of students.
Today, a good man posted a note on his back, saying "Provide bread", which was photographed and posted on the Internet.
He was puzzled at the moment and felt too humiliated to know how to face his children. He was afraid that they had already seen this video.
The taxi driver persuaded him to come down, but what really shook him was that the bridge was not high enough. What should he do if he could not fall down and drag his wife and children down. In this way, it's better to live.
On such a cold winter night, it is not only young or middle-aged people who insist on driving. A gray haired grandfather also continues to work, without any intention of stopping.
He looks old enough to spend his twilight years at home.
A week ago, his son, who was dependent on him, died of illness.
That was his only relative in the world. Now, he is alone in the world.
The old man's car was stopped by three drunken young people. They talked loudly about drunk and sleeping girls, and where they were going was another night show.
Unopportunely, the old man looked at these young people who were laughing heartily, and couldn't help thinking of his children. He said, 'You are funny, I wish you good health.' The boys laughed after hearing this.
The old man realized the embarrassment, had to explain the reason and mentioned his son's death.
But the three young people were not touched at all. They continued to joke, saying that it was better to have fun in time than to die.
They not only have no empathy, but also have no basic respect. They are rude to the elderly, and even want to refuse the fare when getting off the bus.
The old man went to the convenience store to buy a piece of pizza with the note that the boys threw into the car contemptuously.
Instead of eating, he gave a stray dog.
This is a little male dog. He touched the head of the stray dog and said to it, 'You know, I also have a child. Like you, it is a boy.'
He was left alone in this indifferent world. He didn't even know who to tell about his son's death. He could only warm up with stray dogs.
What Uncle Yu intercepted just now is only four small clips in the film, and these short clips are just a journey.
In the back seat of the taxi, there will be prostitutes, lawyers, men and women who cheat, former enemies;
In the yellow car door, warmth, death, hatred and deception are also playing out.
The story is wonderful, and everyone is really trembling. Uncle Yu looks forward to seeing it for yourself.
Taxi drivers, to some extent, constitute a metaphor for this country.
It seems that he is the one who grasps the direction. In fact, where the car is going has nothing to do with his will.
He is just a puppet. Even if we choose obedience, we will only get a temporarily determined journey.
Everyone who takes a taxi just takes a "shortcut" to get off at the station, leaving an empty back seat, wandering around the city, looking for passengers round and round.
Remember the man who shot himself at the beginning of the film?
His heart was about to be transplanted to a down and out bakery owner.
If the operation is successful, this heart will beat on his body and let him regain his vitality.
Life can continue, but what about life?
Is it really a heart that he needs?
The bakery he worked so hard for collapsed;
Unable to pay the high medical expenses, his wife died of cancer;
His son, who had been raised hard, abandoned him and went to Canada alone.
A beating heart was transplanted from the chest of a desperate person to another desperate life.
Is it the continuation of life or the suffering of survival?
One third of the population left Bulgaria, and so did God.
What Bulgaria needs is not a heart, but hope beating for it.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
