Filmmaker Statement

"Confessions and Reveries" marks my first 'true' work as a filmmaker. Although I have claimed to have been creating since a very young age, this is the first time I have truly melded my learned knowledge with the aesthetics I have pondered. -About Inspirations: A director, who had graduated from my film school, once said in a lecture that he watches paintings that impact him and then diverges his thinking based on the narrative quality of the paintings to gain story inspiration. I don't understand paintings, but at that time, in the entire museum, Goya's painting "Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga" attracted me the most due to its unique sense of story. Next is the process of divergence. This child in the painting, dressed in bright red attire, is holding a tied-up magpie, while three cats and a cage of birds behind him watch the magpie's act of picking up a telephone card. The child's demeanor and expression make me feel that he is still in an innocent state, still coming to understand the world. Yet, at the same time, he is dressed in court clothing that is tightly bound and out of place in his environment. The act he is performing is one of binding a small animal, and even the cats behind are curled up, closely watching their companion’s behavior, in a state of high tension. This child, born into a great family, is bound and plays alone in solitude. The entertainment in his hands even has a nature of cruelty. Reflecting on the fact that this child died not long after the painting was completed, I feel a sense of eerie formalism and darkness. I don't think his indifferent expression is numbness. On the contrary, as a state of being an animal, humans inherently have no distinction between good and evil. Before a child becomes conscious of social education, they are closest to this state, a state without taboos or moral distinctions. Humans, like animals, rely on biological instincts to survive, without taboos, acting on biological desires. Even adults, despite being more constrained by modern society, inevitably retain many things that seem perverse in the context of ethical and social norms. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many mass killings, fratricides, and incestuous events in society every day. Continuing to diverge, what kind of family would make a child adopt such a manner and end tragically years later? His elders at home must possess a high degree of authoritarianism and oppressiveness, and they can't hide their animalistic nature and ugliness when interacting with family members. This led me to think of the character Father in the family. The family's higher social status depends on him, and his heart, like an animal, values his own gains and losses the most. Therefore, he has a pathological pursuit of authority and his public image. He doesn’t accompany his children or provide moral guidance, nor does he care whether his son’s favorite cat dying in front of his son impacts his son's development. However, when the son acknowledges his father’s public image as a good father during a paper-burning ritual, he feels satisfied. His care requires a kind of reciprocal value, needing family members to uphold his honor. But these are his very latent sides; as a person who must survive in society, he cannot simply act on his desires. To truly provoke him, a character like elder brother is needed to oppose and disrupt Father's desired reciprocity. Elder brother, as a young man, openly displays his animal nature to support his rebellion against Father. You can imagine him growing up under the same roof as Father, lacking care and intimately acquainted with Father's violence. His beast nature, like that of the younger son, is allowed to grow unchecked. However, his animal nature is not as deep as Father's and is more superficial because he is internally weaker. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have initially refrained from fighting back in the office confrontation. And I don’t like this animalistic nature of humans, the hypocritical disguise of adults like Father, brother’s unmasked directness. Therefore, the design of the Mother's character might be puzzling. She represents a kind of beauty and innocence. She obviously has a weakened spiritual state, blank and dazed. Yet, at this moment, she is closest to the state of a child, and the most true to herself. Her innocence has her focusing only on the plum blossoms she nurtures daily. It is also because of her kindness towards cats that the younger son receives proper guidance, balancing his moral compass. But such innocent beauty is always to be bullied and destroyed. brother mocks her, Father destroys her. In the end, the aversion to this animal nature is only expressed in the scene where the younger son releases the cat. At this point, the story begins to take shape. -About the Theme The development trends of contemporary society, characterized by Westernization and modernization, have led to a disconnection from tradition, causing people to lose their traditional spiritual support and gradually abandon or even despise past social constraints and morals. However, this pursuit of self-supremacy and disdain for tradition has also resulted in a sense of alienation in society. In families, the importance of roles, love, tolerance, and sharing life together may not be as valued as each person living independently in their own space, making their own choices. But this does not mean that people no longer need love and tolerance or the recognition of others to be completely independent. Thus, this feeling of alienation makes many people, even with absolute freedom and openness, feel unsatisfied. This alienation not only makes individuals increasingly indifferent to others, but the indifference of others also causes harm to the self. Gradually, a sense of aggression develops between people. After losing the spiritual reliance provided by past traditions (such as the pursuit of family harmony and the normal trajectory of life), people's pursuit of absolute self reveals their animal nature and ugliness. This is the core message that this film wants to convey. Aggression here refers to the inherent human desire to attack others, a kind of animal nature. I believe that compared to the rigid and conservative past of China, today’s society, which has become more open and free due to economic changes, is ironically more lacking in spiritual support, thus more filled with malice and this animal nature due to the reasons mentioned above. The peculiar thing about the family in this story is that they originally had almost no bonds or connections with each other. Each of them pursues their own value and absolute independence, placing their personal lives above the family, but the lack of recognition from family members, in turn, makes them feel pain and confusion. --I detest the inherent vile attributes of human nature mentioned above, but they are inescapable. Especially in the country where I live, these attributes have become very apparent alongside the confusion brought about by the rapid development of the times. I have already felt this chaos, so I want to make a film about it.