The thing my father didn’t say： I have a secret that my father has buried all my life.

Special feature of 1905 film network Starring by,,, was released nationwide on November 3rd. This film is the first Chinese film directed by a director who won the Oscar for best foreign language film and is the best at grasping delicate emotions. It has been highly anticipated by the audience since the official announcement.

The film is based on the traditional cake "ice crystal cake" and tells a family story between Chinese father and son. In the story, Han Geng plays Liu Jiansan, the eighth generation craftsman of the family craft, and Zhang Guoli plays Liu Tingshen, a low-key and taciturn father. They have misunderstandings, disputes and estrangements because of the secret recipe of making cakes in the family. It was not until his father died that his son understood his good intentions and opened his heart.

Silent fatherly love heals people’s hearts

The movie "The Thing My Dad Didn’t Say" tells the story of Liu Jiansan, an eighth-generation descendant of ice crystal cake, who learned the family’s ice crystal cake craft since childhood. After years of practice, Liu Jiansan’s craft gradually matured, but the ice crystal cake he made was always inferior to his father’s craft with a special flavor. But no matter how to beg, my father is always reluctant to reveal the missing secret recipe, which makes Liu Jiansan unable to understand. Until the birth of his daughter Liu Wenyan, it brought great changes to Liu Jiansan’s life.

My father wanted to hand over Tongshunxiang, a century-old shop, to Liu Jiansan, but because of previous misunderstandings, Liu Jiansan refused his father’s entrustment about the family business. However, my daughter suddenly got pneumonia when she heard the smoke. This sudden accident made Liu Jiansan, who was not rich, live a more difficult life.

As a father and grandfather, Liu Ting couldn’t bear to watch, and had to go out again to increase the output of ice crystal cakes, and finally died from overwork. Until his death, his father didn’t tell Liu Jian the secret recipe of the most critical step in making three ice crystal cakes. Finally, when sorting out his father’s relics, Liu Jiansan finally solved the secret recipe of production. Only then did he understand his father’s various practices and hide his father’s love in his heart.

In the film, the father is busy and lonely alone; In the process of making ice crystal cakes in the smoky atmosphere, as well as the fireworks surrounding the rural Shan Ye, every shot and detail deeply revealed the delicacy and emotion of director Yôjirô Takita, and also showed us the charm and temperature of traditional handicrafts, which made us feel the warmth and silent love between father and son.

Differences in cross-cultural creation

The story is touching, and the production team is even more powerful, but these have not made this "cake" sell well, and the film is weak, and the box office is predicted to be less than 10 million. The reason behind it may be the different impressions brought about by the differences in cross-cultural creation.

If this film is compared to "cakes", its taste is too weak for the audience to accept. Recently popular movies, whether suspense films or other types of films, will have relatively strong drama conflicts and more attractive character relationships. In this film, everything is so dull that the subtle things between the characters are actually hard to be perceived by the audience.

The creative origin of this film is that the director Yôjirô Takita was very interested in the novel Smelling Smoke after reading it, so he made it into a movie. However, his vision of choosing the theme is slightly out of line with the movie preferences of China audiences. Yôjirô Takita is very concerned about some characteristics of Japanese culture. For example, I am obsessed with a career, and I would rather sacrifice my life in order to reach the peak of my career, or I am obsessed with the sublimity of death.

Therefore, in the film made by the director, it is actually praising his father for sending himself to death. My father is in a dilemma, thinking of it runs in the family and inheriting the technology of this snack. In a sense, he actively chose death. The director is praising his father’s choice. But in fact, this is not an ordinary emotion of Chinese. The fun of reunion is what we in Chinese pursue. Therefore, this kind of praise for him in the film is actually a Japanese-style praise, which is actually different from China culture.

In cross-cultural creation, the creator still needs to know more about the customs of this country and the tradition of this country’s movies, because movies and literature are different from other arts. If you only see the appearance, but don’t really understand it deeply, it’s hard for China audience to empathize.

The movie "The Thing My Dad Didn’t Say" is being shown all over the country. I hope everyone can go into the cinema and experience it on the big screen.