The loneliest piece of filmmaking I ever dared to sit through, it left me feeling like I was isolated from the rest of the world for four hours and everyone had moved on without me, the atmosphere is frighteningly contagious, fills up the room with carbon monoxide in a matter of seconds and putting the audience in a trance. The characters wander around aimlessly and the camera has no choice but to follow, that's all there is to it, wandering in open space, the world too large and too small at the same time, sad people clinging onto the fantasy of escape but has nowhere else to go, because it is the same everywhere, the sky is consistently grey, trains still get cancelled, people are still lonely, every thing stays the same, that's why it is more comforting to stay put and dream, continue hearing the elephant's trumpet echo from the other side of the mountains, never shattering this fragile illusion -- that things are maybe, slightly, better over there, where the elephant sits.
TW//self-harm, attempted suicideThere's a group of four scars on my right leg. I've cut myself all over my body, but those four are the deepest, and those are the ones that aren't leaving.I think it was in seventh grade I realized something was wrong. There was a feeling that everything was falling apart even though nothing was. It was always lurking in the back of my mind, but that year it lept out at me and suddenly everything was wrong. I couldn't go to school without thinking about how everyone hated me and that there just wasn't any point to all this. It suffocated me under its weight, and it felt like there was nothing I could ever to do make it better. And for a really long time, there wasn't. The only way I could feel anything but an overwhelming wave of hopelessness was by hurting myself in any way I knew how. I'd bang my head with a wrench till I couldn't see straight and cut my wrists until they were covered in blood. And it didn't get better.It got worse and worse and I never told anyone. I just kept cutting, until one time I was so fucking sick of it I tied a plastic bag over my head and didn't breathe until I passed out. I woke up half an hour later and kept living my life as I had because I was so scared of how I'd be looked at by my parents and everyone else if I told them. It took me three years to tell someone that, and I haven't told anyone since. It's a feeling so overwhelming and consuming that plagues me every day of my life that I'm not sure what to do a lot of the time. It doesn't get better, or at least that's what I thought until I saw this.The thing about depression is that it's only real for me. When I see statistics or some counselor comes in to tell everyone about how prevalent it is, and all its harms, I get nothing out of it. Seeing numbers and knowing that there are people who have faced the same things I have doesn't help. I can't know that they feel this way unless I know them. But I didn't know them, so for years, I was the only person in the world who felt the way I did.But then, I saw this movie. When I saw this for the first time, it hit me harder than anything ever had because, for the first time in my entire life, I didn't feel alone. I saw this and I finally understood that I'm not the only one facing what I'm facing. This film is a lot of things, but it's mostly about living in a world where you feel like everything and everyone doesn't give a fuck about you. Like there's no point in anything, and living isn't worth it. This film is Hu Bo pouring out his soul to the world and expressing his most honest and painful thoughts and feelings. I see myself in every person in this film. I see myself in the drug dealer who feels like he ruins everything he touches. I see myself in the grandfather who feels like he's unwanted in his own family. I see myself in the boy who thinks there's nothing left for him. I see myself in the girl who thinks her mother hates her. I see myself in all of them, and that's what I needed when I watched this a year ago. I needed to be heard and I needed to know that I wasn't alone. That may not be enough for everyone, but it was everything for me.My scars will never heal, but I'm okay with that. They're a reminder of who I am and what I've been through. They let me know how much I've been through and how much is ahead. I know that I'm not alone and that's enough for me, in fact, it's why I'm alive. There's not a day that goes by without thinking about what we've lost and what could've been if Hu Bo didn't take his life, but I'll be forever indebted to him as the reason I didn't take mine.
