Movies About Memory 2

Coming Home (2014, China), directed by Zhang Yimou

A human drama that marks the first collaboration in eight years between Chinese master director Zhang Yimou and popular actress Gong Li. The film depicts a wife who suffers from memory loss and believes her husband is a stranger, and the husband who continues to stay by her side.

In 1977, after the Cultural Revolution ends, Lu Yanshi (Chen Daoming) is released from a labor camp and sends a letter saying he is returning to his wife, Feng Wanyu (Gong Li).

Every day, Wanyu goes to the train station to meet her husband. Just as he wrote in his letter that he would return on the 5th, Yanshi arrives at the station and gets off the train, but Wanyu, holding a sign, does not recognize him at all.

Having suffered from memory loss due to the stress of waiting for her husband, Wanyu is unable to recognize Yanshi as her husband.

Believing that her memory will one day return, Yanshi begins living in the house across the street as a stranger. He tries to show her photos to help her remember, but all the photos of Yanshi have been cut out by their daughter. When Wanyu says she wants to tune the piano because her husband loved it, Yanshi disguises himself as a piano tuner to repair it, but Wanyu only remembers the music and does not recognize Yanshi as her husband.

A package containing a large number of letters from Yanshi to Wanyu finally arrives. Hoping that this time she might remember, Yanshi reads the letters to Wanyu, but to her, Yanshi is nothing more than 'the man who reads the letters.'

And so, many years pass. In the snow, Yanshi comes to pick up Wanyu on his bicycle with a sidecar as he always does. They go to the station together to meet her 'husband,' but another '5th' ends with them waiting in vain.

This film defeated me. I take my hat off to it. I am humbled.

A snowy landscape where the snow falls silently, and a man and woman—a 'married couple'—standing and looking up at a freezing train station. Even though they should be able to warm each other, they are left at a loss in front of a wall they cannot overcome.

I simply wept at the cold, transparent fragility and beauty. I wept for a sad love that never leaves my heart and continues to shake the depths of my soul.

In particular, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the thoughtful demeanor and the heartbreaking, endearing efforts of Chen Daoming, the national actor of China who played the husband.

If one were to call this a form of marriage, perhaps it is. A wife whose mind was eroded because she loved so deeply, and a husband who continues to watch over her from the sidelines as a stranger.

I couldn't help but wish that their relationship would just continue on like this, quietly and steadily, forever.

By the way, according to a certain care manager I heard from somewhere before, the person a mother-in-law with dementia remembers until the very end is her daughter-in-law, and the person who is easily forgotten is overwhelmingly the spouse.

Does this mean that hatred (and other negative emotions) is stronger, tougher, and more persistent than love? Heaven forbid.