How long have you not given your mother a hug? Whenever there is a long holiday, there is always a hot search on Weibo: “On which day were you disliked by your parents?” Everyone’s answer is similar – on the first day, the mother and son are still loving and filial, and on the second day, everything starts to go haywire. But in the movie “Lost in Russia”, in a small carriage on a train heading to the north, a mother and son began their 6 days and 6 nights of tit-for-tat, turbulent life.
Mother Lu Xiaohua is addicted to the public account for middle-aged and elderly people. She believes in strange health theories, is conservative and suspicious, and is obsessed with feelings. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Russia, she wants to go to Moscow to sing for her ideals of the year. But her son Xu Yiwan is just the opposite. He is smart and capable, but not honest and upright. He sneers at his mother’s feelings and thinks that his mother’s ideals are as vain as the scam of the public account. The most important thing is to do business and fight for his own interests. Countless coincidences put these two generations on a train. Under this temporary “roof”, many problems common to families are also presented. In the film, the moment the mother saw her son for the first time, the smile on her face was like a flower that had been in drought for a long time, blooming instantly, just like the mother who saw her child returning from afar, carrying luggage and standing at the door of her house. Similarly, in a blink of an eye, she couldn’t help but start nagging. This seems to be the Chinese family affection, which can only maintain a short-term warmth. In the following plot, when the son called, the mother kept stuffing food for her son. The son’s protest was refuted by the mother: “You will get Alzheimer’s disease if you keep calling”; when the mobile phone had an accident, the mother did what the public account said; on the train, the mother carried all kinds of things with her; when to drink water, she also asked her son to strictly follow it; when eating braised pork, a mother’s desire to control her son became more and more obvious. These details are too real. Most parents are keen to absorb various messages from the public account and follow them meticulously. Not only that, they also use this as a blueprint to require their children. This is certainly because parents are getting older and paying more attention to their health, but on the other hand, it also exposes the parents’ strong desire for control. They never realize that their children are independent people with their own ideas and habits. The son on the other side disliked his mother’s 60-second square, but ignored his own voice square at work; when he picked up his mother’s tomatoes and threw them outside the train one by one, he showed a happy smile; from the beginning of careless perfunctory “hmm” and “ah”, to the impatient “can you leave me alone”, to speaking without thinking and abusive words. These seem to be a microcosm of us. For our parents, we are not satisfied with their control and always want to perfunctory or resist. But while we can’t tolerate the shortcomings of their character, we also forget our own problems. We give our parents self-righteous care, but forget what our parents want most.
The son and mother in the film have a life-and-death experience in “Boonie Bears”. Their relationship has become better and the journey of reconciliation has ended. But this seems to tell us that this is an unsolvable proposition. The film can only tell us the attitude: love is not control and demand, but acceptance and respect. How to love is a compulsory course for a person’s life. After the reconciliation, the son wanted to help his mother realize her dream. He carried his mother on his back to catch the train on the glacier. His mother said forget it and let her go, but the son did not give up and continued to run hard. It’s like we are running towards the unknown ahead with our parents on our backs on the glacier of time, but we have to put them down halfway.
The following is the highlight of the whole film. Xu Yiwan finally noticed his mother who was shining brightly on the stage. We have been chasing our own dreams, but we have forgotten the dreams that our mother had to give up for us. At the end of the film, the mother fulfilled her wish and slowly took off her wig, revealing her gray hair.
