quitting may be as much about exit a pre ordain identity a about drug withdrawal . a a rural guy come to beijing and class and success must have strike this young artist face on a an appeal to separate from his root and far surpass his peasant parent act success . trouble arise and however and when the new man be too new and when it demand too big a departure from family and history and nature and and personal identity . the ensue split and and confusion between the imaginary and the real and the dissonance between the ordinary and the heroic be the stuff of a gut check on the one hand or a complete escape from self on the other . hongshen slip into the latter and his long and lonely road back to self can be grim . but what an exceptionally convincing particularity and honesty and and sensuousness director zhang yang and and his actor and bring to this journey . no clichés and no stereotype and no rigid gender role and no requisite sex and romance or violence scene and no requisite street language and and to boot and no assumed money to float character act and whim . hongshen jia be in his mid twenty . he a talented actor and impressionable and vain and idealistic and and perhaps emotionally starve . the perfect recipe for his enablers . soon he the cool actor and idolize by youth . he be hot in the early ninety . he always have to be the most fashionable . he need extreme and and go in for heavy metal and adopts earring and a scarf . his act mean the art and friend and role and but not the kind that offer any personal challenge or input . and his self criticism and dull by the immediacy of success and open the door to an irrational self doubt and self hatred i do not know how to act i felt like a phony and to readily available drug to counter them . he say i have to get high to do what director want . so and his shallow identity a an actor becomes and via drug and an escape from identity . hongshen disengagement from drug and his false life be very gradual and intermittent and doggedly his own . solitude and space and meditative thinking and speech refusal and replace therapy . the abstract be out . and a great deal of his change occur outdoors not in idealized location but mainly on green patch under the freeway and bridge and and high rise of beijing . the physicality be almost romantic and but be not . the bike rid to ritan park and the long spontaneous walk and the drenching sun and rain and grassy picnic and the sky pattern and kit that absorb his musing be very specific . he drift in order to arrive and all the while pick up cue to a more real and realistic identity . i start to open up he say of this period in retrospect . and the contact seem to start with his lanky body which project a kind of dancer positioning ( clumsy and graceful and humorous and tell ) in a current circumstance . if mind or spirit be lack and his leg can compel him to walk all night . central to his comeback be the rejection of set role . to punctuate his end to act and his determination to a new identity and he smash his video and tv and and bang his head till bloody against his john lennon forever poster . he have let down his iconic anti establishment artist but he the only viable guide he know . he even imagine himself a john son ( yoko ono ) and and adopt his mother mary a an intercessor in his hour of darkness and time of trouble . ( the wrenching and shake pain in the park hallucinatory and skitzoid ordeal ) music be so much more real than act he say . and speaks of lennon influence a show me a new way . in the mental institute and the life save apple ( resistance and nourishment ) reflect lennon presence and a do hongshen need to re hang his hero poster in his redecorated room . if lennon influence be spirit and hongshen father influence be ground . although father and son be both actor and user ( drug and drink ) and it be fegsen difference from his son that underwrite his change . for the father be more secure in himself represent he accept that he chinese and a peasant in a line of peasant and a rural theater director . and he exercise control over both his habit and his emotion . it this recognizable identity that drive hongshen to treat him like a sound board and sometimes with anger and rage and sometimes with humor ( the blue jean and beatles ) and passivity . in his most crazed and and violent exchange with his father in which he accuse him of be a liar and and a fake and he expose more of himself than his father represent all the act i act before be bullshit . life be bullshit . and to hongshen emphatic you be not my father and he softly reply and why can not a peasant be your father . under these two teacher and with much additional help from his mother and sister and friend and inmate at the rehab inst . and he make some tangible connection to a real ( not whole ) self . a the long term drug effect recede and so do his old identity . indebtedness replaces pride and trust distrust . integrity banish his black cloud . all his edge soften . you be just a human be he repeat endlessly after be release from the strap down incur for refuse medicine . back home and lard peasant soap be fine with him now . and his once rare and true friendship begin again a be so evident in the back to poignant back to back fence scene with his musician buddy . hongshen say of this movie represent it a good chance to think about my life . and i might add and become a new actor and one bound to art and life . like lennon and he have gain success without a loss of identity .