AFTERSHOCK
*ภาพยนตร์เรื่องนี้เหมาะสำหรับผู้ชมอายุ 13 ปีขึ้นไป
Dir. Xiaogang Feng / Drama / Mandarin with English and Thai subtitles / 130 Mins.
เช้าวันที่ 28 กรกฎาคม ปี 1976 (พ.ศ.2519) ชาวเมืองถังซานกำลังจะเริ่มต้นใช้ชีวิตเหมือนทุกๆ วัน เพียงแต่วันนี้ เป็นวันที่ประวัติศาสตร์ได้เลือกแล้วว่า - ที่นี่จะเกิดเหตุการณ์ธรณีพิบัติที่สร้างความเสียหายมากที่สุดในศตวรรษที่ 20 มีรายงานผู้เสียชีวิต 255,000 ราย (มากกว่าเหตุการณ์ที่เฮติราว 20,000 ชีวิต) ยังไม่นับรวมผู้บาดเจ็บและสูญหาย รวมแล้วประมาณ 6 แสนราย สุดยอดผู้กำกับชาวจีน เฝิงเสี่ยวกัง (The Banquet) มารับหน้าที่จำลองภาพเหตุการณ์ในครั้งนั้นอีกครั้ง ด้วยทุนสร้าง 100 ล้านหยวน ถ่ายทำในสถานที่จริง และเก็บข้อมูลในพื้นที่จริงมาใช้ในการเขียนบท เฝิงเสี่ยวกังกล่าวว่า ผู้ชมจะได้เห็นฉากหายนะที่น่าหวาดกลัวที่สุด แต่ทั้งนี้ทั้งนั้น สิ่งที่ปรักหักพังจริงๆ ของหนังเรื่องนี้หาใช่ตึกรามบ้านช่อง แต่คือสภาพจิตใจของผู้เคราะห์ร้ายต่างหาก ด้วยเหตุนี้เอง Aftershock จึงไม่ได้เป็นหนังที่ตั้งใจขายฉากแผ่นดินไหวเพียงอย่างเดียว แต่ยังเป็นหนังดราม่าที่ลงลึกเพื่อไปสำรวจจิตใจอันร้าวรานของตัวละครด้วย และเนื้อหาของ Aftershock ยังไปไกลกว่านั้น ด้วยจากตั้งคำถามว่า จะเกิดอะไรขึ้น หากเหยื่อของเหตุการณ์ในถังซานจะต้องมาเจอหนังม้วนเดิมกับเหตุการณ์ในมณฑลเสฉวนเมื่อปี 2008
Aftershock กลายเป็นหนังทำเงินสูงสุดในปีนี้ของประเทศจีนตามความคาดหมาย (แม้จะมีเวลาอีก 4 เดือนกว่าจะถึงสิ้นปีก็ตาม) และยังเป็นหนังเอเชียที่ได้รับการจับตามองสูงสุดแห่งปีที่คอหนังไม่ควรพลาด!
In 1976 Tangshan, Yuan Ni lives in a small apartment with her husband and their twins Fang Deng and Fang Da. Yuan Ni expresses to her husband her desire to have one more child, and they get into the back of their truck after putting their son and daughter to bed. Suddenly the ground shakes, and buildings begin tumbling down. Running back to save their kids, Yuan Ni is pulled back by her husband, who runs ahead of her and is instantly crushed. Their house falls down, trapping her two kids.
In the aftermath of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, a rescue team informs Yuan Ni that her twins Da and Deng are trapped together under a slab of concrete. Lifting the slab in any way will kill one of her children - lifting it one way will save the daughter at the expense of her son; lifting it the other will save the son at the expense of her daughter. Heartbroken, she is forced to choose between her children, and finally decides to save the boy. Her decision, however, is overheard by her daughter, who tearfully whispers "Ma..." as the screen goes black. The mother clings to her daughter's body before being pulled away to take care of Da, "her one child who still lives." Later, in the midst of the rains following the earthquake, Deng wakes up in a sea of bodies, next to the body of her deceased father.
Assumed to be an orphan by the soldiers who found her in the camp, Deng is adopted by a military couple. She refuses to speak, and claims not to have remembered anything before the earthquake. She eventually opens up and bonds with her adopted parents. Ten years later, Deng is accepted into medical school and moves away, where she meets a graduate student and begins an intimate relationship with him. In her third year of study, Deng's adopted mother falls ill. Before dying, she asks Deng to use the money they saved up for her to find Deng's real family. Deng doesn't respond. After getting back from the hospital, Deng finds out she is pregnant, and despite being pressured by her boyfriend to get an abortion, she refuses to abandon her baby the way her mother abandoned her. She secretly drops out of university and loses contact with her boyfriend and her adopted father.
During that period of time, Da grows up with his mother, who is still torn from the decision she had to make. The earthquake claimed Da's left arm, leaving him physically disabled. Rather than taking his university entrance exams, Da opts to make it on his own by transporting people with his bike. He leaves his mother in Tangshan and eventually becomes the boss of a successful travel agency. He marries and has a son, named Dian Dian.
After a 4 year absence, Deng goes back to see her adopted father with her daughter, also named Dian Dian. She apologises and makes up with her father, finally admitting that she remembers everything that happened during the earthquake. She tells him about her mother's decision, and says that she will never forget how she was abandoned. Then on New Years Eve, Deng tells her adopted father that she is getting married to a foreigner, who is 16 years older than her and emigrated to Vancouver, Canada with her daughter.
In 2008, Deng sees the earthquake in Sichuan on TV. She immediately volunteers to join rescuers in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake and returns to China. Unknowingly, at the same time, her long lost brother has also decided to help volunteer in the rescue efforts. While taking a break, the sister overhears a stranger (her brother) talking about his past experiences in the Tangshan earthquake, and quickly realizes that it is her long lost brother. It is assumed that she reunites herself with her brother, and they both decide to visit their mother. At first Deng is angry at her mother for abandoning her, and thinks that her mother hated her and that is why she chose her brother over her, but after all three of them went to visit their father's grave and her grave (she was assumed to be dead), she realized that despite her being "dead", her mother had been buying 2 sets of all the school workbooks; 1 for her brother and 1 for her. At this point, she realized the remorse, emotional agony and guilt that her mother had gone through for the past 32 years and finally she forgives her mother. The family is reunited after 32 years of separation.
The screen then cuts to a stone memorial in Tangshan. Carved into the stone is the names of all 240,000 victims of the earthquake. A single elderly man is seen looking up at a name, then biking away. During all this, the subtitles reveal that this man had been visiting this memorial every year. He had lost all of his family in the earthquake. Of the 5 people, he was the only survivor. The camera follows him, as he rides past walls and walls of names all carved in with gold lettering. The screen finally cuts to black.
