Not a Fairy Tale
"Life is in fact a dream—absurd and magnificent. One must choose a way of dreaming, though it does not matter much which; what matters is the experience, and moving on to the next chapter with a heart unburdened."
The film Deep Sea, acclaimed as “a wallpaper made with genuine devotion,” does indeed reach a new height in animation. Though some have complained that the colors are garish, this precisely reflects the color effects that particle-ink style aims for. Aesthetically, Deep Sea is quite extraordinary.
As for the story, being difficult to follow is normal for an art-house film, so the polarized reviews come as no surprise. A portion of viewers were baffled by the first half, only to understand at the end that the film is about the inner journey of a depression patient, at which point they burst into understanding applause and shed a tear or two. But in fact, to engineer a crowd-pleasing ending, the filmmakers significantly diluted the film’s thematic richness and constrained the audience’s interpretation.
Deep Sea is absolutely not merely about “depression culture.” As a film calling for attention to depression it is actually unqualified. Depression is certainly triggered by psychological factors, but it is also a physiological disease; viewing Deep Sea as a portrait of inner healing misunderstands depression and does nothing to help its treatment. A change of mindset alone cannot lift someone out of depression. Deep Sea is an animated Life of Pi; rather than depicting depression, it depicts the helplessness of a human being facing society and reality.
From the moment the film enters the sea, it plants numerous hints: on the back of the door to the Deep Sea Grand Hotel, the words “Fortune at First Sight”—which, as Lu Xun noted in Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, are written on the tongue of the White Impermanence (an underworld spirit). The Cthulhu-esque sea spirits, the eerily shifting window glass of the Deep Sea Grand Hotel, the strange structure—all these bizarre, absurd details signal entry into a realm intimate with death. Even without recognizing this as a near-death experience, we can at least understand it as a symbolic realm.
In the Deep Sea Grand Hotel there are only two human-shaped beings: Nanhe and Shen Cong (Canopus). These two can be interpreted in multiple ways; I understand Canopus as representing the “I” as subject, and Nanhe as representing everything beyond the self—all others. The Deep Sea Grand Hotel, then, is the society upon which human beings depend for survival.
From the moment she enters the hotel, Canopus keeps crying out for her mother. This is unmistakably striking, because we already know her biological mother is indifferent to her, cold and dismissive; her stepmother is not cruel but cannot be called warm—strange at best. In fact I believe “evil stepmother/stepfather” simply cannot exist in materially abundant conditions; the most one finds is insufficient emotional communication. To my mind, this signifies the naturally arising dependence on the mother-body that emerges when a person first enters society and their self-consciousness awakens.
From primary school through university, we shape ourselves according to society’s requirements. Only after entering adult life do we begin to feel the existence of the self, to develop self-consciousness, to discover our true selves; before that point we depend on external things to feel our own existence—first on parents, then on classmates and teachers. What does “the tree longs to be still, but the wind will not cease” mean? It does not mean “the child wishes to care for the parents, but they are gone”; it means parents are the last barrier between children and the confrontation with death. The degree to which a person feels helpless before death corresponds to the degree to which they feel loneliness in society, because they have discovered the distinctness of their self.
The film follows this logic. Canopus obsesses over finding her mother, causing chaos in the process; later, she compromises with Nanhe—or is deceived by him—and settles down to work at the Deep Sea Grand Hotel. Auntie Huahua’s and Tangdou’s affection help her integrate; a single hint of comfort from Nanhe moves her deeply—at such moments she no longer mentions her mother, having substituted these people—others in society—for another mother figure.
The subsequent episodes of being chased ashore, encountering the Mourning Ghost, and being rescued by Nanhe represent the same cycle repeated; one could argue they deepen the love-hate tangle between self and others. I see them mainly as pacing adjustments to showcase the ink-wash aesthetic.
They eventually reach the Eye of the Sea. The Abyss (Guixu) has symbolized eternal silence—death—since ancient times; and the Mourning Ghost is the despair that death represents. The sea spirits, as the Mourning Ghost’s opposite, symbolize hope: impractical, laughable hope destined to dissolve into nothing. Is not the soup brewed from sea spirits something that makes fish (people) feel the world is beautiful? It is merely temporary, as addictive and hallucinatory as a drug.
In this section there is also a brief account of Nanhe’s hometown and his departure from it; perhaps too much snow fell there, and so Nanhe had no choice but to walk away carrying his well. An old film projector also appears here—a common symbol for life.
In the final section, Nanhe, Canopus, and the crew of the Deep Sea Hotel ship unite to plunge into the Eye of the Sea—but Nanhe disappears. No one can accompany us into death; one can only go alone. Even the most magical other cannot cross that threshold. Nanhe’s death in saving another is his redemption; striding through falling snow toward the spring of his homeland, the reason is not simply self-sacrifice, but that he finally understood why human beings live.
Canopus is rushed to hospital in a state of unconsciousness; in her dream she says farewell to Nanhe. What strikes me is that Nanhe apparently was never found, and in the emergency room the beeping of a life monitor seems to slowly stop—suggesting Canopus’s death, which contradicts the ending.
Even if she did survive—even if none of this had happened—reality would not be beautiful. Someone on Zhihu wrote:
Everything in the Deep Sea Hotel is what Canopus saw before she jumped into the sea, and from the cast list we can see that First Officer Old Jin is actually her father, Auntie Huahua is actually her stepmother, and the sea otter Tangdou gets his name from her little brother’s nickname. Though they completely misunderstand Canopus and even directly hurt her in life, they also give her the warmth of home. Her father is harsh, but as Auntie Huahua says, “Old Jin has a sharp tongue but a soft heart.” Her stepmother is very gentle in the deep sea; her little brother is naughty but always gives his sister candy when she is sad. And the sea spirit with such a beautiful name—actually the mother who gave Canopus her most beautiful memories—is the one who truly caused her the greatest harm. Why does the sea spirit look like Cthulhu? Because that is how her mother looked just before leaving—hair covering her face, only eyes showing—the most despairing image of Canopus’s entire life.
From Canopus’s perspective as subject, this journey under the sea symbolizes the process by which a person feels spiritual loneliness and is then healed—asking us how to live; from Nanhe’s perspective as object, it portrays the complexity of human nature—selfish enough to forbid Canopus from touching his merchandise, yet selfless enough to leap in to save a drowning child—asking us what kind of person we should become. The two questions are two sides of the same coin.
Life is in fact a dream—absurd and magnificent. One must choose a way of dreaming, though it does not matter much which; what matters is the experience, and moving on to the next chapter with a heart unburdened.