MovieChat Forums > Huo zhe (1994) Discussion > Fugui's name and symbolism

Fugui's name and symbolism

posted 14 years ago by jeremy_alan36
1 reply | jump to latest

Did anybody else notice a possible connection between Fugui's name (the two characters of which mean 'luck/fortune' and 'expensive/dear' in Chinese) and the deaths of his family members?

Three times his actions led unwittingly to deaths: first his father (due to his gambling away the family house, angering his father to the point of cardiac arrest); then his son (due to his insisting on taking the boy to school when he was exhausted, leading to him being killed in a car accident while asleep behind a wall); and finally his daughter (due to overfeeding the doctor with buns and water, thus incapacitating him just as his daughter needed medical treatment).

So Fugui was lucky - especially that his 'landlord' background was not discovered during the Cultural Revolution section - but his luck had expensive consequences for others close to him.

[–] vaughno04 14 years ago

OMG, you are so right. I didn't know what had happened to the doctor, but yeah, his luck was extremely expensive. Just like the scene when he was captured by the army and only him and his friend survived. The other guy that had saved them in the first place ended up dieing after he saw the coat that Fugui picked up looked like the ones from his brother's troup, which lead him into getting shot.