experienced a series of "removal" storms in the summer vacation last year, the audience waited for more than a year, and finally waited for the scheduled release of "Yai Bai".
Before entering the theater to watch this movie, let’s go through a movie and review Guanhu——
"Killing"
is a movie released in the summer of 2012. It is directed by Guan Hu and starred by Huang Bo, Ren Dahua, Yu Nan and Su Youpeng.
The lineup of"famous director + capable actors" can really make this movie "listen to its name before seeing its name", and seduce the audience's desire to watch the movie.
The movie "Killing" is one of Guanhu's "carnival trilogy" (the other two are "Bullfighting" and "Cook and Actress Rabbi"). It has a strong "tube style" feature, that is, low-level care, Non-linear narrative, allegorical style and emotional images, etc.
In 1992, Guan Hu self-funded and filmed "Hair Disordered". With his creative attitude of wandering inside and outside the system and his avant-garde and rebellious image writing, he became one of the sixth generation of directors in China.
After he finished shooting his second work "Romantic Street", he began to reflect on himself and embarked on a path of actively catering to the system.
After, "Goodbye, our 1948", "Get in the car and go", "Xi Tzu Eyes", "Bull Fighting", "Killing", "Cooking Actress" and other works, almost all successfully entered the mainstream theaters, Released.
A careful study of Guan Hu's works reveals that he has a great passion for history. Almost every work has a clear time and background. Nearly half of the films are based on the 1930s and 1940s.
Guanhu's shooting of "Eight Hundred" is also the continuation of his focus.
However, Guan Hu is not dedicated to restoring the historical features of the time and place. Instead, he takes history as a narrative trap, alluding to current real issues and thinking about the complex aspects of human nature.
As Guan Hu said: "History is ruthless, and the movie should create a world of love for them."
Guanhu’s creative concept is fully reflected in the film "Killing Lives".
is set in the "a corner of the southwestern part of old China in the early 1940s". At this point in time, during the War of Resistance Against Japan, China was in dire straits.
But what is interesting is that Guan Hu points out the time at the beginning of the movie, but completely eliminates the traces of the specific era in the entire movie.
The setting ofmakes "time" an absent field in the film, abstracting history in the overhead history——
We cannot see it everywhere, but it is everywhere.
In addition to time being the "absent presence", so is space.
The filmtells a story that took place in Changshou Town. The geographical environment of this town surrounded by mountains implies the ancient, closed, conservative and mysterious here.
has to remind people of Lu Xun's metaphor of comparing China to an "iron house". And the visual expression of this metaphor has already had corresponding visual expressions in movies such as "The Yellow Earth", "Judou", and "Raise the Red Lantern".
In Changshou Town, no matter what means is used, "longevity" is the only and highest indicator.
The villagers lived for a long time under the norms of the "72 Articles of Ancestral Training", suppressed but orderly.
And the appearance of the sturdy cow made the peace of the town no longer exist. He is the destroyer of the stability and order of Changshou Town.
He doesn't pay for meat, he goes to the butcher and runs away.
Niu Shishi has been peeping at the private life of the painter for more than ten years, which also caused the painters and his wife to hate the cow hard.
Changshou Town has a ritual for taking holy water, that is, to extract the clearest water from the well in order to ensure the health and longevity of the people.
But the beef is sturdy, everyone is serious and solemnI jumped into the well and took a bath...
There is a young man in the town who got married. The bull digs out his ancestral grave, and digs out gold and silver jewellery to give to others...
was about to die, because he could break the longevity record in the town in a dozen hours, so the mayor tried his best to prevent him from dying.
At this time, Niu Shiu appeared again.
He poured a jug of wine into the old man’s hose with salt water, and fed it to the old man to drink, but the old man died without taking a few sips.
the old man died, the people in the town dressed in black held a grand funeral for him, and asked the old man’s young mute wife to bury him.
When everything is being carried out extremely solemnly, the cow is strong and not idle-
He jumped into the river and rescued the beautiful little widow, and took her back to his house as his wife.
is the most spectacular passage in the film.
The deceased was dressed in a white robe and lay on his back on a raft made of white dead wood. The burial mute also wore a white robe and sat on the side of the deceased.
The funeral team ofall wore black hooded cloaks. From time to time, they clenched their fists and thumped their chests, and occasionally yelled from the sky. Finally, the principal in white clothes and red hat chanted prayers and pushed the raft into the river for water funerals.
presents an ancient, primitive and mysterious audio-visual atmosphere, comparable to the mourning and funeral in Zhang Yimou's "Ju Dou".
The most excessive thingNiu Jianshi has done is to pour the aphrodisiac into the drinking water of the villagers, causing the whole town to lose their minds and do all the licentious things.
Niu Shishi has done for more than ten years is, in Banxian's words, "the rules left by the ancestors have been completely destroyed by this house."
But the blacksmith's beating, the crowd's beating, and the expulsion often lead to stronger resistance of the cattle.
In order to discipline the bull's sturdy body full of desire, the people in the town tried to punish him by burying the widow, or even castration, but as Banxian said, "This bull has been smashed for decades and has become invulnerable."
Just when people were frowning and couldn't find a suitable reason to get rid of the cow knot, they thought of a person: Doctor Niu, the cow boy of the year.
Niu Jianshi always steals from his house when he was young, and Niuwazi sealed all the seams in the house in a fit of anger. There was a serious incident in this one. Niu Wazi's grandfather died of suffocation because of charcoal burning and lack of ventilation.
After that, Niuwazi hated Niu Shi.
Niuwazi, who had stayed abroad and became an intellectual, heard that the folks in the village wanted to get rid of the sturdy cows, and immediately rushed to make suggestions.
His strategy is very simple, but also extremely cruel: let the whole town perform a scene, the content is that everyone makes Niu Jiushi think that he has an incurable disease.
So, as long as the cow goes out sturdily, people passing by will pretend to be scared and retreat, as if the cow's sturdy face shows that he is dying.
After a while, someone came over and said that he was dead soon, and after a while, someone came to help the cow carry things firmly, as if he was going to fall down in the next second.
Even, in order to make the cow sturdy and fall ill in self-doubt, the young people in the town took off their shirts in a heavy rain and bounced in the rain to show their strength and robustness.
At this time, Niu Shige, who was already worried about his health, took off his shirt and joined the rain carnival.
This seemingly powerful carnival was a turning point in the movie. After that, the cattle really fell ill.
, the same scene once again appeared in the memories of the mayor before his death, but the carnival in the rain turned into a deliberately cruel murder show.
The same scene from different perspectivesThe two appearances imply the director's praise of free life and criticism of the autocratic system.
is adapted from Chen Tiejun's novel "Children's Play Killing", according to director Guan Hu's own statement: ""Killing" tells the story of a group of people killing an unruly person."
Niu Jianshi, the "unconformity person", actually represents a kind of "self-freedom".
He broke through the shackles of conventional morals and systems, all for his own happiness as the highest goal. He was so arbitrary that he broke through the cognition of many viewers and presented a state of "evil".
In fact, the ultimate freedom is indifferent to good and evil. Good and evil are a standard, and it is as Dostoevsky said in "White Nights": "The more noble the morality, the more egoist elements in it."
The beef is the kind of "carnival power" Bakhtin called. He ignores traditional ethics, hierarchical order, and moral traditions, and allows his vitality to be arrogant.
But "Killing" is not the "carnival square" that Bakhtin called it.
Because Bakhtin’s carnival is for rebirth and reconstruction; and in "Killing Lives", the vigorous vitality represented by Niu Jianshi is killed in a crumbling space.
The carnival of "Killing Living" is tragic and unfinished.
The people in the town let the cow be selected, either he died, or he and the little widow’s son died.
In order to save his son, Niu Jiushi had to commit suicide.
died, he returned all the things he had robbed to his father and the villagers, and knelt on the ground and knocked his head three times, saying "The baby is not guilty" with every knock.
three heads knocked over, the cow sturdy dragged the blue boat-style coffin made for him to a cliff cave where he ended his life.
The colors in "Killing" are miscellaneous and oppressive, and the strong sky blue coffin is like a pure dream, a beautiful hope for freedom and life.
In the next life, he will be a fish, swimming in the sea, looking opposite to the sky, whispering to seagulls, and then listening to those fish who migrate across the ocean telling stories from far away, and follow the waves in the sunset.
After the filming of "Red Sorghum", Zhang Yimou believed that after thousands of years of stubbornness, the Chinese can finally "live with one breath", and life can finally be vigorous and wanton.
But decades have passed. Guan Hu used a "Killing" to show the world that the "killing" of "Iron Room" is far from over, but is reincarnation endlessly.
The sturdy cow can only die alone in a utopian cave.
Guanhu uses a brushwork between absurdity and reality, magic and original ecology to tell a "national fable".
And this absurd reality of cannibalism is very similar to Mr. Lu Xun's "Madman's Diary" and Han Shaogong's "Dad and Dad".
"Cow sturdy" is not only the "madman" living in the shadow of "cannibalism", but also the "Cub" who witnessed primitive ignorance.
Guan Hu once said that "Killing a Life" originated from his admiration for Mr. Lu Xun, and regarded it as a simple version of "Madman's Diary".
We open every chapter of history. This history has no age. On every slanting page, the words "benevolence, justice and morality" are written. I couldn't sleep anyway. I watched carefully in the middle of the night, only to see the words on the screen. The whole film was written with two words: Cannibalism! Fortunately, in the gap between these two words, we can still see the "famous feelings" that the director riveted in...
"History is ruthless, but movies are passionate".
