At the beginning of 2022, a news about "Mother of 8 Children in Fengxian County, Xuzhou" exploded the Internet and quickly aroused heated discussions among netizens. People couldn't believe that she was locked in a cold and damp house, locked with dog chains, lost her teeth, The woman with no shoes, thin clothes and dirty face turned out to be the "mother of 8" Yang Mouxia in this news. Soon, the legal issues surrounding Yang Mouxia's marriage, family and other related legal issues also attracted many people's attention, and the police behavior of the eldest son of the "8-child mother" eldest son pushed the legal aspects of the incident to public opinion. As public opinion continued to ferment, the truth of the whole incident gradually emerged - the abduction and trafficking of women.
's official announcement failed to soothe the indignation of everyone. The reason, I believe everyone has their own answer. Because of some special reasons, we can't mention more about this matter, but this matter reminds me of a movie " Blind Mountain " many years ago, and the director of the film Li Yang has a real meaning to this day. There are only "blind" trilogy in the movie works on the website - "Blind Well", "Blind Mountain" and " Blind Road ". But even so, I still think he may be the most daring director in China.
"Blind Well"
This film is the first film directed by Li Yang in 2003. It was nominated for Best Film Award at the 40th Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards, and won Silver for Best Artistic Contribution at the 53rd Berlin International Film Festival. Bear Award , and it is worth mentioning that it defeated Zhang Yimou 's first blockbuster " Hero ". The
film tells a story that happened in a mining area. Song Jinming and Tang Chaoyang were coal mine workers, but they did not make money by digging coal, but defrauded coal mine compensation by harming others. The specific operation is that they lure the workers into the mining area, then beat the workers to death in the mine, and create the illusion of an accident, and then demand compensation from the mine owner as the family of the deceased. Coal mine owners generally don't want to make things worse. This method is obviously very effective, so they can repeatedly succeed and earn this black money. Until a young boy became their target, one of the murderers' feelings changed, and it was difficult to choose between murder and protection, and finally killed each other with another murderer under the dark and cold mine.
"The Blind Well" is a film about the darkness of human nature. The director tells the audience this extremely cold story with very simple, straightforward and crisp lens language. The dark and cold mines hide the greed and greed of human nature. The sin, the sin that shudders even to the end of the story. However, the ending of the film is very cleverly designed. The surviving little boy finally won the compensation from the coal mine owner, showing a glimmer of humanity at the end of the extremely cold story. When the picture shows him holding the compensation money that he had exchanged for his life with a blank face and at a loss, we as the audience really don't know whether to laugh or cry.
"Blind Mountain"
The second work directed by Li Yang in 2007, the film co-starred by Huang Lu, Yang Youan and He Yunle. The story tells that in the late 1990s, Bai Chunmei, a college graduate who had just set foot in the society, was eager to help her parents share the burden, but she had no choice but to find a suitable job. When she was worried, a trafficker who dressed as an employee of a pharmaceutical procurement company extended her warm hands to her. She followed them to a remote mountain village in northwest China to purchase traditional Chinese medicine. After drinking a glass of water, she fell into bed and fell asleep. . After
woke up, Bai Chunmei couldn't find her "colleague from the pharmaceutical company". When she checked her ID card and wallet, she found that they also disappeared together. In an instant, she realized that she had been sold to the locals. After begging hard, Bai Xuemei realized that the only way to regain her dignity and freedom was to escape. She began to escape again and again. The only person is herself.
The tone of the film is dark and very depressing, directly attacking the social problem in China at that time - human trafficking. In addition to the leading actors who are professional actors, the others are real local villagers, and it is these rigid life-style performances that make people more interested in that.The savageness of those who are far from civilized society feels utter despair. Director
once said that during the filming of the film, when someone knew that this was a film, he went forward and asked shamelessly: This girl (the heroine) looks good, just sell it to me. The real horror of this blatant and shameless behavior is not the lack of local people's understanding of the legal system, but the commonplace and habitual behavior of their long-standing barbarism.
When asked about filming bad things in China and showing them abroad so that more people can see if this is a smear and smear of China, Li Yang once responded that every country has a dark side. , I can't say that this story happened in China, just say that I expose the dark side of the Chinese people. It's not good to tell the truth, but telling the truth is always responsible for one's own society. The
film was finally shortlisted for the "Un Certain Regard" section of the 60th Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Director at the Rome Film Festival. After winning the award, director Li Yang once said: Film Festival is not the ultimate goal of "Blind Mountain". I think the real meaning behind this sentence is self-evident!
" Blind · Dao "
"Blind · Dao" released in 2018 tells the story of the famous singer Zhao Liang who killed his daughter because of drunk driving. The story of a blind little girl who was used by a criminal group to achieve soul redemption.
As Li Yang's ten years of sharpening his sword, "Blind Road" was not only scolded by the movie theaters after its release, but also was criticized and criticized by the audience in word of mouth, and film critics were not stingy with all kinds of sarcasm Full critique of the language. Just because the film can be said to be a work with extremely clear shortcomings, so clear that it does not require a deep perspective or professional analysis to interpret it. The story, characters, and logic of the film itself are all unspeakable and reasonable, and the technical photography and editing are so rough that they don't look like the handwriting of a mature director at all.
In terms of plot, "Blind Road" made a lot of changes in the plot for its release, which also caused the audience to say "This is still the fighter with a sharp blade who made "Blind Well" and "Blind Mountain". right?" such a question. The warm route that Li Yang chose in "The Blind Road" obviously did not go well. The performance was poor, the lines were weak, and the soundtrack was embarrassing. Even the most praised story in the past could not be told well, the most "blind" trilogy. In the final chapter, it is indeed a pity that Li Yang handed over such a work.
However, what I want to say is that according to the estimates of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the number of homeless and begging children in China is around 1 million to 1.5 million. In some rural areas, the sale of children is almost marketized, forming a complete underground black interest chain. Although "The Blind Road" is not as shocking and sharp as "The Blind Well" and "The Blind Mountain", the film still shows the care and attention to the life of China's bottom society and disadvantaged groups as before. The reflection on law and human nature is still sharp and unique, not conventional, and from this point of view, Li Yang is still brave and fierce.
From his debut novel "Blind Well", to later "Blind Mountain", and then to "Blind Road", Li Yang completed his "blind" trilogy, when asked why he used the word "blind", His explanation is as follows: I actually got the word "blind" by accident, and it is inevitable because China has only two words for invisible, one is "blind", according to our understanding, it is a "eye" and the other "Harm" and "blindness" are one "death", one "eye", and "death" is "death", but all of our psychology-related things are "blindness", blind spots and blind spots. A blind spot does not mean that the place is not there, but that you cannot see or turn a blind eye, so my interpretation is that blindness is blindness, which means that your vision is dead, and the things you can see are dead. And "blind" refers to a state of being sick.
Li Yang, who has a lot of experience in documentary filming, his works show a strong pursuit of realism in both content and form, and his films reveal a strong cold and realistic style. Compared with other directors,
is better at using documentary-style lens languageExpose the blind spots of human nature, and this way of presentation can more directly point to the cultural soil and social environment, which also makes his films more realistic and shocking, and the expression is sharper and sharper.
