As a director who is "best at photographing women", Tsui Hark has created many unforgettable female images on the big screen.
So many years later, we still remember Nie Xiaoqian in " A Chinese Ghost Story ", Master Gu Yue and Li Yingqi in "The Legend of Shushan", and of course "Thirteenth Aunt" in the " Once Upon a Time " series .
But if we have to find the most self-aware female character in Tsui Hark's previous works, it must be Xiao Qing played by Maggie Cheung in " Green Snake ".
1. The alternative "The Legend of the White Snake" "The Legend of the White Snake" "
The story of "The Legend of the White Snake" is a household name in our country. Although it has been adapted many times, most of the works follow the creative principle of using White Snake as the protagonist and the love story between White Snake and Xu Xian as the main line.
The most successful adaptation of this type is "The Legend of White Snake" starring Zhao Yazhi and Ye Tong in 1992.
But in "Green Snake", which is also based on "The Legend of White Snake", writer Li Bihua and director Tsui Hark worked together to change the protagonist of this story to Green Snake thirty years ago.
also shifted the focus of the story from praising the love between White Snake and Xu Xian to the awakening of Green Snake.
In order to express as much as possible, Green Snake, as a woman, reflects on the world around her, the film uses a lot of space to depict various ills of the human world.
At the beginning of the film, "Life is Like This" written by Huang Zhan played, and a piece of cyan gauze floated down the water. Such a scene looked extremely poetic.
But after the title was hidden, the movie followed immediately, using a human hell to start the main film.
In this panoramic scene of turmoil, a group of ugly, monster-like humans are brutally slaughtering other living beings.
Fa Hai, who was full of Buddhist teachings, stood on a high platform and witnessed this tragic situation, but after he only said the word "human", he just sat back and watched.
On the contrary, after sensing a demonic aura, Fahai accepted a spider spirit that had been practicing for two hundred years without any hesitation.
Although it had been under the shadow of the Bodhisattva, it had transformed into a peaceful and peaceful spider spirit. The kind-faced old abbot.
It wasn't until Spider Spirit's cultivation was crippled and the prayer beads he held tightly fell to the ground that Fa Hai finally realized that he had indeed collected the wrong monster.
Therefore, when he witnessed the good deeds of the blue and white snakes to protect the mother from the rain, in order to alleviate the sin in his heart, he deliberately left the prayer beads dropped by the spider spirit to the snake monster to help them practice.
The following story of the film tells the story of the two snakes, green and white, who transformed into adults with the help of Buddhist beads and had different experiences in the human world.
White Snake, who has been practicing for thousands of years, wants to be a woman in the worldly sense. In order to achieve this goal, she takes the initiative to approach the honest Xu Xian and vows to stay with him for life.
No matter she was deceived by Xu Xian or blocked by Fahai, she loved her regardless of it, and finally paid her life for it.
Green Snake , who has only practiced cultivation for 500 years, is not as willing to be disciplined by the secular world as her sister is.
She wanted to be a human being and longed for love, but after witnessing Xu Xian's weakness, Fa Hai's hypocrisy and her sister's tragedy, she finally bid farewell to her ignorance and transformed into a woman with awakened self-awareness.
If the white snake lost its life in the process of embracing the secular world, then the green snake regained a new life in the process of criticizing the secular world.
The reason why the film is named "Green Snake" may be to try to use the growth process of Green Snake to awaken more women like White Snake, whose self-awareness is still sleeping.
2. The misunderstood "Green Snake"
Although wearing the cloak of a feminist film, many people do not think that they have the female consciousness to enlighten the audience when they mention the two female characters in "Green Snake".
Some people even think that the green snake is a "third party" and the white snake is a "white lotus".
Many plots in the film seem to intentionally indicate that Green Snake is a third party involved in the love affair between White Snake and Xu Xian.
For example, he stood outside the window and peeped at them having sex, deliberately danced in front of Xu Xian's eyes while wearing cool clothes, and secretly sat by Xu Xian's bed while his sister was away, asking him to explain to her what feelings were.
The White Snake was also misunderstood by the audience as a profound "White Lotus".
After all, the encounter and intercourse with Xu Xian were all planned by her. From the "seduction" while boating on the West Lake to the "teasing" at the Baifu dinner table, she took care of every step.
In the end, in order to monopolize Xu Xian, she pointed her sword at Xiaoqing's throat and asked her to return to the Zizhu Forest.
With all these things, it’s no wonder that everyone thinks she is scheming and has some sinister undertones.
So, are the two snakes, the green and the white, really so unbearable? The answer is of course no.
The reason why Qing Shehui behaved so misleadingly towards Xu Xian was because she was learning how to be a good person from her sister. The way she learned at the beginning was very simple, that is, by imitating. She would do whatever her sister did.
For example, she pulled the lunch box when she first met Xu Xian;
imitated the action of her sister handing over the umbrella when she first met Xu Xian.
Including those seemingly intimate behaviors she did towards Xu Xian after that;
was just a simple copy of her sister's behavior, not a "temptation" with ulterior motives at all.
And White Snake is far less sinister than everyone thinks. Just as Xiaoqing is imitating her behavior, as a snake demon, she is just replicating human behavior.
When we stand on the moral high ground from an ordinary person's perspective and criticize Bai Suzhen's calculation of love, we might as well think about whether the drama of "deep love cannot be retained, and routines win people's hearts" is also going on in the real society.
Therefore, White Snake’s routine against Xu Xian and “expelling” Xiao Qing are actually her imitation of the emotional rules of the human world.
Just like the characters in the film are inevitably misunderstood, the film "Green Snake" itself became Tsui Hark's most misunderstood work by the audience.
In the eyes of many people, it is a large-scale film.
The mother in the bamboo forest at the beginning of the film;
The charming appearance of the green snake in the romantic place when she first transformed into a human being;
There are also the "happy things" that the lovers White Snake and Xu Xian do from time to time.
All these thought-provoking pictures do enhance the scale of the film to a certain extent, but this is just the coat of desire that the film wears.
When we criticize the characters and define the film superficially, we might as well try to think about it, is a film that is famous in the history of cinema really like this?
3. It turns out that the tail played by Green Snake hides such deep hints
In fact, the audience will have many misunderstandings about this movie, and it is not without reason. Compared with the "straightforward" of many movies, "Green Snake" "There are a lot of metaphors in it, and each one is more brain-burning than the last.
Some viewers did not understand the twists and turns, and easily regarded it as a vulgar romance film about two snakes, green and white, competing for Xu Xian.
But in fact, the settings in this video are reflected upon closer inspection.
For example, Xu Xian, who is well-read in poetry but thinks he is lofty, Fahai, who talks a lot about Buddhism but has six impure roots, and Taoist priests who are bent on subduing demons but do not distinguish between right and wrong, implying that the highly respected three schools of "Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism" have their own Its hypocrisy.
The choice of all-male characters to represent these three major sects is a metaphor for the strong constraints on women in a patriarchal society dominated by men.
However, compared to these obscure abstract metaphors, the film's presentation of Fahai's desires is more watchable and more confusing.When the film
expresses Fahai's obsession with sex, it chooses a rather straightforward method: letting the mother's body appear directly in Fahai's mind, except in the bamboo forest on a rainy night.
Other times, a more concrete approach is used to metaphor Fa Hai’s desire.
For example, the bald and long-tailed demon that Fahai fought off during meditation was actually the lustful thought that arose in his heart after he witnessed the naked mother.
The little monsters here are not physical monsters. From the lines spoken by the little monsters and the position they occupy in Fahai's body, it can be inferred that they are the "tadpole spirits" that appear in Fahai's body when he thinks of the mother.
And when Fa Hai practiced dual cultivation with the Green Snake in order to clear away the demonic obstacles, what the latter was playing with under the water was not his own tail.
Even more, this tail is not even a tail, but the Yuanyang of Fahai.
If you want to understand this metaphor, it is actually very simple.
First of all, the green snake's tail has appeared more than once before, and it was always green, but the tail here is black, so it is definitely not Xiaoqing's.
Secondly, from the incantation recited by Fahai and the tattoo on his back, we can think of his true identity, which is actually the python god.
Because the incantation he recited was "Mighty Heavenly Dragon", and the claws on his back were four-clawed, not a real dragon but a python, and the four-clawed python god is one of the eight heavenly dragons protecting the law in Buddhism.
From this we can see that this tail must be related to Fahai.
In addition, in the crystal clear water, you can clearly see his crossed legs, so this tail is not his legs.
Combined with Xiaoqing's behavior of groping inside his clothes and saying he lost, we can conclude that this extremely confusing tail is actually Fahai's Yuanyang.
It is this scene that many people only understand after many years. In fact, it implies Tsui Hark's ingenuity. He wanted to use the victory and defeat of Fa Hai and Green Snake to express Green Snake's doubts and challenges to the outside world. .
If you don't understand this and try to criticize this film, you will really fail the director's hard work.
Conclusion: The unexamined life is not worth living
In the past 30 years, whenever "Green Snake" is mentioned, people will naturally think of many very gimmicky topics.
Although the reason why everyone should remember this film is not its scale but its depth, there are still many people who are willing to continue to misunderstand it.
is like a white snake, willing to be disciplined. As long as it is determined to be a human being, it will follow the rules of the human game in a very programmed manner, never asking why.
But the Greek wise man Socrates has long said that an unexamined life is not worth living.
This is why the praised protagonist in "The Legend of White Snake" finally changed from the docile white snake to the rebellious green snake in this movie who will think about what is love, what is desire, and what is human nature.
As an audience, only when we understand the sadness of the White Snake and the value of the Green Snake can we truly understand this famous feminist film in the history of cinema.
(Movie Rotten Tomatoes Editorial Department: Zihan)
