Gu Changwei still demonstrates his unique directorial style in his new work " Hedgehog ". Moreover, the protagonist Wang Zhantuan includes Gao Weihong (" peacock "), Wang Cailing (" Beginning of Spring "), Zhao Deyi ("" The shadow of characters such as "My Favorite "). These characters have rich hearts and distinct personalities. They do not try to change the people or the environment around them, they are just dissatisfied with the mediocrity and boringness of the real world and want to work hard for something.
Of course, in the eyes of "normal people", their behavior is out of touch with reality and deviates from the norm, which is why it is noticeable.
Although the images in Gu Changwei's films are not gorgeous, they often reveal their originality in their simplicity and roughness. The large number of irregular compositions in "Hedgehog" are ingenious, breaking the audience's visual habits. Interwoven diagonal lines often appear in the picture, subverting the calm and stable sense of harmony, making the audience feel as if they are always in a state of anxiety and depression that is about to collapse. In the world, Wang Zhantuan's subjective feelings about reality are vividly restored.
Gu Changwei's movies often use gray as the main color, giving people a dull and monotonous feeling. This color palette reflects the background of life in the inland counties of northern China, and also hints at the practical dilemmas and inner struggles faced by characters on the margins of society. This gray tone runs through Gu Changwei's nostalgic trilogy "Peacock", "The Beginning of Spring" and "Favorite", becoming their common emotional core.
"Hedgehog" also uses a large amount of unsaturated cyan tones to realistically reproduce the social atmosphere and character's mood of a specific era. It wasn't until Wang Troupe climbed onto the city wall to sing that the audience felt the openness and clarity surrounded by warm-toned light and shadow; it wasn't until Zhou Zheng returned home many years later that the balcony that was once a "cage" had become covered with flowers, and brilliant and saturated colors appeared. But Zhou Zheng's heart at this moment was probably only a desolate gray.
The film uses forward or reverse contrast to deal with tones, cleverly showing the conflict between the protagonist's inner emotions and the external environment, giving the film a deeper connotation.
"Hedgehog" has the meaning of "returning to the original intention" for Gu Changwei. He gave up comedy romances like "微爱的狠" (2014) and "It's So Nice to Meet You" (2018) film genre, and continue to practice the themes, styles and themes he is accustomed to and is good at. In the film, Wang Zhantuan and Zhou Zheng had violent collisions with the surrounding environment in multiple dimensions, stumbling along the way, leaving scars all over their bodies. The film attempts to use their stories to let the audience see the numb, utilitarian, and rigid side of the real world, as well as the hidden barriers, alienation, and coldness between people.
The metaphor and symbolic meaning of disease
Wang Zhantuan is the devil in the eyes of his mother-in-law, the wife's heart disease, and is no different from a "mental patient" in the eyes of others. Wang Zhantuan indeed often behaves out of the ordinary: he never refers to himself as "uncle" or "father-in-law", but requires others to call him by his first name.
This seems to imply that Wang Zhantuan does not want to be bound by secular ethical relationships, but wants to return to the purest "individual" state; in order to satisfy his yearning for the ocean, he took the risk of sneaking into a cargo ship and completed a ridiculous journey across the Pacific; He is keen on writing poetry and likes to interpret the plot of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". This state of showing others with a straightforward face seems natural to Wang Zhantuan, but in the eyes of "ordinary people", it seems deviant.
The film portrays Wang Zhantuan as a metaphorical "crazy" image, but he is actually more transparent, sincere, and detached than ordinary people. He is an abnormality that "stands out from the crowd". The pursuit of the
Wang Group can be summarized as "poetry and distance". In his poem, he lamented that his heart was elsewhere, but he was trapped by the trivial and mediocre life: I came from the wilderness and wanted to go to the sea. The whistle in the distance has sounded, but life has blocked my way. Therefore, Wang Zhantuan, as a "patient", has a strong thematic significance in the film. He reversely confirms the longing for dreams and passion that everyone has long lost in their hearts.
The film spans nearly 40 years and outlines the social changes in China since the 1980s.However, these changes had little impact on the Wang Group, and the film did not even show the financial pressure the family endured during the great changes of the times. Wang Zhantuan has always maintained an optimistic, calm, free and casual attitude towards life. Although this has become a character trait of the character, it also implies that the film has a conceptual tendency towards the setting of the Wang Group.
Especially compared with Gao Weihong in "Peacock", the image of Wang Zhantuan is more flat. The film fails to fully reveal the origin of the character's personality and motivation, nor does it deeply reveal the inner ups and downs of the character when chasing the goal. Even Wang Zhantuan His abundant poetry and outstanding creative talent all seem to have suspicious origins.
This means that the Wang Group is only used as a plot symbol to create sharp conflicts in the plot and contribute to the construction of the theme. As for the three-dimensionality of the characters themselves or the complexity of their personalities, the film does not pay much attention to them.
For "mental patients" like Wang Zhantuan, on the one hand, his family rejects and keeps a distance, on the other hand, they actively carry out treatment and even try folk superstitious exorcism rituals. When everything failed, the aunt simply imprisoned Wang Zhantuan at home and used drugs to make him sleepy every day. Eventually, the emotionally exhausted family complied with Wang Zhantuan's request and sent him to a mental hospital.
Therefore, Dagu and others implemented "discipline and punishment" in Foucault's sense on Wang Zhantuan, that is, labeling "non-conformists", correcting them, and finally isolating them in specific places to avoid affecting "normality" people". For modern society, this is equivalent to a set of purification procedures to remove various disturbing or damaging factors to maintain the orderly operation of society. There is also Zhou Zheng, who was ridiculed as an "idiot" and "monster" just because of his poor study and stuttering. He was even scolded or brutally beaten by his father.
In all these cases, we should not only care about the mental torture suffered by these "mental patients", but we should also explore the social psychology and social operating mechanism of the people around them who treat them differently and force them to punish them. This is not a general sense of "partisanship against dissent", or the social mainstream's devaluation and rejection of "heresies", but an allegorical writing about the universal spiritual shackles and mental numbness.
In Gu Changwei's best films, the protagonists often express unwillingness to accept fate, persistence in their dreams, and a sense of alienation from the outside world. These characters strive to find their own worth, displaying an active search for survival and struggle. "The Hedgehog" continues to think about the human state of existence, the nature of life and the meaning of dreams. Through the tragic fate of characters, it highlights the sincerity and transcendence reflected by these "heresies", and then reflects the entire society's desire for spiritual enrichment and inner satisfaction. Indifferent attitude.
Visible forms of conflict and invisible psychological damage
Wang Zhantuan was despised and misunderstood in his family and society, and was often disgusted and derogated. The manner and intensity of his conflicts with his family also gradually escalated. However, the oppression encountered by the Wang Group mainly came from the external environment. His heart was extremely clear and firm, and he never doubted himself or wavered. He only compromised his dignity and father's love twice. Once, he felt that his legs and feet were inconvenient and his image was indecent, so he ran away from his daughter's wedding; the other time, thinking that he was a burden, he offered to go to a mental hospital in order to free up his house. Get your son married.
Zhou Zheng has been influenced by Wang Zhantuan since he was a child. A series of "irrelevant" behaviors during his adolescence made his parents even more distressed. It can be said that Zhou Zheng is the teenage version of Wang Battle Group. The two cherish each other and support each other. Zhou Zheng has even become the spiritual inheritor and continuation of Wang Battle Group. He seems to have finally reached the "poetry and distance" that Wang Battle Group hopes for. Because Zhou Zheng serves as the third officer on a cruise ship and has the opportunity to travel around the world's seas; he married a girl of Argentinian descent, which satisfied the public's imagination of exotic sentiments. However, Zhou Zheng still felt inexplicable sadness, which stemmed from his longing for the Wang Group and the exhaustion and emptiness he experienced in pursuing "poetry and distance". In other words, in Zhou Zheng's view, all satisfaction cannot make up for the mental shock and psychological harm he suffered during his growing up years.
Videos often use comedy to show the protagonist's unbridled and unruly behavior of breaking the order and rules of the outside world. That kind of pleasure is probably similar to what Bakhtin calls "carnivalization."
For example, just because Zhou Zheng said that people can't fly at all, Wang Zhantuan put on wings and tried to take off from the roof, which shocked everyone, as if they were facing a powerful enemy; Wang Zhantuan and Zhou Zheng reluctantly drank the food prepared by their families. When taking Chinese medicine, the two of them swapped drinks like a prank... In this "destructive" carnival experience, laughter once dominated, full of disrespect and blasphemy against the rules.
However, the two of them more often suffered blows from the rules. After Zhou Zheng wrote a love letter to He Miaozi, he was regarded as a scourge by both parents, and they were humiliated and even violently beaten. In fact, Zhou Zheng might just be grateful to He Miaozi for not discriminating against him and sitting quietly across from him when he was despairing. However, in the old-fashioned concept of adults, it is impossible to understand such innocent emotions, and there is no mood to feel such subtle teenage emotions. This is Zhou Zheng's pain and the sorrow of adults.
Thus, in these scenes that are a bit playful but sometimes swept by storms, we can get a glimpse of the rigidity, conservatism and coldness of the world around us.
The success of the film lies in the fact that it reveals the easily overlooked mental violence in life through quality details of daily life and even adds a lot of comedy elements, and provides a trace of compassion for those who are struggling to breathe in a suffocating environment. and respect. Of course, we cannot avoid that the film's handling of some comedy sequences is a bit out of control, especially the scene where Teacher Zhao pretends to be a ghost, which is over-exaggerated and even exaggerated like a sketch.
The Inner Dissolving Power of the Theme
Although the film is titled "Hedgehog", this image only appears twice.
One of the kings roasted a hedgehog in the park to treat a leg disease, and another time he was protecting a hedgehog crossing the road on the street. This makes the meaning of "hedgehog" in the film slightly contradictory. It is not only a "magic medicine" in folk remedies, but also a "god" in the superstitious world.
The emergence of the "hedgehog" also caused cracks in Wang Zhantuan's character that were difficult to reconcile. Wang Zhantuan has always been a seemingly inconspicuous but kind-hearted figure in the film. He should not have killed the hedgehog. Moreover, Wang Zhantuan once ridiculed Teacher Zhao for treating "Hedgehog" as his father, so it seems that there is no reason for him to protect Hedgehog with a repentant mentality.
In contrast, in "Peacock", the "Peacock" only appears at the end of the film, spreads its colorful wings at the last moment, and only shows its front face at the last second. This extremely restrained approach makes "Peacock" a bright spot in a mediocre world. Some people pursue it persistently, some don't take it seriously, and some directly deny it. This shows different human ecology and values, enriching the characters and thematic connotation of the film.
In order to lash out the prejudices of people around Wang Zhantuan and Zhou Zheng, the film also uses negative argumentation techniques.
Li Guangyuan is ten years older than Haiou. After his divorce, he wandered into dance clubs, which also caused Haiou to become pregnant out of wedlock. From this point of view, Li Guangyuan is clearly another "heretic" and a "bad guy" who is far more destructive than Wang's group. Relatives also predicted that Seagull's fate would be doomed. Surprisingly, Li Guangyuan is considerate, mature and steady, and Haiou becomes the happiest person in the film. Perhaps, the film wants to use Li Guangyuan as an example to prove how absurd secular prejudice is, but the reliability of this argument is questionable, and it is more like an accident forcibly added by the film.
In addition, Wang Zhantuan's son Haiyang was a bus driver. He seemed to be diligent and down-to-earth, and was a "normal person" in the secular concept. However, he was suddenly involved in a car accident and died unexpectedly. This makes the logic of the theme extremely confusing: If deviants harm others and themselves, why can those who follow the rules find it difficult to resist the vagaries of fate? It can be seen that the two characters Li Guangyuan and Wang Haiyang are not only highly flat, but also exert a powerful destructive force on the theme construction.
"Hedgehog" plainly depicts the simple and ferocious aspects of life, calmly shows the living conditions of "mavericks" and their strong inner pursuit of ideals, and coldly and sharply examines seemingly normal social phenomena. Deep criticism and reflection. But we have to admit that this is a highly conceptual story. It is inadequate to explore life and reveal the characters in depth. It even pays too much attention to the metaphorical symbolic meaning of characters and plots, resulting in the logic of characters' behavior and the construction of themes. There is something difficult to justify.
Author:
Text: Gong Jinping (Professor of Art Education Center of Fudan University) Editor: Zhou Minxian Editor: Shao Ling
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