01
about authenticity.
A few days ago, I wrote a review on the movie " Into the Dust ", criticizing it as pseudo-realism, so some people thought I was accusing the film of being "unreal".
In fact, I just pointed out that its plot does not conform to the logic of life, and I did not simply say that it is not true, because "authenticity" is a very ambiguous statement, and it must be used after careful analysis and definition. Whether
is true or not, includes two levels of meaning, a concrete (phenomenal) level and an essential level.
For any non-documentary film, it doesn't make sense to discuss whether it is real or not at the "concrete" level, it is of course fiction, performed by actors, or even "made" by computers.
For documentaries, there is no problem with authenticity at the concrete (phenomenal) level (if the director is objective enough), but at the essential level, there is still an issue of authenticity.
So when we're talking about whether a movie is "real", we're not talking about whether the people and things in the shot really exist (or did exist), but whether it reflects the reality of the objective world. Nature?
is true if it is, false if it is not.
"Hidden in the Dust" presents many details to the audience, including sowing with a donkey, harvesting with a sickle, bare feet and mud, unscrewing with bare hands, building a house by one person, and numb and indifferent villagers.
These details, viewed individually, cannot be said to be untrue, but they are all connected together, giving the impression to the audience that China's rural areas, in terms of productivity, are still stuck in the nineteenth century, and the mental state of the peasants is also stuck in the tenth century. ninth century.
Does this match the reality of rural China in the 21st century?
If nothing else, as far as field operations are concerned, according to the data released by Ministry of Agriculture , the comprehensive mechanization rate of crop farming and harvesting in China's rural areas has exceeded 72%. The comprehensive mechanization rate of wheat exceeds 97%, basically realizing the whole process of mechanization. In
's "Hidden in the Dust", the most agricultural work is planting wheat, harvesting wheat, and plucking wheat, but there is no agricultural machinery from beginning to end - even in the background of "other people's fields".
In a nutshell, on the question of authenticity or not, a quote from the revolutionary mentor Lenin is the most appropriate:
"If facts are not grasped from the total sum, not from the connections, but from fragments and random selections, then the facts are It can only be a child's play, or even worse than a child's play."
Similarly, if the "facts" or details in the film do not reflect or reflect the essence of the times and society, but are intended to obscure the essence of the times and society, it is a kind of fooling or even deceiving the audience.
02
about time.
"Hidden in the Dust" inherits the "fifth generation" view of time, that is, "space overpowers time". What does
mean? It is to believe that Chinese society is a "super stable structure", time is stagnant, and the passage of time will not bring social progress.
In the 1980s and 1990s, when the West was regarded as the "other shore", this set of discourses and expressions implied that only by going to the West could China restart its own time.
In 1984's " loess ", this point could not be more clearly expressed:
everything is as immutable as the loess plateau, heavy and depressing. Gu Qing, a cadre of the Eighth Route Army, is no longer able to assume the role of savior like Hong Changqing in "The Red Detachment of Women". He can only watch helplessly as the poor girl Cui Qiao is swallowed up by the ancient marriage tradition.
"Hidden in the Dust" in this point completely inherited "The Yellow Earth" almost forty years ago.
Ma Youtie and Cao Guiying are also diffusedThe indifferent and snobbish "culture" in the countryside has been swallowed up. The difference is that in "Yellow Earth", there is Gu Qing as a sympathetic witness, and in "Hidden in the Dust", there is no such person as Gu Qing. In fact, no one noticed that the couple Ma and Cao were dead, because no one ever talked about them.
As mentioned earlier, "Hidden in the Dust" left the audience with the impression that rural China was still in the 19th century, and time was frozen into a transparent solid. Is
really like this?
Over the past 100 years, rural China has undergone a series of earth-shaking changes. From the peasant movement during the First Great Revolution, to the "beating the local tyrants and dividing the land" during the Agrarian Revolutionary War, to the agrarian reform movement before and after the founding of New China, as well as the co-operative movement, the people's commune movement, and the late 40s The baptism of the pervasive market economy ..., so all of this did not leave any traces on Ma Youtie and his village? Ma Youtie can actually look like a run soil growing up in a vacuum-preserved canning bottle?
Time will not stand still. China has been changing and will continue to change. As the "summary of social relations", Ma Youtie cannot be Runtu that has traveled back. "Stagnant China" fits the prejudiced Western imagination of China, but not China's reality.
03
is about the shaping of characters. The
horse has the characteristics of iron and is full of paradoxes.
On the one hand, he completely lacks subjectivity, lacks sufficient intelligence, no pain, no emotion, and can only let others manipulate him, including pumping his own blood for free.
On the other hand, he is a highly intelligent and hands-on person with a high emotional intelligence.
Ma Youtie can handle all the farm work from spring planting to autumn harvest to winter Tibet skillfully, and he is also an experienced carpenter and mason who can build a fully functional house on a vacant lot on his own (God knows how he gets on) In the end, he was still attentive, able to detect the subtle emotional changes of his wife, and like a standard warm man, he could always make her change her mind in an instant, breaking tears into laughter.
But at the beginning of the film, the middle-aged Ma Youtie still has nothing to grow, no tiles on the top, and no place to stand on the bottom. Is it because he doesn't know his own interests? But why does he remember every income and debt clearly and deal with it meticulously?
He never got married until his elder brother Ma Youtong married Cao Guiying, who was disabled, barren and incontinent at any time. Is it that he has no desire? No, he is famous for his "distressed woman", so that other women in the village envied Guiying.
In real life, these diametrically opposed personality traits are unlikely to appear in the same person at the same time.
But in the movie, the director wants to make an impossible story seem possible, and has to tear the characters apart.
Cao Guiying's characteristics are pale and conceptual. In short, she is a concept created by the director, not a real person.
In the promotion of this movie, what I disliked most was "Hai Qing's disfigured appearance", it seems that the female star played a rural woman once, which is a great gift, which completely reversed the relationship between the star and his parents. .
However, even if it is "disfigured", Cao Guiying portrayed by Hai Qing is still pale. Of course, this is not just an actor's problem.
Cao Guiying's impression to the audience does not seem to be a native rural girl, but a petty bourgeois girl who lives here.
She does not have the tenacity, optimism, industriousness and love of life of a rural girl, but is sensitive, fragile, and vulnerable, and most importantly, she does not do farm work at all—could it be that her brothers, sisters-in-law and sister-in-law have been living for nothing for so many years her?
She is not good at home life either, she has to do everything herself. On the wedding night, she wet the mattress, but she didn't know how to quickly dry it with fire. Instead, she sat on the urine stain with her head bowed as if she had suffered great grievances, waiting for Ma Youtie to comfort her——Is this really a rural girl who grew up in misery and has insight into the warmth of the world since she was a child?
On the contrary, she is familiar with the exaggerated way of "showing love" to urban petty bourgeoisie girls. For example, on a snowy night, she carried a bottle of hot water to greet Ma Youtie at the entrance of the village, and received Ma Youtie's gratitude as she wished.
But doesn't she know that it doesn't make sense for a freezing and starving horse to have iron (in fact, a horse with iron doesn't drink her hot water at all)? Doesn't she know that if she accidentally slips with her legs and feet, she will bring more trouble to Ma Youtie? Doesn't she know that staying at home at this time, burning the fire vigorously, the room warm, and preparing hot soup, hot water and hot rice for Ma Youtie is the biggest concern for him?
The petty bourgeoisie girl is like this. She understands sentiment, but she doesn't eat human fireworks, and she doesn't understand human fireworks. In fact, she has no fireworks at all.
Chinese movies need realism. Audiences need movies to ask real questions, but they don't need fake emotions, which can only make us more empty and lack the courage to face reality.
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