In November 2019, a self-report article called "Wandering to Hegang, I bought a suite for 50,000 yuan" became popular overnight, letting people know that "Hegang" is the "lowest house price place in the country".
Today, when young people empty a few pockets at home to barely make up for the down payment, today, when Shanghai Tomson is 270,000 square meters, the housing prices in Hegang have attracted countless young people to practice the current hot "lying flat learning".
The last time this small northeastern city became known to the whole country was because of a mega-mine accident that occurred in a century-old coal mine in November 2009.
In the mine, 108 people were killed.
The huge explosion seems to be the last cry of sorrow in this industrial city, after which the Hegang people began to expel in large numbers, and most of the people left were some elderly people. They would always appear with the sun, as if trying to dry some moldy memories by basking in the sun.
What Hegang did not expect was that twelve years later, the rise of the Internet would make it the last "refuge" for young people from other places.
Hegang is the northeast, and the northeast is also Hegang.
As the "eldest son of the Republic", we have witnessed the northeast from the industrial base of new China to today's birthplace of network hot terriers, but rarely think about it:
Why has everything become what it is now?
As a result, some film and television works began to look back, began to think, and began to present, such as "Tiexi District", "The Piano of Steel", "August", "Daytime Fireworks", and such as the one we are going to talk about today -
"Siberian Tiger"
The director of this film is called Geng Jun, a name that is old when you hear it, after all, today's 80s and 90s, there are very few people called "Jun".
Geng Jun was born in 1976, a native of Hegang, Heilongjiang, with a strong body and a large bald head, who looked and felt like a gold chain and a few younger brothers.
However, the anti-gang crime eradication in the northeast has been done very well, and Geng Jun is not here, but is grumpy about the movie.
Making movies is not a profitable thing for many unknown small directors and screenwriters. If there is still some heart and ambition, or what kind of feelings, then it is very likely that money will be posted.
Geng Jun is the same, he has sold dumplings before making movies, worked as a hotel waiter, and the advertising salesman of the advertising version of the Beijing Evening News, in short, it is bitter.
But he did not give up, but also boiled out a "Hegang universe", that is, film works based on his hometown of Hegang, such as "Barbecue", "Youth", "Hammer and Sickle Are Resting", "Relaxed + Happy" and so on.
In 2021, Geng Jun's feature film "Northeast Tiger" participated in the Shanghai Film Festival, and the movie tickets for the screening were sold out in just a few minutes, and finally won the Golden Jubilee Award, which is also a head..
Finally, on January 14, 2022, "Siberian Tiger" was released.
The film is interesting from the point of view of the actors: Zhang Yu and Ma Li starred.
Literary films + comedies, this feels too absurd.
And the absurd is indeed the background of "Siberian Tiger".
Geng Jun positioned the film as: "Drama, Black Humor".
Plot-wise, this is a simple and complex story, with three main lines in the film being pulled by three characters.
The first character is Xu Dong (Zhang Yu), a forklift driver during the day and a dormitory manager at night.
These two unrelated professions are close to Xu Dong alone.
Because his wife was pregnant and about to give birth, Xu Dong put his beloved large dog "Ruyi" and fostered it elsewhere. Xu Dong was reluctant, but still agreed.
He entrusted the dog to a friend, and did not expect to be killed and eaten by a man.
Xu Dong is determined to take revenge.
The second character is Mei Ling (Ma Li), Xu Dong's wife, a woman who is very strong even with a big belly, who is determined to take revenge.
But she took revenge.
The object of revenge was a woman with dyed yellow hair, which she had turned over from Xu Dong's clothes.
In fact, the image of pregnancy was also played by Ma Li in "My Hometown and Me".
It's just that one is the "red child" that will be born in the new mainstream blockbuster, and the other is the child of the "depressed" couple in the literary and art films.
The third main character, named Ma Qianli (Zhang Zhiyong), is a contractor foreman who is in debt everywhere, and the one who eats Xu Dong's dog.
At this point, we may have found that no one in "Siberian Tiger" is happy, no one laughs, no one cries bitterly, and the tone of the whole movie is slow and absurd, as if it is numb after great pain.
This kind of numbness is the kind of eternal loneliness and decay that pervades Northeast movies.
This decay doesn't even need to be told in a story, it just needs a character, a scene, and a piece of music.
As netizens said:
"As we all know, northeast is an adjective, describing the winter wind, describing the stagnation of time, describing the tiger into the cage, describing the end of the hope."
The Dongbei image has almost become a solid image, such as ice and snow, cotton jackets, white gas coming out of the mouth, dilapidated industrial factories, large areas of solidified farmland...
The people in the film seem to have lost their keen senses, leaving only a dull feeling, and this blunt feeling often needs a seemingly violent event as a carrier to set off.
This carrier may be a murder case (the case of the corpse in "Daytime Fireworks") or a must-do thing (making a piano in "The Piano of Steel").
The dull feeling must be transformed into an extreme pain in order to be released.
Thus, in "Siberian Tiger", we see the death of "Ruyi", the beating of Ma Qianli, and the revenge of Xu Dong and Mei Ling.
Combined with this extreme, there is often a kind of funny that comes with being too serious.
After discovering that Xu Dong has cheated, Ru Meiling begins her own path of revenge.
She methodically checked the suspects one by one.
In the cold wind in the northeast, Mei Ling stood up with a big belly and called out a suspect, originally wanting to see if she had yellow hair, but people had hats and masks, and wrapped their hair tightly.
Mei Ling couldn't say that she had come to catch Xiao San, and could only say that she wanted to see what the other party looked like now.
The opposite is not a good stubble, full of pride: "Still the same, beautiful, sexy, attracting bees and butterflies." ”
Mei Ling was not dead hearted, insisting on asking people why they wore hats and masks.
The other party returned because he had just washed his head and extracted his teeth, and he was going to leave when he was finished.
As a result, just after taking a step, Mei Ling pulled down the people's hats, found that the hair had really just been washed, and it was black, and hurriedly returned the hat: "Big winter, put it on, don't freeze the cold." ”
Then he was scolded.
The whole process is filled with a slow sense of joy, funny and absurd.
In "Siberian Tiger", there are many such laughs, but it also makes people have a feeling of not laughing happily, just like the people in the film, living suffocated and unhappy.
Xu Dong could not refuse the demands of others, so he sent his dog away against his own wishes, resulting in the killing of the puppy; therefore, he could not refuse the lover's overtures again and again, breaking the connection.
As a contractor, Ma Qianli was rich, but soon became poor again. This kind of "sandwich cookie" type of profession, with such an encounter is almost a historical necessity.
The background behind this is the reform of state-owned enterprises, which is the real historical development of Hegang in recent years.
The population is flowing out, coupled with the flow of funds, Hegang has a large area of empty commercial housing, presumably there are many "Ma Qianli" sitting at home, watching the bricks thrown in by relatives and friends smashing the glass, and rushing to the door in a daze.
Yes, there are many people who flock to Hegang to buy a house, but very few people actually stay there.
People simply leave a retreat for themselves and continue to live and die in the big cities.
In such an era, it is almost inevitable that poets will go crazy and Siberian tigers will be imprisoned.
As the film says, where culture is respected, there must be light.
But how many people today are respecting culture? It's just respecting the power of banknotes.
Most of the characters and stories in Geng Jun's "Northeast Tiger" are based on real events in the black land of Hegang.
For example, the owner of a large dog who is fostered in a house, and is eaten as a result, and goes to seek revenge;
For example, the Siberian tiger who has a 19th birthday in the film actually originated from a local news in Hegang that said that the Siberian tiger had another birthday.
Another example is the mental poet, in fact, the prototype is Geng Jun's hair, called Zhang Xixian, who originally taught art in school, and Geng Jun had a documentary called "The Journey of Poetry and Illness" before that he was filmed.
"We will joke that the two most talented people in Hegang are Zhang Rare and Geng Jun. I especially agree that Zhang Is rare is the first. ”
But why would such a talented person go crazy today?
Why is it that the contractor who used to make a fortune with his family and friends has now become the target of public criticism?
Why is it that the rich people who used to call the wind and rain are now in wheelchairs with broken legs?
Why is that?
And these are the questions that "Siberian Tigers" wants to arrive at, but ultimately cannot give answers.
History has no answer, only a conclusion.
So, we watch xu dong and Ma Qianli in the film in a very ironic background sound of "waves, beaches, seagulls", telling their fantasies about the south, even if this fantasy only stays in the category of "warmth" and "bikini girls".
Linked to the sentence "Sanya is no longer Sanya in Hainan, but Sanya in northeast China", what "Siberian Tiger" wants to ask but does not ask may be:
"Why on earth would they stay in the cold for so long?"
Will the future really be like the end of the film, "The future is good, survive today together, tomorrow is interesting"?
Sink down, or look up at the sky? Perhaps, Geng Jun had already given the answer to the red kite that flew into the sky.
But as for how to do it, he didn't say it, and he couldn't say it. It's like a future that has promises but never comes.
Geng Jun said that the landscape of the northeast cannot be photographed.
This "headless shooting" may be like the afterglow left by the big explosion decades ago, reminding people not to forget Hegang, not to forget the northeast, not to forget this "eldest son of the republic".
There have always been two northeasts, one is the northeast of rural love, and the other is the northeast of state-owned enterprises and factories.
There are many people who say that Geng Jun's films have a Finnish taste of Kaurismäki, slow, absurd, stubborn, cold humor and poetry.
Some people also say that the music of "Siberian Tiger" is too full, the characters are too monotonous, the narrative is too trivial, and the pretense is profound.
But perhaps, as I said before, great suffering can only be expressed with a strong sense of form.
That's why the footage in Siberian Tigers has a kind of Wes Anderson precision, and Bella Tarr's lengthy.
There are even several times in the film when the characters speak to the camera and the audience, but the counter-shot appears for a long time.
Only through this formal lens and soundtrack, only through absurdity and cold humor, can the pain that cannot be easily expressed be expressed, and the repressed feelings can be released – partially released.
The dog named Ruyi eventually died tragically, and the Siberian tiger waited in a cage to be fed. Will the future be good? It should be fine.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Tong Yunxi
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