Let's start with four points in time.
On February 28, 1947, taipei citizens held a strike march due to the brutal enforcement of the law by the Kuomintang police the previous day, resulting in clashes with the authorities, followed by a large-scale armed riot. Within a few days of sweeping through most of Taiwan, the Kuomintang immediately sent in troops to suppress it, and the movement ended in failure for the "February 28 Incident". Taiwan then began a thirty-eight-year martial law.
In 1949, about 1.2 million Kuomintang soldiers, military dependents, exiled students, entrepreneurs, civil servants, etc., from the mainland, fled taiwan with the defeat of the Kuomintang regime, half of whom were soldiers. In order to relieve the worries of the soldiers, the dependents were arranged to live in the temporary military dependents' houses, the village.
On the evening of June 15, 1961, a love murder occurred in Qidi Lane, Mulling Street, Taipei. Mao Wu, a sixteen-year-old former student at Jianzhong (taipei municipal Jianguo Senior High School), stabbed his girlfriend Liu Min to death over an emotional dispute, the first juvenile delinquency case since the KMT moved to Taiwan.
On July 15, 1987, the Taiwan authorities announced the lifting of the 38-year-old and 56-day martial law. It was from that day that Yang Dechang began to plan the filming of "The Juvenile Murder Incident on Muling Street".
These four time points seem to have little to do with each other, but they constitute all the background and origin of Yang Dechang's creation of "The Juvenile Murder Incident on Muling Street", without which this great film would not have been born. While these backgrounds are omitted, the film holds true. However, once the endorsement of the times is lost, "The Juvenile Murder Incident on Muling Street" will become just a murder film or a criminal psychology film about teenagers, just like the title itself.
In the above context, there is a term that is both familiar and unfamiliar to us: "village". This word, which is more associated with gastronomy nowadays, actually has a very special meaning in Taiwan's history. The people who live in the village come from all over the world in Chinese mainland, and they bring the customs and unique cultures of the provinces to form a "little China". Of course, the "village" is only a symbol, and behind it are the cultural differences and contradictions between the various ethnic groups in Taiwan.
Taiwanese can be roughly divided into three major ethnic groups, one is the aborigines, who were already living on the island before the arrival of the Han People, such as the famous Gaoshan people are one of the indigenous people; the second is the people of this province, including the Minnan people who migrated to Taiwan during the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Hakka from Guangdong; the third is the people from other provinces who came after the Nationalist government took over Taiwan and followed the defeat of the Kuomintang. Compared with the people of this province who belong to a single Fujian ethnic group, the origin of people from other provinces is much more complicated, not only from all over China, but also a variety of occupations, and their arrival has created many social problems for Taiwan.
If there is room for further integration of cultural differences such as diet, language, and customs, then the contradictions in politics and power are difficult to reconcile. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Nationalist government took over Taiwan, but the Kuomintang troops transferred to Taiwan were militarily disciplined and did nothing wrong, while the administrative officials were also corrupt and harsh. The "February 28 Incident" mentioned above was the general outbreak of contradictions and conflicts between people from other provinces and people from other provinces, and it was also a watershed in cross-strait sentiments, and later became a weapon used by the DPP to play up "people from other provinces oppressing people in this province".
By the 1960s, when the story takes place in the film, the people on the mainland who moved with them knew that the so-called "counter-attack on the mainland" had become a slogan, and returning to their hometowns was almost in vain. Coupled with the political high pressure caused by material deprivation, long-term security and communist psychology, the differences between provincial nationalities, the fading of Japanese cultural influence, and the increase in American cultural influence, Taiwan in the 1960s became a strange time and space. For the purpose of self-protection, residents of the same village will form a relatively closed circle of life and maintain a certain distance from the locals in Taiwan. As a witness of the times, Yang Dechang, who grew up in a village, naturally hopes to use his image language to spare no effort to recreate the social environment of "cannibalism", and to think about the relationship between the individual and society, politics and culture through this collective tragedy.
The Lingling Street in the film was originally an old book street, and by the time the film was filmed, it had long been unrecognizable. As a director who pays attention to details, pays attention to the mutual derivation of characters and environment, and pays attention to realistic style, Yang Dechang simply rebuilt a Muling Street, and also came to the school of the perpetrator of the crime, Jianguo Middle School (which is also the director's own alma mater). There are 92 scenes in the film that need to be modified and reconstructed, and Yang Dechang not only has strict requirements for the set, but even the kettle that is difficult for the audience to notice also requires that it be necessary to find a look that meets the characteristics of the era. To this end, the budget of the film was expanded from the initial NT$13 million to NT$27 million.
In addition to everything, Yang Dechang's temper is also well known, and it is no exaggeration to call him a "tyrant" on the set, often throwing hats and scolding for the actor's performance. For the small actors in the film, including Zhang Zhen, who have almost no acting experience, meeting such a director is a childhood shadow. Especially for the protagonist Zhang Zhen, since then he has fallen into the problem of being afraid of the director. There was a scene where Zhang Zhen was pushed onto a stone pillar, and NG more than forty times, until Zhang Zhen "bumped" out of the feeling that Yang Director wanted. There was also a scene to film Zhang Zhen's reaction when he saw the dead man, Yang Dechang knew that Zhang Zhen could not act, so he inexplicably scolded him before filming, and then locked him in the warehouse for half an hour. When the shooting began, Zhang Zhen was pulled out and placed in front of the camera, and finally Zhang Zhen was successfully discharged.
Of course, Yang Dechang's strict requirements are also of great benefit to Zhang Zhen. Zhang Zhen's father, Zhang Guozhu (who also plays Zhang Zhen's father in the film), said that Zhang Zhen was very lively before, but after playing "Little Four", he became much more taciturn. Zhang Zhen himself also said: This movie has a great influence on my personality, and the character I played in it, Xiao Si, is very similar to me. When I grew up, I understood that I kept thinking about why it was so similar, but I couldn't jump out. If it weren't for this movie, I certainly wouldn't have become an actor, maybe driving a taxi now. It can be said that part of the success of "The Juvenile Murder Incident on Muling Street" stems from the mutual achievements of Zhang Zhen and Xiao Si.
In addition to the high standards for scenes and actors, Yang Dechang is a master of great control over images. In the film, we can see that the director maintains his usual attitude of rejecting the old, but uses dark colors and tones, as well as a large number of panoramic and medium-long-range views, so that the environment occupies most of the picture of the composition to create his own narrative program, showing a macro and three-dimensional historical appearance. In the panorama of "The Juvenile Murder Incident on Muling Street", the environment is often the subject. In terms of tone, the environment often appears in the shape of shadows, and the characters seem to be so small that they are almost engulfed by the environment, symbolizing the fragility of people in the environment. At the same time, Yang Dechang neither deliberately guides the audience's emotions nor is he eager to take a stand, but is content with the narrative, moderately maintains objectivity, silently shows the side of history, and accumulates emotional tension little by little, which makes this work more cruel and real.
This "cruelty" is made even more cruel by "youth". We have seen many cruel youth in specific eras, Japan has Oshima Nagisa's "The Cruel Story of Youth", South Korea's Yuhe's "Cruel History of Ma Congee Street" (for film reviews, see "Cruel History of Ma Congee Street": The Passing Era, Unchanging Feelings), Chinese mainland Jiang Wen's "Sunny Days", Taiwan's most representative is this "Juvenile Murder Incident on Muling Street", and later Niu Chengze's "Mengjiao". Including "All About Lily Week" (for film reviews, see "All About Lily Week": The Cruel Story of Youth in the 21st Century) is also a cruel story that uses "youth". Why are the protagonists of these works teenagers in their youth? Because they have extraordinary enthusiasm, restlessness and desire for the outside world, but on the other hand, they have a unique ignorance, confusion and helplessness, which often lead to tragedy under the control of hormones.
Although Yang Dechang did not attack the mainstream of society, the child's world is undoubtedly a projection of the adult world, and the problem of Chinese like to form gangs and factions and form parties for personal gain is also reflected in the children. Look at the group of foreign children on Muling Street who are not popular with the natives, they also formed gangs to warm up, the children of military dependents huddled together in a group known as "217", and the children of public officials colluded to form a "small park", inexplicably posing in an incompatible posture, and even there was a factional struggle within the "small park". Half-sized children often fight for turf and girlfriends, which are intertwined with the pursuit of women's desires and the interests of gangs, and gain vanity and self-belonging from them.
The source of these manifestations, the key signifier of "The Juvenile Murder on Muling Street", is "identity". It should be said that the identity of self-identity plagues everyone in the village. In the film, the fourth mother once inadvertently said: "I fought with the Japanese for eight years, and now I live in a Japanese house and listen to Japanese songs." It reflects that the first generation of the village has not forgotten the war and is still full of strong homesickness. These people followed the Kuomintang to Taiwan, but because of the cross-strait issue, they could not return to their homeland, could not contact their relatives, and at the same time had no way to integrate into the culture and circles of the local people in Taiwan.
In the next generation, their identity dilemma is even worse. The first generation of villagers can also talk to their peers about their hometown dialects, talk about the stories that happened on the mainland, and at least clearly find the identity positioning. If it's not Taiwanese, it's still Chinese, or Sichuanese, Shandong, or Shanghainese. But the Xiaosi generation is different, they have no intuitive concept of their homeland, but only learn some of the situation in their hometown from the words of their fathers, and it is difficult to imagine the homesickness resonance of their fathers in their thoughts and emotions. On the other hand, as people from other provinces, they are also difficult to be recognized by the children of Taiwanese people. As a result, confusion, confusion and anxiety deeply affected the second generation of the village.
The protagonist, Little Four, is typical. He was originally a fringe character who swung between a good student and a little Taibao, and on the one hand, he had good grades, and on the other hand, he often messed with the kittens and planes of the Little Park Gang. Until he got acquainted with the heroine Xiaoming, Xiao Si, who originally did not want to cause trouble, fell into the gang struggle step by step, and the image of a good student was also shattered.
In fact, the values of Primary Four are most influenced by two people. One is his father, xiaosi's father is a traditional intellectual in the Republic of China period, who has a strong sense of justice and morality, but he is not smooth enough in handling things. At the beginning of the film, Primary Four was unfairly punished by the school, and his father righteously and sternly argued with the teacher, and even encouraged the remembered Little Four: "If a person still apologizes and pleases for the mistakes he has not made, then what can such a person do?" You have to believe that your future can be determined by your own efforts." Xiao Si was deeply impressed and always followed his father's example. The other is The former boss of the Little Park Gang and Xiaoming's ex-boyfriend Hani, who had previously fled abroad because of killing people, and after returning, instead of taking Xiao Si, who was close to Xiaoming, as a pity, he also exchanged and talked with him. When he intervened in the turf dispute between the Little Park Gang and the 217 Gang, he chose a single-handed heroic posture, which made Xiao Si fascinated.
Father and Hani are both heroes in the hearts of The Fourth, but what about the result? Xiao Si's father was implicated because of the arrest of his colleagues and was also suspected of being a communist, and this interrogation also became a turning point in the change of his father's personality. The interrogators were not concerned with the subjective honesty of the fourth father, nor with the objective truth of the facts, but with his willingness to confess guilt itself. The father's initial defense sent a signal that the system was wrong, and when he finally stopped doubting and honestly confessed, what he confessed was no longer important and was immediately released. His crime was in fact purely formal, that is, insisting on the position of subject freedom, and the interrogation was a fatal blow to his inner will. After that, he gathered up the elite consciousness of intellectuals, became a small civil servant who only wanted to have a basic guarantee for life, and even later sought to cooperate with the merchants he once despised to do business in the sea in order to make a living. And when he learned that Xiao Si had killed someone, his father who came to the police station only shrugged his head, which was in stark contrast to the scene where he argued with the teacher at school. Hani's ending is even more tragic, and he wants to have a good talk with shandong, the boss of the 217 gang, but he is secretly calculated by the other party and dies under the wheel.
Xiao Si witnessed the disappearance of the idealist Hani, and witnessed the collapse of the model lighthouse father, and the last straw that crushed the camel was Xiaoming's betrayal.
Xiaoming is a legendary character in the film, to be precise, there are scandals about her everywhere. First is Hani's girlfriend, and later with the slippery head in the park irregularity, causing suspicion within the teenage gang, and then hitched a ride with the little tiger, then the little four, and finally committed to the official second generation of the pony, resulting in the confrontation between the little four and the good brother pony. The reason why Xiaoming is fascinating is that it comes from that mysterious feeling, no one knows who she likes, no one understands what she is thinking, and the boys are caught in fantasies because of her non-attitude. But in fact, although Xiao Ming is young, he is well versed in the laws of realistic survival. She has been dependent on her mother since she was a child, living a life of no fixed place and living under the fence, for her, every place needs to rely on a strong male to protect herself, even if it is "human husband", what is the harm? And what made Xiao Si most sad was not that Xiao Ming turned to the arms of his brother Xiao Ma, but that Xiao Ma did not think so: "Girl, this is the case, give her good food and good clothes, fool around, what else can I do?"
At this point, Xiao Si's life beliefs and values were completely destroyed, and he took a dagger to the school gate to try to block the pony, but unexpectedly met Xiao Ming. Until this moment, he still wanted to make one last effort for the ideal, and stressed to Xiaoming without paranoia: "Only I can help you, I am your only hope now." However, his affection and narcissism were crushed by Xiaoming's most ruthless: "Want to change me? I am like this world, this world is not going to change. Who do you think you are?" The accumulating pressure of Xiao Si finally collapsed, and the dagger stabbed at Xiao Ming again and again. The father went from being just and righteous to going with the flow, the best friend stole his girlfriend, and the girl he liked became an inferior person who was looked down upon by others. He couldn't convince Bob, and he didn't know how to save Him. When the integrity of the ego is threatened, narcissism transforms into aggression. We can clearly hear him poking at the same time, while chanting "No face, no breath!" The punishment was both for Bob and for himself, and he chose to paradoxically prove the fairness of the system by sacrificing himself.
We understood where the on-set guards, the director of discipline, the school hospital nurses, and the school teachers, the representatives of the adult society, came from. Social injustice creates resentment in their hearts, and the repression of power compels them to transform this resentment into top-down violence. We also understand where the violent tendencies of those teenagers come from, they learn from the appearance of adults, and they also begin to bully the weak and the weak with impunity. Xiao Si's killing of Xiao Ming was nothing more than a top-down, violent attack on the weak.
For The little four, the director actually lurked a lot of images. Xiao Si began to enter the night department of jianzhong, which meant that it was a world with more darkness than light. His physical symptoms are poor vision, which means that he can't see Xiaoming clearly and the world, and at the same time leads to his misreading of the world (many of his actions have the result of yin and yang). He steals a flashlight from the film set and becomes his other "eye", which participates in gang fighting and sees the rumbling military vehicles at night, but it does not help him to see the world clearly, but witnesses the thicker darkness. Xiao Si finally returned the flashlight, which showed his abandonment of "watching", and even roared at the director on the set: "You can't even tell the real and fake, what other movies are you making?"
In this film, Yang Dechang skillfully snares the messages of that special era in every corner, and uses his voice to establish a temporary experience, a completely immersive world. Even though the film is nearly four hours long, the viewer does not feel procrastinating, but wants to see more cross-sections of that era, because it is not only the youth of young boys and girls that are lost there. Today, with the disappearance of the village, the remnants of Taiwan's association with the mainland have gradually disappeared. The Kuomintang's early totalitarian rule had the opposite effect, with the continued rise of provincial consciousness and "de-Sinicization" in Taiwan, and the original ideological controversy added the meaning of political power grab, becoming more and more simple and narrow. How many people's tears were wiped away in speechlessness, and the orphans of Asia Minor wept in the wind.
As with the lyrics of the song "Black Bat Squadron" about the village:
Some words have been unspoken,
Some of the tears never stopped,
Some of the injuries have never been closed,
Some of the pain has never been woken up.
2021.6.8
![That's how we grew up---- "The Juvenile Murder On Mulling Street"[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)