"Eight years ago, one night on Christmas Eve, I asked you to come here, did you come?"
"Are you here?"
Under the temptation of pretending to be relaxed, Li Fei, the girl played by Zhou Dongyu, revealed a smile of unclear meaning.
This is a black story that takes place in the northeast environment of the 90s, a girl who yearns for the south but has family difficulties and a kind boy who has no yearning and family discord, two young boys and girls who are on the edge of reality, in the waiting for a fire, fate runs differently.
Based on Shuang Xuetao's novel Moses on the Plains, the film "Flames on the Plains" was not only shortlisted for the main competition unit of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, but also received nominations for the "Golden Shell Award" and "The Most Anticipated Chinese Film".
Moses on the Plains
The disparity in identity, the emotional estrangement, and the cruel reality of seeing each other again are already the cruel reality of the police and the suspect's daughter, can the two redeem each other in fate? We might as well try to find the answer in the novel.
A crime story full of coincidences
Li Fei likes matches and loves fire.
On Christmas Eve, 1995, on December 24, she packed her bag with gasoline and prepared to go to a sorghum field to burn a Christmas tree made of fire for the tree.
It was from this day that fate changed irreversibly.
Shortly after the winter of 1995, two taxi drivers died in the city, and a month later, the number of cases grew to five. According to the evidence remaining at the scene, the deceased were strangled with nylon rope and then abandoned in the wilderness. The police judged from the damage to the car at the scene that the murderer must have brought his own diesel or gasoline.
So in order to catch the murderer, the policeman Jiang Bufan disguised himself as a taxi driver and got out of the car. On Christmas Eve, he met Li Fei's father and daughter. Father Li told Jiang Bufan that they were going to a Chinese medicine hall near Yanfan Street. On the way to the junction of urban and rural areas, Jiang Bufan smelled the gasoline in Li Fei's school bag.
The snow was already heavy, and the wind was blowing deep into the neck. Just as Jiang Bufan shot Li's father, a large truck rushed obliquely towards here. Since then, the Zhuang family has moved away, and the Zhuang and Li families have not heard from them again. It was not until 2007 that the two chengguan murder cases linked Zhuang Shu and Li Fei again. Zhuang Shu, who has become a policeman, realized after seeing Li Fei that he was also a participant and promoter of the murder that year.
As one of the masterpieces of Shuang Xuetao, "Moses on the Plain" is full of a sense of confusion, redemption, dependence and edge. As the critic Huang Ping said: "Under the suspenseful black story, Moses on the Plains is like the story in the Bible, a simple poem." ”
Although the novel is a modernist narrative technique, the core of the story is realistic. From 1983 to 2007, in the past 24 years, Shenyang has experienced both earth-shaking institutional changes and layoffs, as well as a sense of separation in the rapid economic development after the millennium.
Just like in 2007, as Zhuang Shu told, the sorghum field at the scene of the crime has long been covered with high-rise buildings, and the dirt road has become a four-lane mooring road. The grass when Jiang Bufan, who was seriously injured, was found became the territory of the large supermarket chain Wal-Mart.
The book presents 14 alternating narratives from the perspective of 7 people, presenting different people's different understandings of the same thing. In particular, the absence of the perspective of the important character Li Father makes the novel covered with an ethereal and alienating temperament, allowing readers to see the flowers in the fog and explore the moon in the water in the full picture of the events that are fully pieced together.
Some readers say that "Moses on the Plain" is about the contradiction between fate and the individual, and people struggle between fate, but they can never break free. Just like Father Li lent money to the Sun family to open a medical center, he had good intentions but was not treated well by fate; Li Fei was brilliant, but she was repulsed by promises; even the criminal police officer Zhuang Shu's dedication to justice ended up only discovering that justice and its two sides.
At the end of the novel, Zhuang Shu and Li Fei each row a boat on the lake, and they talk about the crime and punishment caused by the unannounced covenant that year. Li Fei said that I had a premonition that you would not come, but in the evening I still decided to go, and I promised you. And Zhuang Shu can't even remember the fireworks covenant, only that we were all children at that time, and now we are all grown up, right.
From the green plum bamboo horse to their respective ends, the lake is leisurely, and the two people separated by boats are doomed to wait for Moses to divide the sea, perhaps "Moses on the Plain" is a story without miracles.
Double Snow Tao and Yan Pink Street group portrait
The father who plays chess in school uniform, the rogue old horse in the factory, the monk who returns from prison, the wandering poet Lao Xiao, the girl who disappeared with Leningrad, my friend Andrei... "Moses on the Plain" is composed of ten short stories, under the labyrinth of the story of Yan pink Street, presenting the northern picture of the end of the century and the struggle of good and evil of people who have fallen off the gears of the times.
Located in the south of Tiexi District of Shenyang, Yanfan Street, formerly known as Yanfantun, was a place where rouge crops were grown during the Qing Dynasty, a slum in the Republic of China, and a street organization was formed in the mid-1950s. Singer Ai Jing once sang in "The Story of Yan Pink Street":
My childhood home lived on Pink Street, where there are many stories that happen
I don't have a nice stroller, my game is jumping squares
The adults are busy alive and I love five cents of candy
The three of us sisters were mom and dad's joy, even though I didn't have a passbook at home
It can be seen that the economic outlook of Yanfan Street at that time, but for the writer Shuang Xuetao, Yanfan Street is not only the place where he grew up, but also the place where the characters in his books breathe and breathe. In "Out of Grad", Shuang Xuetao wrote:
"1988's Pink Street was between city and country. To be precise, it is not a street, but an abandoned old city, belonging to what is commonly known as the Three Noose Zones. The peasants who came into the city took this place as a starting point, and the discouraged citizens took it as a retreat, and it was difficult to say exactly what year and month it was formed, but when I got there, it had expanded in size, like a swamp, hiding dirt and dirt, and it was endless. ”
So in "Moses on the Plain", Yanfan Street is still just a simple place name, and the medical center where Li Fei wants to go is there. In "The Hall of Light" and "Out of Grad", Yanfan Street seems to have become a subject. The Red Star Billiard Hall, the Four Camps of Coal And Electricity, the garbage piled behind the house and the muddy land when the snow melts, are ideal places that serve as an outlet to break through reality and accommodate people abandoned by the city.
Therefore, in "My Friend Andre", this classmate who does not play cards according to common sense and is full of human feelings is finally sent to a mental hospital; in "Rogue", a "lower three abuses" father can also become a brave person who smashes his own head with a wine bottle to help others get back the lamp; in "Master", the father of the opponent can also choose to abandon his son and surrender because of the legless monk at the moment of victory or defeat in the chess game...
As Shuang Xuetao said: "When I go to write, my purpose is to write about a person and a person's destiny." It's just his fate, just a person's sorrow and joy, just a person's rise and fall. In fact, if you think about it carefully, it is very worth writing. "And many of these people who cast reality and imagination live in Yanfan Street."
"Camouflage costumes with disguise" and "self-deprecation"
On the waist seal of the novel "The Aviator", there is a sentence that "leaves some fictional records for those who are insulted and damaged, for precious moments in our human nature." This is also manifested in Shuang Xuetao's other northeastern writings, Yanfan Street, Hongqi Square, Spring Wind Dance Hall, Shadow Lake... People living here either walk close to the ground, or have romance and paradoxes that rise up in the air.
The famous Chinese writer Su Tong once likened Shuang Xuetao's works to "camouflage clothes with disguises", because it is difficult for Shuang Xuetao's works to judge where its literary nutrition comes from, "He is good at disguise and self-covering, which is good writing." And his conscious departure from Yanfan Street was also called "new life" and "self-judgment" by Su Tong.
However, no matter how Shuang Xuetao pursues and reinvents himself, he really brings topics such as the cold of northeast China, heavy industry, and collectives back to the public's vision. When talking about Li Fei in the movie "Flames on the Plain", Zhou Dongyu said that "Li Fei in his youth is the most free character in the film." She dared to think and dare to do it, and she had the shadow of Fu Dongxin on her body, but she "lived much more thoroughly than Fu Dongxin." ”
In the novel, Fu Dongxin goes to find Father Li, who is both Zhuang Shu's mother and Li Fei's "teacher". Zhuang Shu said, "Maybe in her eyes, it doesn't matter what I do, I'm not the kind of person she wants", and Li Fei is different, she not only teaches Li Fei to read, but also teaches her everything at the bottom of the box. At Li Fei's house, Fu Dongxin told Li's father that he had been her father's savior, and that the person who had killed her uncle was Zhuang Dezeng (Zhuang Shu's father). So she fights marriage with silence, she seems to have the freedom to travel the world and paint, but she is also a member of the cage of the heart.
Although "Flames on the Plain" is not the first cooperation between Shuang Xuetao and filmmakers, "Moses on the Plain" undoubtedly has the potential to become an excellent literary film. Although it does not have the imagination and rich text space of "Assassination of a Novelist", it also has an airtight emotional space and traces of the times.
Speaking about the writing of "Moses on the Plain", Shuang Xuetao once said that "many times I felt that my patience had been exhausted, as if a protracted and demanding too much love, irritable and deeper because of noise", "When I wrote about it, I realized that I had walked into the wilderness and saw several figures in the distance, but they smiled at me, did not give me directions, looked back, everywhere had collapsed, there was nowhere to go, I had only myself, this was a terrible and lonely moment, All I can do is one thing: try to maintain my dignity."
Those who go are not to be advised, but those who come can be traced. It is better for us to go to this fiery flame covenant together in the world of shuangxuetao's words.
Recommended Reading:
Journey to the Northeast
Winter Swimming
The Aviator
The Age of the Deaf
The Getaway
Dr. Zhang and Dr. Wang
Dust
Outline of Northeast China History