丨This article was first published in the Pippi movie
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There is a habit in China that people who are away from home must be decent when they go home.
And this decency must be all-round.
For example, we must pick a sunny afternoon to arrive home, so that the old and young masters of the village have eaten and gathered at the head of the village to nag. Then inadvertently drove the car into the field next to it, and when everyone came to help, they pretended to take out a bag of Chinese and scattered.
Although I usually buckle the rope and am only willing to smoke a few dollars a pack, the scene must be supported.
After greeting all the fathers and villagers who could not remember what they were called, they all greeted each other with a smile, drove the car to the door of the house in the eyes and discussion of everyone, opened the trunk, and carried all kinds of New Year goods bought with hard-earned money into the house.
While gasping for breath, he shouted, "Mom, I can't finish eating these in the unit and bring them back." ”
More importantly, the body should also be dressed decently, and there is a technical term called what to wear: the battle robe.
No, there is a saying in rural Guangdong:
There is no eight or two gold on the man, what kind of man is it?
And the movie we're going to talk about today is called "Eight Two Golds."
This is the last part of Hong Kong director Cheung Wanting's "Immigration Trilogy", the first two of which are "Illegal Immigration" and "Autumn Fairy Tale".
In an article, Zhang Wanting recalled that the reason for creating the "Immigration Trilogy" was because in 1983 China and Britain began negotiations on the future of Hong Kong, and she was studying film in New York at the time, so she "began to pay attention to this strange motherland, trying to make up for China's history, and pursue her long-forgotten roots."
Originally from Guangdong, Zhang Studied English Literature and Psychology at the University of Hong Kong, and later studied drama and literature at the University of Bristol. In 1982, she entered the prestigious New York University to study film, and became a classmate of Ang Lee and others.
As a cross-cultural female director, Zhang Wanting has a Western education background and a unique perspective on traditional Chinese culture and Local Culture in Hong Kong.
In the Hong Kong film industry, which is full of swords and rivers, brotherly righteousness and light-heartedness, Zhang Wanting has turned hundreds of steels into soft fingers, exploring Hong Kong's history and memory with gentle and meticulous brushstrokes, and recording the metaphysical thinking of Hong Kong people on identity.
In 1989, five years after China and Britain signed a "Joint Statement" on Hong Kong's future. In the face of the major historical changes that are coming, some Hong Kong people have responded passively, and emigration to foreign countries has become a "trend" for a while.
In this year, Zhang Wanting went against the "trend" and returned to the mainland for the first time to shoot the literary and art film "Eight Two Gold". This was her first substantive intimate contact with her cultural hometown, and in the 31 years since the film's release, it has been regarded as a classic by countless "petty bourgeois" fans.
What makes fans even more surprised is that in this full literary film, the male protagonist is actually starred by Hong Jinbao.
Perhaps in the minds of most fans, Hong Jinbao is just a rough man who shoots martial arts dramas, but in fact, it is not.
Hong Jinbao came from a film family, and his grandfather Hong Ji was the younger brother of Hong Shen, one of the early founders of Chinese drama and cinema, and a famous film tycoon and director in LaoShang Beach. His grandmother, Qian Xiangying, was China's first generation of martial arts actresses and was called "China's first female heroine" by the audience.
In addition to being a famous martial arts director, Hong Jinbao also has another little-known identity - the pioneer of early Hong Kong literary and art films.
In 1985, he took his disciple Jackie Chan to try the literary film "The Heart of the Dragon" for the first time, in which he played Jackie Chan's mentally handicapped brother and harvested the tears of many audiences.
And this "Eight Two Gold" is another of his later literary and artistic films, the reason why the film is successful, in addition to the skill of director Zhang Wanting, it is impossible to leave Hong Jinbao's wonderful performance.
The hero of the film is named "Thin Monkey" (Hong Jinbao), but he is not thin or like a monkey at all, but round and chubby.
Monkey is a taxi driver in New York, but speaks super bad English and swears wildly.
It's hard to imagine this being a man who smuggled into the United States for a full sixteen years.
In order to be able to "return home", the monkey specially asked his friend to borrow a few gold and put eight or two gold belts on his body, and also bought a few "Boston lobsters" so that the people in his hometown could see the "American lobster".
In addition, the monkey also bought a pack of Statue of Liberty-style lighters, although the base is marked "made in china", but who cares!
He doesn't care, he looks like American goods!
After being busy for a while, the monkey finally got on the plane back to China.
As a result, there was a wave of small "air disasters" on the road, and the flight attendant took out a blank paper for the passengers to write a suicide note.
The monkey didn't want to write (couldn't write), so he recorded it with a tape recorder at hand.
He confessed on the tape recorder: "Mommy and Daddy, please don't bury me in the United States after I die, I have a terrible English, and I don't want to deal with these foreign devils anymore... I ask you to take the gold on my body and give it back..."
Before I could finish speaking, the plane was normal.
The film then takes nearly half an hour to vividly express the sense of cultural separation and strangeness that the monkeys experienced when they first set foot on their homeland. This kind of "culture shock" encountered by the monkey must also be a true portrayal of Zhang Wanting's own complicated inner feelings when she first returned to the mainland of the motherland.
Contrary to the envious and admiring eyes of the imaginary fathers and fellow villagers, as soon as the monkey stepped on the land of his hometown, the suit on his body was never clean again, and he experienced various embarrassments.
First the parents are not at home, and then the car can not find the way to fall into the mud and get covered in mud, that is called a miserable, which is like the United States back, the original shape is exposed, not at all beautiful.
But fortunately, the monkey meets his childhood playmate cousin "Wuzu Po" (Zhang Aijia).
The tomboy of that year has now grown into a big girl. I heard that my cousin has already decided on a family affair, and when spring arrives, the groom who opens a restaurant in New York's Chinatown will marry her and enter the door.
The reunion of two deceased people brings not only memories, but also new feelings, and the two people gradually have feelings in the process of getting along.
As the plot progresses, we know that when the monkey left home, it was the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and in the sixteen years after leaving home, the monkey only wrote a letter to his home.
In order to reassure the old mother at home, the father of the monkey could only write a letter imitating his son's handwriting every year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and then send it home.
Exactly thirteen letters, almost blinding the eyes of the mother of the monkey.
"Eight Two Gold" seems to be a romance film, but in fact it has a deep historical background. The director is not only depicting people, but also the changes that the land of China has experienced in the past ten years.
So we saw not only the high-end revolving restaurant where my cousin worked, but also the classroom with three graves in front of the blackboard.
There are not only people returning from the United States and people who are about to go to the United States, but also midwives who rely on feudal superstitions to deliver babies...
This complex environment where tradition and modernity blend really exist, and it hits the heart of the monkey and also hits Zhang Wanting's heart.
In the past ten years in the United States, the fine monkey saved money to save money and quickly squandered little.
First invited the whole village to dinner, and then wrapped the red envelope, and the monkey sister gave birth to a child and cost money.
Coupled with witnessing the poverty of the childhood school lagging behind the heart, the monkey donated the rest of the money to the school.
Even the eight or two gold, the fine monkey melted, and then hit a piece of gold jewelry for the cousin as a dowry.
My cousin's wedding date was in the spring, when all the red flowers on the trees were falling, it was when she got married.
So the monkey climbed up to the tree and tied the red flowers one by one.
But spring still came, and my cousin also took a flower boat away in the sound of fireworks in bloom.
Return and departure, which also shows the endless drift and rootlessness of immigrant groups. Just as the hero at the end climbs up the hill and looks devastated, he is still in a deep identity crisis.
Whether it's a monkey who works as a driver in New York or a cousin who is about to fly thousands of miles away to open a restaurant in Chinatown, the United States, they are all others in modern Western cities. Just as the monkeys have been abroad for more than ten years and still can't speak English, they are out of place "exiles".
As Sayyid said, "Because exiles look at things in both the way they are left behind and the reality of the here and now, they have a dual perspective and never look at things in isolation... Comparison can not only look at the current situation of things, but also see the causes. ”
The marginalization of immigrant groups and the diversity of cultural backgrounds allow them to examine the differences between cultures from a more macro and sober perspective, and to face life with a more open-minded attitude.
As Zhang Wanting herself said of immigrant groups: "Because they have no identity, their language and living habits are different from those of the West, so that although they have been in the United States for more than ten years, they still cannot integrate into Western society,...... Their backgrounds are complex, and they have lived a life of upheaval and displacement, but their attitude towards life is more optimistic and open-minded than that of those of us who grew up in the greenhouse,...... Behind the appearance of Hanger Lang Dang, they contain amazing fighting spirit, tenacious vitality, surprising sense of humor and self-deprecation of seeing through the world! ”
There are many good directors who have cross-cultural education backgrounds, such as Ang Lee, Wanting Zhang, Jim. Jarmusch, Apichatpong, etc.
Therefore, their works all have a new examination of their own national culture, more objective and more comprehensive.
The nostalgia in Zhang Wanting's "Eight Two Gold" is also the nostalgia in Yan Hao's "Like Water Flowing Year".
This feeling is complex, tangled, but ultimately sincere.
Although my cousin left in a flower boat, although the director did not give a happy ending, we all know:
This is our motherland, this is our hometown.
Thousands of miles, a thousand words, can not change all this.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Tong Yunxi
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