The writer Zhang Fangyu wrote in "Insights in Isolation" that "the biggest feature of modern civilization is that people exchange a tense spirit for a relaxed material life." From a point of view, the process of modernization that we often talk about is actually a process of "materializing" everything. In the process, the beautiful, poetic, spiritual things that both human beings and nature share are gradually disappearing.
In 2014, director Li Ruijun made a movie called "Home in a Place with Abundant Water and Grass". Li Ruijun focused his lens on the Yugur ethnic minority, which is almost extinct on China's geographical map. This is a nomadic people living by water and grass, and when you walk into the history of the Yugur people, you can see the era of wars and chaos, and you can see the mature and thick national language. However, as industrialization approached, the nation gradually lost its land, homeland, and spiritual belonging.
In the movie, the old people of the Yugur tribe always chant: the closer to the town, the more desolate the grassland. Such fragments of thoughts carry nostalgia for the past years, and also remind the audience that the disappearance of civilization is an irreparable fact. So, two children who have not yet fully understood the meaning of "national culture" cross the vast desert alone to find the home of the once lush water and grass.
We can see a lot of traces of grassland degradation, soil erosion, and the gradual demise of Yugur culture in the film. In addition to the contradiction between man and nature, there is also a gap between people. Although the two children in the movie are brothers, there are many contradictions due to different living environments. The older brother is familiar with the grassland and yearns for the place where the water and grass are abundant, and the younger brother has been immersed in modern civilization and is more looking forward to the life of urbanization.
The characters and plots in the film are not as simple as the story, the grandfather represents the exit of the traditional generation, the father represents the confusion of the middle-aged generation, and the teenager undertakes the cultural mission of finding the tradition, which happens to be the pain of this era. Li Ruijun said, "All civilizations are related to this land, if the environment changes, that civilization will change, and the environment is a way of externalization of the character's heart." A lot has happened in this land... Some things have changed, and some things have not changed, such as the Terracotta Field set up during the han wudi period, which is a very cross-cutting thing to think of. All civilization comes from its way of life, and when the way of life changes, the civilization of the past will naturally disappear. ”
Through these disappearing ecological civilizations and national cultures, we understand the deeper meaning of "Home in a Place with Abundant Water and Grass", the presentation and reflection of the cultural space of ethnic minorities.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > presented: a tragic romance constructed in audiovisual language. </h1>
Since the twentieth century, the creation of minority films has shown the following changes:
Shift from perceptual political writing to rational cultural expression.
Shift from masterful stereotyping to self-expression personalization.
From showing the image of the collective to the telling of individual needs.
Behind this change, there are naturally also changes in audiovisual language. Images can construct the daily life state of an ethnic group, from family personality traits to life attitudes, from national personality to emotional characteristics, from which we can see the transmutation and iteration in the inheritance of cultural change. We cannot judge the nature of this change, but we can be sure that it is an inevitability. Man needs to cater to the laws of existence, which is an immutable truth.
In "Home in a Place with Lush Water and Grass", director Li Ruijun shows us the tragic romance of western civilization through poetic lens language. There are many panoramic shots, empty shots, long shots, and long-range shots in the film. These shots not only show the emptiness and remoteness of the western world, but also show the loneliness and confusion of the Yugur people in that environment. Especially in the face of the demise of the living homeland, Li Ruijun's lens has long ceased to be present, but has gone deep into reality and moved forward in the rift.
When the teenager decided to ride a camel to find a home with abundant water and grass, Li Ruijun chose to use empty lenses and long-range lenses to explain the natural environment and the smallness and powerlessness of people in nature. When presenting the contradiction between the two teenagers, Li Ruijun first used a long-range lens to present the relationship between the two teenagers, walking one after the other, and then used a close-up lens to present the various frictions between the two teenagers. In addition, Li Ruijun also chose to use long shots to show the desertified grasslands and the vast western desert. These poetic shots set the sad emotional tone of the film, and also convey how small and humble the culture of ethnic minorities is in the face of the deteriorating natural environment.
If the language of the lens plays a driving role in the narrative, then the tone of the color can render the emotion. The tone of the film is different from the lens, the choice of the tone of the film is related to the national culture, and the choice of the lens is related to the artistic taste of the director. "Home in a Place with Lush Water and Grass" is a film built on a dusky desert, everything in the movie is dilapidated and rough, the only bright color is the clothing of the Yugur people, after the death of the grandfather, the people in the village come to help deal with the future generations, and the colorful national costumes dissolve the heaviness of the black of death. As teenagers walked in the desert, their brightly colored clothing contrasted strongly with their surroundings, and this contrast implied a new faint hope.
In films that express the culture of ethnic minorities, audiovisual language represents an absolute visual aesthetic, while also having multiple functions of cultural metaphor and driving narrative. When we immerse ourselves in Li Ruijun's poetic lens language, we can feel that what he has done his best to construct is a romantic tragedy.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > reflection: a universal spiritual crisis caused by the impact of modernization. </h1>
In the context of modernization, there are four contradictions that cannot be ignored:
Confrontation and fusion between fishing and hunting culture and modern culture.
A game and compromise between nomadic culture and modern culture.
Hedging and substitution between farming culture and modern culture.
Integration and compromise between ecological culture and modern culture.
Between different cultural shocks, it is not only the geographical landscape that disappears, but also the sense of home that is deeply rooted in people's hearts and minds and in their lives, which we can call the spiritual crisis caused by the impact of modernization. This kind of spiritual crisis is not only the culture of ethnic minorities, I once read such a sentence in Xu Zhiyuan's "A Wanderer's World": "Don't pretend that we are an ancient civilization, the tradition has long been divided, we are a rootless nation, the spirit is desolate, and the forged traditions only exacerbate our hypocrisy and highlight our emptiness and vulnerability." "Spiritual desolation is actually a spiritual crisis.
The Yugurs are a nomadic people who once lived in the vast wind-blown grass and low-lying grasslands of the heavens and the wilderness, but now the grasslands have been seriously degraded, the machine wells cannot get water, and the way of life of the herders for hundreds of years has been seriously affected. The lush grassland of the past, as Grandpa said, was once a golden pasture, and after decades, the rivers dried up, the grassland withered, and it could no longer support the life of the herders. Herders who were forced to change their way of life began to embrace modern civilization little by little, although they still retained the national language, national costumes and national habits. But in their cloudy eyes, they could see their helpless rebellion against nomadic culture and their bow to modern civilization.
The three generations in the film represent lifestyles and mindsets of different periods. In the era when Grandpa lived, he could graze freely and the water and grass were abundant. With the death of grandpa, his father appeared, and his father was looking for a place where water and grass were abundant, but had to accept the changes brought about by industrial society. By the time they got to the teenagers, the grasslands were devastated, and they had to trek through the Gobi Desert and the saline lands in search of their home.
The father is a highly reflective character, he is wrapped up in the times, both to adhere to the nomadic culture, but also to survive, to go with the flow, into the modern society. The irony of the film is that the herders who have been forced to abandon their nomadic lives begin to learn to hold a sieve with their hands that pick up the reins and whips, tear apart the place where the water and grass once looked, looked for ore, and washed the gold sand in the crystal clear river. Thus the rigid mechanical model began to suppress man's personality, causing him to lose the passion of free thought and the impulse to create culture, which is a disease of modern civilization, and its root cause is the atrophy of the life instinct.
Regardless of the story, "Home in a Place with Abundant Water and Grass" is more like an elegy. Since ancient times, the endless grasslands, distant skylines, and slow-paced nomadic careers have all made people have unlimited reverie and longing, which has also cultivated the innate boldness and romance of nomadic peoples. On the other side of the nomadic people, however, we must understand that for thousands of years, the harsh natural environment and the nomadic life of the homeless have given them the heaviness of fate. This heaviness flows in their blood, showing an epic sense of vicissitudes and thickness.
In a sense, reincarnation seems to be an inevitability. Unfortunately, few people can be prepared before this inevitability comes. The Yugur people are the epitome of national culture, from the past to the present, national culture has always been wrapped up in the entire era. Behind the nomads, the decline of culture, the disappearance of grasslands, and the desolation of the environment are an irresistible fate, and this fate is change.
The Yugurs are a tibetan Buddhist people who have spent their entire lives on grasslands and horses before modern civilization has touched on this land, where they herd horses and sheep, marry and have children. The once prosperous national culture has allowed the Yugur people to have an unfettered life that the world envies. However, with the continuous westward progress of industrialization, people on horseback were eventually forced to abandon the traditional way of survival, and the ideal home was disillusioned.