To talk about the extremely heavy mouth and no compromise to reality, Imamura Masahira will be able to occupy a place, his lens is always focused on the lower body and small people, the evil of human nature, the evil of reality, layer by layer tearing bloody to the audience.
As the apprentice of the famous director Yasujiro Ozu, Masahira Imamura is very clear, he knows that the real world is never a paradise that is not stained with dust, so he refuses to create "false sanctity".
The core of the film "The Examination of the Mountain Festival" is placed on the life and death of the elderly, and on this basis, it shows the absurd nature and animal nature of human beings.
The opening scene of the movie is generally a long empty shot like "Love Letter", and the small village covered with snow seems to be a paradise for lay people.
However, in this small village at the foot of the mountain, there is a custom that "when the old man in the village reaches the age of seventy, he must be carried by his son to worship the mountain god".
It is only this trip to worship God that it was actually set up because of the extreme poverty of life and the lack of enough food to feed the elderly who have lost the ability to work.
Although it is a worship of god, it is actually to throw the old man on the mountain and let him kill himself, so as to save rations.
The 69-year-old Ah Ling will be about to enter the mountain, but her body is strong, her teeth are strong, and her ability to catch fish is more advanced than many young people.
In order not to increase the burden on the family, in order not to let the descendants of the family be looked down upon, Ah Ling finally voluntarily carried this "sacred mountain" on the back of her son Chenping.
The film uses nearly a quarter of its length to show Tatsuhito's mother's journey up the mountain.
"Climb up and there's a god waiting, is that true?" Ah Ling nodded, as if comforting her son, as if comforting herself.
As the white bones gradually came into view, reality broke all illusions and exposed all lies.
In the villagers' songs, Ah Ling became the object of "favor" and would be praised forever with the white bones of the mountain. And Chenping will also usher in his own "chaoshan" in torment and helplessness.
The village under the mountain is a altar mixed with the primitive nature of man, and all morality and dignity will be ignored in the face of the vital premise of survival.
Maslow divided people's basic needs from low to high into five levels, namely physiological needs, security needs, social needs, respect needs, and self-actualization needs.
The more low-level the needs, the more similar they are to animals, and only when the low-level needs are realized can we gradually move towards the higher needs.
The need for survival and reproduction is still difficult to satisfy, and ethics and morality can only retreat behind the behavior of survival.
When Asagi and Assun Yunyu were in the rain, they touched her stomach and said, "If it's a boy, kill it, if it's a girl, take it and sell it for money." ”
Babies born in the Lingshan area are likely to be abandoned, and women can give birth to more than a dozen babies in a lifetime, but because they live in poverty, they will be hastily discarded if they cannot feed them.
And baby girls are often able to survive because many people can buy baby girls at a cheaper price than their wives, and when they are raised, they can not only work for the family as wives, but also bring economic benefits of "selling babies" to their families.
Secondly, in a family, usually only the eldest son is eligible to marry, and the second and third sons are called "slave cubs", which are destined to be the life of labor, and may not have the opportunity to contact women until death.
Tatsuhira's younger brother Ritsusuke is such a being, a thirty-five-year-old man has never experienced male and female love, and can only take advantage of the night to secretly make peace with the neighbor's little white dog.
Lisuke was disheveled all day and naturally smelly, Ah Ling went around asking for help from the women in the village, but no one was willing to sleep with Lisuke, until finally she found an old woman with a sense of smell failure and fulfilled her son's wish in the stable.
In addition, there are lynchings such as "burial alive" in the villages of The Mountain.
In the film, the rain house family steals food to solve their own food problems, and after being discovered, they are beaten by the whole village.
Villagers believe that the Rain House family steals things because of blood, because their previous generation also stole things. Therefore, the villagers decided to bury them alive to exterminate the Yuwu family. The daughter of the Yuya family, Ah Song, who was already married to Tatsuhira's son, was also given a plate of potatoes by Ah Ling that afternoon for her to take home, and that night, the Yu House family, including Ah Song, was buried under the loess soil by everyone.
Similar to films such as Shohei Imamura's Pigs and Warships, "The Kao of the Mountain Festival" uses a large number of animal close-ups to help express thoughts on the survival and reproduction of life.
For example, when there is a sex scene, the scenes of frogs hugging each other and moths crossing their tails are inserted and alternating; when Asayoshi and Assun discuss the child, there is a shot of the snake giving birth; when Ah Ling asks Asson to return to the rain house, there are also owl symbolizing death.
The harsh environment has led to the lack of civilization, and man as a high-class animal is only left with the advantages of appearance and language.
Masahira Imamura has responded to the expression of many sexualities in his creations:
"I care about the relationship between the lower body and the bottom of society, who are deeply rooted in the daily life of japanese people."
At the end of the movie, heavy snow comes, and Ah Ling sits among the white bones and jackdaws, calmly greeting death in a silver wrapper.
Her calmness makes the audience sigh and can't help but cry, but she will not be disdained because she sticks to her bad habits.
But in fact, Ah Ling seems to be active in going up the mountain, but in fact, there is no other choice, there are only two roads in front of her, take the initiative to calmly go up the mountain, or passively cry up the mountain.
It is her understanding that reality has no way out, which makes her a "noble" character.
The old man of the Qianwu family, on the contrary, reached the age when he should go up the mountain but did not want to go up the mountain, and the son tied up his father without hesitation, and in order to save food, he cut off his father's diet before going up the mountain.
On the day of going up the mountain, the old man grabbed his son and did not let go, begging his son not to abandon him, but instead let his son kick him directly off the cliff.
Since the birth of human beings, the emergence of each custom has been inseparable from the local environment, and the Festival of the Mountain seems to be just the death of individuals, but it is a common behavior of human beings to sacrifice individuals to preserve the collective.
If it happens to be one of them, everyone is likely to be the staunchest supporter of the practice.
Legend has it that After reading the script of "Pigs and Warships", Ozu Yasujiro frowned and asked Imamura Changping, "Why do you always want to shoot maggot-like people?" ”
Masahira Imamura replied, "I will write maggots until I die." ”