Today I see a sharing, which is an autobiographical novel, or essay, written by Jin Yong in his later years
"Moon Clouds".
It is written about a handmaiden who mortgaged her family when she was a child, writing that she was grateful for accidentally eating a sugar rice cake, writing that she would rather not eat and sleep at the feet of her parents, but it is impossible... Later, I was also displaced and never inquired about her again.
At the end of the article, Jin Yong wrote:
"Jin Yong's novels are not well written. However, he always felt that he should not bully the weak and make people have no ability to resist and endure great pain, so he wrote martial arts novels. When he was writing, and when he reread his work later, he often wept over the misfortunes of the characters in the book. He wrote that Yang Guo cried out when the sun went down when he could not wait for the little dragon girl; he wrote that Zhang Wuji cried when he was forced to break up with Xiao Zhao; he wrote that Xiao Feng cried even more sadly when he killed his beloved Aju because of a misunderstanding; he wrote that the poor Zhong Asi family in Foshan Town was boiling with blood when he killed the bully Feng Tiannan, and he slapped the table with anger and slapped his palms with pain. He knew that these were all false, but there were many more sad real things in the world, many others, and many of his own. ”
When Jin Yong died, we wrote an article "Let's Say Goodbye", which wrote that Jin Yong's "I also have a lot": the young man lost his mother, the young man lost his father, the old man lost his son, and fell in love with a person and could not ...
Like this self-condition in his later years, the humanitarianism in his works is mostly derived from his own empathy.
The same is true of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, tall and grumpy, but his heart is actually very sensitive, and he can't put down the theme of humanity all his life, joking that he is a "humanitarian weeping ghost".
March 23 marks the 110th anniversary of his birth.
Why do < h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > like "preaching"? </h1>
In his biography, Akira Kurosawa repeatedly spoke of his anger at the hypocritical teachers in elementary school, the instructors who embarrassed students in middle school, the people who were full of fear and murder during the earthquake, the women who abused his ex-wife's children, the matchmakers who slandered him for no reason, and the prosecutors of the Ministry of the Interior in wartime, "all of them are people with unsound nerves." They were all persecutory paranoias, all with the character traits of sadists, masochists, and pornographers," "there is nothing more abominable than the petty officials and micro-officials who were very tame by the power of the special era," and on the eve of Japan's defeat, he even made a vow with his friends that if the emperor ordered the people to "crush the jade," they would kill the prosecutors before committing suicide.
It can be said that this 1.81-meter Japanese man still maintains the ancient style of a samurai family, his father was a trained army general, a respected instructor, who deliberately let Kurosawa learn kendo and lived a "field samurai" life in the countryside.
Guiding Akira Kurosawa on the path of cinema was his older brother, who worked as a silent film commentator in a movie theater, and he recommended that his brother watch many movies, all of which later proved to be classics.
But at the time, Kurosawa didn't know his way out, but greedily instilled in his mind the knowledge of art, literature, drama, music and film, "I have been wandering for myself to have a place to play." ”
Later, because of his brother's suicide, he had to take on the responsibility of supporting his family before he applied to the film company as an assistant director.
In Kurosawa's view, his brother's talent is much higher than his, but because he failed the exam, "world-weary philosophy occupies his clever mind." ”
The urgency of Akira Kurosawa's humanitarian preaching stems from this.
In his films, whether it is a petty official facing death ("The Desire to Live") or a "Seven Samurai" who is not paid three meals, it is a salvation for indifference and stubbornness.
As the line in the last scene of "Sunset Love": "Everyone has to find what they like most, and once they find it, they will work hard for it." ”
"Dreams"
There is a funeral scene in "Dreams", where the old man says, "A man lives well, works very well, works hard all his life, and when he dies, people congratulate him." ”
There is also a "Peach Blossom" passage in the front that recreates his reunion with his little sister who died of illness at the age of 16.
This is the most observant Akira Kurosawa, whose early works were full of death, disease, poverty and suffering, and who at this time became invisible as a wise man of the East, more than 30 years after his suicide in 1971, in which he only shot Desu Uzara, Shadow Samurai and Chaos.
The former won the 1976 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film to announce his recovery, and he began to write an autobiography, telling a peaceful story: "In the mountains, there is a special kind of toad, which is not only uglier in appearance than its kind, but also has a few more legs." After people grab it and put it in front of a mirror or in a glass box, the toad can't help but be frightened out of the oil when it sees its ugly face. This oil is also a precious medicinal material used by the folk to treat burns and burns. ”
At the same time as self-deprecating, he also quoted Nakamura Kusuda's poem: "Looking back at the willow dark flowers ming to weep, but the newborn calves are not afraid."
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > "humanitarian mourner"</h1>
The screenwriter of "Drunken Angel" Uekusa once accused Akira Kurosawa of being a natural strong man because he insisted on creating a doctor with ideals and strong humanitarian ideas, and had nothing to do with regret, despair, humiliation, and so on.
Akira Kurosawa argues that he is just "putting on a mask of a strong man in order to resist the suffering of man... I am neither a particularly strong person nor a person of special talents. I am just a person who does not want to show weakness to others, does not want to lose to others, and therefore works tirelessly. ”
He even joked that planting grass is a "romantic weeping ghost" and himself a "humanitarian weeping ghost".
Akira Kurosawa's autobiography is full of teachings and technical explanations from people who have come over, just as the wise old man who appears in his movies is always facing the stinking guy.
"I really like people who don't have dry milk. Maybe it's because I'm always smelly and undried. Anyway, I have infinite interest in things that are not completed but are in the process of completion. ”
His humanitarian ideals, from 1943's "Zi Sanshiro" to 1965's "Red Beard," almost all have such a "master-apprentice" balance. His heroes often come and go as alone as the Cowboys of the West, but they do not refuse to "learn", presumably because they also have the task of changing the world, "Kurosawa's works have a heroic humanism that is close to Western values." Most of his films focus on depicting individual desires to restrain themselves and dedicate themselves to the benefit of others. (Bodeville) This was a great encouragement to Japan's post-war renaissance.
In Akira Kurosawa's early films, there are some dirty, ugly broken houses. "Lower Class", "Red Beard", "Wild Dog", "Rashomon", "Seven Samurai" and so on, are all like this.
This insight is also due to my brother.
After the Great Kanto Earthquake, my brother took him to see the hellish ruins, "When I involuntarily turned my back on my face and didn't look at it, my brother scolded me: 'Xiaoming, take a good look!'" ’”
Later, he moved to the long row of houses and alleys rented by his brother, and the occupants seemed to be all people who survived the earthquake.
They lived a hard life, but they were quick to live, full of humor and humor, but also hid a terrible and extremely dark side: an old man raped his young granddaughter; a woman who went crazy every night and said that she was going to commit suicide, arguing that everyone was not at peace, one night she wanted to hang under the eaves, and was ridiculed and ridiculed by everyone, and she jumped into the well and died; and there was a child whose stepmother abused his ex-wife, kurosawa ran to release the girl, but was coldly refused, "I can untie her straps, However, she could not be rescued from the situation that bound her. For this child, people's sympathy is meaningless. ”
In Redbeard, The Lower Class, and Trolley Mania, there are abused girls in mental purgatory.
With his brother's income, he did not have to live in the slums, and in the hearts of those people, "my brother is like a wandering samurai, and he is looked at differently by everyone." "The heroes of Akira Kurosawa also have this fascinating, almost aristocratic mysterious decision, or the humanitarianism of personal decisions.
Kurosawa akira often does not pick out the more specific background of the chaotic world, and uses many storms, thus isolating the protagonist from the outside world, not pushing the responsibility for depravity to Satan or society, but must honestly face his own desires, good and evil.
But as Japan's renaissance progressed, the practical value of its humanitarian ideas was gradually abandoned by a young audience that had grown up during the boom, said the American scholar Audi Bowck, "who tend to be self-centered, anti-sad, and conservative materialists." They prefer to be intimidated rather than encouraged. ”
While they admired how anyone could make a movie like "Seven Samurai" and "Heart Stick", they also avoided preaching like "Red Beard".
On the contrary, Akira Kurosawa believes that the violent spectacle of samurai films violates humanity, he wants to make a serious movie to teach justice, and the two roads have since forked, causing Akira Kurosawa to gradually embark on the puzzle of loss, despair, suicide, and relief, and his own human entanglement is no easier than the movie.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the wasteland of human nature</h1>
The sensation of "Rashomon" in Europe mostly caused discussions on narrative concepts, but for Akira Kurosawa, it was the most solid expression of his unpredictability: "This script describes the nature of people who cannot live without false decorations." It can even be said that even if a person dies, he will not give up the illusion, which shows how deep man's sins are. ”
During this period, Japan was observing the changes in the world, and it itself was gradually changing.
Kurosawa wants to inject honesty, integrity, and frankness into Japan, and the "samurai" are therefore far more difficult than cowboys, and the first contradiction is to see through and even use false ornaments:
In "I Have No Regrets about Youth", the protagonist hides his loyalty to communism in order to subvert capitalism, "The Man Who Stepped on the Tiger's Tail", "Wild Dog", "Heaven and Hell" and "Warring States Hero" are stories that rely on disguise to achieve their goals, "Lazy Sleeper" and "Scandal" are flipped several times between reality and illusion, and the thrilling suspense falls on human nature, which is Kurosawa's most brilliant place.
Therefore, compared to the good and evil of western films, Kurosawa's hero must be a wise man who sees through human nature and is not bound by convention, Inspector Sato skillfully smokes and talks with female prisoners in "Wild Dogs"; Redbeard Doctor uses the scandal of the local governor to blackmail him into donating money to patients; Nakashiro in "Heaven and Hell" must win a commercial conspiracy to master the company in order to make the ideal shoe; in "Seven Samurai", the guards pretend to be monks, and the farmer Kikuchiyo pretends to be a samurai, which is not so much a collapse of class identity. Rather, the "freedom" of these true heroes to peek through the skin, Kurosawa obviously prefers the rebellion of Toshiro Mifune's character to Katsushiro's deference, which is a prerequisite for learning from the wise, and Tsubaki Warns the Young Samurai that "people are not really as they appear."
"Chaos"
In fact, from "Zi Sanshiro" to "Sunset Love", most works have stories of disciples receiving education from older wise men, which in Kurosawa's view is a condition for personal struggle (he also mentions his mentors at different stages of life in many places), and it is also a reminder of Japan's strength and freedom from loneliness.
Like "The Desire of Life" and "The Record of the Living", it is very miserable to find the meaning of life alone, and completely refuse to "learn" and let desire develop, which will stage the tragedy of "Spider's Nest City", and when the elder (Xiuhu) in "Chaos" is unwise, it is even more in a situation where there is no way to save. It can be said that Akira Kurosawa made films with obvious social intentions into dramas of human nature itself.
Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune
Like Zi Sanshiro, Akira Kurosawa is a person who can overcome the environment, has a simple and flexible personality, but he is attracted to Gennosuke's kind of person who is defeated by the environment and situation due to his strong personality, and finally dies out.
The fate of the latter's defeat is unleashed in Zi Sanshiro, culminating in Spider's Nest, Shadow Samurai, and Chaos, as it is also a tragedy that Shakespeare likes to depict. After a series of "failures", Kurosawa's heavy responsibility of changing the nation and giving positive hints to society is also liberated, and the artist's unavoidable loneliness and crazy humanity are released like the tiger in "Chaos" walking on the wasteland.
If the desolation of the samurai and the indifference of the peasants after the collapse of the class in "Seven Samurai" are still typical of the Japanese national character, the later films show more and more delicate and fierce desires, which is an exploration of universal human nature, love, sexual desire, power, conquest, admiration, shame, fear, despair, etc. are magnified, and finally all go to destruction.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the heroic dilemma of the "emperor"</h1>
It is said that when Akira Kurosawa met with the Emperor of Japan, he bluntly said, "I am also the Emperor." "Make the other party laugh."
He did not hide his desire to improve Japanese culture, "My biggest dream is to transform Japan and become the prime minister, and Japan's political level is the lowest." And he relies on the simple and crisp heroism and bright and high morale of the Western, a kind of masculinity.
He valued the era in which he grew up: "My elementary school was in the early Taisho period, and the meiji afterglow was still endless. The songs sung in elementary school are all bright and cheerful tones. ...... In the Meiji era, I thought that as described in Sima Liaotaro's work "Clouds on the Slope", they lived in the mood of looking at the distant clouds above the hillside and ascending the slope. ”
He later became at odds with the film industry, in part because of his disdain for the younger generation's "fragile, decaying spirit of relying on others." ”
He accused them of failing to take responsibility for the decline of Japanese cinema, as he did for the country during Japan's postwar renaissance.
It is this high standard that makes Kurosawa Akira until "RedBeard" unswervingly create a perfect hero with tenacious vitality, no matter what kind of test, must rush through, at least fall with dignity.
"The Japanese are not very respected in the world, but the samurai who are their symbols are an exception. Through Kurosawa's films, people saw the essence of the Japanese samurai: sense of responsibility, sense of mission, self-esteem, self-sacrifice, and the courage to be fearless in the face of death. Tadao Sato said.
Red Beard
The search for perfection is widely known in "The Desire to Be Born" and "Seven Samurai", reaching its peak in "Red Beard", and then superman becomes a madman in "Chaos", and finally disappears into the whisper of "Dream".
Because the perfect man always has to face his own imperfections alone, not the temptations of the devil, the greatest threat to them can only come from death and disease, in a sense of fate: venereal disease in "Quiet Duel", tuberculosis in "Drunken Angel", cancer in "Desire to Live", the death of samurai, murder and fufa in crime stories, as well as nuclear horror in "Record of the Living", war in "August Rhapsody" recalled, and so on.
In his later years, "Dream", "August Rhapsody" and "Sunset Love" are not so much about the concept of life and death, but rather the obsession with this threat, and his entire film and life are actually "the desire to live": life, glory and death.
When talking about the early deaths of his sister and brother, as well as relatives and friends such as Naruse, Takizawa, Fumizu, and Inoue, Kurosawa laments that they have not been able to complete their lives and ideals than sadness.
The suicide of 1971 was speculated to be related to the failure of Tiger Tiger and Trolley Frenzy, which was seen by mean critics as the bankruptcy of Akira Kurosawa's "humanism at the level of middle school students" (Yukio Mishima).
Later, Akira Kurosawa did not express this tendency explicitly, and turned to the visual spectacle and madness of human nature in Shadow Samurai and Chaos.
But between the requirements of the times (perfect, superhuman) and the turn to spiritual adventure (madman), what is broken is undoubtedly ordinary people, weak people, or sinful people, such as the scoundrel that Uebausa likes very much ("Drunken Angel"), or the various small people that his American disciples are very good at shaping, but this is the "mediocrity" that the tough "emperor" is not willing to get involved in. Until the last "Sunset Love", although the mood is very daily and peaceful, the persistence and pride of perfect humanity are still obvious, and even somewhat contrived.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > ambiguous Japan</h1>
In a speech entitled "The Ambiguous Japanese Me" at the Nobel Prize in Literature, Kenzaburo Oe said that Japan's modernization is characterized as an imitation of the West, but it is located in Asia, and the Japanese also firmly and continuously guard traditional culture, and this ambiguous process has left Japan in a political, social, and cultural isolation.
The speech was aimed at Yasunari Kawabata's "The Beautiful Japan Of Me" about Zen and haiku, and "this powerful and sharp ambiguity that tears the country and the people apart" is exactly what the latter wants to hide, which is probably the collective unconscious of the Japanese nation: on the one hand, learning from the West, on the other hand, despising those who flaunt the West.
Akira Kurosawa unfortunately became the target of this ambiguity because, like John Ford's Westerns, he focused on the value of the characters' individual actions, trying to change the world, rather than emphasizing harmony, teamwork, and responsibility for the family as the average Japanese movie does.
Only a few believe that the self-determination, moral behavior, and sustained spiritual growth of Akira Kurosawa's films stem from Zen teachings and Bushido.
However, Kurosawa Akira frankly said that his hometown is the earth, "people can send satellites into the universe, but mentally they will not look upwards, but like wild dogs, they only pay attention to their feet and wander." ”
He believes that Japan's post-war liberalism and democracy were both given by external forces and were not won by their own struggle. To truly turn it into something of your own, you have to study it seriously. But after the war, Japan simply swallowed them like dates.
Akira Kurosawa's generation of educated young people grew up under an open and clear dual-cultural education. Like his brother, he was fascinated by Russian literature, and later filmed the Soviet-invested "Desu", which conveyed the tranquility and slow realization of The russian travelogues such as Turgenev and Baustovsky in a static style that was very different from his dynamic label.
But he was even more fascinated by the dominant, dramatic power of nature: "I love Japanese things very much: Noh drama, tea ceremony, haiku, and waka. But they looked too delicate and I felt like I couldn't indulge in them. For this reason, I cling even more to the powerful Western drama. ”
In "TramMania", a homeless man who lives in an abandoned car "fantasizes" about their house to the son of a little beggar and says, "The Japanese like gentle light, like to live at the junction of light and shade, like to be close to nature... Wooden houses are more suitable for the Japanese, but the entire nation uses this material, which has the potential to make us weak and impermanent, and those tough foreigners, build their houses out of stone, etc. ”
So he drew masculinity from westerns, heavy tragedies from Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, not only faithfully adapted the latter's famous book "Idiot", "Scandal" also has obvious "Crime and Punishment" overtones, others such as the drunken doctor in "Drunken Angel", the petty official in "The Desire to Live", the industrialist in "The Record of the Living", the cruel avenger in "The Lazy Sleeper", the berserk criminal in "Wild Dogs" and "The Lower Class", You can see the shadow of the archetype of the russian literary figures of the nineteenth century.
In contrast, adaptations of Shakespeare are most sought after in the West because of their lavish style. Spider's Nest City is derived from Macbeth, which is still his stage of focusing on mass entertainment, thus simplifying the complex character of the original book, and placing the protagonist directly in the mystery of tragedy, which also leaves enough space for visual art: the desire and sadness of women to act like dramas, the general's castle is forever shrouded in a rolling fog under the contrasting black and white photography: the witch is replaced by an old lady spinning yarn in the ghostly forest; the dignity of the power-grabber is pierced by random arrows, and the "trees" attack the castle. The songs when the fog gathers are full of sentimentality.
Compared with "Spider's Nest City" to build an ancient castle from scratch, "Chaos", adapted from "King Lear", needed to build three castles and use hundreds of horses, in order to find investment for this bold plan, he filmed "Shadow Samurai" with the help of Coppola and others, and after winning the award, he was able to complete "Chaos" with French funding.
The scholar Audi Bauker was keenly aware that "when Akira Kurosawa becomes more and more cosmopolitan in his treatment of themes... Fewer and fewer unfortunate people can offer the protagonists of his work to help out of humanitarianism." In other words, a prosperous Japan is indifferent to values such as "humanitarianism" and "democracy", but instead leaves Kurosawa in the "old era": "Redbeard" can not find the background of the times, the slums in "Trammania" are not easy to find in rich Japan, and the strange "primitive" men in "Desu" are also incompatible with contemporary times. As a result, Kurosawa's late works, which have always been known for their change and creativity, are all about memories. If it weren't for the fact that the director had been great enough for his life, this kind of retirement would be sad.
"In the era of Japan's reconstruction, before the rapid economic development, Kurosawa emphasized justice and bravery. However, today we are in an era when it is difficult to discern what justice and what is bravery, and Kurosawa's eyes are staring heavily at this dark reality. Tadao Sato said.