"Turn over the serfs and sing."
This sentence, which we often use today to ridicule, is actually full of heartache and blood and tears behind it.
When we think of Tibet, we always think of holy snow-capped mountains, scorching sunshine and majestic temples that revere majesty, and the kind of devout believers.
But what we don't know is that beneath those predatory beauties lies a history of cannibalism.
In the records, there are dozens of cruel tortures in Tibet that abuse serfs alone: mouth beatings, tongue cutting, eye gouging, heart slicing, sawing legs, breaking tendons...
There are also human heads, human skins, human hair, air-dried human hands, human feet, patterned Buddha statues carved from human thigh bones, tea bowls made of human skulls, and hand drums made of human skin, etc., which are creepy after watching.
If some viewers have watched the famous funny show "Tiantian Jianbao", they will find that many people will ask for some things made of human skulls and the like, and most of these are invited from Tibetan temples.
Serfs have no personal freedom, everything is the property of the serf owner, and even the children born from the moment of birth belong to the serf owner.
This brutal serfdom began in the 10th century and was widely established in the 13th century, continuing until the early days of the People's Republic of China, when it was abolished during the Tibetan democratic reform movement in 1959.
The film we are going to talk about today tells the story of the tibetan serfdom before and after .
Serfs
Completed in 1963, the film was directed by Li Jun and adapted from the screenplay of the famous literati Huang Zongjiang. And as a gift film for the 15th anniversary of the National Day, it received countless praises.
Premier Zhou read the praise and personally received the lead actor Wang Dui, and Deng Xiaoping, Yang Shangkun and other central leaders also praised director Li Jun for "shooting well."
Films made from the founding of New China in 1949 to 1966 are known as "Seventeen Years of Cinema".
The general policy of "Seventeen Years of Cinema" was Mao Zedong's "Conversation at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" published in 1942, and the literary and artistic works thereafter, especially films, were filmed from the standpoint of the people and the proletariat.
In this period of strong domestic political atmosphere, this period when the oppressed strata turned into masters, a large number of ethnic minority films, such as "Five Golden Flowers", "Mountain Bell Ringing Horse Gang", "Peacock Princess", "Avanti", "Visitor on the Iceberg", etc., all of which have a strong ethnic minority style and political brand.
At this time, ethnic minority theme works resonated with the mainstream ideological discourse, and the purpose of the cooperation between the state apparatus and film was to integrate the national discourse with the minority culture to unite the people of the whole country.
"Serfs" is a classic of socialist realism in the "Seventeen Years of Cinema" in New China, and a model for films on the theme of institutional reform in ethnic minority areas.
In fact, Tibet was peacefully liberated in 1951, but the process of democratic reform did not begin immediately, and the reactionaries in Tibet were always eager to move during this period.
"Serf" tells the story of a serf named Jamba during this period.
Little Jamba was born into a slave family, and his grandmother and parents were serfs.
When Jamba was very young, his father was beaten to death for bumping into the serf master, and his mother, who had just given birth to a child, was tortured to death by Resawangje because she could not afford to pay the debt she had owed for generations.
Since then, the elderly grandmother has struggled to raise Qiangba alone.
When Qiangba was young, he always saw his grandmother reverently burning incense and worshipping the Buddha, offering offerings to the Buddha, and even if there was no food at home, he would save it for the Buddha.
He didn't understand why, only that Grandma had asked him to do the same.
Qiangba has a little friend, her name is Lan Ga, and she is a very beautiful little girl.
Once, Grandma wanted to take Jamba to the temple to offer Buddha, and Lan Ga asked him to ask for White Tara for her before he left, because ""She looks so good, and her heart and eyes must be very good." ”
As a result, when he arrived at the temple, Jamba was so hungry that he couldn't bear to eat the offering fruit placed in front of the statue of White Tara Buddha, and was caught and punished by the living Buddha of Tudeng.
After experiencing this incident, the Buddha-believing grandmother fell into the river on the road in order to atone for The Atonement for Qiangba's sins, and never got up again.
From then on, Jamba was reluctant to speak again.
As he grew older, Jamba went to work at the slave owner's house.
The first thing he did was to give the young master lang jie of the family a horse to ride. Qiangba did not want to, so he threw Langjie to the ground and was beaten and humiliated by the housekeeper inhumanely.
In the slave owners' homes, Jamba lived so badly that he didn't have any shoes and was barefoot all day. He also needed to be a stool for Langjie when he got on and off his horse, and when Langjie didn't want to walk, he was given a horse to carry him.
In addition to Qiangba, the status of blacksmith serfs was even lower.
They were chained by a thick chain and were treated like disaster stars.
It is said that in old Tibet, blacksmiths could not drink water from other people's bowls, cook from other people's pots, or step into the doors of other people's homes. Even in the sun, the blacksmith cannot let his shadow overlap with the shadow of others, otherwise it will bring bad luck to others.
Whoever drank the water of the blacksmith's house would turn black with bones and blood.
The fate of such a generation of inhuman beings has the hope of changing with the arrival of the "Bodhisattva Army".
The "Bodhisattva Army" here refers to the People's Liberation Army of New China.
There are three scenes in the film where Qiangba wrestles Langjie, the first time has been mentioned earlier, and the second time is when Langjie went to see the People's Liberation Army as a slave owner, Qiangba accidentally threw Langjie to the ground because he was too hungry and tired, and was kicked hard.
Comrades of the People's Liberation Army saw the situation and not only bandaged Qiangba's wounds, but also put on a pair of brand-new cloth shoes for him.
This was the first time Jamba had put on shoes in his life.
Fearing that Qiangba would not be able to walk, the comrades of the People's Liberation Army gave him a horse for him to ride home.
At the moment of standing in front of the horse, Jamba subconsciously knelt on the ground as a stool, and in his consciousness he was not qualified to ride a horse, only to be a foot on the stool when the serf master was mounted.
When the comrades of the People's Liberation Army saw the situation, they immediately lifted Qiangba up and helped him onto his horse.
As a result, before he could ride long, the housekeeper came and kicked the strong man down and tied him to the back of the horse and dragged him...
At this point, the film has two clues advancing at the same time, one is the clue that Qiangpa was punished as a hard labor lama for this behavior, and the other is the clue that Tibetan extremists are secretly preparing to rebel against the People's Liberation Army.
The current living Buddha, in collusion with the serf owners, is ready to swear to resist to the death, and secretly buys guns from abroad to hide in the Buddha statues, and is also preparing to flee abroad and rely on Western forces.
When Jamba discovered all this, he did everything he could to stop them and help the comrades of the People's Liberation Army.
In order to strengthen the ideological function, the film sets up different action processing, character language and camera movement when showing the positive and negative forces.
For example, in the scene where Lang Jie and the Living Buddha appear, the rhythm is very fast, showing their abuse of Qiangba and the plot of rebellion as tense and cruel.
In the paragraphs of the People's Liberation Army, both the movement of the characters and the movement of the camera are relatively slow, full of warmth and harmony.
In the last clip of Langjie's fall, Jamba prevents him from crossing the border, and Langjie also dies under the guns of the People's Liberation Army.
Before the young PLA comrade could shoot, Lang Jie had already shot the PLA.
This liberation in exchange for blood completely awakened Qiangba.
He broke with the serf owners and uncovered the crimes of the Living Buddha, exposing his terrible face in the guise of religion to the masses and leading the people to a free and equal future.
At this time, Qiangba, who had fallen into a position of aphasia because of the oppression of the powerful, finally regained the right to free expression and shouted a sentence -
"Chairman Mao!"
Yes, many people accuse Serfs of being too ideological.
But the problem is that the reform of serfdom in Tibet is a political event in itself, and it has indeed benefited the people.
The Chairman once said that we must never forget the class struggle, and imperialism will never die.
Today, when classes are solidified, and when young people are incomparably transparent but unable to change the status quo, can we really understand the painstaking intentions of the policy at that time when we watch "Serfs"?
What is underpinned by the towering Himalayan snow, the Brahmaputra River that flows endlessly, the temple that shines with solemnity, and what is underpinned by these brilliances?
Behind the glory of the millennium, doesn't the history of cannibalism need to be changed and exposed?
Even despite the need for political propaganda, Serf itself is an excellent film.
This is an excellent work of "cinematography involved in the play", and the big panoramas, those moving shots and close-ups in the film are all moving with the film itself, following the characters moving, not moving for the sake of moving.
The photographic techniques in the film are not for showmanship, but just to better play the role of photography.
In the play, we also need to learn from the advantages of "Serf".
The film combines the magnificent historical and political discourse of Tibet from 1951 to 1959 with the fate of Qiangba himself, which is both humane and profound in history, which is impressive.
Another example is Lan Ga, she was a woman, a serf, a persecuted person, but later she became a cadre of the Communist Party, became the main body of history and text, and became an enlightener.
This progressiveness of thinking about portraying female characters is still missing in many of our films today.
In addition to these, it is worth noting that "Serf" is the first film to be shot in Tibet, and the actors in the film are all Tibetan actors, not a single Han Chinese.
Today, only Wan Ma Tse-dan, a Tibetan director, has done this.
Whether in the script, audiovisual language or depth of thought, "Serfs" is all about letting the Tibetan people tell their own stories.
And such a work is painstakingly produced by the director and the film crew.
Every ordinary piece of clothing in the film was exchanged by the film crew for new clothes from the locals one by one; and the script was also revised and polished many times by Li Jun, Huang Zongjiang and Xia Yan.
Such excellent works are very rare even today.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Tong Yunxi
© Original 丨 Article Copyright: Ppdianying
Please do not reprint in any form without authorization