At the 75th Cannes Film Festival some time ago, Korean films shined.
Countless domestic film fans lamented that Chinese films have not been able to play a dazzling role in the international film world for a long time.
But this recently released film has brought us a new dawn.
It is the only Chinese-language film to be shortlisted for the main competition of this year's Berlin Film Festival, which is also the "first breakthrough" after the absence of Chinese films from the three main competitions in Europe last year.
Its emergence is not only for the Chinese film market, but also for theaters that are struggling under the epidemic, which has invaluable value and significance.
Fade into the dust
Return to Dust
Director: Li Ruijun
Writers: Li Ruijun
Starring: Wu Renlin / HaiQing / Yang Guangrui / Wu Yunzhi / Li Shengfu
Genre: Drama Producer
Country/Region: Chinese mainland
Language: Gansu dialect / Mandarin Chinese
Release: 2022-07-08 (Chinese mainland) / 2022-02-13 (Berlin Film Festival)
Runtime: 133 min / 131 min (Berlin Film Festival)
As of now, the Douban score is 8.2, which is the highest score of the domestic cinema film in the year so far.
Unfortunately, the box office is not good, and it is currently released for 5 days, and the box office is less than 2.5 million.
This is the story of this year in a small village in the northwest, away from the hustle and bustle of the city,
Everyone here is a child of the land.
The north wind whistled, and in a warm house, a perfectly normal blind date was staged.
But these two parties who are married are not unusual,
The man's name is Ma Youtie, because he is the fourth oldest,
And his third brother always squeezed him, as if he was doing long work for the third brother,
Everyone didn't seem to remember his name, and often called him Ma Laosi.
The woman's name is Guiying, and when her sister-in-law introduced Guiying, she only said "Guiying" and did not say her last name.
Perhaps in the face of this chronic family who is suffering from chronic diseases and unable to have children, his mother's family also has a headache.
Just such a poor man and infertile woman in the village,
Under the arrangement of the two families, the second half of life was set.
There is iron sitting in the house, with a low head, eating silently, and the donkey outside the door also bows its head and eats silently,
Outside the window, there were shadows, relatives eagerly discussing his future, but he himself seemed to be an outsider in his own life.
Guiying silently touched the back of the donkey outside the door, and there was iron embarrassed to look at her, so she had to stare at herself in the mirror in front of her.
Through the mirror, the two face the audience, as if they have to face the future life hand in hand.
On the night of the wedding, the calendar at the head of the bed is a red happy day, and the door of the house is posted with a big red happy word.
However, such a warm atmosphere does not belong to the newlywed couple, and Guiying, who is worried about his incontinence, faces this strange husband with restraint, and Mu Ne's iron does not have the courage to break the silence.
The first time Yu tie called out Guiying's name was when he took Guiying to pay homage to his deceased parents and brother.
Shout out to your ancestors and tell them that you have a family.
The two sat on a high sand dune, and the yellow sand dispersed with the wind.
The thin figure has a solid power like dirt under the sky, and the lives of the two people have slowly taken root in this land.
What is the love of two ordinary and powerless beings?
In this land, You tie and Guiying are the lowest difficult households in the rural marriage market.
Director Li Ruijun mentioned in the interview:
"In the countryside, if a woman loses her fertility, she loses a lot of value, and the heroine does not have the ability to do heavy physical work, so she is almost worthless."
In the traditional conception of the countryside,
Taking women's fertility as the main value criterion is a kind of objectified gaze.
Ma Youtie, who is also a man, cannot escape the judgment of others.
Abandoned villages in the process of modernization, and the current situation of gender imbalance,
Lacking knowledge and inferior physical strength, Youti iron became the bearer of this tragedy.
In this soil that has not been invaded by urban civilization, there is still a strong historical dross of patriarchal society.
However, it is this land that also gives birth to such a pure life as iron and guiying,
This is also the spiritual force that belongs exclusively to the agrarian society.
In the cold streets of Guiying waiting for an iron to return home,
Love is a flashlight swaying in the cold wind with hot water that heats up again and again.
On a thunderstorm day with heavy rain, love is a plastic sheet covering the undried bricks together.
In the carton that expects the chicks to hatch quickly, love is a constantly heating up, constantly shaking thermos lamp...
Their love came from nothing, never said, silent but powerful,
They are aphasiars in the marriage market, but they are the writers of true love.
The director is not an idealist who only describes the good.
In addition to this precious innocence and simplicity, rural life is more of a marginal person in history in the process of modernization.
The brutal depiction of the undercurrent is surging and deafening.
In the film, Zhang Yongfu, a wealthy merchant who contracted the land in the village, urgently needed blood.
This extremely rare panda blood is owned only by the poorest horse in the village, Ma Youtie.
Zhang Yongfu symbolizes the absolute power of the village, and even you have not seen his person in the whole film.
You can still see the awe of the villagers who were held back by him, and Zhang Yongfu's life affects the lives of every family.
The Zhang Yongfu family, who drive a BMW, are a symbol of capitalists and bureaucracy in the city.
The village leaders who coerce and induce, as well as the indifference and bystander of the nurses in the blood drawers, are the fingers and accomplices of the bad habits of urban civilization.
The transfusion vessel between Ma Youtie, the "most rural" villager, and Zhang Yongfu,
What is communicated is not just the blood that saves lives, but the plundering, dumping, demand and dependence of the city on the countryside.
In the construction of modernization, cities always need the countryside to provide resources such as food and manpower.
As this necessary reserve force, the city has thrown it off fiercely in progress.
However, the rarity and preciousness of panda blood are even more in this kind of circulation,
A true feeling that is rare in the city, passed from the countryside.
Back in the countryside itself, the director finds a self-consistent way to survive for Ma Youtie and Guiying.
In this land, there is no BMW, but there is a "treasure donkey".
A composition worth scrutinizing, almost a realistic scene.
The 1.55:1 photo-like frame, the long shot of the contemplative sense of recording, in the idyllic image presented to us by the director, we are shocked by the tenacious vitality of Youti and Guiying.
Can't be sure if there is such a strong life in such a difficult life?
In the spring, Guiying mistakenly picked a wheat seedling while weeding,
In the face of his wife's remorse, There is iron but said,
Let him make fertilizer for the other wheat seedlings, each wheat has its own number of lives.
The wheat seedlings that have been mistakenly removed are like the villages abandoned by the times, the marginalized farmers.
Guiying carefully planted it back into the soil, not knowing whether it could continue to grow.
When the harvest season came, on the donkey cart full of loads, Guiying picked up the full ears of wheat,
She also seemed to be wondering if the wheat that had been removed could grow?
The house is the spiritual and physical home of all peasants, and indeed all Chinese.
The swallows will build the nests of the swallows, and the people will build their own houses.
The bulldozer machinery of the forward bulldozer crushes the houses where people once lived in the past,
And the swallows can find their nests, and with iron, they can also build new houses on the flat ground.
The dilapidated environment gives birth to an extraordinary spirit, and this contradiction is nourished in the land,
Just as the death of winter is the rebirth of spring, the death of a bare land is the rebirth of a land full of wheat,
Perhaps the land is inherently contradictory, and life is inherently contradictory.
The countryside in "Hidden in the Dust" is less deliberate in the past to cater to the vision of others, and less of the so-called folklore imagined out of thin air.
Less grafting with urban dramas, less romantic idealization;
More lyrical depictions of simple countryside, more portrayals of plain farm life,
There is more worry about the future picture of the countryside, and more torture of the rapid development of modernization.
Hear the whistle of the rain tank and see the swallows returning home.
The white crane went west and disappeared into the dust and smoke.
*Text by Asa Asa