In the late 1980s and early 2010s, Nepal was not only in a period of transition, but also faced a complex and turbulent social reality, which was reflected in the film as a "victim" who was constantly being infused with suffering.
After the early 2010s, Nepal gradually got on the right track, the people's war ended, and the country as a whole tended to be a problem. During this period, the underlying image presented in the film began to shift from "sufferer" to "strivers", focusing on the new pursuit of Nepalis in the process of modernization.
The image of the "victim" represented by Danny, Kusum and Harry
In the underlying narrative, realist aesthetic consciousness dominates, and reflecting suffering is its basic narrative law. ”
As a vulnerable group, the people at the bottom are generally in a state of being insulted and damaged, showing the image of "victims". In "Relationship", "Double Tears" and "Our Three Brothers", the image of the "victim" represented by Danny, Kusum and Harry is presented, and he bears pain and suffering between the individual and society, the body and the spirit, and even becomes the martyr of love and affection.
Relationship is a 1988 Nepalese film directed by Ugyen Chopel that focuses on the love story between Triputi and Danny, who kills his wife because of his wife's cheating anger and causes the accidental death of his wife's lover, who happens to be Triputi's husband.
Under the extremely coincidental plot setting, the film shows the image of Danny, a victim, through the two survival dilemmas in the beginning and the end, Danny becomes a criminal because of love, becomes a wanderer at the bottom, and after he once again gains emotional comfort, Triputi's love, he is arrested and imprisoned because of the crime.
Despite suffering from psychological trauma and survival difficulties, Danny has always maintained the qualities of kindness and warmth of the heart, which is why he has once again gained hope in life, so the film shows the choreographer's understanding of the way individuals survive and the meaning of survival in the survival dilemma.
"Suffering arises from the tension between survival and reality, and survival itself is continuous, unique, consistent and complete, so that any form of suffering necessarily involves the presentation of man to the world as a free whole." Danny's crucifixion embodies the precious qualities that drive the bottom to find continuity and integrity in the struggle between desire and humanity.
Two Tears is a 1993 Nepali film directed by Tulsh Kimir. The film tells the story of Kusum, a young woman who wanders from the countryside to the city, with an orphan who survived a car accident.
Kusum has always been experiencing different sufferings, first the loss of family affection - the death of the only brother; Then there is the dilemma of survival, the basic survival can not be guaranteed, the personal safety is threatened - almost raped; The second is the disillusionment of love; In the end, it is the sacrifice of life.
The experience of Kusum's suffering shows the complexity of survival, and the reality of the surface of the film's continuous emphasis on suffering is not to say that the bottom can be completely rescued and get rid of the fate of suffering, but to exist on the basis of individual survival as the basis for saving the entire texture of survival.
In the face of continuous sinister difficulties, Kusum's efforts and struggles to survive appear particularly tenacious and persistent, which highlights the brilliance and strong qualities of the "Virgin" emitted by Kusum, which is the weapon for women at the bottom to struggle and live in the survival dilemma.
The 1996 People's War, a tug-of-war between Nepal's rebels and government forces, plunged Nepal's children into more than 10 years of riots, becoming often overlooked victims of ongoing conflicts, exacerbated by poverty and abuse.
One of the consequences of the conflict is the violation of children's rights and serious disruptions to their daily lives. According to a 2005 report by UNICEF citing child workers in Nepal, it is estimated that more than 40,000 Nepalese children were displaced during the rebel uprisings. Against this backdrop, films such as "Our Three Brothers" that reflect the group of orphans appeared.
The Three of Us is a 2004 Nepali action comedy directed by Shiva Regmi that tells the story of three orphans, Harry, Ram and Rushman.
The film revolves around the suffering of Harry as an orphan, Harry's daily life is to work for basic survival, food, clothing, shelter and transportation can not be basically guaranteed, begging and stealing are his usual means of survival, there is no stable life in this world, the spiritual world is like wandering in the landless, materially displaced and helpless.
After encountering two orphans, Ram and Rushman, Harry adopts them and assumes the responsibilities of a father, and the plight of suffering takes a turn for the worse, and Harry begins to walk into the normal life trajectory of ordinary people.
Harry's turn is as Athpers points out: "I have no idea what the purity of the soul I wield as a possibility of existence is, but I am thrown back into my own concrete conscience, which guides me and makes me feel guilty in every sense." The purity of the soul is the truth of existence, and it must have the courage to bear and realize uncleanness in reality, so that it can always guiltily grasp the realization of purity as an infinite mission in tension with temporal reality. ”
It was Harry's conscience for the other two orphans that prompted Harry to make a move that was unself-conscious but changed his destiny.
Harry fully assumes the responsibility of being the father of two other orphans, and in order to send them to education, he works part-time: selling newspapers, shining shoes, washing cars, delivering goods, until the two are raised to adulthood, while changing the fate of others, Harry's fate also quietly changes, the film shows the experience of the suffering here to live with their own conscience, to keep the holiness of the soul to get rid of suffering.
The fate of the victims presented in the underlying narrative of Nepalese cinema is the fate of suffering that cannot be escaped—the fate of reincarnation with a strong tragic meaning; One is the unresolved fate of suffering - the anxiety and confusion of survival in the torrent of the times; One is the fate that can be freed from suffering – an active breakthrough in the predicament of survival.
Three different fates of suffering surface the different views of Nepal's underclass narrative creators on survival itself. But the way we face suffering points to the underlying personal qualities: purity, holiness, and strength.
This solution shows the choreographer's identification with the identity of the underclass, the compassion for the suffering experience of the bottom, and embodies the humanistic spirit in the underlying narrative of Nepalese films.
The type of "strivers" represented by Ramesh, Haku and Prazo
In the process of modernization, Nepal's modern industry, science and technology, and bureaucratic system have undergone profound changes in the economic, political, cultural and ideological fields of traditional agricultural society.
Modernization in a broad sense is mainly the great change in the mode of social production led by modern productive forces since the industrial revolution, causing the accelerated development of the world economy and the general trend of social adaptive changes; specifically, this is the process of realizing the great transformation of traditional agricultural society into modern industrial society with the driving force of modern industrial and scientific and technological revolutions, so that industrialism can penetrate into economic, political, cultural, and ideological fields and cause profound changes in social organization and social behavior.
2008 "Love Disaster", 2012 "Robbery" and 2017 "Chhakka Panja2" portray the image of "strivers" in different periods, different environments and different types of "strivers" in the process of Nepal's modernization, outlining the pursuit and struggle of Nepalese in the process of modernization.
The story of the film "Love Disaster" takes place in the process of modernization and change, which presents the changes and realities in the lives of young farmers in the middle and lower mountains of Nepal under the wave of modernization, and shapes the image of Ramesh, a low-level strivers.
As the market of the modern commodity economy expanded, the cider business in which Lamesh was engaged became involved, and Ramesh worked hard to produce cider, risking large trade orders, going to big cities to buy machines to meet production requirements, and constantly chasing the material desires of self-expansion.
The 2012 Nepalese film "Robbery" is a story about how a gang of gangsters rob a bank, revolving around Haku, a marginal figure in the city, about the process of the urban underclass struggling to "struggle" in pursuit of desire.
"Robbery" is completely inconsistent with the mainstream Nepalese film form and the mainstream ideology of the country, but the film has achieved great benefits at a very low cost, gaining a group of fanatical followers with its rough and authentic style and imaginative expression of the desires of the underclass.
From the perspective of personality, the image and behavior of the five presented in the film are very in line with the reality, they are inseparable, irritable, and they fight when they do not agree, and the petty theft is pretending to be reasonable; From the perspective of survival dilemma, the film focuses on the difficulties of Haku and Pandi in family and emotional life, Haku and his wife run a small restaurant, every day to be busy in the restaurant, but also to take care of their own children, after provoking his wife to constantly coax his wife.
And Pandy, because of the real economic situation, constantly quarrels with his girlfriend until he breaks up. Survival dilemma, violent personality, and material desire together create the image of the "strivers" in the urban background, and in terms of photography techniques, the downgraded city street shadows and night scenes are not only in line with the tense state of the characters when robbing the bank, but also the scene expression of the characters' desires; The film uses a large number of handheld shooting, bringing a strong documentary effect; In showing the tension and uneasiness of the characters, the film especially uses fast panning, tilting, close-up, sliding and other shots, and the rhythm control is excellent. In 1950, when the people of Nepal launched a massive mass movement and armed struggle against the dictatorship of the Lana family, King Tribvin restored the royal power, ended the rule of the Lana family, and implemented a constitutional monarchy.
The Kathmandu Valley was suddenly overwhelmed by transnational waves, and political, economic and cultural currents brought new ideas, new technologies and, ultimately, new ways of living.
The transnational currents of modernization have a daily impact on the lives of the people of Kathmandu, an experience that immediately and fully integrates into the unprecedented flow of goods, ideas, people, and a force that characterizes global modernity, but which is conceptually excluded from modernity by a dominant political and cultural economy that continues to require a "traditional" other, as opposed to it, in order to imagine itself as "modern."
Among them, the life of developed countries abroad has become a "modern" goal of countless young people in Kathmandu, and the life of the country has become a "traditional" other.
The movie "Chhakka Panja2" is to portray such an unemployed young man Prazo who strives to go from the bottom to the modern life abroad, trying to achieve his goals, but he and his girlfriend carefully designed a scam to obtain study abroad funds.
Lamesh, a low-level young farmer in the mountains of Nepal who is moving toward commodity economy and machine production, Haku, Naresh, Katri, Gov, and Pandy, who are trapped on the fringes of the city who are trapped in poverty and on the road to crime, and Prazo, an unemployed young man who strives to move from the bottom to a modern life abroad, are all true portrayals of the low-level youth in the process of Nepal's modernization process, from which we can spy on the Nepalese people's pursuit of modernization.
The selection of these three characters has a strong realist character, and they are all typical characters in a typical environment: one is the low-level peasants who are in the countryside and beginning to move towards the commodity economy, the other is the urban fringe figures in the dirty environment of the city, and the other is the unemployed youth who are pursuing urban prosperity from the countryside to the city.
It can be seen that Nepalese films present a vivid and multi-faceted image of "strivers" in the underlying narrative.