When I meet you again, after a long gap of years, how to greet you.
With tears, with silence.
In Tehran in 1958, a hurried Nashar ali walked the streets with his newly purchased violin. Suddenly, he slowed down and stopped the woman who had just passed by: "Ylang? He added eagerly, "You don't remember me? ”
"Sorry, seriously, I don't remember anything." The gray-haired woman replied.
Nasha Ali returned home. To his confusion and horror, no matter how well he used the violin, he could no longer play soulful music as he had before.
He put the new piano away and shed tears on a damaged old piano.
To the surprise of many people, Nasha Ali, who was full of despair, decided to die.
This is the opening of "The Taste of Plum Chicken".
Whether it is Douban, Baidu Encyclopedia, or b station, their classification of "The Taste of Plum Chicken" is uniform - comedy.
I thought for a long time as to why this movie was put in the "Comedy" column. It did make me laugh briefly, but it taught me more of a long-term sadness. Maybe the core of comedy is really tragedy.
It tells the story of the eight days that Nasha Ali decided to die.
On the first day, he pondered how to end his life.
As an artist, Nasha Ali's imagination is really rich: he imagines the intensity of suicide on the track, the fear of jumping off a cliff, the pain of shooting suicide, and he can't help but grin and twist his face; he also thinks of swallowing sleeping pills first, and then putting a plastic bag on his head to fight for a painless death. But thinking about the name behind him, how will future generations evaluate him? "The one with the plastic bag on your head?" It was another retreat.
Accompanied by cheerful music and comical and exaggerated movements, Nasha Ali had a flash of inspiration.
He decided to go on a hunger strike and die, waiting for death to arrive.
The next day, his wife invited his brother and tried to persuade him to no avail.
On the third day, he tried to emulate the essence of Socrates' inheritance of ideas, but due to his son's young age, the plan failed.
On the fourth day, his wife, Franji, was distraught and decided to make Nasha Ali's favorite dish, plum chicken. The only time she saw her husband smile was during the meal: "This is the best plum chicken I've ever had." ”
She remembered her youth. Few people know that she has had a crush on Nasha Ali since she was a child, and a crush on the teenager who played the violin. It wasn't until Nasha Ali returned home at the age of forty that they became reconciled. Because Nasha ali's mother felt that they were suitable, in the face of her son's refusal, she said: "Get married first, and as the days go by, love will come." ”
But love never came.
Franchis was a math teacher, while Nasha ali was an unworldly musician who remained indifferent to most of the affairs around him. Finally, after an argument, Frankie lifted Nasha Ali's violin and slammed it on the ground.
"I will never forgive you. I never loved you. ”
Nasha ali thought of his only love, when he was 21 years old and reprimanded by his teacher for knowing only techniques and not being able to grasp the "sigh of life". Distressed, he met his lover at first sight, Yilan. They were in agreement, like glue, but they were forced to separate because of the opposition of Ylang's father, leaving behind a sigh that seemed to be nothing.
On the fifth day, he remembered the grim reaper he had encountered when his mother died.
On the sixth day, death came to visit.
On the seventh day, the doctor returned to the sky and did not have surgery.
On the eighth day, he passed away in the memory of Ylang Ylang.
At the time of the burial, those who loved him were present.
She was there too.
I often wonder whose fault it is that this tragedy is.
The wife is wrong, wrong in wishful thinking to fall in love with someone who does not love herself. After getting married, she neither got the love of her husband nor enough material foundation, and finally ran out of patience in the solitary work. But sadly, she still retains her love for her husband. This is also the most painful point. Because at the end of the film, they recreate a scene of their quarrel: Nasha Ali plays the violin inside the house as always to tell his inner melancholy and longing, while his wife secretly hides outside the house to wipe away the tears of heartbreak.
There are many people who talk about the generation gap between husband and wife, one is an artist, the other is a pragmatic, and two people have only one-sided love without understanding, which is doomed to be a tragedy. But the shot that wipes away the tears clearly tells that the wife understands everything, and she knows that her husband's piano is his haunting lover from beginning to end. His soul, his sigh, his life was all there for another woman. Rather than be clear pain, she preferred not to understand.
Yilan was wrong, wrong in her thinking that she could forcibly suppress the emotions in her heart. What an unforgettable love it was that made her instantly recognize his face after the two had been separated for many years. How many times did she have to rehearse in her mind before she could say so smoothly and even slightly urgently, "Sorry, seriously, I don't remember anything." Then I cried in the moment I walked down the street.
She was his muse, his lifelong concern, and only a nameless passerby at the funeral.
For Nasha Ali, all this is too much like a big dream.
"The world's favorite music is what I wrote with the greatest pain." Schubert's words seem to be a portrayal of the lives of most artists. Before meeting Ilan, Nasha Ali was just a skilled "craftsman" who lacked that touching feeling. However, when he was forced to sacrifice the emotions of a lifetime, he painfully grasped the "sigh of life" and was recognized by the teacher. The teacher gave him a violin:
"From now on, everything you lose will turn into notes under your fingers." She will always be your breath and sigh. ”
It was this piano that pinned all his mourning and heart. When he lost the piano and was heartbroken by the illusion of not knowing each other, the air was not only a sigh, but also the meaning of his life. As a Douban blogger said, "After many years, you don't know me, and I have no reason to continue wandering in the world." ”
In my opinion, there are only two loves in Nasha ali's life, Qin and Yilan. Plum chicken, along with all other mundane things, is nothing more than a like, a liking that can be given up at any time. Therefore, he is not a qualified husband, nor is he a qualified father, which is a defect that even his high artistic attainments cannot avoid. He does not take on the household, so that his wife's temper gradually becomes sour and irritable, and he does not accompany the children, preferring to put them in the neighbor's house to escape from reality. For him, the whole life after leaving Ilan is like an absurd and long dream, and only music can make him temporarily awake and aware of the value of his existence.
They are all wrong, and none of them are their fault. I can only sigh, fate makes people.
Writing this, a poet suddenly came to mind.
Poetry, painting, music and other arts, without exception, all need a little aura, or a little twists and turns. Some people are born talented, Wang Bo became famous at a young age, Li He was the head of zhengrong, and the fifteen-year-old Li Bai was even more white-shirted and gilded, proud of the tang dynasty for a thousand years; there were also people with many fates, destined to swallow the blood and the bitterness of huanglian after tasting the sweetness of honey.
Nasha Ali always reminds me of Bai Juyi.
At first glance, it does seem a little ridiculous. But the paradox of fate and the resonance of literature seem to lie in this.
They are equally talented, spirited, and the same love, alone.
Perhaps few people know Xiang Ling, she is a village girl of Fu Ling (place name), and also the first love of Bai JuYi Qingmei Bamboo Horse.
Nasha Ali fell in love with Yilan at the age of 21, and Bai Juyi fell in love with Xiangling at the age of 19. Nasha Ali can only play the piano, and Bai Juyi can only write poetry. Yilan's father refused his courtship, and Bai Juyi's mother opposed the marriage. Nasha Ali played a piano sigh in the painful lovesickness, and Bai Juyi wrote a sympathetic love poem under the hopeless bitter love. At the age of 41, Nasha Ali married an unloved math teacher, and Bai Juyi accepted the marriage introduced by a colleague at the age of 37.
In the end, Nasha Ali sacrificed his life to commemorate this only love, and Bai Juyi never paid his heart again.
He only exudes his own meaning in poetry. Send Xiang Ling, Cold Night, Sauvignon Blanc. The first chapter wept blood, the first deep affection.
In heaven wish to be compared to a winged bird, in the earth wish to be a branch. The days go on and on, and this hatred lasts forever.
We will never be able to verify whether Bai Juyi integrated into that unforgettable feeling when he wrote "Long Hate Song", and whether the tears hidden deep in his heart fell a drop because of this lingering verse. But we know that when he was forty years old, he wrote the poem "Feng Old" after meeting Xiang Ling, and after "Long Hate Song", he used the word "hate" again in this poem.
In ancient times, "hate" was not hate, but regret.
Long goodbye and occasional encounters, both suspected to be in a dream. This has been going on for years, and it is hard to see again.
It is too easy for the artist to stumble in reality, and it is too difficult to have enough ability to guard his love. We have to admit that sometimes it is this lifelong regret that makes them shine. As Emerson put it in one of his little poems, "You set her free." You should know that when the half-man and the half-god are gone, god is coming. ”
If they avoid the pain of lovesickness, perhaps we will have many fewer great artists and more ordinary people. But if Nasha Ali and Bai Juyi were allowed to decide for themselves, if they could get enough freedom in front of love and art to choose at will, what would they choose?
Maybe they'd rather be mortal.
Perhaps for the emotional genius, art is inherently cruel. They have to desperately pierce their hearts, and then dip the dark red blood to smear the only bright color of life, and posterity will only admire the beauty of art, but they can't smell the salty breath of tears and blood.
Art is probably a sacrifice.
Not only Bai Juyi, this movie is already real.
It is adapted from the picture book work of director Maggie Shatapi, based on The Uncle of Maga Shatapi, an Iranian musician who has the same personality and self-congratulatory personality as Nasha Ali in the film.
The entire film is shrouded in a melancholy and melancholy atmosphere. Even when Nasha Ali took his daughter to a puppet show, their faces were hidden in dim light. There are always large areas of darkness obscuring the surrounding scenery, and if there is a seemingly innocent shadow lingering around the character, in the dark tone, often only the side face is illuminated.
In all of Nasha Ali's memories, there is only one bright color, that is, when the 21-year-old met Ylang. The sun is bright, the clouds are full of clouds, and the pink and light blue are reflected in each other, as if it is a fairytale dream. But as long as it is a dream, it will eventually wake up. The cool tones of black, white, and silver gray are almost like the smoke blown by the protagonist, floating to every corner with a sigh of life. Those lingering breaths connect the cutscenes and memories, and envelop the texture of confusion and illusion. The viewer reached out, but couldn't catch anything.
The story is originally a simple story, but through the director's editing, under the layout of flashbacks, flashbacks, interludes, third-person narratives and other ways, it shows different meanings layer by layer. At first, most people must have been surprised that Nasha Ali had committed suicide for a broken piano, and was also interested in the abrupt end of his first encounter with Ilan, and at the same time understood his wife's act of wrestling the piano, but there was still a trace of regret. We are groped in the mist, amused by some of the antics, until at the end we find out that this is a complete tragedy, a sad dream that no one is right, everyone is wrong, and no one is happy.
Jian Wei wrote in "The Split of April" that affection is a tragedy that must be read in death. I quoted this phrase in the film review of "The Great Gatsby" and felt that it was quite a match for the beautiful and illusory life of Gatsby in that film. But after reading "The Taste of Plum Chicken", I understood that this sentence wrote all the deep sorrow. In many cases, it is too difficult for us to resist the arrangement of fate. Whether it is a relationship or a career, the cost of trial and error of fate is too high, even geniuses do not necessarily dare to take that defiant step, we are afraid too much, afraid of only one wrong step and fall off the cliff and never recover. So we only dare to stand where we are, let the sideburns grow old, leaving only the broken sigh in the wind.
At the end of the film, there is a full five minutes, without a single line, only music lingering on the fragments of their lives after they separated. The slightly brighter tones of the initial parting gradually cast layers of thick shadows, and the music gradually transitioned from the beginning of the high to the sad and mournful whimpering, and the fragments of the two people's lives intertwined more and more frequently with the acceleration of the music, almost pouring out a kind of sadness that was too thick to be reconciled.
Until the two passed each other, Nasha Ali shouted "Ylang", and Ylang only responded faintly: "Sorry, seriously, I don't remember anything." ”
This love, this piano, is finally gone.
It was finally over.
This article is reproduced from the WeChat public account: nothing will always stay, please do not reprint without authorization.