Dzolan
Poster for the movie Balloons
At the end of the recently released Wan Ma Tse-dan movie "Balloons", Dajie bought red balloons for his two young sons from the town, one of which broke and the other flew into the sky in the middle of the competition. Thus, the people who look up at the balloon - wife Zhuoga, husband Dajie, sister Dolma, brother Jiang Yang, doctor Zhou Tso - form a set of close-up portraits in the movie, while looking at the balloon, they are also watched by the balloon, no one knows where the balloon is floating, just like the land they share under their feet, they live here, and they will be taken to the unknown future.
Wan Ma Tse-dan's novel of the same name, "Balloon"
The movie "Balloon" is adapted from Wan Ma Tse-dan's novel of the same name, after his films "Tharlo" and "Crashed into a Sheep" were adapted from his own novels. Born and raised in Tibet, Wan Ma Tse-dan, who entered the Chinese context to write, always tells stories in simple, plain and non-deliberately carved words, which are not complicated with the breath of words. The novel "Tharlo" tells the story of a shepherd who is familiar with and believes in "Serving the People" and feels that he has betrayed his beliefs after being deceived by a girl he likes. The novel "Crashed into a Sheep" tells the story of a truck driver who wants to overdo the sheep he killed.
Poster for the movie Tharlo
Poster for the movie "Crashed into a Sheep"
In another novel by Wan Ma Tse-dan, The Ninth Man, the story is like a simple fable: the woman tells her ninth man about the eight men she had met earlier, and the woman ended up leaving the ninth man. For readers who read these novels, it is not difficult to imagine the way Wan Ma Tse-dan wrote: a man who has stepped into a foreign land, cautiously picking up the stones under his feet- the stones of words and sentences, relying on almost instinctive feelings to build up the national customs in the memory of his homeland, and the clumsiness and innocence revealed by them have also become the characteristics of his novels that are different from movies.
Wan Ma Tse-dan's novel collection "Ugin's Teeth"
In contrast, the novel "Balloon" is more complex and detailed than most other novels, mainly about a series of trivial, seemingly unrelated small things that happen to the Dajie family in Tibet.
At the beginning of the novel, Dajie punctures the balloons that his two younger sons blow out of condoms and promises them to buy new balloons after they go to the county seat. In this process, there have been things such as his wife Zhuoga preparing to do ligation surgery, Dajie breeding the ewe, Dajie's eldest son Jiang Yang returning home, and Zhuoga's sister Dolma coming to make love. There is no easily recognizable protagonist and single, linear story line in Wan Ma Tse-dan's other novels.
Until an accident occurs: Darje's father dies unexpectedly, and at the same time Drogga discovers that he is pregnant, and the departed father will be reincarnated into the family – this prophecy of the living Buddha links two seemingly unrelated things together, and also makes the core of the story emerge from the sparse family routine and rise to a contradiction between religion and reality, not serious enough, but also quite tricky. Is it to ease the burden on the family to beat up the child, or to leave the child for the reincarnation of the father? Dajie and Droga got into an argument.
Stills from the movie "Balloon"
In a sense of coincidence or divinity, a series of small things from before are linked. Did the two young sons steal condoms and make Droga pregnant? Does Dajie's breeding of sheep have an innuendo to this? In the novel, Drogga compares Dajie to the ram used for breeding several times, "(The ram) looks just like you!" The link between the sheep and Droga's pregnancy is more apparent in the film, and Droga discovers that she is pregnant the day after dreaming that a long-unproductive ewe gives birth to a cub.
Stills from the movie "Red Balloon"
In the history of cinema, balloon-themed films are not unique, the most famous of which is the 1956 French director Albert Rameres's "Red Balloons". The film tells the story of a young boy who accidentally picks up a red balloon and becomes inseparable from it. The boy's red balloon attracts the jealousy of the other boys, who team up to break the red balloon. In this film with both childlike and sad colors, the red balloon seems to symbolize the characteristics of children that are different from others, and growth is to erase the characteristics in the eyes of everyone, and become a part of everyone in the willing or unwilling.
Poster of Hou Xiaoxian's movie "Red Balloon Journey"
Hou Xiaoxian made a movie in 2006 that pays tribute to "Red Balloon", "Red Balloon Journey", and international student Song made a movie about boys and red balloons while taking care of Simon, the son of single mother Suzanne, who is the boy in her movie. In witnessing Suzanne's frequent family life, Song always maintains the right distance from Susannah and never overly participates in her life.
Stills from the movie "The Journey to the Red Balloon"
Not necessarily like the poster in the movie "Balloon", the balloon with the crook of Zhuo Ga's arm symbolizes her pregnant body, in the movie, the balloon is to the Dajie family, perhaps just as Song is to Suzanne, from a simple plaything in the hands of the sons at the beginning to a scenery after the end of the liftoff, just as a kind of observation from a distance. Just as Wan Ma Tse-dan uses words carefully in his novels, he also uses balloons as the weight of imagery in the film.
If one had to use a pedantic attitude to find the connection between things, and regard the ram in Drogga's mouth as Dajie, the ewe in the movie that no longer gave birth and gave birth to cubs in Droga's dream may be seen as an allusion to Droga's fate.
In the novel, when the ewe first appears, Dajie and Droga have this dialogue -
Dajie looked at the old ewe and said, "This guy hasn't produced lambs for two years in a row, and it seems he can't produce lambs." ”
Zhuo Ga said a little worriedly, "However, it is still quite obedient." ”
Dajie said, "What's the use of obedience?" If it can't produce lambs, it means it's useless! ”
Drogga glared at her husband, and Dajie got a little embarrassed and said without words: "You see feed it water and it doesn't drink it." ”
At this time, the old ewe drank the water in the basin as if she had not drunk water for several days, and looked at Dajie and Zhuoga.
Drogga looked at Dajie and smiled. Dajie looked at the old ewe and said, "This guy seems to understand me." ”
Drogga continued to laugh. At this time, Dajie said solemnly: "In a month, we will have to sell it and pay Jiang Yang's tuition and living expenses for the next semester." ”
Droga stopped laughing, didn't speak, and went over and took another scoop of water, poured it into the basin in front of the ewe, and looked at the ewe.
The film retains The very different attitudes of Daj and Dolma towards the ewe. In the second half of the film, Dajie really sells the ewe as tuition, and ZhuoGa meets Dajie and his eldest son Jiang Yang in the abortion operating room, which is the most impactful scene in the movie, and the ewe who is sold waiting for slaughter and ZhuoGa, who is forced out of the operating room, walks towards the common intersection of fate.
For Dolma, not having children is to lighten the burden on the family, and to have children is to become a family belief: to let the father's dead soul die. Dr. Zhou Tso's sentence "We Tibetan women are not born to give birth to men to come to this world" seems too far away from Dolma. As for the ewe, if it cannot be produced, it is sold. In "Balloon", the motherly body is a body that is not self-dominated by the family and faith, and it is also a body used for value considerations.
Another place that conveys the dominance of faith over the body comes from Dolga's sister Dolma. In the novel, Dolma is a nun who came to make love, and does not introduce Dolma too much. In the film, Wan Ma Tse-dan reveals the reason why Dolma became a nun: after a failed relationship, he chose to convert to faith.
On the one hand, the sister who is family-oriented and pays for the family, and on the other hand, the sister who cut off her lust, they have different views on the issue of sex and fertility. When the sister used to borrow condoms to avoid "trouble", the sister was ashamed of this, threw down the condom she had accidentally found in her hand and turned her head. When the sister told her sister about her pregnancy and the idea of having an abortion, the sister objected, because faith told her that rejecting the reincarnation of the undead was too cruel and that it was a cultivation to help the undead reincarnate.
It can be seen from the sister that even if she escapes the constraints of her identity as a wife and mother, in the faith, the identity of the woman is already dominated, and compared with the sister, she may only enter from the dilemma to a single dilemma.
At the end of the film, while looking at the balloons floating overhead, Dolma and Droga have decided to leave the house for a while and go to the temple for a while. The birth of children is unknown, and to solve the problem laid down by family and faith, they need to let go of their attachments to family and faith, and perhaps they can truly control their bodies.
Editor-in-Charge: Fang Xiaoyan
Proofreader: Liu Wei