The world divided by dirt

The film "Dirt Boundary", which was nominated for last year's Oscar nomination, has reached a state of ideological and artistic nature - simple and shocking, profound and real. The multi-layered story, the subtle changes in human nature, and the tragic and unusual conflict have covered up the racial problems in the Mississippi region of the United States and the European battlefield in World War II. The film scheduling is like a rural picture scroll, calm and thick; the color and light tone, dark and gloomy, maintain a high degree of fit with the original novel. It's just that the film connects multiple perspectives into a linear time, pruning the branches of the novel as much as possible, and retaining the trunk, just like a good gardener knows how to prune a bonsai.

The film begins by mimicking the reverse sequence of the novel: Before the storm, Henry and the Jamie brothers bury their father—an extreme racist who ends his sinful life. Ironically, he had to be buried around the black slave graveyard.

The unfolding of the story by the writer Jordon is much more complicated. Jordon inherits the faulkner tradition of telling the same story from multiple perspectives, all shifting viewpoints—clashes of "prejudices" from different characters. The naming of "The Dirt Realm" seems to have already predestined the theme of the work, that is, land and boundaries. "Land" talks about the dependence and bondage of characters, and "boundaries" refers to the isolation and hatred of different races. The novel uses two families and six characters to reflect the complex contradictions of society, race and family, and this "generalization" makes the purity of the work very strong.

The main line of the novel requires the reader to collage and patch through the dictations of different characters. The male protagonist, Henry, is a graduate of a prestigious school who fought in world wartime and was lame and saved from World War II. He married Laura, a girl over thirty years old who also had a degree. Laura is deeply educated, is a typical deep bridesmaid, pure as a blank piece of paper for men and women, and is full of emotions in the face of sudden love. But Henry was never romantic, even somewhat self-righteously "arbitrary", and was always a man of ambition. Looking at it today, he is a typical "straight male cancer". Overly rational, he believed in family ethics and relied on the creed of his ancestors to occupy the land and become a farmer. His younger brother, Jamie, is the opposite of him: romantically handsome, multi-emotional, and pursuing freedom. The pair have a potential common discourse, affection and romantic temperament.

Henry's father became the "abstract idea" in his work, he was "cunning and gloomy, and his dark eyes were always staring at you viciously". He is the most graphic character in the work, a collection of symbols such as good and bad work, selfishness and ruthlessness, and racial hatred. After his brother-in-law committed suicide, Henry took on the full responsibility of supporting the family, and finally found an "excuse to realize his dream" of buying the farm and relocating the family. Unexpectedly, he was sacked by the landlord, although the deposit was paid, it was only a verbal agreement, and the courtyard had been sold to others. Laura endured Henry's chopping and playing, and also sympathized with his simple country spirit. This also opens the curtain on the book's transition from urban family life to wilderness farm life. In other words, dirt became the boundary between them and urban civilization.

The novel writes a kind of "concerto" of double sounds—when white families need to reclaim land, black families are bound by dirt for generations. The Haup and Florence families are miniature. Harper was an "atypical" black man: not too dark-skinned, literate, and knowledge of contracting with white people, which Henry did not expect. His love and pity for his wife, never letting women work in the fields, was also rare among ordinary blacks. Florence usually works as a midwife and "barefoot doctor", superstitious and nagging, with the kindness of traditional black women, who saved Laura's daughter. The contradiction between Haup and Henry lies in their attachment to "dirt" – Henry wants to become a farmer, and Harp wants to get rid of the fate of "sharecropper".

As a result, Haup broke his leg and had to rent Henry's mule again to become a sharecropper and pay the harvest. This is the American version of "Shoko the Camel", who dreams of a piece of land, and finally finds that he is unable to jump out of a strange circle of fate. The same is true of Hapu's son, Junsel, like Sisyphus pushing a rock up the mountain, but falling back to the bottom again and again. He was discriminated against in Mississippi lands, and after enlisting in the army, he not only won the love of white girls in Europe, but also made military merits and became a sergeant. Junsel, who originally thought that he was "mentally whitewashed" and had his self-esteem reshaped, was still discriminated against and humiliated by white people after returning to his hometown. The white girl sent him pictures of the mixed-race children, which unexpectedly fell into the hands of the racists, who rounded up Juncell, lynched his tongue, and "punished" this "interracial fornication." The writer writes about the horror of a martyrdom.

The boundary of dirt is the boundary between the city and the wasteland, between white and black, between bondage and freedom. The fusion of "breaking boundaries" became the highest intention of the novel. On the battlefield, people of different colors fought for the country, living and dying together, which made Juncell and Jamie a friendship. Florence rescues Laura's daughter from danger, laura also seeks a doctor for Haup, and the two women feel sorry for each other. The film ends with Ronsell revisiting the white girl and reuniting with the children, which is the so-called beginning of hate and ending with love.