Jiang Wen's debut novel tells about Chinese unspeakable sex

In 1994, Jiang Wen's debut film "Sunny Day" showed amazing talent at the beginning of the test, shocking the domestic and foreign film worlds, and won many awards including Best Actor Award, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematography and so on.

The American "Time" magazine selected the film as "the first place in the top ten international films" and gave a very high evaluation: Chinese director Jiang Wen's "Sunny Day" can be called one of the world's most amazing films in 94 and is still eager to watch.

After the film was released in China, it won a box office of 50 million yuan, becoming the box office champion of domestic films in 1995.

Until today, "Sunny Day" still ranks among the top 250 on Douban with a score of 8.9, which is well received by a large number of audiences, and was even called by Dai Jinhua: "The first youth film in the history of Chinese cinema, and so far it may also be the most successful youth film." ”

And this "best" may need to add a few qualifiers to become: Chinese mainland the best male youth film.

So what would we see if we tried to look at the film from the perspective of an average woman?

01

"My story always happens in the summer, when the hot climate makes people naked more and hides their desires more. At that time, it seemed that it was always summer, and the sun was always free to accompany us, and the sun was so bright that it made the eyes blacken for a while. ”

Before the film officially begins, a hormonal male narration reveals the subjective perspective of the story. Then, the opening film appears on the screen, fiery red and dazzling.

If the previous is just a man's private childhood memories, the images and narration that appear later quickly connect the era with the individual, pointing to the background of the story: in the seventies, the children of the military compound ushered in their less honorable but only one-time adolescence in a state of undiscipline.

And the protagonist of the story, that is, the owner of the first-person narration, is Ma Xiaojun.

This is an era when the red sun shines forever, an era when red songs float around, an era of high enthusiasm.

Ma Xiaojun, on the other hand, actively practiced the most essential meaning of youth in the corner where the red sun could not shine: waste.

As the children of high-ranking officials, their parents either went to other places to serve as military representatives, or went to the countryside with the call of the state.

In short, the departure of the "authorities" has left a huge power vacuum for the "Ma Xiaojun".

Ma Xiaojun, Liu Yiku, Liu Sitian, Big Ant... A group of teenagers gathered together to form a gang, either to peek at the girls, or to make trouble in class, in short, parents can't control it, teachers can't control it.

Fighting is one of the main ways that hairy boys use to vent their excess energy, whether this step is just lip service or put into practice.

All this, fighting, messing around, doing nothing ... These can be seen as teenagers' exploration and curiosity about sexual desire.

As an extremely unique part of the sequence of Chinese film history, "Sunshine" tells Chinese unspeakable "sex" with the story of a teenager.

The most obvious image in the film is Ma Xiaojun's fascination with the relationship between keys and locks.

In that era of collectivist transpiration, adults could not slip or take time off work on a hot summer day, but to engage in hot work.

As a result, Ma Xiaojun, who was neither big enough to go up the mountain to the countryside, nor small enough to need his mother's care, was obsessed with unlocking it.

At first, he just stole open the drawer on his parents' lock and fluttered balloons to shoot around.

But soon, props such as keys and locks closely drive the development of the plot.

When the square world at home can no longer satisfy Ma Xiaojun's desire to explore, the excess energy makes him start to enter other people's houses, just to see, play, and imagine how others live.

Eventually, Ma Xiaojun opened a door and saw the photo of Milan.

02

Milan, the name was almost a miracle in that era, after all, most of the children's names at that time were similar to "Xiaojun" and "Bitter Thoughts", with a strong atmosphere of the times.

The first time he accidentally broke into his home in Milan, Ma Xiaojun quickly found a plaything - a retractable telescope.

At this time, the role of this modeling element is the same as the role of the key and lock in the front, which interprets the metaphor of "sex".

The upright telescope soon found an object: a photo of a beautiful girl in a red vest.

At this time, Ma Xiaojun's majestic and boiling adolescent desire finally found a clear object.

Unlike the childish aesthetic of many of our influencers today, Milan in the photo has an extremely mature beauty.

At the same time, this beauty is very strange, it is completely different from the love of blue and green in our impression of that era, it is the beauty of fiery desire.

Therefore, the beauty of Milan is, in a sense, completely a kind of adolescent lust of Ma Xiaojun.

It is precisely because of this lust, this confusion of memory, that the logic of many places in the film is extremely unclear.

And this narrative chaos is not the problem of the film itself, but the intense desire that men must experience in adolescence, caused by conflict, chaos and confusion.

In order to strengthen the intensity of Ma Xiaojun's desire, the film repeatedly delays the real appearance of Milan, thereby enhancing her mystery: first the photo, then the discussion of others, then Milan's feet and half a blurry mirror image.

Later, on the road, Ma Xiaojun finally met her.

The back is a very graceful figure, and when I turn around, I see a bright-eyed face with a pair of sunglasses, pure and beautiful.

Here, we cannot realistically portray Milan, but rather as a projection of adolescent desire for women: she has both the innocence and purity of women and the seductive sensuality of women.

On the one hand, "Milan" needs to be like a gentle and considerate mother or sister to guide the growth of adolescent adolescents; On the other hand, she must be a pure goddess, mysterious, unattainable, and serious.

This is exactly what Chen Ren sang:

Hope that I am crazy and hope that I will not live alone / Think of me cold, still want me to be frivolous and lowly / Want me sunshine and let me not shake / May I be like smoke and wish me Manli and lazy / Look at me crazy and look at me funny and dignified / Want me to be beautiful and want me to kill without blinking...

Alias, "What Do You Want Me For?" 》。

The same is true of Milan in "Sunshine".

Yu Beibei clearly said that she was very serious, and later the movie implied that Milan was not serious, and even for men to catch it with ease.

At the pool, another episode was arranged about the men even fighting for Milan.

There have always been many fans digging into the details of the film, so as to prove that Milan is not a pure love girl but a veteran of the love scene, and trying to explain that the change between these two images is the root cause of Ma Xiaojun's growth trauma.

The question is, is this true?

03

Attributing the trauma of "Ma Xiaojun" to Milan was originally a ridiculous thing, both inside and outside the movie.

"Sunny Day" is an excellent work, and not just because it tells an era and perceives an era with the hormonal erection of a teenager.

At the same time, Jiang Wen also used superb film skills to make Chinese audiences feel the ignorance and confusion of adolescence so easily for the first time.

The shots in the film can remind us of many famous blockbusters in film history.

For example, Ma Xiaojun peeked at the picture of several little girls dancing in the classroom, like the god-level scene in "Once Upon a Time in America".

The transition of Ma Xiaojun and Fox Peng Dog Friend competing to throw a school bag is obviously borrowed from a bone of primitive people in "2001: A Space Odyssey" that instantly turned into a spaceship transition design hundreds of thousands of years later.

At the same time, the film almost fits the title very well, the sun is shining from beginning to end, and the design of natural light is very vibrant, which seems to be the overflow of Ma Xiaojun's exuberant hormones.

The love and sex involved, entangled and chaotic in the process of growing up as a teenager finally formed "Sunny Day", a very personal personal image.

It is a seemingly vigorous failure at the beginning of youth, but no one knows about it, this failure is unforgettable, so Ma Xiaojun needs to try to beautify the memory in an extremely narcissistic and self-deprecating way.

Beautification also causes a loss of narrative integrity, which is why the film's memories appear so fragmented.

And the most broken and contradictory manifestation is undoubtedly the image of Milan.

She is a pure saint for a while, and a woman of immorality for a while; The men would spit and crawl in front of her.

But none of this is about the real Milan, and it doesn't matter to the men what the real Milan looks like.

At first, Milan was the object of their desires; Later, they approached Milan, found that she was not as good as they thought, and began to run away; Or the dog jumps off the wall because he can't get her, or he gets tired because he gets her.

In short, neither the imaginary Milan nor the real Milan can please the men. In the end, Milan became traumatized by these people, which is absurd.

In fact, there are not many people who can resonate with the "Ma Xiaojun" in the film.

After all, their identity seems to be "the dragon and phoenix among people" today.

The big yard boys, who experienced that special period and tasted the fruits of the market economy, finally sat in a luxury car, said that Beijing had changed, and then missed their youth, smoked cigars, drank foreign wine, and were more dashing.

The dividends of the times made the Chinese film industry at that time mostly dominated by men, so there was this film that shaped women as objects of pure desire.

It should be said that "Sunny Day" is a good work and a unique work, but this does not mean that it is a perfect work.

(Movie Rotten Tomatoes Editorial Office: Miu Miu)