On May 27, 1985, Chengdu held the Hundred Flowers Award, and it rained heavily that day.
However, 12,000 teachers and students of Sichuan University braved the rain to watch the best feature film "Life", and after the screening, the voices of "Long live life", "Long live the movie" and "Long live Wu Tianming" rose one after another.
Director Xie Fei said: "There is no greater film than this, 12,000 people standing in the rain to watch the film festival. ”
"Life" is Lu Yao's famous work, which caused great repercussions as soon as it came out.
It is highly respected not only among rural youth, but also in cities, because the issues discussed in the book are not limited to the countryside, and every young person who wanders on the edge of the border can feel the same way.
This sense of confusion and identity among young people, and the root-finding problem brought about by the difference between urban and rural areas, have become an unavoidable social phenomenon after the advent of reform and opening up.
After the fourth-generation director Wu Tianming saw the novel, he decided to adapt it into a movie and asked Lu Yao to be the screenwriter.
But if it is completely according to the novel to shoot, it will make the movie seem too coincidental, so Wu Tianming used appropriate performance techniques and made appropriate deletions in the adaptation, and the beginning and end of the film are the embodiment of these two ways.
The three compositions at the beginning of "Life" are actually the theme of the entire movie.
Going up the mountain to farm, standing on the top of the mountain and looking into the distance, going down the mountain to go home, depicting the trajectory of life.
People born in rural areas have dealt with the land all their lives, but there are always people who are not willing to be trapped in the countryside, yearning for a different life and having greater ambitions.
So I chose to go down the mountain, go to the vast world, and ask for something, but whether the choice after going down the mountain is right can only be answered with a lifetime.
In photography, Wu Tianming mostly uses long-range scenes, the horizon in the picture is higher, and the camera is close to the land.
In order to highlight the subjective status of the land, and there is a perception of asking questions to the land, the emperor is unfair, and the land is silent, so should people leave the land?
This is also a bold attempt by Wu Tianming to change the story-based dramatic structure of past films, changing the expression method, borrowing scenery lyricism and supporting things.
At the same time, the philosophical concept is exported, when the difference between urban and rural areas is increasing, and the concepts of urban and rural areas collide, what is the relationship between people and society, and what is the meaning of human existence.
From this point of view, the status of "Life" in Chinese film history is similar to that of "Yellow Earth", which has revolutionized the narrative language of Chinese films.
But the filming of "Life" was a little earlier than "Yellow Earth", "Life" has already started filming, and "Yellow Earth" has just prepared for filming and the selection of actors.
It can be seen that Wu Tianming is really underestimated, his power is not only insightful, but also Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Huang Jianxin and others in the fifth generation of directors, and he also has extraordinary talent as a fourth-generation director.
At the end of the novel, Gogarin returns to the land where he was born and raised.
The villagers did not laugh at him for his gray face, but gave him all kinds of comfort, and Gogarin had nothing in return, just took out a paper cigarette and scattered one for everyone.
Then he met Grandpa Deshun, saddened that he had lost a piece of gold because of vanity, and told him, "When Qiao Zhen learned that he had returned, she went to beg her sister's father-in-law Gao Minglou to let you teach again." ”
After hearing this, Gao Garin suddenly threw himself at the feet of the old man Deshun, grabbed two handfuls of loess with both hands, groaned in pain, and shouted, "My relatives." ”
But at the end of the movie, Wu Tianming deleted the children's songs, the comfort of the villagers, and the preaching of the old man of Deshun.
Gao Garin walked on the way back to the village, stopped at the Dama River Bridge, and the camera first swept the mountains and waters of Gaojia Village, and then gave Gao Garin's expression a close-up, full of pain and chagrin.
In the last big vista, Gogarin continues to walk towards the village, and the film ends abruptly.
This kind of blank space is not as thorough as the novel, but the open-ended ending that does not give the answer puts the initiative in the hands of the audience, allowing the audience to think from it, and what they get is no longer the doctrine, but the valuable experience of life about decision-making.
Of course, in order to fully understand "Life", you must first understand the era background of the novel and movie.
In the 80s, China's household registration system divided citizens into agricultural hukou and non-agricultural hukou, creating differences between urban and rural landscapes.
This disparity is also subjectively reinforced in various initiatives, leading to a widening gap between urban and rural areas in terms of living styles, cultural uptake, and ideologies.
This divide also allows opposition to emerge.
Intellectuals who grew up in the countryside did not want to be tied to the land, and ordinary people living in the cities did not want to be pressed by the dignitaries.
So the identification of identity, the desire to cross classes, will germinate in a person, and Gogarin is such a contradictory combination.
He is one of the few high school graduates in the village and first taught in the village.
But the son of Gao Minglou, the secretary of the brigade, returned and took his place, turning him from a decent teacher to a peasant with his back to the sky facing the loess.
Intellectuals always carried a sense of pride, and Gogarin hated his status as a peasant, looked down on the big words of the pimples, did not know a single word, and was bent on going out.
This lack of identification with the land that raised him made Gao Garin not last long even if he was with Liu Qiaozhen, and he would still choose to abandon Liu Qiaozhen when he had the opportunity.
When the opportunity really came, Gao Jalin really stopped liking Liu Qiaozhen and chose Huang Yaping instead.
In the countryside, Gao Garin had no other way to endure the short days of Zhang and Li's family every day, but when he came to the city, the conversation was all literature and poetry, and naturally he could not tolerate the Xialiba people.
He was a peasant at his roots, but he defined his identity as a city dweller in his heart, and the gap between reality and ideals allowed him to seize all opportunities that could cross the class, even if he was not close to people, and he would not hesitate to scold him for coveting vanity.
However, after all, the commoners could not fight the scheming of the dignitaries in the city, and a personal vendetta made him fall to the bottom and return to the countryside again.
This time, in the city, there was no place for him to live, and he had to leave if he was not willing, and in the countryside, he felt embarrassed to eat in the land and did not want to go back.
Came and went, got nothing, Qiao Zhen married a woman, Huang Yaping could not love him all his life in the big city, he was sent by Qiao Zhen when he left, and he was alone when he came back.
Fortunately, this trip made him understand the meaning of the local area.
Whether it is urban or rural, in fact, the Houtu is not silent, it just tolerates everything you have, replacing answers with silence.
You leave, it does not complain, you come back, it does not dislike, as long as you still have attachment to the homeland, it still welcomes warmly, what is not seen, feel ashamed, it does not remember in mind.
When Gogarin really realized this, it was also a kind of compensation for his inability to hold back his true feelings.
This mountain, this water, this land in my hometown has fed generations of people, without this land, there will be nothing in the world, and disidentification with one's own roots is equivalent to a piece of duckweed, floating all the time, unable to reach the shore.
In other words, a person should have ideals and illusions, but he must not put aside real life and pursue the unattainable castle in the air, because the cornerstone of life is reality.