It's May 9, and at noon, my phone has received a short video from a Wanma movie: Tharlo, the shepherd who can't get a wife, is reciting "Serving the People" in Mandarin with a Tibetan accent, muttering like chanting, word for word, and the camera occasionally points to a lamb sucking milk:
“...... People always have to die, but the meaning of death is different, and a literary scholar named Sima Qian in ancient China said, 'Man is inherently dead, either heavier than Mount Tai, or lighter than Hongmao'..."
"Tharlo"
The length of the video is three minutes and seven seconds. I watched quietly, couldn't help but laugh, and then stopped - Wanma was gone. We all received this unbelievable news at noon yesterday. It's night, and actor Huang Xuan sent a voice. Two months ago, he was still filming with Wanma in Qinghai. He sobbed and said, "I have never met someone so gracious as him, it seems to be my father." "He will fly to Lhasa tomorrow to bid farewell to Teacher Wanma.
Last year, Wanma published a new collection of novels and asked me to write the foreword. I never talked about novels, but I wrote them seriously, because I love Vanma's films, and his predecessor of films, is fiction. Recently, when my miscellaneous manuscript was going to be published and the document was arranged, Wan Ma collapsed, it is said that he suddenly lacked oxygen, was unwell, and collapsed, at the age of fifty-three.
I love Vanma's movies. Although I am not qualified as a commentator, I have watched almost every work of Wanma. I would like to venture to say that there are no such directors in the mainland. The techniques, tricks, and excitement of mainland movies are absent from him. What does he have? Yesterday I heard the bad news, and I went through his movies over and over again, including "Tharlo".
It was a black-and-white movie, and it started with a whole recitation, after which Wanma began to lay out the story - why is it so hard to see an honest flat and straightforward movie - until the silly Tarlo people are empty. Such an ending, if you are not careful, it will be bad, I think, how can Wan Ma end it? I saw Tarlo riding a countryman's broken motorcycle into the mountains, driving and driving, he stopped... Why stop? Please look for it, no spoilers.
"Quiet Mani Stone", his first work, is too simple, I guess the theater will not want it at all, but I want to watch it again and see how he flattens out the narrative - such as Bresson's "Mouchette", Truffaut's "Small Change", and even Olmi's "The Tree of Wooden Clogs" - at the end of the film, the male protagonist, the child who became a lama, From the mountain beam (the long shot follows him from the left side of the screen) trotted all the way, several times covered by the trees, and then revealed the figure, was covered again, and finally jumped, ran into the temple, the temple was buzzing with chanting, the child was late, and the movie was over.
"Quiet Mani Stone"
His films expected an audience as pure as the kid (the little lama watched "Journey to the West" on TV and was fascinated). There should be such an audience. I asked Wanma for the audio of the chanting song that played between the end credits. A little boy murmured incoherently. Now the song is still on the phone. Not because of my interest in Tibetan Buddhism, but because I listened and found that there was a light in my heart that was lost very early and gone. I listened to it twice and didn't listen to it again. People are afraid to be reminded of this moment [by the child's voice] that you are no longer naïve. (Audible at the end of the article)
Zhimei of "In Search of Zhimei Genden" is a prince in an ancient Tibetan drama who sacrifices his eyes to help the poor. In Wanma's story, this Tibetan drama is about to be made into a movie, and the film crew found a beautiful girl who played a female role (she leaned against the door, sang a few words timidly, a good scary person), she said that it had to be the actor he cooperated with to go out of the mountain, and in fact, the actor was her good friend, and after breaking it, she went away to teach elsewhere. Now, the girl followed the car all the way and wanted to ask for an explanation.
The film crew did not know and took her on the road, on the way, the man in the front seat talked about his failed love, and the girl in the back seat listened silently, thinking about things. Journey after ride, finally arrived, the young man got up from behind his desk to greet the guest, and was told that it was she who followed... Next, do you think it's a heated conversation between the sad girl and the negative heart? No, Wan Ma didn't. The camera moves to the playground packed with students, far away, under the basketball hoop, where the lovers stand.
Too many girls have had similar experiences (and so have boys), but we don't know what they said, whether the girl got an explanation, and we don't know if they have worked together again... In the next set of shots, the girl returned without a sound and left with the car.
Wan Ma understands people, and in this scene, I thought he knew movies very well.
"In Search of Wisdom and Beauty"
Then there is "Old Dog", which theaters will not want. Has Wan Ma read Turgenev's "Mumu" - Flaubert said, it is the most moving novel in the world - but the fate of the "old dog" and the story of "Mumu" are completely different, therefore, not moving, but, when I watched the old man slowly bind the old dog on the wooden pillar, turn his face, pull the rope, tighten it, step by step ... I straightened up from my seat, not knowing what to do.
"Old Dog"
The first movie that taught Wan Ma was "Hit and Kill a Sheep". The protagonist, the fierce avenger, imagines him swinging a knife and chopping away. At this time, Wan Ma used a set of blurry slowing shots, but nothing actually happened (this is a trick used by directors who understand classic novels and write novels themselves). Remember the driver's good looks, the coach lady? Wan Ma really can tease actors, and in his next movie "Balloon", this lively actress suddenly becomes an honest peasant woman, and if Wan Ma hadn't told me, I wouldn't have recognized her as the boss lady.
Then, there's "Balloon" - this time, the lovelorn girl turns into a nun and accidentally meets her ex-boyfriend, who has written a book about their relationship. How much she wanted to read this book, but she was ripped off by her honest sister and thrown into the hearth and burned (the glasses suddenly fell off when the embarrassed ex-boyfriend answered her sister's rebuke) - the personalities of Wanma's previous works converged in it, more scale and ambition, but his narrative is equally calm. When the child runs away with the balloon and disappears at the end of the hill, and then the balloon rises (what a successful shot), Wanma seems to have found a new dimension in his film. This dimension foreshadowed the heights that his future films might reach, but he died.
"Balloon"
Now, I am waiting to see "Stranger" starring Huang Xuan, which is Wanma's posthumous work. Huang Xuan said that he faced the mountains in a set of shots and burst into tears. He meant to say, now that he thinks about it, did he cry for Wan Ma in advance? At noon today, on the 10th, Huang Xuan came to the voice, saying that he saw Wanma separated by a curtain (as if asleep, very peaceful), and tomorrow he will wake up, and many, many send-offs will gather around Wanma, and after chanting at the Jokhang Temple, they will go around Lhasa. Tibetans believe that dying in Lhasa is the supreme blessing.
Calm, restrained, and modest, Wanma's appearance and temperament are the most intellectual-like directors I have ever met. His imagination, his heart, his vision of looking back at Tibet with everything he had learned in the hinterland, was handed over to the film, and I saw him in each of his roles, sitting with him several times, and I thought: What is this head thinking? After the release of "Balloon", I asked him, how difficult is it to shoot the sheep that are mating, how do you get it? He said softly: It's okay, there is a way. Ask him what books he likes to read, and he says books that have nothing to do with literature and movies. Ask him about the movies he watched in his village as a child, and he mentioned Chaplin. Ah, Chaplin! I thus understood how he was faithful to and understood the humble soul, but did not exaggerate sorrow, but made people laugh—the kind of laughter caused by extreme purity, and in his images, the moments that made me laugh brought out the character of Wanma, calm, restrained, and modest.
Several of the young people he brought with him are now directors, including his vigorous son. How uncomfortable they should be at this moment. Uncomfortable days are yet to come! It was Wanma who made Tibet heard and seen, and his half-told story will of course continue, but the narrator is no longer Wanma Tsedan.
The way he stood there, how kind, how good-looking. The year before last, he came to the outskirts of Beijing to visit my exhibition of Tibetan group paintings, and I was not honored, but ashamed. Those paintings are only a brief glimpse, my understanding of that plateau is actually superficial, and Wanma's films are the flesh and blood of Tibet. A nation takes out its own movies and faces the world, and it has an unspeakable face and self-respect, and Wan Ma is the first person to practice this self-respect.
May 9–10, 2023
Wan Ma Tsedan, December 3, 1969 - May 8, 2023