Husheng
"Swim until the sea turns blue", listening to the name is a special literary film. But in the context of the Chinese film market, literary and art films are always associated with dullness and boredom.
I watched in the theater for less than half an hour, and there was an audience on each side. One of the girls took out her phone and slapped it hard at the opening scene, then collapsed in her seat, and then, yawning, hurriedly left the scene.
Of course, director Jia Zhangke's pursuit will not be a box office hit, but we still have to ask, what does this film take to retain the audience?
Poster of "Swim Until the Water Turns Blue"
Like Legends of the Sea, Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue is a film with a distinctly Jako long imprint.
In addition to the interviews with individuals, the film is interspersed with many seemingly meaningless segments. The camera is either aimed at the faces of peasants eating, or at ordinary people passing by on the street, or at objects placed on the table... You seem to see something, and you don't seem to see anything.
Perhaps, this is the point that Jia Zhangke has been emphasizing: literature has things that movies can't do, and movies also have advantages that literature can't reach. These shots don't have any verbal symbols, and how they should relate to the interviews of the characters depends entirely on the free interpretation of the viewer.
The official introduction to the film is this: three writers born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua and Liang Hong, become the most important narrators of the film, and together with the daughter of the late writer Ma Feng, they re-look at the individual and family in the midst of social change, making the film a 70-year history of the Chinese psyche.
But viewers who have watched this film will find that what Jia Zhangke wants to express has little to do with big words such as "social change" and "history of the Chinese mind". Several famous writers, such as Mo Yan and Su Tong, also appeared in this film and said a few tall testimonials at an event - there is modernity, the mutual of the soul, the future of society, and so on.
What exactly these words mean, how to understand, the film does not mention half a word at all. From the first minute to the last minute, the film does not have a single introduction. As for what the symphonic 18 chapters mean, the audience can also explain for themselves.
This is not to say that this film intends to scatter and scatter, step on the watermelon slice, and slide to where it counts. From Ma Feng's daughter to Jia Pingwa, from Yu Hua to Liang Hong, their conversation styles are different, and the life stories they tell have their own characteristics, but in the seemingly aimless chatter, we can gradually see the intention hidden in the image.
Jia Pingwo
Today's readers, except for scholars or students in colleges and universities Chinese departments, may be somewhat unfamiliar with Ma Feng and his works. The works written by Ma Feng, Xi Rong, Li Shuwei, Sun Qian and other writers of the Yam Egg Sect are, of course, a bit "earthy" from today's point of view. When I was in college, I was born in the city and didn't like Zhao Shuli's works, and I felt that I couldn't read them.
But listening carefully to the narration of Ma Feng's daughter and fellow villagers can not only outline an interesting image of Ma Feng, but also understand how his works are closely related to his life and career. The so-called cooperatives, collective labor, mutual help and mutual assistance... It was these concepts of distance from young people that ignited Ma Feng's generation.
Seeing this, I also touched the doorway of this film. The next three main narrators, Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua and Liang Hong, are all great writers who are very familiar to domestic readers. Do you think they're going to talk about their early life stories, or their views on literary creation, or their prospects for Chinese literature?
Not really.
Jia Pingwa said, "At that time, I was young, I wanted to write everything, and after graduation, I also wrote a little bit of everything, and by 1982 and 83, I felt that this was not going to work, and I had to find a direction." So he went back to Shangluo and walked around the village, feeling very happy.
Liang Hong's situation is similar. After graduating with a doctorate, getting married and having children, life was smooth, but she always felt "wrong" and felt that it was a "betrayal". So, she went back to her hometown, chatted and nagged with the old man who stayed there, and we all knew the story behind.
The relationship between writers and hometowns, we have talked too much. This time, if Mo Yan was also interviewed and talked about his "red sorghum", it would be no problem to talk about three days and three nights.
However, this film is obviously not concerned with literary issues, but how these writers find their own life path and how to discover their own infinite possibilities.
Yu Hua
The most interesting of the several narrators is Yu Hua, who really did not expect him to be a scribbler. However, the experience from dentist to writer is fun and fun, and buried under the language of joke is Yu Hua's very deep understanding of life. For example, the nap in the morgue makes him think about the meaning, which cannot but be reminiscent of his ill-fated little people. The questions he pondered on the shores of his hometown were all metaphors—what was on the other side of the mountain?
The answer to the question is not readily available and must be found on your own. Therefore, we can completely see this movie as a "root-finding" of life. It is not writers who return to their hometown to write it, but they find the foundation of their own lives in their hometown, find the language they want to express to the world, and find the strongest connection between themselves and others.
As soon as Liang Hong talked about her mother and father, she couldn't help but burst into tears, saying that these things were still "afraid to touch." This is not a manifestation of Liang Hong's sentimentality. Mother, father and sister, where did their suffering come from? What is the root cause of this? We are all familiar with Liang Hong's "Liang Zhuang", but after watching this film, you really understand why she wrote those words, and why "Liang Zhuang" is also a microcosm of China.
What impressed me most was that Liang Hong's son could no longer introduce himself in the dialect of his hometown, and he had to repeat it sentence by sentence with the help of his mother. How do today's young people feel about their hometown? This is, of course, a problem. But people of different eras may have to rely on their own strength to find a way forward, and there is no standard answer. Liang Hong's son's knowledge and understanding of suffering is destined not to be the same as hers, but the young man will certainly be able to go out of his own way.
Liang Hong
In the movie, after each chapter, there will be an ordinary person reading the golden sentences in the writer's work. Their tone of voice is not standard, it sounds strange, but from their extra serious expressions, I suddenly realized that the original literature, whether it is film or not, is really not the "interpretation" that stays in academic papers, it has already melted into everyone's life. What is the "correct way to read"?
The film ends with Yu Hua's emotion. You can see his words as a point, or as a dialogue between the film and all the audiences. Yu Hua said that when he was a child, the sea in his hometown was yellow, which made him feel very strange: How come the sea is not blue? So, he's going to swim all the way down until the sea turns blue.
Why keep swimming? What if you keep swimming and the sea doesn't turn blue? The film ends abruptly here, but the problems left by the text remain there. The film is calling on us to fill those gaps in meaning together, to find the sea that can contain the vast life of the individual.
As for swimming or not swimming, it is everyone's freedom, the right to choose, always in our own hands.
This issue is edited by Zhou Yuhua