Wen | Qian language talks about the style of writing
Editor|Humble language on book style
In the 90s of the 20th century, the development and breakthrough of artistic creation became more active. The two different forms of art, literature and film, have borrowed and integrated each other and made remarkable achievements. Literature provides excellent material for film, and film provides a more emotional and intuitive form for literature to enter the public.
Both the text and the film are explaining themes with eternal charm: the deep examination and exploration of people and human nature, the ultimate perception and reflection on the life and death of life itself, the persistent pursuit and reflection of the era and history, and the eternal hope and longing for the future and light.
However, novels use language to narrate plots, shape characters, and express emotions; The film conveys the concept of film and television with intuitive pictures and sounds that impact people's audiovisual organs. Therefore, even if the same theme is expressed, it will present the subject of the work with different characteristics and means of expression.
"Alive" as a movie
"Alive" is also a turning point and transcendence in Zhang Yimou's film career. Zhang Yimou's films have an indissoluble relationship with literature: Mo Yan's "Red Sorghum", Liu Heng's "Fuxi Fuxi", Su Tong's "Groups of Wives and Concubines" and Chen Yuanbin's "Ten Thousand Family Lawsuits", which have been reinterpreted and polished by Zhang Yimou and have become internationally renowned film works.
"Red Sorghum", "Ju Dou", "Big Red Lantern Hanging High" and "Qiu Ju Fights Lawsuits", although there have been ups and downs along the way, the love for art has inspired Zhang Yimou to persistently interpret his works with his unique artistic perspective and aesthetic perception and show his life.
Zhang Yimou's early works are full of his fascination with the sense of shape and deliberately rendered visual effects, allegorical annotations on symbolic figures, and his love and prominence of traditional Chinese cultural customs; For a long time, they almost constituted a kind of "Zhang Yimou symbol".
Zhang Yimou is a person with a strong spirit of self-doubt, self-criticism and even self-denial, and it was when he deliberately challenged his own model that he chose "Alive". Comparing the film with the original novel, we can find a breakthrough in the artistic vision and concept presented by the participation of the literary text through the media.
Historical background prominence and dominance
In the novel, Yu Hua describes Fugui's "life" as a calm bystander and listener. He seems to be more focused on presenting the state of existence itself, and this power to "live" "does not come from shouting, nor from attack, but from endure, to endure the responsibilities that life gives us, to endure the happiness and suffering, boredom and mediocrity that reality gives us."
In this way, history as a foil and undertone for the relief of human nature is deliberately watered down and bleached. In the film's revisions to the original work, Zhang Yimou highlights the background of the times implied by each catastrophic blow that Fugui has endured, and at the same time, treats suffering and death as a combination of chance and necessity.
The film uses historically iconic subtitles such as "Forties", "Fifties", "Sixties" and "Later" to connect the plots, using the audience's historical experience and memory to form an expectant vision, and replacing the suffering connotation of "hunger" in the original work with historical fate. Youqing's death was adapted from a blood draw to an accidental car accident.
Fengxia's death was adapted from a massive hemorrhage after difficult labor to an absurd mistake. These are all in line with Zhang Yimou's emphasis on the indirect implicit relationship between fate and the times: without the labor and wealth of "big steelmaking", Youqing would not sleep behind the wall knocked down by a car.
If it were not for the mistakenly beaten old professor as a "reactionary authority" and locked up in the cowshed during the special period, Feng Xia would have received timely treatment and saved her life. As a result, the withering of both flowery lives is treated as indirect victims of the times. The perspective of the film then shifts from the inner spiritual concern of human nature in the original to the external historical examination.
The treatment of the fate of Erxi and Bitter Root
In the novel, Yu Hua gives the fate of Erxi and Kugen to the god of death, and the backs of Fugui and Old Niu float in the twilight of the vast earth, and the ending is bitter.
But at the end of the film, Jiazhen, Erxi and Mantou (the "bitter root" in the novel) have always been accompanied by Fugui, and the family is poor but warm and full of good hope. Comparing the two treatment methods, there are roughly the following two reasons: First, the creative perspectives of writers and directors are different.
Yu Hua strives to calmly display repeated death to explore the instinctive meaning of "living", and to annotate the essential connotation of life from the height of compassion; And Zhang Yimou strives to "return art to the world, return the world to people, and return people to himself".
The film is made into a "play watched by ordinary people", showing the life theme of "the living are still alive, the dead are dead, and only hope is eternal". From this, it can be found that Yu Hua is a person who loves extremes, and Zhang Yimou has to restrain extremes this time. Yu Hua hopes to create a special case in fate, while Zhang Yimou hopes that the story will be implemented in a universal sense.
More importantly, as an art form using language and writing, the novel can set up repetitive plots to repeatedly stimulate the reader's heart to achieve the deepening and sublimation of the theme.
If a film with a picture as an expression uses repeated shots to act on the audience's audio-visual, it may cause them to doubt and resist the authenticity of the film. This may be due to the fact that film offers the audience much less room to recreate than fiction.
Secondly, the artistic concept conveyed by the novel and the film is different. Yu Hua gazes and listens to the whole story with a downward gaze, showing indifferent rationality and thinking, and conveying the philosophical speculation of "survival is eternal".
Zhang Yimou refracts the fate of the era of the entire Chinese into the epitome of Fugui's life, compared with Yu Hua's indifferent bystander, showing an understanding and deep taste of suffering, integrating deep subjective feelings, and conveying the brilliance of human nature of "hope for eternity".
A scene at the end of the film: Fugui and Jiazhen face their little grandson, calmly and dignitly telling their life insights sublimated from life circumstances - "When a chicken grows up, it becomes a goose, when a goose grows up, it becomes a sheep, and when a sheep grows up, it becomes a cow!" Zhang Yimou through close-ups of the child's bright smiling face and panoramic shots of the whole family clustered.
It conveys this philosophy of life that ordinary Chinese generations believe in. It is with this simple and simple idea that they have survived all the hardships, pains and even despair in the world. While life gives them the resilience and endurance to live, it also teaches them open-mindedness, tolerance and hope for the present world.
Zhang Yimou's subjective feelings are also revealed in the rendering of friendship. Yukei's childish and just struggle to protect his sister; Fugui's embarrassment after drinking his son's "hot and sour tea" with great interest caused everyone to laugh in their hearts; Jiazhen's eventual forgiveness and encouragement to Chunsheng; The warmth in the red egg that has not been isolated by the identity of the village chief's "capitalist roader"...
These simple emotions are also one of the reasons why Fugui, a "loser", can persistently live without dying in indifference and self-blame like Yang Laosan in Ba Jin's "Garden". It is people's instinctive desire for survival and external emotional atmosphere that nourishes the form of "living" existence, and life becomes abundant because of hope.
The allegorical allusion of "shadow puppets" and the construction of human figures
Zhang Yimou always seems to have difficulty giving up the classical complex of traditional culture: from the rough and extravagant red sorghum to the return of lust in the dyeing workshop; From the burning struggle and twisting of the big red lantern to the "find an explanation" imprinted in Chinese bones. The "shadow" culture of "Alive" still embodies Zhang Yimou's love for personal interpretation and allegorical expression of cultural symbols.
When Fugui was destitute, shadow puppets were the craft of supporting his family; In the "fifties", shadow puppets brought Fugui a "revolutionary proof" and escaped the fate of being criticized; During the "Great Steelmaking" period, shadow puppets became entertainment programs in leisure time; "In the sixties", the shadow puppet that was burned as the "four olds" although only an empty box remained.
But become the support and home of children's beautiful dreams. We can find that the shadow puppet in the film accompanies Fugui through the storms and sunshine of history and times, becoming a living memorial witness and a tortuous focus of Hengyuan's hope.
Of course, as a general requirement of film art for clues, the repetition of shadow puppets in the audience's vision also incorporates the development of the plot into a clear context trajectory.
Let's compare the plot where Fugui learned of Youqing's death. It is written in the novel: I screamed several times in Youqing Youqing, and as soon as Youqing didn't move, I knew that he was really dead, and I hugged my son, and Youqing's body was hard.
After reading it, people realized and admired Jiazhen's wisdom, and also sympathized with her painstaking efforts. Zhang Yimou is accustomed to pouring more idealistic colors into women, but Jiazhen is independent of the red primitive and gray destinies of Jiu'er, Judou, and Songlian, appearing quiet and restrained.
In the film, Jiazhen inherits the "traditional and virtuous" side of the original work, but breaks through the clichéd "rural women's model" of weakness and obedience. After Zhang Yimou lost Fugui's family property, Jiazhen was forcibly taken away by her father, and adapted into her bitter persuasion that her husband could not quit gambling, and resolutely took Fengxia to leave.
This change gives Jiazhen a stubborn, decisive and tenacious temperament to become a charismatic "this one"; At the same time, Jiazhen also conveys Zhang Yimou's rebel complex of daring to abandon nightmares and choose the dawn of the world that Zhang Yimou places on women.
Film is an audiovisual art, and the picture gives people a direct emotional impact. The experience of photographer has cultivated Zhang Yimou's keen and sharp sense of color and composition. At the end of the novel, Fugui led the old cow away in the aftermath of the sunset, and this gloomy, heavy, vast and empty solemn background and seamless composition instantly touched Zhang Yimou's inspiration.
Although this mirror language did not appear in the film in the end, Zhang Yimou ingeniously created the same rhyme everywhere. Most of the films use almost black and white tones as the background, flooded with nostalgia and loss like old photos. Even the pure smiles of the children, even the hot years, precipitate a faint bitterness in the shadow cast by the brilliant and enthusiastic.
Zhang Yimou integrates this most traditional way of living in China with the dialogue of everyday spoken language, evoking the warmth and surging resonance of the viewer's heart.
For some special reason, "Alive" did not receive a domestic performance, but this did not prevent it from regaining its unique charm as a work of art. And Zhang Yimou's breakthrough and transcendence in "Alive" is bound to become a towering milestone in his artistic career.
Of course, in this process, the artistic concepts of writers and directors have been vividly displayed, and at the same time, the works have been interpreted from different perspectives precisely due to the differences in various art categories and expression methods: Yu Hua deeply understands the difficulties and consciousness of living, while Zhang Yimou strips away the warmth and hope of suffering and seeing life.
epilogue
From the perspective of art genre, Yu Hua's calm language is deeply buried in the deep philosophy of life in the light and tasteless, while Zhang Yimou pays attention to highlighting the truth of artistic life and the integration of human nature through the choice of plot, the performance of actors, and musical colors.
But there is no denying that whether as a novel or a film adapted, "Alive" conveys a concept and experience of survival.
In the final analysis, art comes from life and interprets life from multiple angles and colors. The road of tomorrow, maybe no one knows where it leads, but the road of life and art will always extend - what matters is, how we face it, how we "live" ...