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In the film landscape of contemporary China, Jia Zhangke is deeply loved by researchers for his unique marginal position and poetic artistic feelings. In the existing film research of Jia Zhangke, most of them focus on the study of his artistic characteristics, narrative strategy and personal style, and pay less attention to the theme connotation and humanistic ideas of his works.
Survival value and life belonging are the eternal themes of art, and Jia Zhangke is good at capturing the alternative history that has been obscured in contemporary China's social changes with his lens full of "nostalgia" in his films, and reflects the historical and cultural symptoms of a specific era with the survival conditions of small people at the bottom and the edge.
As Dudley Andrew puts it, "Jia Zhangke is a film poet who shows Chinese and their country lost in the process of modernization. Therefore, "the specific cultural spirit of a specific era and a specific environment is the main content that Jia Zhangke wants to express." ”
Go deep into the interior of Jia Zhangke's film world, and explain the theme ideas and philosophical implications contained in Jia Zhangke's films through text analysis, which can help to understand Jia Zhangke's films in an all-round way.
The loneliness of geographical distance
As an agrarian people, Chinese cherish the homeland and relocate to the homeland, and the relationship between human networks and identity and the homeland is extremely close. At the same time, the backwardness of transportation also makes geographical distance an important reason for human loneliness. In ancient Chinese literature, there are poems about bondage and servitude, which mainly describe the loneliness and sorrow of wanderers when they are adrift in a foreign land, as well as the nostalgia for their hometown and relatives.
Since the 80s of the 20th century, China has launched the process of modernization and reform, and people have been liberated from the dependent relationship with the land and hometown with a strong desire to change their fate, scattered like dandelion seeds, and the traditional social order and status have also undergone fission, becoming nominally landed mobile beings and in fact extremely anxious foreigners.
They are farther and farther away from their hometowns, the space where they live with each other begins to break up, becoming islands of drifting, and the separation caused by geographical space involves the unspeakable loneliness in people's hearts, even modern instant communication tools and convenient means of transportation can not eliminate the loneliness in people's hearts.
As a director obsessed with an "agricultural background" and a strong sense of nostalgia, Jia Zhangke has always focused on those Chinese who were forced to leave their hometowns in the economic tide of the times, so "migration" has become a recurring theme in his films.
In "Mountains and Rivers Departed", Jia Zhangke is like a film poet, singing the song of the journey of contemporary Chinese society, telling the nostalgia of rootless individuals in stories mixed with stories about politics, fate and class changes; Like a sharp scalpel, while dissecting the social reality of China, it also analyzes the inner world of contemporary Chinese loneliness.
Father Shen and Lao Wu: Fenyang-Shahe
Shen Tao's father is an old man who has lost his partner, and the film presents the loneliness and vicissitudes of life of the old man in an expressionless and silent way. In order to resist loneliness, he traveled back and forth between Fenyang and his comrade Lao Wu's living place Shahe. In order to describe Shen's father's loneliness more heavily, Jia Zhangke did not have a single scene of Shen's father and his comrade-in-arms Lao Wu getting together in the film.
Even the last goodbye of Father Shen and his comrade-in-arms Lao Wu was expressed through mobile phones. Father Shen sat quietly alone with his eyes closed, accompanied by the ringing of his comrade-in-arms Lao Wu's mobile phone, and he left this world alone.
Jia Zhangke drew an end to this deep friendship with the phone that could never be reached, and the late goodbye turned into a silent farewell.
When Shen's father died, there were no family and friends around him, which is also very symbolic. Human beings exist in this world as individuals, loneliness is its essence, and loneliness is an inevitable proposition in our lives. No matter how modern society is, no matter how convenient means of transportation are, it cannot eliminate the loneliness involved in the geographical space between Fenyang and Shahe.
Shen Tao, Zhang Jinsheng, Liang Jianjun: Fenyang-Shanghai-Handan-Australia
The loneliness caused by geographical space is also reflected between Shen Tao, Zhang Jinsheng and Liang Jianjun. In 1999, Zhang Jinsheng, a coal mine owner, and Liang Jianjun, a miner, both fell in love with Shen Tao, an elementary school teacher, and Shen Tao finally chose Zhang Jinsheng, who was better than Liang Jianjun in material conditions. At the end of this paragraph in 1999.
The triangular relationship presented by the director through the triangular composition of the three people on the bank of the Yellow River foreshadows that the three of them will never be fellow travelers, and they are destined to go their separate ways on the lonely road of life. In 2014, the distance between the three became more and more distant, and different living areas and career choices formed different worlds.
With hatred, Liang Jianjun left his hometown, became a coal miner, got married and had children in Handan, and lived a difficult life; Zhang Jinsheng divorced Shen Tao, left Fenyang with his son, settled in Shanghai, and finally fled to Australia to escape legal sanctions; Shen Tao was alone and stuck to his hometown Fenyang.
Under the torrent of the times, former friends scattered, and their hometown became a foreign land, drinking all over the place. The Yellow River, which appears repeatedly in the film, witnesses the transformation of the relationship between the three and the joys and sorrows of the world. The spring breeze blew and thawed the Yellow River, but did not thaw the barrier between the three.
Shen Tao and Zhang Zhile: Fenyang – Australia
The relationship between Shen Tao and his son Zhang Zhile also reflects the loneliness of geographical space. Shen Tao's role as a mother has always been "missing" in the process of Zhile's growth. This absence comes not only from geographical distance, but also from emotional spatial barriers.
Fenyang-Shanghai-Australia, the distance between mother and son is getting farther and farther, and emotional communication is getting less and less, and in the end, this communication turns into "zero".
The hometown that can't go back, the mother who can't see it, and the joy of wandering in a foreign country can only turn that loneliness into a "wave", which travels across the ocean to the ears of the same lonely mother In a sense, the Australian town can also be understood as a mirror metaphor for the future Fenyang, suggesting the survival situation of the Chinese who has broken its roots in culture after obtaining material abundance.
Loneliness from emotional alienation
Human beings are social animals, and the loneliness of individuals stems from alienation from others, and in the definition of loneliness, the existence of others has long been presupposed. "The sea has a confidant, and the end of the world is like a neighbor." Good interpersonal relationships, deep family and friendship and harmonious husband and wife relationships have always been the "body armor" for human beings to resist loneliness.
"Widows and widows are lonely, and the most bitter in life is said to have no complaint. If you don't tell anything, you will suffer the most. The so-called relatives: the remains depend on each other day and night, and the spirits especially rely on each other for comfort. smile and answer each other; A pain and an itch, think of each other. "Loneliness is actually an emotional experience that results from the loss of human care and emotional communication.
"Loneliness is a state of mind that lacks intimacy and social relationships and is isolated. When a person feels that interpersonal relationships cannot meet his social expectations, he often produces a lonely, lonely, unpleasant emotion...
It is subjectively having a strong desire to get close to others, and objective social factors cannot meet their inner requirements, resulting in loneliness. Such as the loss of loved ones, the loss of love, the loss of friendship, the lack of sociability, etc. will produce loneliness. ”
"Mountains and Rivers Departed" takes Shen Tao as the center and completes the narrative through three emotional threads: one is the love line with Zhang Jinsheng; One is the friendship line with Liang Jianjun; One is the family line with his father and son Zhang Zhile.
The film describes the whole process of how Shen Tao lost love, friendship and family affection, and finally became alone, in the narrative of "one point and three lines", truly presenting the emotional world of contemporary Chinese and the world, and the creator shows the fission of interpersonal relationships in "county China" in a cold way.
In 1999, Shen Tao faced the love pursuit of Liang Jianjun and Zhang Jinsheng and hesitated. As Shen Tao asked Liang Jianjun in the film: "Study you? What's wrong with you? What about geometry issues? Or is it an algebraic problem? This seemingly casual question is a metaphor for Shen Tao's difficult choice in love.
The "geometric problem" represents the relationship between things, and Liang Jianjun represents the "geometric problem". Liang Jianjun's love for Shen Tao is based on emotions, as an ordinary miner, although he cannot give Shen Tao many material things, he will buy curling irons to give to Shen Tao, who loves beauty.
When Shen Tao drove Jinsheng's car into the stone monument, Liang Jianjun said to Shen Tao with concern: "The car is German technology, but you are a Chinese body." "It can be seen from this that Liang Jianjun cares for Shen Tao with the softest heart." The "algebraic problem" represents the relationship between things and quantity, while Zhang Jinsheng represents the "algebraic problem", and Jinsheng's love for Shen Tao is based on matter.
As a coal mine owner, he can give Shen Tao material satisfaction, and can win Shen Tao's heart with money, cars, and status. In the end, Shen Tao still chose Zhang Jinsheng, who could give her more material conditions, but the marriage also broke down due to material expansion, and Jinsheng and Shen Tao chose to divorce due to emotional discord, moved to Shanghai and had a new wife.
After Liang Jianjun lost his love, he chose to drift in a foreign land with hatred, and the friendship between the three fell apart. In 2014, Liang Jianjun, who was ill, returned destitute. Life does not sympathize with this man who was once abandoned by love, and in the face of life, the individual fate is full of various accidents.
That Liang Jianjun, who once ran away for love, did not achieve a counterattack in life, and could only return to the old house where he once said that he would never go back. But after 15 years of absence, the identities and status of Liang Jianjun and Shen Tao have changed, and it is difficult to intersect with each other.
Thanks to the property obtained when he divorced Zhang Jinsheng, Shen Tao became Shen Zong, running a gas station, living in a large house, and driving an Audi; And Liang Jianjun still lives in a dilapidated old house, and the life-saving money has to be scraped together. When Shen Tao took 30,000 yuan (this money should also belong to Zhang Jinsheng) and handed it to Liang Jianjun.
The man who once ran away for love and declared that he would never come back was finally defeated by reality, and all his unwillingness and helplessness could only be reduced to the sentence "Is it convenient?" ”。 Shen Tao returned the key that Liang Jianjun threw away 15 years ago, and kept the dusty wedding invitation 15 years ago.
But none of them could go back in time, and the years grew old and destroyed friendships, and the problems of "geometry" and "algebra" eventually became discrete "trigonometric" problems.
epilogue
In "Mountains and Rivers Departed", Shen Tao experienced three choices: the first was the choice of love, which was Shen Tao's active choice; The latter two, the choice of son custody and the choice of son to migrate to Australia, are Shen Tao's passive choices. Compared with Zhang Jinsheng, who made his fortune on venture capital, Shen Tao cannot give his son a better material life.
He cannot be sent to an international primary school in a metropolis, nor can he be allowed to immigrate to Australia. In order to make Le have a better living environment, Shen Tao could only reluctantly give up custody and agreed to migrate to Australia. Perhaps at this time, Shen Tao has understood that there is no chance to reunite with his son in the future.
So in the way of sending his son back to Shanghai, Shen Tao chose a slow car, and for his son's question about why he didn't take the high-speed train and plane, Shen Tao replied: "If the car drives slower, the longer your mother will accompany you." ”
The brief reunion with Zhile makes the separation even heavier. On the train, Shen Tao gave a bunch of keys to Le's house, but in the end, he did not wait for his children to go home.