Speaking of Xu Ke's most beautiful movie, it is "Green Snake".
The faces of Wang Zuxian and Maggie Cheung alone are enough to amaze an era.
Bai Suzhen, played by Wang Zuxian, is charming and moving, and Xiaoqing, played by Maggie Cheung, has a delicate charm.
Coupled with the ethereal set and ambiguous pictures, the beauty of this film can be described as soul-destroying.
However, it does not stop at beauty, in its bones, it is an allegory of desire, affection, and love.
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Desire is the starting point of the story of "Green Snake", and the film's performance of desire is both subtle and bold.
When the white snake and the green snake incarnated as human beings on the roof, their bodies were intertwined, and the green snake rose and fell with the rhythm of thunder, like the clouds and rain of Wushan Mountain.
And beneath them is the wind and moon field, the place of indulgence.
After that, the green snake fell naked and joined the process of fun-seeking.
If you look closely at her dancing with the dancers, you will find that there is a blood-curdling temptation hidden inside.
Opposite the Wind Moon Field is the classroom of the students.
There is a sharp contrast between the singing and dancing in the distance and the sound of books in the near distance.
But can the students of the academy really be pure in their hearts and quietly read?
Obviously not.
Soon the teacher Xu Xian found that a student named Qin Song was actually writing a small yellow poem!
He was obviously not in favor of learning about love.
First he criticized in class, and then he took away the lantern that his girlfriend had put in the river.
On the surface, he did not want the student to waste time and waste his studies, but in fact, it was because he did not understand the great desires of men and women at this time.
In traditional education, readers should refrain from self-denial, but restraint does not mean that desire will disappear.
Whether it is for readers or ordinary people, desire is a flood beast, and once it is out of the cage, it is difficult to stop.
Take the story in the film, xu Xian's feelings for Bai Suzhen are not arising from desire?
The first time the two met was in the West Lake.
It rained heavily, and Xu Xian and Bai Suzhen crossed the lake by boat together.
At this time, Xiao Qinggang had just transformed into an adult, his breath was unstable, and the snake's tail appeared prototype.
In order not to scare Xu Xian, she jumped into the lake.
Bai Suzhen was afraid that Xu Xian would see it, and deliberately pretended to be unsteady and asked him to help.
When Xu Xian touched Bai Suzhen's soft body and saw her delicate face, it was impossible to be as calm as water.
After getting on the boat, Xu Xian couldn't help but peek at Bai Suzhen and saw that her wet hair was clinging to her collarbone, and further down, her breasts were slightly exposed.
Such a wonderful spring light, he lost his mind for a moment.
After discovering his gaffe, he immediately forced himself to wake up, got up and ran to the bow of the boat.
His careful thoughts, how to hide from Bai Suzhen who had been practicing for a thousand years?
Although this feeling arises from desire, it does not mean that there is no love. (This will be said later).
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As a human being, there are desires that can be released, but as a person who is a Buddhist cultivator, how can we dissolve them when we have desires?
Unlike Fahai, who broke off seven passions and six desires in "The Legend of the New White Lady", Fahai, played by Zhao Wenzhuo in the film, was trapped by "love" and "desire".
The love that plagues Fahai is not love, but human touch.
At the beginning of the film, he collects a spider spirit.
Although the spider spirit was a demon, it did not do anything bad, but practiced honestly, was amiable, and absorbed the buddha's shadow.
At that time, Fahai had an extremely simple understanding of good and evil: as long as it was a demon, it was evil and should be subdued.
After receiving the spider essence, he moved his compassion and began to doubt whether the value judgment he had always insisted on was correct.
It was when his values were shaken that he encountered white snakes and green snakes.
They were still snake-like at the time, shielding a pregnant woman from the rain.
Demons are considered evil; but demons can help people in distress and are acts of good.
With the preparation of the spider spirit, he was more tolerant of the kind demon and let go of the white snake and the green snake.
But then he fell into another magic obstacle.
During the birth of the mother, he accidentally saw the naked body of the other party, and after that, he often appeared in the scene when he was settled.
The mother's heavy breathing, the movement of stroking her body, and her exposed breasts lingered in his mind.
Because the desire was so deep, he even saw a group of naked goblins attacking him.
When he was fighting with the goblins, the golden paint of the Buddha statue fell off, which also implied that his inner faith was lost, and he had something other than the Buddha.
In order to eradicate the inner demons, he released the spider spirit that he had once subdued.
But is that enough?
Obviously, he has more to test.
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It is said that after Xu Xian and Bai Suzhen met on the lake, Bai Suzhen invited Xu Xian to the Bai Mansion the next day to get the umbrella he had lent himself.
When they met for the second time, the two went to Wushan together.
Previously, Xu Xian had blocked students from falling in love, but after tasting the sweetness of lust, he fell deeper than the students.
After the two are entangled, the camera turns and focuses on the pouring flood.
How could this water not be the desire of the two of them to spew out?
Xu Xian to Bai Suzhen, at first, may have seen the color of the intention, because of the color of love, but also because of love.
The most obvious evidence is that after he learned that Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing were snake demons, he also stood up for the two.
After seeing Xiaoqing in his original form for the first time, he was scared and ran out of the house.
Although Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing explained it with the illusion caused by the wind blowing the drapery, Xu Xian obviously did not fully believe it.
Therefore, he would propose to go to Beijing to catch the examination in order to leave for the time being.
During the Dragon Boat Festival, when Bai Suzhen did not shy away from drinking Xionghuang wine, he wanted to dissuade but did not know what to say, so he had to secretly pour the wine into the lotus pond.
But what he didn't know was that Xiao Qing was hiding in the lotus pond.
A bottle of XiongHuang wine was poured in, causing her to appear in her original form, and Xu Xian was also frightened to death.
Later, Fahai found him and told him that the two women in the family were one green and one white and two snake demons, and gave him a string of Buddha beads to protect himself, but he threw the Buddha beads away and bought time for Bai Suzhen and Xiao Qing to leave.
Knowing that his wife is a demon, he can do this not only desire, but love.
When he first learned the truth, he was indeed cowardly and thought of escaping, but love eventually overwhelmed the fear in his heart.
However, mortals are fragile after all, and after experiencing various twists and turns, he still failed to live up to Bai Suzhen's full love.
Bai Suzhen's love for Xu Xian was so strong that she sacrificed her life to steal the immortal grass for him and flood the golden mountain for him.
Under her willingness to give up everything, Xu Xian's love seemed so thin and unconvincing.
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What is easy to confuse in the film is the relationship between Xiaoqing and Xu Xian, and the relationship between Xiaoqing and Fahai.
After Bai Suzhen married Xu Xian, Xiao Qing "seduced" her brother-in-law, and Xu Xian's charm to her was obviously difficult to overcome.
When Xiao Qing and Bai Suzhen were playing in the bath, Xu Xian accidentally saw that Xiao Qing smiled at him charmingly, and he couldn't help but look at it a few more times.
When Xiao Qing deliberately danced to him in the courtyard, he would also be embarrassed for a moment.
This is a normal man's reaction.
However, Xu Xian is a reader after all, even if he is in a trance at some moment, in the end he can still restrain himself and know what can and cannot be done.
As for Xiaoqing?
She didn't really fall in love with Xu Xian and didn't want to possess him.
At that time, she had just come of age, but she did not know how to be a person, and she was full of curiosity about the seven passions and six desires of the world.
All she does is imitate Bai Suzhen to meet her own needs to explore human nature.
Xiao Qing's first experience of lust was in a contest with Fahai.
Fahai wanted to drive away the inner demonic obstacle, so he let Xiao Qing test himself.
Therefore, Xiao Qing imitated bai suzhen and Xu Xianyun's appearance when they were raining.
At first, Fahai was still able to restrain his composure, but under Xiao Qing's repeated provocations, his desire suddenly poured out.
At this time, Xiao Qing and Fahai, who originally had no mortal feelings, both experienced the lust of mortals.
Although one of them is a Buddha and the other is a demon, they are both developing in the direction of human beings.
Whether it is Fahai, Xiaoqing, or Bai Suzhen, the final belonging is all people.
The plot of the film after the flood of jinshan is very profound.
Bai Suzhen did everything to save Xu Xian, and her explanation for this behavior was: according to all the rules of being a human being.
That is, to fulfill the responsibility of being a person, being a woman, and being a wife.
In her opinion, all she did was what a wife in the world should do to her husband.
Fahai originally confronted Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing, but when he found out that Bai Suzhen had cultivated into an adult and given birth, he instead wanted to save Bai Suzhen and killed the monks of the Golden Mountain Temple.
With such a move, how could no one have selfish intentions?
When Bai Suzhen asked her to save Xu Xian, Xiao Qing asked Bai Suzhen:
"You always say that there are sentient beings in the world, but are demons ruthless?" Have you ever thought that our two sisters, five hundred years together are love? Have you ever thought of me like I was human? ”
Although Xiaoqing has not experienced love, she also understands feelings at this time.
So, when she entered the Golden Mountain Temple and saw Xu Xian shaved his head and became a monk, she felt that she and her sister had been betrayed.
At that moment, she was left in tears.
This tear may be feeling unworthy for Bai Suzhen!
The sister's deep affection was finally wrongly paid.
When she finally took Xu Xian to see Bai Suzhen, she found that Bai Suzhen had been washed away by the flood.
Since Bai Suzhen had already cultivated into an adult, and since he was experiencing weakness after childbirth, it was obviously impossible to escape the swallowing of the flood.
Therefore, she used the sword to penetrate Xu Xian's chest, allowing him to accompany his sister in another way, and also fully realized her sister's love.
Obviously, in the film, the role of the white snake is not less than that of the green snake, and the story line of the white snake is more obvious and more mature, which is the main axis of the development of the film, so why is the title of the film called "Green Snake"?
Maybe the answer is at the end of the film.
When Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian both disappeared, Xiao Qing said to Fahai:
"You say that there are sentient beings in the human world, but what is love? It's ridiculous, you people don't know, let me figure it out, maybe I'll come back. ”
After saying that, she jumped into the flood.
At the beginning of the film, Xiaoqing was unsentimental, and later in Bai Suzhen, she gradually understood love.
Different from Bai Suzhen's dedication to love and unrepentant dedication, she sees another aspect of love: fragility, inability to withstand tests, betrayal.
Therefore, she did not indulge in it like Bai Suzhen, but withdrew and left.
Perhaps, she is the one who truly understands love, and the one who completes the overall understanding of love.
When she understood everything, the so-called true feelings in the world, she no longer despised, nor did she linger.
The most tangled thing is Still Fahai.
He was troubled by what is good and what is evil, and what is a man and what is a demon.
He tried to drive away the barrier, but did the barrier leave?
At the end of the film, he embraces the children of Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian, and is in the Ze country formed by the flood, looking around, all dazed.
So, what exactly is love? What is desire? What is a person?
People who have experienced it must have their own answers.