Text/Half a Lifetime (Author Half Life, Special Commentator of Litchi News, Senior Entertainment Critic; this article is the exclusive manuscript of "Litchi Network" and "Litchi News" mobile client, please indicate the source when reprinting. ）
If you're a viewer of a commercial genre film, "Crashing into a Sheep" is probably not your dish.
Today, when "Avengers 4" swept the box office, the film produced by Wong Kar-wai and directed by Wan Ma Tse-dan shows another side of globalization represented by superheroes: the disintegration and persistence of unique national traditions.
As a director, Wan Ma Tse-dan has two characteristics that are difficult to peel off, one is the nationality of the place where he was born in Tibet, which allows his works to maintain a kind of care immersed in tradition. This kind of concern of the director is not in the form of a column, let alone a curiosity of snooping, but sincere.
The second is that Wan Ma Tse-dan, who was born as a writer, is different from other directors in film creation and pays more attention to the literary nature of the story text.
In the works of Wan Ma Tse-dan's director or producer, there is often a sense of form that transcends the story, which is hidden under the cloak of nationality, religion and region, and is full of mysticism.
In the final analysis, the form of Wan Ma Tse-dan is often the content itself. In his films, story and conflict are secondary, and the poetry and mystery of the form itself is uniquely aesthetically pleasing due to its high degree of stylization.
The story of "Knocked a Sheep Dead" is simple, it's a movie that's not afraid of spoilers. The driver, Kimba, was driving a van and accidentally killed a sheep, and he was determined to overdo the death of the sheep. On the lonely Tibetan road, the driver Jinba meets the killer Jinba and learns that the man with the same name is going to avenge his father's murder.
The two Jinba met in this way, and the driver Jinba, who was grateful for "killing a sheep", thought about the killer's revenge and decided to go to know the follow-up. As a result, the killer Kimba unexpectedly disappears, and the driver Kimba completes his revenge in a dream and transforms into a killer.
The names of the two Kimbas, of course, are not a coincidence, this is a story of Zhuang Zhou Mengdi. Wan Ma Tse-dan once mentioned a Tibetan proverb to the effect that "if I tell you my dream, you may forget it; if I let you into my dream, it will also become your dream." ”
This is the key to understanding the movie. The two Kimbas meet in the accidental event of "killing a sheep", and their alternative revenge in their dreams is under the cloak of mysticism, representing two very different Tibetan identities.
In fact, in the Kham Tibetan area where the story takes place, revenge is a typical traditional reincarnation, which is the starting point of Wan Ma Tse-dan's creation.
The revenge of killing the father is primitive violence but also simple and traditional. The revenge of the killer Kimba can be fully interpreted as a traditional insistence. In contrast, another driver, Kimba, because of the open experience of traveling north and south, is more like a person in modern society.
Wan Ma Tse-dan paid attention to the hint that the killer Kimba was thin and decadent on the outside, while the driver Kimba was tall and burly. This is a very conspicuous fable, it represents the momentum of tradition and modernity in the present.
The conflict of Wan Ma Tse-dan does not come from characters or stories, but from the interaction of allegorical identities.
In the story of the two Kimba, the traditional killer Kimba, who looks thin and weak, is actually rock solid, and eventually he gives up violent revenge because of compassion.
Another modern social driver, Kimba, initially showed kindness for "killing a sheep", but in his dream, he revealed his cruel self and completed the traditional act of killing.
This creates a reversal that the modern driver Kimba is strong and hypocritical, and the traditional killer Kimba is weak and compassionate.
The two Kimbas are like mirror images, and you can think of them as one person or as a group. Beneath the contradiction of superficial reversals is the fierce confrontation within Tibetan culture.
This is not the wishful thinking of the interpreter, the director Wan Ma Tse-dan in the film, everywhere arranged hints. I was impressed by the scene where the driver, Kimba, completed his revenge in his dream, looked up for the first time to see the vulture, and looked up again to see a plane.
The meaning of the vulture is primitive, traditional, historical, while the airplane is modern, industrial, and cold. The driver Kimba's two heads-ups convey a clear message from a subjective perspective: abandoning primitive traditions does not mean civilization, but rather may be more bloody violence.
Wan Ma Tse-dan's adherence and yearning to tradition is hidden in such details. His films are thus stylized, and the natural, mysterious and poetic forms of expression are naturally in line with the original depth.
In "Bumped into a Sheep", the story of Wan Ma Tse-dan is not only about people and things, the vast Tibetan landscape, unique language and communication methods, under his lens, there is always a clash between tradition and modernity. These rich images hint at the current situation of Tibetans' lives, and also convey the director's humanistic thinking.
Wan Ma Tse-dan said: "It's a killer story, but it's different from other killer stories, and I like the way this story is told. ”
You see, in the director's view, the story itself is not so important, and the way the story is told is the content itself. If you're bored with the business story of superheroes, then "Kill a Sheep" should be able to give you a little novelty from the form to the content.