"The Guardian of the Island": The spiritual coordinates of the guardian era

Author: Zhan Qingsheng

The film "Island Keepers", based on the advanced deeds of "people's model" Wang Jicai, has met with audiences across the country on June 18. In fact, many years ago, Wang Jicai's deeds attracted attention in the film industry, but they were prohibitive because of the extremely high difficulty of creation: a couple, a small island, the characters and space are extremely simplified, and the story is highly everyday, repetitive and bland, which is far from the strong dramatic contradictions and conflicts required for film creation. Not only is it difficult to type, but it's even difficult to achieve basic dramatization. What is quite surprising and gratifying is that in the face of this extremely challenging and extremely difficult special subject, the creators of the movie "Island Keeper" not only successfully completed this seemingly "impossible task", but also put it on the big screen, and the ideological and artistic quality presented by their works was also surprising.

The success of the movie "Shoudao Man" is the success of the path of realist literary and artistic creation, showing the great power contained in realist creation. The main creative team of this film conducted solid preliminary research to achieve the greatest mastery of the creative materials. The team went to Kaishan Island several times to collect style, and the director Chen Li, who is also a woman, even talked with Wang Jicai's wife Wang Shihua on the night of Chinese New Year's Eve, aiming to deeply explore the life and spiritual world of the hero of the heroic model. This two-hour film recreates the feat of the husband and wife guarding the island for 32 years. The protagonist goes from youth to two sideburns, from obscurity to touching China. It is real and gives the film a powerful power to move people's hearts.

Realist creation is not a naturalistic record of life, but necessarily contains dynamic selection, refinement, processing, transformation and sublimation, and is an artistic re-creation of "higher, stronger, more concentrated, more typical, more ideal". In the face of the seemingly bland archetypal story, this film strengthens the refinement of typical events and typical environments, highlighting the conflict between man and nature, man and self. The film opens with a scene of Wang Jicai's first encounter with a super typhoon on Kaishan Island. Dark clouds roll wildly, huge waves, small Kaishan Island is almost swallowed up by the furious sea, the protagonist while struggling to survive, while risking death to repair navigation beacon lamps, this kind of death struggle between man and nature, is not only a true record, but also the epitome of the protagonist's survival of the lonely island in 32 years, is the image portrayal of his tenacious spirit of resistance and indomitable will. In the face of the extremely harsh living environment, the protagonist completes the mental process of fighting with himself from the initial hesitation, doubt, struggle, and final firmness and fearlessness.

As a heroic model biographical film, the film is not about suspended abstract conceptual characters or gods who shine throughout, but about real and moving, believable real-life people. There is no slogan-style concept transmission in the film, but provides a solid realistic logic support for the protagonist's actions and psychology: the family's revolutionary prehistory (his father once undertook the task of supporting the front in the Battle of the Crossing River, and his second uncle was a soldier of the New Fourth Army), the words and deeds of the minister of armed forces Wang Changjie, the competitive character of not wanting to be a substation, the psychological satisfaction brought about by winning the wide respect of fishermen, and the life creeds of "guarding the island is to defend the country", "you guard the island, I guard you", "if you do one thing in your life, you will not lose your heart, and if you do not lose your heart, you will not live in vain". The superposition of various internal and external factors, reasonable construction, and strong support for the hero's 32-year feat, tells the natural formation process of the hero very convincingly. Liu Ye, Gong Zhe, Hou Yong, Chen Chuang, Zhang Yishan, Song Chunli and other actors added a strong appeal to this heroic story with their simple and natural performances.

The film puts the characters in a rich detail to show, with a large number of work details such as repairing navigation equipment, filling in meteorological and hydrological logs, raising the national flag, cracking down on smuggling, rescuing fishermen, etc., showing the protagonist's daily work, and also powerfully revealing the practical significance and value of garrisoning Kaishan Island. The film also uses vivid and interesting details of life (accompanying the protagonist's big yellow dog and its descendants, playing cards and cheating, singing Huaihai opera, eating instant noodles, watching the Olympic kick, New Year's party), real survival details (fighting typhoons, resisting mosquitoes, planting vegetables and grabbing harvests, placing crab cages and harvesting), and even various props (hair clippers, radios, national flags, telephones, telescopes, etc.), to build a real and complete living space. The film also adds emotional and allegorical artistic expression, the scene of the two baths is shocking, when the protagonist is disturbed by severe eczema and the back of the long-term sun and rain erosion is presented in front of the camera, the physical suffering they have suffered has been intuitively and emotionally presented in a figurative and artistic way, the cruelty of reality, the poetic romance and the spiritual sublime, in a high degree of artistry to achieve creative integration.

The creators of "The Guardian of the Island" use their "foot, eye and brain power" to find exciting materials from real life, from the daily life of heroes and the deepest parts of the soul of the characters to deeply explore the extraordinary and ordinary in the strange places, with solid plays, highly infectious performances, expressive lens language, to create a film boutique, but also for the new era of literature and art to provide a "body, heart, love" of the creative model.

"The Island Keeper" is a small theme and a small story, but it contains a transcendent pattern and big feelings, pointing to a lofty and grand theme. It is about how individuals hold fast to their beliefs and beliefs, and how they guard their unchanging feelings of home and country in difficult circumstances. The guardians of the island are not only an island, but also a spirit, a belief, and the spiritual coordinates that should be followed in this era.

The film uses a series of lines, symbols and narrative elements to reinforce the spiritual value of this sense of home and country. "Shoudao is to guard the country, and to keep the country is to guard the family", which points out the spiritual theme of the isomorphism of the home country, and also injects a lofty spiritual significance into the protagonist's persistence. As the image of the country, the flag raising is the most solemn moment in the film, the protagonist waving the national flag, rescuing the national flag in the storm, and the national flag is more precious than life in the protagonist's heart. It is a symbol of the country and, in a sense, a spiritual totem that runs through the whole film. The end credits reveal that Wang Jicai and his wife have used a total of 368 national flags in 32 years. People are integrated not only with the island, but also with the flag and with the country. This film not only condenses the 32 years of time between the husband and wife, but also reflects the great social changes in China from the early days of reform and opening up to the new era. Listening to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games from the radio, the increasingly powerful Chinese navy presented in the telescope makes the protagonist feel extremely proud, and even the son's name "Zhiguo" contains the home country point of "having the motherland in his heart".

"The Island Keeper" constructs the spiritual genealogy of a national narrative. The film tells the story of two people guarding the island, and the image of the country behind them has formed a consistent spiritual vein. As the implicit narrative line in the film reveals, the father, Chang Jie's father, the company commanders who died on the island - Wang Jicai, Wang Changjie - his wife Wang Shihua - the son who joined the army - the masses from all walks of life who paid tribute to Wang Jicai, the spirit of home and country has been inherited in different generations and different groups. In 2018, after Wang Jicai's death, more than 500 people in the first batch of militia guarding the island in Guanyun County applied for the recruitment, and a system of militia rotation on duty on the island has been formed. When Wang Jicai became a "model of the people", countless people joined him and became learners, followers and inheritors of his spirit. And this is the original intention of the film "Shoudao Man", this Shoudao story wants to express far beyond the Shoudao itself, but has a more far-reaching spiritual meaning and practical function. Wang Jicai and Kaishan Island have become symbols of patriotism, dedication and fighting spirit, and have become a bright symbol of the times and spiritual coordinates.

At the same time, "Shoudao Man" also inherits and carries forward the fine traditions of new Chinese films in the field of biographical films and heroic model films, and has carried out new development and development in the context of the new era. Films such as "Dong Cunrui", "Nie Er", "Lin Zexu", "Lei Feng", "Doctor Bethune" and other films in the "Seventeen Years" period, "Sun Yat-sen", "Mayor Chen Yi", "Liao Zhongkai" and other films in the 1980s, as well as "Jiao Yulu", "Kong Fansen", "Zhou Enlai", "The Day Of Leaving Lei Feng" and other films in the 1990s, have built the glory of Chinese biopics and heroic model films. After the new century, although there are also excellent works such as "My Left Hand", "Yang Shanzhou", and "Old Auntie", the films adapted from the stories of british models have not yet produced a wide range or even sensational impact on the whole society like "Lei Feng" and "Jiao Yulu" and other previous works. Of course, there are many reasons for cultural pluralism and aesthetic changes, but the creation mode of British model films has indeed appeared some stylized and routine tendencies, and the heroic model characters on the screen are often hollow and conceptualized, and the phenomenon of "respectable and unlovable, amiable and unlearnable" appears, and the creation of British model films once fell into a dilemma.

It is gratifying that the film "Shoudao Man" uses vivid, three-dimensional, plump film characters, simple and plain but exciting film narratives, accurately refining and grasping the spirit of the times contained in the heroic model characters, and successfully achieving a breakthrough in the dilemma of the creation of british model films, and the creators of the film have enriched and developed the creative mode of the British model theme film with their own persistence and persistence, creating a literary and artistic masterpiece. (Zhan Qingsheng)

Source: Literature and Art Daily