This article is written by Wang Xiaodong
The Bible of Job tells that Job, as a man of perfect integrity, fear of God, and away from evil, after God tried him twice, destroyed all his wealth, and caused him to suffer from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, and suffered extreme pain: Why is it that such a righteous person as he is tortured, while the wicked are safe and sound? Later, with the persuasion of three friends and Elihu, and the presence of God himself, Job strengthened his faith, stopped being self-righteous, and regained God's blessings.
The film "Miyang" directed by Li Cangdong is exactly the opposite of Job's story, which tells the story of the atheist Shen Ai, played by Jeon Du-yeon, who returns to her deceased husband's hometown - Miyang with her son, opens a piano class, and starts life again. But the good times did not last long, the only son was killed again, and when he was alone, Shen Ai seized on religion and began to believe in God. But when she was ready to forgive the criminal who killed her son, the prisoner said that he had also believed in God in prison, and that God had forgiven him. Shen Ai couldn't help but run: Why hadn't she forgiven the prisoner yet, but God had forgiven him? After not getting an answer, she stopped believing in God and began to take revenge on herself and those who preached.
Job's story has been passed down for millennia, and his journey from conviction to doubt to conviction of God is a process of christian conviction. And in "Miyang", Shen Ai's transformation from unbelief to faith to unbelief to God is the process of a woman's inner collapse. Talking about this movie, we can't get around religion, but people without religious experience are difficult to judge their right and wrong, I prefer to know them from the perspective of human nature, their suffering, helplessness, escape, we can deeply feel, perceive, and move.
First, Shen Ai
For the heroine Shen Ai, it is difficult for me to feel sympathy for her.
In the movie, Shen Ai first lost her husband, then lost her son, and finally her faith collapsed, and she lost herself again. Yes, she was a poor person, but I still couldn't sympathize with her.
Shen Ai is first and foremost an escapist.
From her brother's mouth, we know that her husband died after cheating, but Shin Ai still thinks that her husband loves her and her son Jun'er. So to escape the gossip, she came from Seoul to the small town of Miyang. The sunlight of the miyang was warm enough to heal her heartbreak.
However, Heaven was too unfortunate for her because of her show of wealth by investing in real estate, and her son was kidnapped and killed. When the police caught the prisoner passing in front of her, she could not look at the prisoner directly, was this because she and the neighbors had gathered to drink and did not take good care of her son's self-blame?
In order to escape the self-blame of the heart, she turned to Christianity and sought the placement of the heart in religion. She can sing hymns at Sunday gatherings, actively participate in religious activities, and even squeeze out a smile when preaching to others, forcing her face to laugh and say: I am very happy. But when a child broke into her house, she could no longer escape, and the tears could not help but flow.
Shen Ai is also a self-elevated person.
She came from a piano background, and art gave her the experience of beauty, but also created her isolation from the world.
She thinks she is different, so when she first arrived in Miyang, she instructed the decoration of the neighbor's clothing store; she thought she was independent, so she vainly invested in real estate; she thought she was elegant, so she refused to go thousands of miles away from the vulgar Zong Can's show of affection.
Even the most shocking scene of forgiving the enemy after believing in God was a means of self-elevation to show that she was different from ordinary Christians. But unfortunately, the criminal said that God forgave the criminal in advance, and that what she believed in could no longer be allowed to exalt herself, so everything in the past became a deception.
Shen Ai is a person who cannot take feelings seriously.
Dealing with family affection, after the death of her husband, she abandoned her brothers and families in Seoul and took her children to live alone in Miyang, which was her escape;
For friendship, she takes her neighbors to bars to drink and talk, but only uses them to integrate into the community; in the face of Christians, she deliberately destroys after not believing in religion, completely forgetting the help they once helped her.
In the face of feelings, especially for Zong Can, played by Song Kanghao, I can understand her dislike of Zong Can (discussed later), but I can't understand that she treats people as spare tires. She did not give warmth to Zong Can, but she hung him all the time, letting him live in pain and entanglement, truly scummy.
As the saying goes, there must be something hateful about a poor person, and for Shen Ai, her pity is naturally painful, but in the face of her nature, please forgive me for the fact that it is difficult for me to sympathize with her.
2. Zong Can
In "Divine Eagle Hero", Guo Xiang first met at the Fengling Ferry, and when he saw Yang, he was mistaken for life, and Zong Can, the owner of the Miyang auto repair shop, met Shen Ai, and this life can also be regarded as a lifetime mistake.
Life was cruel to Zong Can, he was thirty years old but still did not have a family, in the small city of Miyang,Humane Society, was looked down upon by others, but this was not his fault.
The environment in which he grew up shaped his behavior of making lewd jokes, singing loudly, and attracting students with fake certificates, which seemed quite vulgar to Shen Ai, who was "self-elevated", but it was not his fault.
His real mistake is that he fell in love with Shen Ai, they are like people on two parallel lines, they would never intersect, and by chance they met, but Shen Ai looked down on Zong Can and looked down on them.
I can understand that Shen Ai rejected Zong Can because of a story told in Chapter 169 of the Tianshu "Heart of the Goddess" by Xu Gongzi Shengzhi:
A Lion King fell in love with the goddess, in order to get the heart of the goddess, he turned his terrifying roar into a low chant, and even in order to prove his love, the Lion King pulled his most precious thing, the claws of the giant lion, one by one deeply pulled out of the body and dedicated to the goddess, and its pain tore his heart and lungs. But the goddess was unmoved, she said: Just because you love me, will I love you? The will of the gods will not accept your coercion, no matter how much you claim to love me!
Zong Can is like the Lion King, no matter how much he pays for Shen Ai and how deeply he moves himself, but this is Zong Can's own business after all, not because he loves her, Shen Ai must love him!
In fact, in the final analysis, it cannot be said that Zong Can's wishful thinking about Shen Ai is wrong. Guo Xiang, Cheng Ying, Lu Wushuang, and Gongsun Lucai in "Divine Eagle Heroes" are all once they met Yang for life, but for their lives, there have been those beautiful stories, and it is also a kind of luck, Zong Can, as long as they have no regrets.
But I still can't help but pity for Zong Can, sorry for a true heart.
3. Pastors
If Christianity did not save Shen Ai, it at least redeemed the pastor in the movie.
In revenge for the Christians who had helped her, Shen Ai used her woman's charm to seduce the priest, and when the priest took off her clothes and lay on her, she could see Shen Ai laughing at the sky.
Movingly, the pastor did not carry the matter forward in the end, he felt that God was watching him, making it impossible for him to have sex with Shen Ai, and years of Christian education stopped him from committing crimes. And in the evening Christian gathering, he did not lead everyone to repent because of shame.
In the preface to the Golden Plum, it is said: Those who read the Golden Plum and have compassion, the bodhisattva; Those who are afraid of the heart, the gentleman also; Those who rejoice, so do the little ones; He who has the heart of the Law in effect is the ear of the beast. I watched the plot of Shen Ai seducing the priest in "Miyang", there is compassion, the fear is even worse, the woman is really terrible, can only say that the pastor's choice saved himself, saved the family, and also saved Shen Ai, avoiding everyone's mistakes.
Sex, wealth, and power are the three sharp weapons that corrupt people's hearts, and civilization is mostly to prevent these things from being excessive, such as the Ten Commandments promulgated by Christianity, there is a moral law of "no adultery", perhaps these things are usually clichés, and everyone does not pay attention to it, but when some choices are needed, these clichés often make civilization appear in the choice.
4. Murderers
The criminal who killed Shen Ai's son said that God had forgiven him, and his face had a peaceful and peaceful look, which had the meaning of the Buddhist family "putting down the butcher's knife and becoming a Buddha", just like xie xun, the golden retriever king of "The Book of the Dragon Slaughtering in the Heavens", even if he killed countless people when he was young, but finally worshiped under the Shaolin monks, he could live in peace in his old age, is this normal?
Don't say that Shen Ai can't accept it, as long as it's normal people can't accept it.
The Ten Commandments of God clearly say", "Do not kill," and the book of Job also says that the wicked will suffer a lot in their lifetime, and the voice of fright is often in his ears, so how can a murderer, as a Christian, get God to forgive him?
But man is such an animal that takes the initiative to find reasons for self-consistency. The murderer can say that killing a child is a test for God to believe in God, and as for the dead child, he will selectively forget. And now that he is bathed in the glory of God, and God is so merciful, why can't he be at peace? He will selectively remember God's mercy and forget God's punishment.
This act of seeking self-consistency in sin makes sin no longer sin, so that sinners are no longer tormented by the soul, and they are a good person from now on.
But is the crime gone? No, at least not in Shen Ai's heart; not in the heart of a person with a conscience.
In the words of the movie, the secret sun is the secret sunshine, the sun shines in this small place, there is beauty and ugliness; here is the self-condemning love, the heavy love of Zong Can, the self-redemption of the priest, the murderer who makes the crime self-consistent, they are all small people, but these small people are like us.
In the Bible, Job said after seeing God, "Once upon a time the wind had heard of you, and now I see you with my own eyes." The last of "Miyang" is also a gust of wind, what do we see?
(Image from the Internet, copyright belongs to the original author)