The word "Chengxian" belongs to Chinese characteristics, if you study it carefully, from the Warring States period of Fang Xian Dao, the upper class began to pursue the art of immortality, to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Taoist Ge Hong combined the Taoist Immortal FangShu and some Confucian ideas to build a complete system of immortality, interested friends can see his book "Baopuzi".
In the Hong Kong drama "I Have a Date with a Zombie", Ma Xiaoling's famous set of knotted mudras is derived from the nine-character mantra "Pro-Soldier Fighters, All Arrays Move Forward" in the "Baopuzi Inner Volume XVII Dengshi", but in the process of being introduced to Japan, it was mistakenly copied as "Pro, Bing, Dou, Er, All, Array, Column, In, Front".
Whether it is the bird things that the ancient Chinese emperors did to refine the elixir of immortality, or the current genetic cloning experiments, it can be seen that the pursuit of immortality is a tacit thing for all mankind from ancient times to the present, and in view of the high cost of "becoming immortals", it has long become a political ideal. Today, Kim Ki Ki-jun recommended an old Hong Kong and Taiwan movie "Double Pupil", the story is related to Cheng Xian, directed by Chen Guofu, starring Leung Ka Fai, Rene Lau, David Morse, the thriller horror film, telling the story of stubborn Taiwan police detectives and US FBI experts joining forces to hunt down the real culprits behind the bizarre serial murder case. The film was released in Taiwan on October 25, 2002.
Huang Huotu (Leung Ka-fai), a police officer in the Foreign Affairs Unit of the Taipei Police Department, awkwardly bumps into his brother in the criminal unit who is investigating the bizarre death of billionaire Liao Zhenfu while arresting a foreign worker with incomplete procedures.
Since Huang Huotu exposed the corruption of his colleagues and brother-in-law two years ago, he has been like a street rat in the police station. Everyone looked at him with disgust and disgust, and the advantage of the best English in the whole police station became the reason why he was assigned to the cold door affairs team, and the once bright future became the twilight of the present.
He can't face the accident that his daughter Huang Meimei has become autistic because of the reporting of the incident, and the evasive mentality makes him prefer to hide in the cramped office of the police station day and night. The long-term non-return home makes his wife Qingfang (Rene Liu) unable to endure this kind of widowed marriage, and repeatedly files for divorce from her husband.
Huang Huotu, who was trapped in the situation of his wife and daughter, thought that his police career had come to an end, but he did not expect that because of the death of Christian priest Lorenzo, he was mistakenly involved in this strange serial murder case, acting as a translator for Anthony, an investigator from the US FBI who assisted in solving the case.
The serial murder involved five lives, each of whom died in a manner that fits the punishment of the five hells in Taoism.
Liao Zhenfu, the owner of the Taifeng Chemical Group, a big capitalist who was rich and unmerciful, died alive and froze to death, which was called cold ice torture; the adulterous slut who destroyed other people's families - qiu Miaofang, the mistress of a member of the Legislative Council, was burned to death by fire; and father Lorenzo of Jingjiao (that is, Christianity, which was called Jingjiao when it was introduced to China in the early years), was nominally a priest, but behind his back was an intermediary who sold arms in Taiwan by the United States, and when he died, his stomach was stuffed with intestines washed with water, which was called intestinal punishment.
Chen Liangwang, the unfilial son who forced his parents to die, was tortured to death by heart-wrenching; Anthony, who finally died of tongue pulling, did die unjustly, simply because he showed in front of the media his hatred for the despicable act of killing people and disdain for the theory of ghosts and gods.
Except for the execution of the heart, the other four people did not die in real people, but were caused by the consumption of some kind of mold emitted through the air conditioner.
The five represent five kinds of human fish, and the order of death is exactly in line with an ancient and rare Taoist illustration, and this illustration is a method of becoming an immortal, and the person who wants to become an immortal is the one who survives in the twins of the difficult mother in the opening scene of the movie - Xie Yali, the daughter who suffers from cancer.
According to Xie Yali, she and her sister, who had died in her mother's womb, were the same two Daoists in the True Immortal Temple of Luofu Mountain in their previous lives, and they should have soared into immortals but should have failed, so the two had to be reincarnated and rebuilt. The sister was able to cultivate in her mother's womb, and Xie Yali had already dissected the corpse step by step. Xie Yali could only follow the cultivation procedure of the previous life, through his own pupils, find the human fish to beat him into hell, and finally use the hand of the yellow fire earth to achieve the liberation of the soldiers and feathers to ascend the immortals. In the illusion created by Xie Yali, Huang Huotu finally fired his gun, and as a destined person, he would also follow Xie Yali to "ascend to heaven by one person".
As for the ending, considering the impact of the broadcast, the director made two versions. One version is a deleted version of positive energy (the massacre part in the True Immortal Temple is deleted), Huang Huotu came alive in the voice of his daughter, leaving the four words "love does not die" at the end of the film; the other version is a complete version, whether Huang Huotu has survived or not can only let the audience speculate on their own, and at the end of the film, there are four Sentences of Buddha(from the Buddhist book "The Mysterious King Seeks the Dharma").
The film transmits the Taoist concept of "Chengxian" from beginning to end, but the final picture ends with a Buddha, which shows that the four sentences of this point are what the director finally wants to express. Of course, as a pseudo-suspense horror film cloaked in the cloak of religion, the thinking about human nature and the metaphor of society are the places we should pay attention to.
As one of the four Asian tigers, Taiwan in the 1990s was in a period of rapid economic development, until the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the world economic situation took a sharp turn, although the impact on Taiwan in the same period seems to be very light, but with the strong follow-up to the financial crisis, the economic damage caused by it is becoming more and more prominent, and the rotation of Taiwan's political parties in 2000, so that Taiwan's economic problems are not only unresolved but also retrogressed, the distribution of income deteriorates, the government is poor, the people are poor, The situation of the rich and politicians is becoming more and more serious. In the movie, Huang Huotu's behavior of reporting corruption of his colleagues was originally a matter of being a police officer, but he was excluded by the people of the whole police station, corruption and bribery were the norm, and righteous behavior was incompatible with the police station, and from top to bottom, greed became a convention, and Huang Huotu was not a "different" in this regard.
Don't look at the Taiwan authorities as so arrogant inside, when it comes to facing the United States, it still has to obediently admit it, after all, it is the economic and military lifeline, and it only dares to shout at its own people to drink five or six, and secretly instigate the yellow fire soil to make Antony a stumbling block. Although the art of cinema has always been exaggerated because of its theatrical characteristics, think of "hollow Cai" can even say things like "power for love", what magical things will not happen?! And the extremely powerful fatalism in the film also makes people feel the sense of despair of the people and the confusion of facing the unknown and the future.
P.S. it is necessary to state here that although the so-called art of immortality and some things about Taoism are repeatedly mentioned in the film, the film belongs to the artistic process. The "Five Hells" are mentioned in the Taoist classics, and the story of Wong Tai Sin is also mentioned in Taoism, but the combination is another matter, at least this so-called murderous "way of becoming an immortal" is not approved by Taoism, please distinguish carefully, in other words, Taoism does not carry this pot.
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