Poster of "A Vast North"
On July 20, Cai Chengjie's film "A Vast North" was released in theaters of the National Art Film Alliance. This film has won two awards at the 11th FIRST Film Festival for Best Feature Film and Best Director, and its magic realism performance method, the narrative method of the female perspective, and the accurate depiction of the ecology of today's northern countryside are rare in domestic cinema films. The fact that such a film can be released can also be regarded as a more diversified possibility for the Chinese cinema film market and the choice of the majority of film audiences.
Stills from "A Vast North"
Stringing together many stories and scenes in the film is the heroine Wang Erhao. For the design of such a character, the director and screenwriter can be described as painstaking. Because her three husbands have all died unexpectedly, in the conservative countryside of Hebei, widows like Wang Erhao are naturally regarded as ominous symbols, and are criticized and disliked by villagers. Interestingly, because of the various yin and yang relationships, Wang Erhao began to be regarded by the villagers as having special mana, and then became known as a great immortal. Faced with the change in the villagers' attitudes, Nihao initially resisted the identity of the Great Immortal; however, when she found that the Great Immortal could not only solve the problem of survival of herself and the little uncle Stone, but also make her have the power of instructions to the villagers, she accepted this identity arrangement.
From the rejected little widow to the living immortal worshipped by everyone, the story that happened to Wang Erhao seems to be a reproduction of the red light that was also born in this land of Hebei more than a hundred years ago, and the folk fairy tales such as the so-called White Lotus Godmother earlier. The red light of the knife and gun, the white lotus godmother's wind and rain, are all re-embodied in another magical and strange way, wang Erhao, who lives in the contemporary countryside of Hebei.
The backlash between tradition and modernity is very obvious in Wang Erhao. On the one hand, she is arguably the most modern person in the village. She wears a bra that the women of the village rarely wear, and her dress is relatively foreign; she has a kind, authentic heart, reverence for nature, love for children, and uphold justice. On the other hand, however, it is a great irony that such a woman of great modernity must eventually make a living in the most traditional and local way of playing a living fairy. The back-and-forth nature of Erhao's body is actually a microcosm of the northern rural ecology represented by Hebei in the film.
On the one hand, the belief in gods and demons, feudal superstitions, traditional concepts, etc., still continue in a very stubborn way in the rural society; on the other hand, the desire for money and wealth brought about by modernization and economic development has made the villagers profitable, so that people's hearts are corrupted. Under such circumstances, the reason why the good two good people are willing to accept the identity of the living immortals is that such an identity can make themselves have the right to speak and dominate the voice and domination of extraordinary people.
In the film, we see again and again that Erhao, in the form of instructions from the living gods, asks different villagers to love the girls, not to deceive the good, and to abide by the integrity. The identity of the living immortal has become the source of power for Erhao to spread justice and protect justice.
Since it involves the belief in gods and demons, the film naturally cannot be shown purely by using realism, and the way of expression is closer to magic realism. In order to present this interweaving of magic and reality to the extreme, the director not only used the uncommon picture ratio of 4:3, but also let the film be presented in an overall black and white tone. In this black and white color, heavy snow, dead trees, crows, wild foxes... A variety of symbolic elements with chinese cultural traditions and freehand colors make the film present a poetic magical effect.
Of course, similar to director Zheng Dasheng's new film "Village Drama" released not long ago, in addition to the overall black and white tone of the picture presentation, this film also inserted several color pictures in a timely manner. According to my personal statistics, there are three places where color pictures appear in the film.
The first is when everyone praises Niyoshi for having the magic power of the immortals, and When Nichiyoshi also decides to accept the identity of the immortals, the director immediately launches a close-up shot of Nichiyoshi's face, and the clarity of the picture quality is beyond the ordinary. Perhaps the director uses such a way to tell the audience that the so-called immortals actually do not exist, and the human heart itself is the biggest abyss.
The second time was when Niyoshi relied on being a god and his life began to improve significantly. With the entry of the color picture, the director immediately showed a long shot of Niyoshi dressed in a fairy costume and dancing the god. In such an image expression, the divinity of the two good comes not so much from some unnatural mysterious force as from her kind and handsome personality charm.
The last time is at the end of the film, when the subtitles appear. In such a color picture, cute little boys, kittens and green plants are presented, and such a warm picture design leaves a little hope for the future of Erhao.
Just like director Xu Tong's famous documentary "Fortune Telling" that shows the fate of folk fortune tellers, "A Vast North" also uses a very contrasting and pathetic approach to show the so-called two good who can control the fate of others, but their own fate is still drifting and unpredictable. Erhao tried to help the villagers give birth to boys, and their original intention was to like the two girls of the villagers' families very much, hoping that they could treat their daughters kindly; they did not expect that after the villagers really gave birth to boys, in order to raise the boys with all their strength, the ruthless villagers actually sold their two daughters to outsiders, which also made Erhao's hope of being a mother of two girls disappointed. The little uncle Stone, who has been dependent on Niyoshi for his life, was also killed by the explosives used by the villagers to blow up the beasts in an accident. In the end, even Erhao himself, because he prevented his old classmates and the village chief from digging the gold mine in the mountains, was also splashed with hundreds of urine by his old classmates and was unconscious.
There is a very brilliant scene in the film, where the villagers twist and sing on the bridge, while the two good people under the bridge are paralyzed on the snow, helpless and desperate. This kind of composition is very rich in meaning. Seeing that there, the author can't help but sigh: no matter how magical the mana, it may be difficult to resist the sinister and unpredictable of the human heart, but no matter what, the sinister human heart will eventually pay a price in the face of nature. The gold mine in houshan was proved to be fake, and many villagers with dreams of making a fortune accidentally lost their lives in the bombing.
The last scene of the film is quite ironic: the families of the villagers killed and injured in the bombing accident have come to the aid of Erhao again; the helpless and complaining Erhao claims that he has been broken by the mana and is powerless to return to heaven, leaving only the last peace charm, which can only keep one person safe; so the crowd begins to compete for this last so-called peace charm. In the freeze-frame scene of the crowd scrambling, the film is over. From this, the audience may suddenly realize that this film is not about gods and demons at all, but about the human heart and human nature itself.
Throughout the film, The people and things that Erhao's past experiences and the people and things he came into contact with in Chengxian are intertwined and combined in a magical way, such as the sixteen-year-old girl who jumped into the well and the second husband who died in the well of Niyoshi, such as the white fox that has appeared many times through the snow, and the echo between Erhao's own identity. Perhaps, as Yan Lianke, a famous writer who is very good at the creation of magic realism literature, said: The reality on the land of China today is even more magical than the description in all the literary works of magic realism. Thank you to director Cai Chengjie and his team for bringing such a wonderful and realistic movie, and sincerely recommend everyone to go to the cinema to watch.