Background: Loess Plateau. Vast, vast, desolate. The old movie "Yellow Earth", made in 1984, brought people a visual impact, a spiritual shock, and deep thinking.
The film's director Chen Kaige, the photographer Zhang Yimou, and the male protagonist Wang Xuexi. Gu Qing (Wang Xuexi), a member of the Eighth Route Army's Cultural and Labor Corps, comes to the home of Cui Qiao (Xue Bai), a poor girl on the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi, to collect folk songs. Eat and live in the people's homes, do housework with the family, do farm work together, get along harmoniously, and after a period of time, Gu Qing is like a family. In particular, Cui Qiao saw that Gu Brother even sewed his own clothes, and after listening to Gu Brother talk about the marriage autonomy of the Eighth Route Army, Cui Qiao secretly followed the heart of joining the army.
Gu Qing was leaving, Cui Qiao wanted to follow, and Gu Qing said that he would go back to ask the leader. When Gu Qing returned, Cui Qiao had already fled his newlywed mother-in-law's house and crossed the river overnight to find the Eighth Route Army.
The whole work does not have many details, and there seems to be no clear theme, like ink paintings floating by. There was not much dialogue, especially among the peasants of northern Shaanxi. But these have made the audience understand enough, deep enough.
In the vast and barren yellow land, there are still so many of our compatriots, who are poor, kind and simple, but also ignorant and backward in tradition. On the ridge of the old cattle ploughing the ground, a group of people naked upper body praying for rain, picking a load of Yellow River water to cross the mountains and walk ten miles, the passionate waist drum team sent their sons to fight the East Ocean, this picture, embedded in the eyes of the deep into the mind lingering.
Whether Cui Qiao crossed the river safely and whether he found the Eighth Route Army, the film does not introduce at all. The future of CuiQiao is worrying. Too many regrets, left to the audience, can it be regarded as a fly in the ointment of the work?
May we send them more sunshine and green and hope, give them more help, and let them grow together with our motherland and prosper together.
Ma Liang, 2021.10. 23 , Shanghai
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