Speaking of Zhang Yimou's works, with "Hero" as a watershed, two completely different forms of creation have been formed. Before "Hero", he made literary films, and "Heroes" entered the era of commercial films. Although he later made literary and artistic films such as "A Thousand Miles to Ride Alone" and "The Love of hawthorn trees", the literary and artistic temperament of the film has disappeared, just like a woman who has given birth to a child can no longer change back to the appearance of a girl.
Fortunately, we still have pictures of women in their teenage years, and we can relive the literary qualities that have passed. "The Big Red Lantern Hanging High" is the girlhood of Zhang Yimou's films, which is a representative work of his early works.
This work is a specimen of post-colonialism, and unlike the positive praise Chinese vitality promoted by "Red Sorghum", "The Big Red Lantern Hangs High" goes in the opposite direction, criticizing China's feudal culture from a negative point, which is also the main tone of this work.
A good literary film is inseparable from the skills of the actor, and all the details are on the face of the actor. Look closely at the propaganda poster above, from the clothing, the two identities are close. In terms of age, the sitting woman is younger than the standing woman, but it is the standing woman who massages the sitting woman, which is an anomaly. Looking at their expressions again, the sitting woman's eyes were sluggish, without the slightest pleasure of enjoyment, while the standing woman had a complicated look and her eyes were full of reluctance. Judging from this, the film tells a story between women.
What can be done between women? Through the storyline, we find that women's stories are closely related to men's. But the center of the story has always been around the woman, the hero even rarely shows his face in the movie, most of the time is a back, but do not underestimate this back, the lives of the people in the whole mansion, are in his hands.
This article focuses on several cultural symbols in the film from the perspective of artistic metaphors.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > a chen in an old mansion</h1>
The biggest feature of this film is the use of many metaphors, highlighting strong Chinese cultural symbols. The head of the Chen family in the film, Mr. Chen, is a metaphorical character and an important symbol of the man in the film.
We know that this work is adapted from Su Tong's "Hordes of Wives and Concubines", and the background of the novel is in Jiangnan, but Zhang Yimou placed the location in the Qiao family compound in the north when filming.
The Qiao Family Compound is a representative of folk houses, and as a traditional Chinese building, the courtyard has been endowed with a strong Chinese cultural heritage. The courtyard is a closed house, there is only one street door to the outside, the closed door comes from the heavens and the earth, has a strong privacy, in line with the personality of the Chinese, low-key and introverted.
Zhang Yimou gave the Qiao family courtyard a lot of close-up shots in the film, high walls, narrow aisles, complex portals, and the wedding night of the fourth aunt Tai Songlian gave the courtyard a meaningful overhead shot. The photography of these physical spaces is aimed at elevating them to the level of artistic expression.
The film uses the environment as an important means of expression, and sets up a big artistic label in this environment, that is, Mr. Chen. We can hear his voice, but we can't see his face, always just a back, in which he is represented by an abstract image.
Through the artistic expression of the environment, and then to understand the existence of Mr. Chen, it is not difficult to explain his metaphorical role, that is, male power. Therefore, in this film, we see two series of characters, one is male and the other is female. Men are unrelentingly adhering to the "old rules", while women are secretly crossing the Chen Cang under the cloak of "old rules". "Old Rules" has a fierce confrontation with human nature in the film, and in the end who do you think wins?
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the story of a plate of spinach</h1>
There is a detail in the film that Mr. Chen lit the lamp at which aunt last night, and the next day the aunt had the right to order what she wanted to eat. Song Lian had served Old Master Chen the night before, and the next day she wanted to eat some spinach, so she could get a plate of spinach smoothly. After another day, she still wanted to eat some spinach, but Old Master Chen hadn't spent the night at her place the night before, and she couldn't eat this plate of spinach.
A plate of spinach represents a power, and when men satisfy their lusts, they give women a special kind of power, but this power is limited, and after the expiration date, it is invalidated, and the grant and deprivation occur almost simultaneously. The women in the film are fighting for the power of this "spinach".
The eldest wife is a feudal antique, the second aunt is too mouthy with a honey belly sword, the third aunt is too arrogant, and the fourth aunt who has just entered the door is too clever. People say that three women are a drama, and these four women have become a pot of porridge.
The second aunt sent an undercover agent to the fourth aunt's room to take revenge in the vicious way of the villain, lust for profit, and viciousness. The third aunt and Song Lian had many confrontations, but when Song Lian knew the true face of the second aunt, she and the third aunt seemed to become good friends.
The image of the third aunt is a drama, which is again a traditional cultural symbol. People often say that "the drama is ruthless", which means that the drama is two-sided, the surface is bright and beautiful, and it is seductive; but in terms of emotion, the watery Yanghua is both sexy and dangerous.
In the body of the third aunt, Zhang Yimou fully demonstrated the emotional needs of human nature. She had an affair with the tall and handsome Doctor Gao, and eventually became the target of the male power's punishment and lost her life. Despite her arrogance, the audience did not feel disgusted with her, but was full of humanitarian sympathy.
The fourth aunt is what Mr. Chen calls a "foreign student", which means that she is a new type of woman who has been influenced by Western culture and should have progressive ideas. However, she voluntarily jumped into the fire pit and married into the feudal and autocratic Chen family, becoming the fourth aunt.
Just married into the Chen family, we see that Song Lian still has a modern consciousness of independence, equality and self-improvement, such as equal treatment of the next person. But soon the style of painting changed, in the Chen family, which has a strong desire for power, Yahuan Yan'er became a victim of the power struggle, and she also stepped into the center of power step by step. She not only competes with women for power, but also with men.
In order to get the right to order the plate of "spinach", she pretended to be pregnant to gain greater power, but in the end she was also sent to the end of the road, and was severely punished by the male power, not only was the lights closed and permanently beaten into the "cold palace", but also labeled "crazy".
On the surface, the film shows the intrigue between women, revealing the complexity of women's inner desires and shaping the image of women. However, what we need to think about is that in Zhang Yimou's films, most of the films highlight the feminine temperament of women in terms of gender settings, and rarely show the masculine temperament of men. Why?
Zhang Yimou was born in the 50s and grew up with the state, and the feminine temperament of women is often associated in postcolonial theory with the image of a lost, aggrieved, oppressed state. At this point, we may be able to explain the reason why Zhang Yimou has not been able to make profound literary and artistic films since "Hero".
When the image of the country is enhanced, in the real world, the old things are precipitated by the times, and what surfaces is a steady stream of new people and new three views. People's aesthetic tastes have undergone a fundamental change, those once profound decadent ideas have faded out of people's sight, modern people are more concerned about the present and the future, and Zhang Yimou is the same.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">
The sense of cultural ritual in the film</h1>
There is a point ceremony in the film, which is to hang the lamp. Zhang Yimou particularly emphasized this ceremony, every night the four aunts and wives would stand at the door, listening to the housekeeper Chen Baishun shouting a few courtyard lights, like the emperor's flop, accompanied by the drums of Peking Opera, the old servant holding the lantern, stepping on the small steps, hanging the lantern in front of the selected aunt's room.
The aunt who heard the lights in her yard was full of joy, while the other three were full of emotions, and the ritual of hanging the lamp carried abstract cultural significance. In a patriarchal society, how do women embody their power? It's through sex. This is true of hanging lights, and so is the right to order food.
In addition, the film uses a prop to metaphorize love. Yahuan Yan'er said that the flute is something that men play, and the young master of the Chen family can blow it, but women can't play. Song Lian is attracted by Fei Pu's flute and runs to the rooftop to chat with him, and later Song Lian gets drunk and tries to get Fei Pu's love.
In addition to subtle psychological changes, such a plot also has a hidden cultural ritual. Since the flute is a man's thing, it means that women cannot have it. And it just so happens that Song Lian has a flute, so where did this flute come from, and Song Lian said that it was a relic of her father.
But in the eyes of Old Master Chen, this flute is a product of love, and it is likely that song lian's lover gave it to her when she was in school. Feipu can play the flute, and subconsciously, Song Lian associates Feipu with her past lovers, and only then does she have a slightly drunken love.
The ritual makes an ordinary life phenomenon and details carry abstract cultural meaning, which is a narrative method with a deep mode, which makes the film full of a strong sense of culture and depth.
From this film, we see the strength and horror of male power in the old era, but at the same time, we also see the mutual killing between the same sex under its influence. In order to compete for a plate of "spinach", the aunts and wives of the Chen family fought back and forth with open guns and arrows, and finally died and went crazy. The film deepens the cultural thickness of the vulgar story through many metaphors, and the whole work carries many cultural symbols, probably because Chinese culture is too thick and not easy for Westerners to understand, so it caused this film to miss the Oscar best foreign language film of that year.