"I will write maggots until I die." —Imamura Changping
"Kaeyama Festival Examination" is a 1983 Japanese feature film directed by Masahira Imamura, adapted from Shichiro Fukasawa's short story "Kao Kao kao", in which the director describes the life and death state shared by humans and animals with a very calm attitude.
The deeper connotation of "death" is the praise of "life." The film took more than three years to complete, and broke through many masterpieces that year, winning the 36th Cannes Palme d'Or.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > a director dedicated to depicting the ugly and real world — Masahira Imamura! </h1>
Masahira Imamura, a director whose creative theme describes his films as the lower body of a person and the bottom of society. He is also one of the few people in the world who has won two Cannes Palme d'Or awards.
His films focus on the meaning of human existence, thinking and reflection on human nature. It reflects the animality and inferiority in the lowest level of human nature, and the cruel side of human nature is described in "The Examination of the Mountain Festival", which once made the author press the pause button.
This film tells the story of a poor mountain village in The Mountain, due to food shortages, all the elderly people at the age of 70, regardless of whether they are healthy or not, have to be carried by their children to die on the mountain.
Why has the word abandonment appeared in our human history? In primitive uncivilized society, labor is the main mode of productivity. The elderly and young children are the only two groups that cannot contribute.
And children will grow, which means that the new labor force is generated, the elderly are usually not the main force of labor, and it can even be said that the elderly are superfluous. When the population increases and food is scarce, it will lead to the elimination of a group of people, and this group of people must bear the brunt of the elderly.
Darwin's theory of evolution, "natural selection, survival of the fittest", these eight words, tell the essence of the evolution of life, but also tell the cruel facts of the system at that time in the film.
The whole world is an icy gladiatorial arena, and if you want to survive, you must adapt to the environment under the current system, and the history of mankind has come step by step.
In the film, Ah Lingbo, the mother of The Tree Stump Family Tatsuhei, takes the initiative to ask to go up the mountain to end her life early in order to save food. In the author's opinion, Ah LingBo did not really want to go to The Mountain with reverence for the mountain god, but more because of the customs of the village for generations and the cruelty of adapting to society.
The song of thirty-three teeth gave Ah Ling Po an extra title of "ghost mother-in-law", an old man who was about to reach the age of going up the mountain, but had a pair of healthy teeth, which made her a laughing stock in the village. So she painfully knocked off two of her teeth on the water altar, as if this was the posture that a 70-year-old man should have.
Before Ah Lingbo went up the mountain to die, she designed to trick her daughter-in-law Ah Song back to the Rain House. Ah Song, who is delicious and lazy, will not be a good granddaughter-in-law in the eyes of Ah Lingbo. Such a daughter-in-law may even bring shame to the family.
Choosing between human nature and the interests of the family, Ah Ling Po very decisively chose to sacrifice Ah Song, who was still pregnant. Only by removing this time bomb can she die more safely.
We can't evaluate whether her approach has lost the goodness of human nature, and morality is less important in the case of survival as a problem.
In order to survive under certain circumstances, human beings will create a society of survival of the fittest, and all their behaviors are closely related to survival, which is both cruel and naked reality.
Just as in lower animals, the female mantis will eat the male mantis to replenish their strength when laying eggs to ensure that the offspring reproduce, and they live only to live.
If we change to the current society, there is overcapacity and the financial market is very developed, then our entire pattern, culture and ethics will change greatly. A perfect social system, an excellent environment, and a high-speed and developed economic and social civilization have all provided us with a good life, and our standards of morality and good and evil will also change.
In the film, animal elements such as "toads", "snakes", "praying mantises", "moths" and so on appear many times, interspersed with scenes of hunting, devouring and mating. They also correspond to the people in the film who are like inferior animals, when they are lagging behind civilization, everything returns to barbarism and primitiveness.
The animal element is an alternative photography method of Shohei Imamura. Through the unique shooting perspective of people and animals, it satirizes the attitude of survival of humans and animals without difference. The interspersed use of these animal elements makes the whole film strongly express the atmosphere of human beings under nature and also having to face cruel survival.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the realistic choices brought about by the process of urbanization, where should the elderly go? </h1>
Although the abandonment of the old age of "The Examination of the Mountain Festival" will no longer appear in the current life and civilized society, most of us will face the "pension dilemma" now.
As an ordinary wage earner, most of the post-80s and post-90s generations belong to only children. When faced with the pension problem of four elderly people, it has become the biggest topic now.
In the movie "Father and Mr. Ito", the 74-year-old father had no choice but to make the last choice he wanted to make after living with his children. Because he knows that there are many factors that his children cannot accept living with, and that he is conformist, stubborn, and cannot help but interfere in his children's lives.
The children did not need the empirical value of the old man and the daily harsh nagging, so the father left a note back to his hometown and decided to start living alone.
However, on a rainy night, the house of his hometown was struck into ruins by lightning, and his father made another strategy in desperation: a nursing home.
When her daughter Ah Cai and boyfriend Ito were sending their father to a nursing home, Ah Cai finally made a choice and rushed to the place where his father left.
In most people, we should all see the same shadow, parents want to live with their children in old age, but they are afraid of having conflicts with them and causing trouble.
Every bit of life, parents try not to add trouble to their children, even when they are old, the biggest expectation is to be able to see their children on holidays.
Our parents always gave a lot for us, but after we became adults and started a family, we cared for and cared for our parents very little.
The debate in the ninth episode of the fourth season of "Strange Story" is: Should parents support living in a nursing home?
This topic is the choice that many people in contemporary China are facing or will face, an old man who chooses to live in a nursing home, is it really a choice to live out himself, or a helpless choice?
The words of the opposing defender Ma Weiwei really touched the author. These things themselves occur in the ordinary and middle-class ranges, and although it is a debate, it reflects a very real problem.
In the "Examination of the Mountain Festival", Ah Ling Po is not because of reverence for the mountain gods, follow the traditional customs to voluntarily go to the mountain, in the choice of life and death, the old man will choose to leave the opportunity to live to his next generation. But her firmness was only to make her son Tatsuhei feel less guilty.
Many old people now, adhering to the principle of not causing trouble to future generations, voluntarily live in nursing homes or live alone are not a minority, the old people are saying the truth, and it is true that they want to go to a nursing home, but the factors that make this decision may not be for themselves, but for their children.
Today, we live in a modern, affluent and civilized society. For the elderly to propose to live in a nursing home, whether to support or not to support is actually a choice, it does not belong to the category of life and death of the choice, it does not seem difficult to choose.
Families with stronger funds go to better nursing homes, and ordinary families go to general nursing homes, but few people find out why their parents really go to nursing homes.
And no matter what choice you make, there is no right or wrong, it just depends on which choice you can afford to pay the price. This is the reality, cruel and naked, that you have to face it.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > you grow up with me, I grow old with you! </h1>
Director Masahira Imamura's films use harsh reality to perceive human nature. For example, the choice of the elderly who must face early death in "The Examination of the Mountain Festival"; the choice when facing risks in "Eel"; and the choice of how to liberate ourselves in "The Warm Current Under the Red Bridge" all make us feel the cruelty of human nature in choice.
Between the trade-offs, those cruel images have also been pushed to the extreme by the director. When Tatsuhira, the eldest son of filial piety, carried his mother up the mountain, he truly realized the pain of his father's skin. His phrase "After killing my dad, now I killed my mom again" made people choke.
The author particularly appreciates Japan's courage to face death and reflect on human nature. The legend of abandoning the old age actually existed in ancient Korea.
In North Korea, there is also a story similar to the "Raoshan Festival Examination": grandfather, father, son three generations in the same house, when their father carried the grandfather over seventy years old to the mountain to fend for himself, the son picked up the back frame of the grandfather on the way back, the dialogue between the two made people think deeply:
Father: "Why do you have to carry the back frame back?"
Son: "When Daddy is old, I will use this back frame to carry you on my back."
There is a saying after the break called "eaves water, dripping old nests" in a specific environment, meaning to go up and down, parents' words and deeds and attitude towards the previous generation, will have an impact on their children. Just like this story, the father abandoned his grandfather in the barren mountains to fend for himself, and the son would learn to treat his father with such an attitude.
Everyone will eventually grow old, even if we are now in our prime, our children are still young children, but when they grow up and we are getting old, have you ever imagined what kind of example you set for your children? How you treat your parents, your children will treat you.
The development of history is always so similar, when you have made a choice between life and death from a primitive and barbaric society, in a civilized society you will make a choice because of the various dilemmas of real life!
At the end of the film, the sky began to drift heavy snow, and his son Tatsuhei hurried back, when he saw his mother who was like an old monk in the snow, he whimpered and shouted to her: "Mom, it's snowing" "Mom, you're so lucky, the day you went up the mountain met the snow" "Mom, you must be very cold..."
Although the author cannot feel the pain of Tatsuhei's struggle between survival and his mother, it is fortunate that we can make better and kinder choices in the modern civilized world today, without abandoning morality and affection for survival like animals.
Give your parents more companionship and care, more patience and understanding, they grow up with you, and you accompany them to grow old. To yourself, but also to those of you who have seen the article, I hope to encourage you!
Text: Chi Yi
Figure: Network