I have previously sent two explanations about the film "A River of Spring Water Flows East", the first time is a short review after just watching the film, that is, my personal first impression of the film in a short period of time, written very briefly and strangely; the second time is a general but relatively complex interpretation of the film, but I believe that even the most complex interpretation, no article can describe the whole of the film "A River of Spring Water Flows East". Because this film alone from the length of up to three hours, can leave many film and television interpreters with complex and tedious interpretation work.
"When we talk about love, the other elements around love become less important. When we delve into the love that the author wants to show, love and love are always so fascinating. "This movie, which I want to watch at every time of the year, gives a different impression. The ideas presented in the film are complex and diverse: love, nostalgia, family and country feelings, tragedies caused by class disparities, and the unspeakable sadness and indignation of scholars. Today, leaving aside everything else in the movie, let's talk carefully about love— the main line that drives the film's plot, and the "love" contrast between the romance movies Seven Year Itch and Gone with the Wind.
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<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > the first thing to understand is that "A River of Spring Water Flows East" is not just a simple love movie. </h1>
There is a plot about "love", the movie is like a "dragonfly dotting water" as a quick skip, but then because of the love of the thoughts or sad emotions are always shrouded in the audience's heart. This is obviously done by the director on purpose, because the scene of love and this romantic feeling shown in this film is secondary. Love itself is beautiful, but the environment it produces and the effects it brings are diverse, and when any of the elements that make up the balance of love collapse, then love will produce unsettling feelings.
In psychology, there is a "love triangle theory", which is the love theory proposed by the American psychologist Sternberg, which believes that love is composed of three basic components: passion, intimacy and commitment. But in my opinion, this theory lacks a key, and that is in all love - romance.
Zhang Zhongliang and Su Fen' complicated and long affair from falling in love to getting married and having children is all explained in the movie with about "eight minutes" of footage. There is no doubt that the director intends to reduce the long story on the road of courtship to reduce the audience's extravagant expectations and memories of love and romance, so that it is convenient to quickly bring the audience into the lonely and sad atmosphere of "a river of spring water flowing east".
One shot of romantic love in the film (for me) is the duo's declaration of the moon. Zhang Zhongliang's sweet words and shan menghai vows were all so simple and simple.
The two took an oath to the moon and made a covenant
There is no doubt that even if the director deliberately breaks up the original meaning of love, let us forget the joy of love, forget the romantic wind and snow, and quickly enter the atmosphere of "sadness and loneliness", when we see such a shot or hear such a line, we will still wave "the vision of love" in our hearts.
In another movie, "Gone with the Wind", the love romance scene shown has the same swearing of love and the oath of the mountain and the sea with this shot, which is the dialogue between the lovers melanie and Ashley before eating barbecue at twelve oaks manor. However, this shot with an oath-like love testimonial is all aimed at two lovers.
Two people in the Twelve Oaks confess their love
Judging from the actor's lines, the content of the two films is almost the same, both are some romantic confessions, but the scenes shown in the film are different, that is, the scenes in "A River of Spring Water Flows East". I am not very arbitrary about this judgment, but it stems from the "combination of situations" in ancient Chinese poetry, and there are many such presentations in early Chinese films. The theme of the film "A River of Spring Water Flows Eastward" is a Chinese poetry scroll, and most of the imagery is related to poetry.
Let's look at some of Goethe's descriptions: "Chinese are almost like us in thought, deed, and emotion, making us feel very quickly that they are our kind, only that in them everything is clearer, purer, and more moral than we are here." In their place, everything is understandable, approachable without intense lust and soaring turbulent poetry.... They also have the characteristic that man lives with nature. You often hear goldfish jumping in the pond, birds singing in the branches, always sunny during the day, and always moonlit and clear at night. The moon is often talked about, but the moon does not change the natural landscape, it is as bright as the sun. ”
In addition to the symbol of "blending scenes", some other romantic elements are the differences in the cultural composition of China and the West, as well as the differences in ideas.
For example, the following shot, the waltz at a fundraising ball. The fundraising scene in "A River of Spring Water Flows Eastward" is Zhang Zhongliang's touching speech.
The waltz at the fundraising ball
From this, we can find two differences: the love image of the Chinese movie "A River of Spring Water Flows East" comes from the moon, Zhang Zhongliang and Su Fen's true feelings under the moon are romanticism mixed with scenery, and the meaning of the moon is undoubtedly a symbol of purity and beauty, but its deep meaning is "longing and sorrow", "I hope that people will be long-lasting, and thousands of miles will be cherished together." "The sea is born with a bright moon, and the end of the world is nearby." Needless to say, the "love story" behind Su Fen and Zhang Zhongliang will certainly not be too perfect, this romantic love story is built on tragedy, a love castle built with tears.
The love story in the American movie "Gone with the Wind" is more of a realistic love, and romanticism plays a role in the regulation of "no other". We can see that the freedom, human rights, and independence advocated by Americans seem to be so grand and so reasonable to appear in this movie. Whether it is money or power, or true love, it is the concept of romantic love shown in this movie. Just like the overall tone of the film, although the ending has an invisible scar, the overall plot is to give people infinite positive energy. Such a romantic love story is based on reality, but it is untouchable by reality and is beautiful.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > love factor in the three films</h1>
The romantic idea of american love from "Gone with the Wind" is not based on a family, but more on the "personal" aspect. The romantic idea of love in "A River of Spring Water Flows Eastward" is not a romantic factor generated by love itself, but is more about it in a big environment and in the feelings of home and country. Another film, The Seven Year Itch, will be mentioned later as special material. *(This is the Hong Kong film "The Seven Year Itch" and not the American film "The Seven Year Itch")
The first factor, the child.
Talking about love, sometimes it may only be enough to talk about the feelings between two people. But most literary works are talked about from a family. A family should not only be a couple, but also have a child and other people. And "child" is an important factor. Especially in movies, the feelings expressed by children are very specific and graphic. And through the child, it is also possible to directly express a lot of other feelings mixed in the gaps in love.
In "A River of Spring Water Flows Eastward", the child is a very important factor in the play, and the child is not a direct product of love and romance. The symbol of the child's meaning is a symbolic product of China's historical "Confucian" moral ideology. The romantic love story is brushed over in the play, and instead the love between the husband and wife is directly transitioned to having a child, and the symbolic status of this child here is more important than that of the wife.
Let's look at the last paragraph of the movie, the plot of Su Fen's suicide by jumping the Huangpu River. The child, as a product of husband and wife, is in a middle structural position, and the idea of transition is more of a catalytic product of tragedy than a factor of romantic beauty in love. If the two of them had no children, I don't think the audience would have too much grief, and the feelings would have been "sad and indignant" instead. Because the audience's thinking here changes in this way - how pitiful it is for a mother to die, leaving a child and an old man alone and unattended. "Pity" becomes the audience's first concept; but if there is no child, this important factor, more feelings will become, this Zhang Zhongliang is really lost, forcing his wife to die. "Anger" replaces "pity" as the audience's first concept. And the reason why there is such a change of feelings, I think, is more because the abstract thing of "love", the thoughts and feelings expressed in front of the concrete thing "child" are empty and powerless.
Scarlett and Red's daughter in Gone with the Wind are also incarnated. I think everyone who has seen it should have a memory - the daughter died unexpectedly while riding and jumping off the railing, and the love between the two was temporarily over. Was the death of his daughter the trigger for their separation? I don't think so, because before that, Red knew that Scarlett liked Ashley, so there was a plot of Red traveling with her daughter and the two. However, because the daughter at this time was too young to leave her mother, she could not do it. If later... Hard to imagine.
Does it mean that the intention of "child" appears in love movies? Or to put it another way, the appearance of a child in any love is not an ideal event, but an imposition of people's subjective will.
In fact, in these two movies, there are specific feelings about parents for "children", which symbolize the product of love and happiness, which is very different. Such emotional setting is determined by the overall performance atmosphere of the film and the thoughts and feelings it wants to convey. The "resistance to life" in "A River of Spring Water Flows Eastward" is a representative of tragedy, a reproduction of tribulations - the mother of an eight-year-old child committed suicide by throwing herself into the river, while her father betrayed the family, and the only relative left was her grandmother - all this tragedy, condensed in a family, placed in front of a child, is a great pain. And throughout the life of "resistance", it is all tragedy, and there is no point in the happy days he has. And Scarlett's daughter Bonnie in "Gone with the Wind" is a princess-like life, which is more like the author's intention, Bonnie's death is an accident, and this sudden accident also directly led to the broken love between Scarlett and Red, although in the end we can know that the two will eventually be together and continue the frontier. But this broken love, or deliberate love, is not a natural love process.
I know that my mother's resistance after jumping into the river
Bonnie failed to jump the railing and died
One is the seed of tragedy condensed by thoughts and sorrows, and the other is a beautiful dream that awakens people but can connect the bridge of love. What we see is that "resistance" cannot influence the end of a love, and the "lover" is bound to fall in the tribulation; what we see is that "Bonnie" can influence the life of the "lover", and the long road between the two sides of love is full of her shadow.
The second factor, men and women
The man and woman here are naturally both sides of love. In "A River of Spring Water Flows Eastward", Zhang Zhongliang and three women are emotionally involved, namely su fen, who is his first wife and pregnant with a son, Shu Xiuwen, who rescued him in Chongqing, and the last one is Shangguan Yunzhu, who received him in Shanghai. In the American movie "Gone with the Wind", Scarlett's feelings are also quite complicated. The whole movie revolves around Scarlett's three love stories and Ashley, whom she has always loved.
The two sides of love have always been the main body of love, and the subject's every move will affect the changes in love. In the movie, Su Fen has always been thinking about Zhang Zhongliang, and Zhang Zhongliang actually has a place in Su Fen's heart. Zhang Zhongliang's love journey is bumpy, he and Shu Xiuwen are together for money, and with Shangguan Yunzhu is for desire, only when he is with Su Fen is for simple and simple love. This expression of love is the purest and rarest of all this love. Just like Scarlett's love journey, in the end, Scarlett suddenly realized that the person she loved had always been Red, but she didn't want to admit it. The choice of love in "Gone with the Wind" is a two-way choice, not a simple one-way choice.
Three women in one play
Scarlett saw Red for the first time
The development of the concept of love is diverse, and it is difficult to define a thing that has existed since the existence of human beings- love—and we cannot identify or summarize any existing concept of love in casual terms. Because love is an idea that starts from the heart, there is no need or absence of any objective concept to "correct" this idea, just like the classic line "Does it take a reason to love someone?" Zhang Zhongliang loves Su Fen, even if later his choice is biased towards materialization and chooses a life of desire, but from the final ending, Zhang Zhongliang, who stands on the shore, is full of remorse; Scarlett is Allred's, but she is in a high position and proudly looks down at Red. She thought she had been in love with the unobtainable Ashley, until she found out that Red could leave her, she panicked, she understood that she was deeply in love with the man she loved more deeply.
Marx said: Man is the root of all art. And love, which can best be called aesthetics, is the "art" composed of living characters. Here, I would like to say that love, as an abstract spiritual body, has always existed in the form of thought. Like Scarlett in the movie, her heart had always belonged to Ashley until she married Red, and her "love situation body" was pinned on Ashley, even if she did not belong to Ashley; but after marrying Red, when Red had not yet filed for divorce- Scarlett's "love situation body" had not changed until the separation of the two, this "love situation body" transformation occurred in an instant, after something inexplicable and unaffecting subjective happened. The spatial transfer of love between Ashley and Red is impossible to capture. And when we know that Scarlett likes Red, she said it herself.
Love is something that is not constrained by space and time, so magical that people cannot believe in its existence. When you have it, you marvel at its subtle and random changes, but you can't really control the changes in love; when you lose it, you will find that you really have love.
The third factor, the times
Now we can finally reveal the true face of the third film, and if you ask me which of these three films I like the most, I can tell you without hesitation that it is "The Seven Year Itch".
I had a literature class before, and the teacher asked, "Which one do you like more, Shakespeare or Kafka?" I thought the answer was Kafka, but I didn't know why. The teacher told us that because Kafka told a modern story and was close to our lives, naturally none of us could get close to the life of the royal nobles described by Shakespeare.
Putting these three movies "A River of Spring Water Flows East", "Gone with the Wind" and "Seven Years Of Itch" together, it is true that "Seven Years Itch" is modern life and close to us. "The Seven Year Itch" is about a couple of seven years together, the male wu Dewei, who dislikes the woman Zhang Xiaomei more and more uninterestingly, so he wants to find some "wild food" to relieve the hunger, thus triggering a series of stories. However, the ending of the film is beautiful, and the two freeze their former suspicions and live happily together. The theme rhythm of the whole film is cheerful and light, and there is no discomfort in the slightest.
The times are indeed a major factor influencing the concept of love, and in the movie "The Seven Year Itch", there are a few lines that I remember particularly, and I have copied them as follows for your reference:
Zhang Xiaomei: In fact, when a woman reaches my age, what else do I have to ask for, but I just want to have a stable home, a husband who is loyal to herself, a famous and a share, have children, and be a good wife and mother. (Movie 75 min 10 sec)
Wu Dewei: I have no interest in my wife at all, and I am starting to itch a little again... My wife is now a baby machine, it's boring... I'm also going hunting for wild game... Peony flowers die, do ghosts also merry. (Movie around 81 minutes and 20 seconds)
Director Du Qifeng's seven-year itch (1987)
It can be seen that unlike the 1939 movie "Gone with the Wind" or the 1947 movie "A River of Spring Water Flows East", 1987's "Seven Year Itch" did change the original face of the concept of love. But now to discuss such a complex and bloody love process, we still need to consider the long term. The essence of love shown in this film is actually the same as in "Gone with the Wind" or "A River of Spring Water Flows East", but the concept of love presented here is more inclusive. Coupled with the development of the times, the changes in society, and the changes in the audience's mentality, such specific symbols can appear so normally and be accepted by the director and the audience.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="79" > Summary:</h1>
We will find that with the development of the film industry, the continuous improvement of the type of love film, "home in the romance film, in the structure of the relationship with men and women, no longer becomes the kind of plot-oriented structure in social films." No longer shows a kind of tightness, but shows a gradual alienation". Therefore, more and more romance films can take simple love as the main story line, separated from the objective secondary factors of "children" and "material influence". I would love to see that kind of real romance, which will make me feel good physically and mentally, although only one of the three works mentioned above is a real romance film.
"As a popular work, the ideological requirements of the love film are not new or deep, but whether it can represent or summarize the ideals and concepts expressed in the class at that time. Whether the characters and plots in the work can be echoed and resonated by the general public from the ideological and emotional point of view. ”
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