A person who boasts that he never changes his views is actually a fool who stipulates that he will always go in a straight line and believe that he will always be the right fool. There are no principles in the world, only events; the wise man caters to the events and conforms to the times, so that they can be guided by the situation and used for their own use.
- Balzac, "The Tall Old Man"
This is a story about a small village in western Hunan province on the edge of the Three Gorges in the early 1870s, where two men know young people and a rural girl.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" >01 New World</h1>
It was 1971, 19-year-old Ma Jianling and 18-year-old Luo Ming were good friends, both were born into a family of doctors, and due to the background of the times at that time, the two went from their hometown of Tianquan County to phoenix mountain on the edge of the Three Gorges to join the queue, and it took two full days to walk.
Luo Ming brought an alarm clock and a recipe, and Ma Jianling brought a violin.
When they arrived, the house was crowded with a bunch of simple villagers who had never stepped out of the mountains to see the two young men from the city, and the production captain inspected their boxes and interrogated them.
The captain found a book in Luo Ming's box, because the villagers were illiterate, the captain turned to a page for Luo Ming to read the previous paragraph to verify what the book was, Luo Ming read: chicken breast meat six two, dried walnuts ten, a small spoon of bean flour, a large spoon of rice wine, egg white half a small bowl, a little salt, wash the chicken breast meat into small cubes and put it into a bowl ...
The villagers never knew that chicken had such a practice, and heard Luo Ming read these successive nods and ask questions, but the captain interrupted their communication and criticized Luo Ming, saying that they must work hard here and burned the recipe.
When inspecting ma jianling's box, a violin was found, but no one knew, the captain accidentally touched a string, they laughed and said that it was not a toy, the villagers were curious to turn to see, the captain wanted to burn him again, luoming snatched it, and said that it was a musical instrument, let ma jianling play a Mozart sonata for everyone.
The captain asked what the sonata was? Romin replied that it was a song title. The captain asked what was the song title? Luo Ming replied that it was like a song and not a song. The captain was anxious, saying that there was no song title, and Luo Ming replied in a hurry, the song name was "Mozart will always miss Chairman Mao."
The sound of ma Jianling's piano brought a new world to the villagers, a sound they had never heard before, so moving and melodious, resounding through the valley, the house was full of villagers, and the window was full of people.
After coming to Phoenix Mountain, Luo Ming and Ma Jianling are also faced with their new world, a new life, starting from pouring vegetables and mining.
In re-embracing these boring and boring labors, they discover a new, more interesting world, namely, the girls bathing in the hot springs of the first line.
These innocent young girls frolicked together, and in the eyes of the two young men, they were as beautiful as fairies, like a fairyland on earth.
Luo Ming accidentally fell into the trap and was found by the girls, the girls did not shout, but rescued him, at the same time, Luo Ming and Ma Jianling met a beautiful girl, her name is little tailor.
The little tailor is the granddaughter of the old tailor in the village, who lost her parents and was brought up by her grandfather, who taught her how to make clothes.
Since there was only one old tailor in the village, who was exquisite in his craftsmanship, he was highly respected, and everyone respected him very much and invited him to his home to make clothes.
Phoenix Mountain is the new world of Luo Ming and Ma Jianling, and the arrival of the two of them has also opened the door to a new world for the little tailor and the local villagers.
The first time the villagers tried to use an alarm clock to guide the time of work and work; the first time someone told them the story of the movie, although every time they were sent to see the movie "The Flower Girl", they could always tell it vividly and bring the girls to tears; for the first time they heard new ideas and new stories that they had never heard before.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="36" >02 small tailor</h1>
In this age of thirst for knowledge but poor books, intellectual youth show a strong desire to dabble in the world's knowledge.
In addition to physical labor every day, they want to enrich the spiritual world. Luo Ming and Ma Jianling heard from the little tailor that there was a Zhiqing in the village named Four Eyes, and he had a suitcase full of foreign masterpieces.
After being rejected by the Four Eyes in person, they managed to steal the box of books and hid them all in the cave, naming it "The Hidden Book Cave" and taking only one copy out at a time.
Romming and Ma Jianling watched Balzac's The Tall Old Man, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Dumas Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, and Lu Xun.
For the first time, they opened the spiritual door to the world, and after a sleepless night of reading a book alternately, they would get up in the morning, they would shout the names of the novel, and greet the arrival of the new day with full spirits, and it could be seen that since having these spiritual food, they had become passionate.
The little tailor who can't read has the aura and simplicity unique to the mountain girl, luo Ming decided that he wants to teach the little tailor to read, to read to her, to let her understand the outside world, and he wants the little tailor to no longer be an ignorant mountain girl.
This is the greatest mystery of human nature, love is rational indulgence, is the enjoyment of the great mind, the serious enjoyment, the barbarians only have emotions, and civilized people have thoughts in addition to emotions.
Barbarians surrender themselves to temporary emotional domination, but civilized people use their thoughts to imperceptibly affect emotions.
Luo Ming often took advantage of the old tailor's absence to read to the little tailor, and unconsciously fell in love with this lovely girl, and the two immediately fell in love and secretly dated without emotion.
The little tailor was subtly influenced by these new ideas, such as the fact that she would go from wearing a small vest to making a underwear for herself, and showing off her fashion to the girls in the village, telling them the difference between civilized and barbarian.
The three of them often spend more time together, and Ma Jianling also falls in love with the little tailor at the same time, but his love can only be hidden in the bottom of his heart.
In fact, from the scene where they first arrived at Phoenix Mountain and the captain, it can be seen that Luo Ming is a cheerful and extroverted person, while Ma Jianling is more introverted and deep, and is not willing to express himself, luo Ming always acts as a spokesman for Ma Jianling.
The little tailor was pregnant with Luo Ming's child, and before he could tell Luo Ming that he had returned to his hometown for two months due to his father's illness, Luo Ming asked Ma Jianling to continue to study for the little tailor before leaving, taking care of her, and staring at not being robbed.
Ma Jianling read "Madame Bovary" for three weeks for the little tailor, but the little tailor said that her favorite was Balzac.
In fact, it is also implied here that the little tailor has a special love for Balzac, that is, she only loves Romin. Because Romin read Balzac to her, Ma Jianling read Flaubert to her.
The 18-year-old little tailor was not old enough to get married, and the hospital could not give unmarried women an abortion, and the little tailor told Ma Jianling about the pregnancy, a shy young man who ran to the hospital for the little tailor to ask for obstetricians and gynecologists, and used foreign literature books as a quid pro quo, and the doctor agreed to come to the cottage to secretly give the little tailor surgery without anesthesia.
The little tailor who had finished the operation said on Ma Jianling's back that she found herself as if she had become someone else.
In order to give the little tailor some psychological comfort, Ma Jianling handed her twenty yuan and asked her to go to the county town to buy whatever she wanted.
The little tailor asked where the money came from, and Ma Jianling said that he had sold the violin to the obstetrician and gynecologist for 25 yuan, leaving five yuan for himself to buy a hero harmonica.
Two months later, Luo Ming returned to Phoenix Mountain from her hometown, but no one expected that the little tailor said that a person had changed, that her thinking had already changed in these literary works, that she had never bid farewell to anyone alone, cut her hair short, wore a pair of small white shoes, and embarked on the road to the city to find her dreams.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="67" >03Why little tailor loves Balzac</h1> alone
The first foreign novel that the little tailor heard was Balzac's "The Tall Old Man" that Romin read to her, and what story did the tall old man tell? It's actually full of metaphors for the future of the little tailor.
In order to train two daughters to marry into the rich, the old man wrapped them with money indefinitely, and instilled the idea that only money can have happiness, but in the end, the eldest daughter became a countess, the younger daughter became a banker's wife, and the old man did not treat them well and got the good treatment of his daughters. The daughters squeezed out the last bit of money from him, let him sell his house and live alone in a cheap rented apartment, and died a miserable death, relying on a stranger to take care of his funeral.
Just as at the end, When Lo ming catches up with the little tailor who is about to leave and asks her about her change, Romin says, who changed you? The little tailor replied that it was Balzac.
She insisted on going to the city to change her life because of a sentence from Balzac: the beauty of a woman is a priceless treasure.
Time flew by, twenty-seven years passed, Ma Jianling went to France to play the violin, Luo Ming became a doctoral supervisor in the School of Dentistry, and went to the city to find a dream of the little tailor?
In 1982, Luo Ming, who had been transferred back to the city, went back to Phoenix Mountain to find a small tailor, heard that the little tailor went to Shenzhen, and later went to Hong Kong, no one knew how she was now, broke off contact with everyone, and the old tailor had long passed away.
But from "The Tall Old Man", it can be known that this is the only balzac novel that the little tailor has heard, and in her urban dream, she who takes the beauty of a woman as her capital and faith is doomed to the "degenerate history" of her urban dream.
The little tailor's exclusive love for Balzac, perhaps another hint of her life, under the cultural impact of the soul suffering from new ideas, the desire for the outside world of the mountains, the precious items she came into contact with in the books, and the yearning for the life of the paper drunk and gold fans, and the materials that were no longer scarce and the clothes made cheaply, all of which attracted the little tailor with a beautiful face, and this capital had no advantage at all in the mountains, and could not exchange for the comfortable life she wanted.
People will change their lives because of the immersion of a certain book, a certain sentence, or a certain kind of thought, and they will also be awakened at the moment of contact with a certain thing or person because of the nature of this life.
It was after spending eighteen years in the mountains that the little tailor met The Lomin she should have met in her life, and was awakened by Balzac's words that "a woman's beauty is priceless", and has completely changed her life.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="82" >04 background</h1>
In 2000, Wei Sijie, a French resident Chinese, completed his first French novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Tailor, and in 2002, he wrote and directed the film of the same name, which was released in France, and the entire film was filmed in Tianmen Mountain in China, starring Zhou Xun, Chen Kun and Liu Ye.
The film has received multiple nominations abroad, but due to its bold shooting methods, Chen Kun and Zhou Xun's passionate interpretation in the play was banned for 18 years before it was presented to the domestic audience.
After the original novel was published in France, it sold 1 million copies, and the English version also reached 500,000 copies, and in 2016, it was translated into the novel of the same name by Yu Zhongxian, a doctoral supervisor of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and published Chinese.
Since the author, Mr. Dai Sijie, is a native of Chengdu, and the place where the novel takes place is also on the Three Gorges Side, the whole film adopts the Sichuan dialect, the simple villagers combine the authentic dialect, and the scenery of the Three Gorges, laughing and contemplating in the interesting story.
On the one hand, the ignorant and simple villagers guided the educated youth, on the other hand, the intellectual youth invisibly integrated into the life of the mountain village and influenced the villagers' cognition, and finally in the final construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the villagers as immigrants out of the mountains, the two aspects of effective neutralization.
As for the little tailor who went to town to pursue "Balzac's dream", what kind of fate would she have? There are too many possibilities, but in the life after breaking through her previous cognitive limitations, she is growing and changing, and more importantly, she has seen how beautiful, how tempting, and how confused the world beyond the mountains is...