The entire film revolves around the confirmation of Tharlo's identity
In the face of extremely limited scheduling, in order not to miss Wan Ma Tse-dan's new film "Tharlo", he got up early to catch the first show of the theater. When the ticket was collected, the ticket sales guy said that the film was selling well, and there were four people watching it. It seems that consumers and theater people have little expectation for the box office of such films.
At the beginning of "Tharlo", a Tibetan man carries Mao Zedong's "Serving the People" in full Mandarin, with a fixed camera position of about ten minutes, black and white pictures, boring and lengthy, challenging the audience's ability to endure. But looking back, this clip is very meaningful. The male protagonist of the film, Tharlo, went to primary school, and in his life's memory of "knowledge", there may be only this "Serving the People", in his perennial memory and recitation, the death of "serving the people" and "heavier than Tarzan" gradually evolved into his life creed. It is precisely because of this that he has been able to herd sheep for others for many years, and in the process of modernization, he has gradually been forgotten into an identityless "Nobody".
The entire film of "Tullow" also revolves around the confirmation of Tullow's identity. The film opens at the police station, where the director and Tharlo have a conversation about an "ID card", which is usual and meaningful. In Tharlo's simple philosophy of life, I just know who I am. But this logic obviously does not work in modern society, in the grand framework of the city, each person does not belong to himself completely, and the clarity of personal identity, in many cases, is more meaningful to others. There was an interesting conversation where the director asked Tharlo what his name was, and Tharlo said pigtails. The director said his real name, and Tharlo said his name was Tharlo. The director said Tharlo, the name is beautiful. Tharlo smiled shyly and said that no one had called me that for a long time. As a result, the braid and the tharlo become the double incarnation of the Tibetan man in front of him, the former is the hidden tradition and self, and the latter becomes the identity that the braid needs to pursue and confirm.
Pigtail came to the county town with the task of taking an ID photo and began his urban wandering. He "roamed" Beijing and New York in the photo studio, and the background of the curtain became a symbol of globalization, a effortless perception of cosmopolitanism, so that residents of any remote area and any nationality could coexist with the world and modernity. Tharlo and his sheep appeared in the county town in an image of ignorance and cowardice, a relatively modern place. Sitting across from the camera, he looked uneasy, still staring at the camera in a fixed mid-frame, guiding the viewer to examine the man on the screen. Hats, messy hair, amulets around the neck, etc., have become scrutinized wonders, alien to modern times and in urgent need of transformation. So, under the guidance and admonition of the photo studio owner, Tharlo went to the barbershop opposite to wash his hair, where he encountered another "enlightenment" in his life.
The Tibetan girl named Yang Tso has a poster of SHE in the barbershop, combing the rare short hair of a Tibetan girl and smoking a lady's cigarette. She became a temptation of modernity, actively provoking Tharlo's body and mind, and she incarnated as an evil enlightener, working with the county town to create a vision for Tharlo, a dream with a woman and urban Lhasa. Tharlo began to imagine more about his identity, influencing his duties as a shepherd, and was eventually slapped in the face: You are just a shepherd. But after the desire was opened, Tharlo was obviously no longer satisfied with this identity, he sold out his sheep, with 160,000 cash and the dream of regaining his identity, he found Yang Tso, but in the end, Huang Liang had a dream, Yang Tso could not find it, and the dream of money and Lhasa also went with the wind.
To be a Benjamin's "urban wanderer" is obviously to capital. Tharlo is not qualified, he thinks he can go to Lhasa with Yang Tso with money, but he does not know that the premise of urban wandering is the recognition of self-identity and the prudence of the city. Tharlo is not defensive about the people in the modern city, and delusionally imagines a good life as a modern self. But in fact, in the lens of Wan Ma Tse-dan, he is always isolated from modern life. Even with Yang Tso, who is physically related to him, they are always at opposite ends of the mirror on the screen, and most of the scenes are separated. In other scenes, Tharlo is always placed at the very bottom of the frame, always seemingly suppressed. Therefore, Tharlo has never been able to be a free man in modern society, always regulated, seduced, and persuaded, nominally looking for identity, but in essence losing his identity. Tharlo is disciplined by a living person, the director, the owner of the photo studio, the policeman he meets on the road, and Yang Tso, but behind it is the power operation mechanism behind modern society.
So at the end of the film, when the little braid has not been able to become a tharlo and has lost the self-symbolistic braid, he has completely become a Nobody, and on the vast and peaceful Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, he has once again lost the trace of his identity and become a person with nowhere to go and nowhere to go. This has to be said to be a tragedy of modernity, and Tharlo, who has no skills, has not read books, and even has lost his memory, is finally abandoned, and he belongs neither to the past nor to the future.
The grammar of Wan Ma Tse-dan's shots is still calm, but it is omnipresently brewing ideas. The extensive use of long shots and fixed scenes, the fusion and conflict of tradition and modernity, the gradual decline of national culture, and the sense of ritual in black and white pictures make the whole film full of calm and contemplation. However, objectively speaking, the excessive implantation of image symbols, the pale weakness of the characters themselves, the one-sided depiction of Yang Tso/women, and the dualistic juxtaposition of thinking undoubtedly weaken the strength of the film. But in the current film environment, "Tharlo" is undoubtedly a clear force, worthy of everyone who loves movies.