Author: Hao Han, Master of Drama, Film and Television School, Communication University of China
Different from the ontological awakening of the fourth generation of Chinese films and the image innovation of the fifth generation, the "seventeen years of films" carried by the third generation of "red directors" often give people the stereotype of being too instrumental. But directors of almost all three eras have contributed "Spring in a Small Town" style film, like "a dusty diamond", shining through the dark night sky. Li Jun is the "third generation of Chinese film directors" who came out of Yan'an. Although his "Serf" filmed in 1963 did not break free from the shackles of history, its high degree of self-consciousness about the image body can be said to be beyond the times, enough to become a "red classic", which can be called another "dusty diamond".
Serf poster
In the seventeen years of films, especially the theme of revolutionary history, most of them implement the standard narrative paradigm of "new Chinese literature and art" established by Mao Zedong at the Yan'an Literary and Art Forum in 1942, that is, a typical "white-haired woman": workers, peasants, and soldiers with a protesting nature but backward thinking have become the objects of salvation under the party's inquiry, and then consciously move toward the right path of revolution. "Serf" is the product of following this narrative model. The main narrative of the film is based on the class duality between the low-level serfs represented by the Qiangba family and Lan Ga and the upper-class serf owners and monks represented by Lang Jie and Tu Deng. Inspired by the People's Liberation Army, Qiangba matured in progress and moved towards the right path of revolution, growing into a qualified proletarian revolutionary fighter. The narrative motif of "The New Society Turns Ghosts into People, and the Old Society Turns People into Ghosts" in "The White-Haired Girl" is re-elevated here: "Without the People's Liberation Army, there would be no new Qiangba, without the People's Liberation Army there would be no New Tibet, and without the Communist Party there would be no New China."
In the film, Jamba is portrayed as a "aphasia" who refuses to speak out of hatred, and when he was a teenager, his father was persecuted to death by the slave owners, and he was also levied an insulting "corpse tax", and the seeds of the struggle were buried in Jamba's heart. But this kind of resistance, like its identity, is an ineffective and silent struggle, and it is not until the salvation of the People's Liberation Army that Qiangba's resistance is on the right path, and gradually becomes an effective and voice-speaking struggle. The loss and regain of language became a symbol of the collapse and construction of power, and a driving force for the revolutionary action of the Jangba. At the end of the film, Qiangba wakes up in his sickbed, faces Lan Ga, a factory party member who is the "savior", and almost shouts out the first sentence with exhaustion - "Chairman Mao!" This represents the establishment of the discourse power of the bottom and slave classes in Tibet, represented by Qiangpa.
Stills from Serf
The film narrates the fate of another "fire thief", the female character Lan Ga, through parallel montages. Lan Ga and Qiangba share the same fate, not only reflecting Qiangba's growth path, but also witnesses to Qiangba's suffering fate, and their feelings are based on their common hatred for the old order. As the mirror of Qiangpa, Lan Ga highlights his rebel image in the first half of the film, and is concentrated in the narrative passage of "Young Qiangba steals the tribute of White Tara": the status of White Tara is equivalent to that of the Guanyin Bodhisattva in Chinese Buddhism, and the young Qiangpa is hungry and impatient to steal the offerings offered to White Tara. At this time, Lan Ga's narration sounded: "Worship White Tara for me, she looks so good, and her heart and eyes must be very good..." However, Qiangba was immediately grabbed by the iron rod lama and beaten by the living Buddha. The director repeatedly uses the overhead lens of the white Tara's perspective to stitch the line of sight with the upward perspective of Jamba, resulting in a sense of suffering of sentient beings, the buddha's wordless delay, and the absence of religious beliefs makes the spirit of Qiangba collapse at this moment, thus naturally becoming a revolutionary.
In the second half of the film, Lan Ga changes from the image of compromise to the image of the enlightener, and grows from "rescued" to "savior" before Jamba. Ranga's transformation is reflected in this Dialogue, which contains Tibetan mysticism and ideology: "In the East, a red sun appeared, and in the sun stood a bodhisattva with a high ceiling, and he could see everything. He saw the world... In the highest place in the world, there are people who are suffering the deepest and deepest. With a finger of the bodhisattva's hand, the bodhisattva soldiers crossed thousands of mountains and rivers... To relieve people's great suffering and great hardships, each bodhisattva soldier has a red star with five horns on his head..." At this point, Lan Ga's attributes gradually changed, growing into the image of Wu Qinghua-style female revolutionaries in "The Red Detachment of Women", and like the socialist new women "Golden Flowers" who raised cattle, fished and mined in "Five Golden Flowers", carrying the political status and enlightenment role of men in the past. Overall, from the perspective of character shaping, "Serf" to a certain extent surpasses the "seventeen-year-old" protagonist who is jealous and hateful, passionate, and bitter, and the Qiangba and Langa in the film are like the great rivers and rivers in Tibet, heavy and wordless, pregnant and more intriguing.
In addition, the extremely stylized audiovisual language in "Serf" can be called the biggest "outlier" in the "seventeen years of film". From the perspective of image modeling, the Qiangba and Lan Ga in the film are Tibetans, with sharp and sharp axes and angular features, and the two main characters appear in close-up or large-format close-ups, and the faces fill the entire screen, supplemented by a very expressionist style of highlights, so that the characters have a heavy sense of ancient Greek sculpture, reflecting the slow and solemn rhythm of the entire film, and also leading the viewer to approach the inner world of the characters.
In terms of storytelling, the film adopts a truly cinematic narrative, trying to get out of the dualistic narrative and fall into the confinement of the traditional Chinese film "sense of film drama". The film's several transitions are extremely creative and poetic, and the unique charm of the film's cutting time and space is exquisitely grasped. For example, in the opening chapter, after the slave owner tortured and killed Qiangba's father, he forced Qiangba's mother to pay the "corpse tax", the slave owner threw the whip on the ground, and the camera gave a close-up, at this time a shadow was cast, the camera was pulled, the scene expanded, and it had been changed from the luxurious manor of the slave owner's family to the dark and dirty grass shed of the Qiangba family.
Then there is the localization of the Soviet school of montage, and the film uses metaphorical montage several times to cater to the theme. For example, the use of stunt photography to show the old serf sitting in the palm of a huge Buddha to sculpt a golden body, metaphorically under religious rule, any slave can hardly escape the fate of being controlled. There are also several extreme compositions in the film, that is, the world and the small people who occupy a huge canvas in the huge scene, which is not difficult to recall the fifth generation of image aesthetics of the "Yellow Earth". All in all, "Serf" is ahead of audio-visual, and in the combination of cinematic narrative and Chinese nationalization, I am afraid that only "Spring in a Small Town" can reach. (Hao Han)
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