If you ask, which is the most perfect movie for Stephen Chow, I think many people will say "Kung Fu" without hesitation like me.
After the release of "Kung Fu", the following year won the 2005 Academy Awards Best Film Award, golden horse award for best film, best director award, that year, he defeated Wong Kar-wai's "2046", Du Qifeng's "Big Event", Feng Xiaogang's "No Thief in the World".
However, when "Kung Fu" was first released, the reputation among ordinary audiences was not good, it is said that "Kung Fu" initially scored only six points on Douban, but now, the Douban score of "Kung Fu" has risen to 8.6, ranking 120 in the Douban movie TOP250.
Why can "Kung Fu" change from a bad film with word of mouth to a classic that can squeeze the TOP250? I think it is because in "Kung Fu", in addition to those wonderful fights, touching music, and funny bridges, we can also see a vague self from the plot, those plots that once looked a bit irrational, after repeated taste, can find another deep meaning.
Wuxia is an adult fairy tale, and Zhou Xingchi's "Kung Fu" is a man's fable.
To understand this fable written by Stephen Chow, we must first understand that in the movie, the fat man and the fire cloud evil god are actually one person, and they are both the embodiments of the protagonist. More precisely, the fat man is the embodiment of the hypocritical and weak character of the protagonist, and the evil god of the fire cloud is the embodiment of the protagonist's evil and powerful desires. Don't rush me, the following detailed explanation.
Although in the introduction on the Internet, each character of "Kung Fu" was given a name, in the movie, the protagonist, the fat man, and the dumb girl were all nameless. This nameless treatment gives the characters a more symbolic meaning. Below, I refer to the protagonist as a man, and in the movie, the protagonist is the symbol of all men.
Let's start at the beginning, when the man was a boy, he met a beggar. The beggar peddled him martial arts secrets and said that he was a once-in-a-century martial arts wizard, and that he would entrust him with the heavy responsibility of punishing adultery and eliminating evil and maintaining world peace.
Notice that there is a saying in the beggar's words here: "I will not go to hell, who goes to hell." This sentence is very important, and the charter wife behind also said this sentence.
After the boy spent all his savings and bought a copy of the "Rulai Divine Palm" from the beggar, he began to practice hard.
Isn't this little boy the one who once had a dream of martial arts? When we used to go around with a wooden stick, did we ever fantasize that one day we could get a secret book, practice the world's martial arts, and henceforth go around doing chivalry and righteousness, punishing evil and promoting good, and maintaining world peace? Even if we finally understand that there are no secret books in this world and no unique martial arts, we still want to strengthen ourselves so that we can stand up in the face of injustice.
Soon, the boy began to practice his dream of being a hero, and the first thing he did was the most common bridge in martial arts novels - the hero saving the united states. However, the real world is not like martial arts novels, bad people are always subdued by good people, real evil is much stronger, real self is much weaker, the fluttering of the leaves, not their own imagination of the volley, just the wind is flowing.
When the hero's dream is awakened by urine, the great humiliation banishes the good wishes of the heart, and the evil shows its great power. So, the boy also began to yearn for the power of evil, he did not want to be a good person without power, he wanted to be a strong bad person.
But the inner struggle between good and evil makes the boy neither a good man nor a bad person.
Years later, the boy became a hypocritical and weak man. This hypocritical and weak man is a fat man.
The clever place in "Kung Fu" is to externalize the protagonist's inner personality and desire into a specific role, so that the psychological changes of the protagonist can be shown through the mutual image between the characters. Fat people are the embodiment of a man's hypocritical and weak character.
Why do you say that men are weak? We see, when men bully people, they always pick those who look weak. He first stepped on the soccer balls of the children, then blackmailed the big one and the little sauce burst, and when the blackmail sauce exploded, he also sang red and white faces. When picking a single opponent, he also looked for the weakest one, but which one came out, he did not dare to do it. Even if he was beaten by the charter wife and gold wire glasses, he did not dare to fight back.
Why do you say that men are hypocritical? Because every time he bullied someone and was bullied, he always used the spiritual victory method to deceive himself.
In that cruel world, weak people are to be bullied, so he disguises his weakness as fierce, so weakness is externalized, but he becomes a fat man, which is "punching a swollen face and filling a fat man."
If you understand that fat people are a symbol of men's hypocrisy and weakness, you will understand why the knife they throw out when they go to kill the chartered wife, why it always pierces the man himself, because his fierceness is pretended. When he wants to hurt others, because of weakness, it is himself who is hurt. This paragraph seems funny, but in fact, it has great meaning.
When a man is repeatedly hurt by the fierceness he disguises, he sees his weakness clearly, so he hates the fat man who follows him more and more.
In this world, the streets are full of money, and there are women everywhere, but these are all things that only fierce people can have.
When those who promote the law of the jungle drive luxury cars and embrace beautiful women, the whole world begins to learn the laws of wolf nature.
Therefore, men decide to become really fierce people, to become really fierce people, they have to say goodbye to their own kindness, so men have to rob dumb women.
In Kung Fu, the mute woman is a symbol of good wishes in a man's heart, and a lollipop is a symbol of kindness.
In this part of the man robbing the mute woman, Zhou Xingchi shot it extremely touchingly. The director chose such a young and beautiful Huang Shengyi to play a dumb girl who symbolizes the good wishes in men's hearts, which is simply a stroke of God.
When Huang Shengyi, dressed in a white shirt and with a pure smile, appeared on the street, I wished to have all the beautiful words to describe her. It is this beauty of Huang Shengyi that makes men's choice to abandon good and follow evil full of a sense of tragedy.
When the man holds the knife and stares at Huang Shengyi's beautiful face, it is like we look directly at those good wishes that were once there. The man's anger seems to be questioning why the weak are bullied, why the kindness is so powerless, but the kindness and beauty cannot be answered, and she can only shed sad tears.
The tears of the mute woman Huang Shengyi actually flowed from the bottom of the man's heart.
In this scene, the knife is a symbol of evil, and Huang Shengyi is a symbol of beauty and goodness, and through this scene, Zhou Xingchi vividly shows the struggle between good thoughts and evil thoughts in a man's heart. It can be said that this scene is enough to forever hang on to the history of film. With this scene alone, Zhou Xingchi is enough to rank among the film masters.
After the robbery, the mute woman took a lollipop from the box and handed it to the man, which was the same one that the mute woman had once handed to the boy who had come out for herself. Lollipops convey goodwill, but in that year, the boy refused because of a strong sense of humiliation. Now, men reject again because they want to forsake good and follow evil.
When the lollipop falls into pieces, it symbolizes that the man has completely abandoned kindness.
I've seen Kung Fu many times, but every time I see it, I cry. I think that everyone who has experienced the collision of good wishes and reality in their hearts must be able to experience this feeling.
Giving up the good, the man must drive away the weakness, drive away this hypocritical and weak fat man, and the man can completely release the evil in his heart.
At this time, the man seemed to really feel that he was free and strong, and when he went to see Chen Ge, he also danced specially to show his mood.
The next thing is to set fire to the evil god, which is actually to release the evil in the man's heart.
When watching the movie, there may be a strange one, obviously rendered very scary, but the rescue is very smooth, and even casually roll down, you will find the fire cloud evil god. This is completely inconsistent with the audience's expectations for the rescue, and I think this is one of the reasons why some people scored low points that year.
However, when we understand that the fire cloud evil god is actually the embodiment of the evil in the man's heart, this anti-climactic rescue is easy to understand. Driving away weakness and goodness, it is easy to unleash evil. Those visions do not exaggerate the tension of rescue, but set off the horror of evil.
The Fire Cloud Evil God was originally a character in the Hong Kong comic strip Dragon and Tiger Gate, in which the Fire Cloud Evil God is the reincarnation of the Luosha God. The Rakshasa is a human-eating evil spirit in Buddhism, so the fire cloud evil god is the embodiment of evil. He is ostensibly a martial fool, but in fact he can't fight and ask for forgiveness, and he will sneak attack, he ostensibly says that he wants to be killed, but in fact he is a man who wants to win over everyone by any means. The Fire Cloud Evil God is a pure evil that combines malice and insidiousness.
When a man has completely fallen into the evil path, he needs someone to wake up, and this person is the charter wife. What the charter wife woke up the man was a word and a martial art.
One sentence is: "I don't go to hell, who goes to hell." ”
The beggar had said this at the time, but the boy had only written down the chivalrous righteousness of maintaining world peace, but did not pay attention to the most important sentence.
"I don't go to hell, who goes to hell." It is a term used in Buddhism. Jizo Bodhisattva once made a vow: "Hell is not empty and vows not to become a Buddha, and all sentient beings have attained enlightenment." The charter wife said this sentence here, which means that to be a hero, you must have a sacrificial spirit.
You think that to become a hero is to vent the unfairness in your heart, but to be admired by thousands of people and favored by beautiful people, but in fact, to become a hero, you have to pay a great price, and even give up everything and sacrifice yourself to death in order to fight with powerful evil. The previous weakness of a man was not because he was not strong, but because he was afraid, did not dare to fight, did not dare to go to hell.
One of the martial arts that awakens a man is the lion roar gong of the chartered wife.
The lion roar is also derived from the Buddhist term. The Buddha said that he would not think about the secret Mahayana Sutra: "The bodhisattva is now in the great bodhi field, and wants to prove the three bodhisattva fruits of Ajanta Dora. Descend on the demonic armies, in order to make the perfection of the ten forces, the four fearless, the eighteen do not provide the Dharma, the universal turning of the Great Wheel of Dharma for all, the roar of the lion, the practice of the Dharma on all sentient beings, the purification of the Dharma eyes of all sentient beings, and the suppression of all evil and foreign theories. "The roar of the lion is to describe the Buddha's teachings as subduing sentient beings like a lion threatening the beasts.
However, the word lion roar was played badly by Su Dongpo. Su Dongpo has a friend named Chen Jichang, who is afraid of the inside and is often overwhelmed by his wife's scolding. Su Dongpo wrote a poem to laugh at Chen Jichang, with two sentences: "I overheard the lion roaring in Hedong, and I fell into the palm of my hand in a daze." Saying that Chen Jichang's wife's roar could make Chen obey like the Buddha said. Later, "Hedong Lion Roar" became synonymous with humble women.
Zhou Xingchi cleverly set up the Lion Roar Gong as the kung fu of the chartered wife, with the taste of Su Dongpo's joke in the front and the meaning of the Buddha's saying in the back. The chartered woman appeared to say that the man named the real chivalrous way, and the goodness in the man's heart also began to awaken, so he would pick up the mallet and declare war on the evil in his heart. This time, even if the blood splashed five steps, he did not flinch.
At this time, the man finally found his own good heart, so the man drew the lollipop representing goodness with blood, and the mute woman also put together the broken lollipop.
The goodness that has not faced evil is fragile, so the lollipop put together by the dumb woman will be broken when picked up, but the one drawn with blood will not. The man breaks the cocoon in the process of facing the evil in his heart, and he believes that he can overcome his own evil. The weak fat man looked at the iron cover full of palm prints, and he found the kung fu to defeat evil--ru god palm.
Rulai is a Buddhist term, Rulai is a kind of realm, and if you attain the fruit position of Rulai, you can become a Rulai Buddha. "As" means "true as," that is, the true face of all laws (things). "Rulai" means "to come by the way of truth, to go by the way of truth", that is, to come and go is to be their own true face. The palm of the god symbolizes that the man has found his true face.
In men's hearts, there are weaknesses and evil thoughts, but there is also a good wish, that is, "punish adultery and eliminate evil, and maintain world peace." ”
The true self is strong and does not need to be disguised. When a man recognizes himself, the evil in his heart is naturally surrendered. But evil can only be surrendered, not destroyed, so the man did not kill the fire cloud evil god.
The man who has found himself no longer has to disguise, so the fat man in the back, the action is sharp, does not have to pretend to be cruel, and he will not fall asleep motionless.
The man who has found himself has also found his own good wishes, so the dumb woman has found it.
The man and the mute woman turned back into children, which actually meant that the little boy who had been determined to maintain world peace had returned.
Although he once gave up his ambitions because of the ridicule of others, and once lost his way because of the temptation of worldly desires, now he has found his true heart.
The beggar at the end, staring directly at the audience, is obviously asking the audience, do you remember your original intention? It is up to you to maintain world peace.
In this world, everyone who has ideals and beliefs will be challenged by reality, but many people give up as soon as they encounter challenges, and they feel that their former ideals and beliefs are too naïve and unrealistic, and even show their maturity by laughing at their former ideals and beliefs.
Laughing at one's former ideals and beliefs is not maturity, but cowardice, and the real maturity is to learn how to adhere to one's ideals and beliefs in the cruel reality and find one's original intention.
In a person's life, there are two battles. One is to fight with oneself, to fight one's own weakness, to fight one's own hypocrisy, to fight one's own evil. The most powerful kung fu in this battle is the Rulai Divine Palm, which regains itself and wins the battle. The other is the battle against society, the battle against the pressure of society, the battle against the temptations of society, the battle against the injustice of society. In this battle, the most powerful weapon is the self-healing ability, no matter how much damage you take, you can repair yourself, that is, there is no unique master in the world.