Hollowed-out carved wooden windows, melodious piano solos, crisp and sweet green papaya fruits, and the dreamlike portrait of an oriental woman...
In "The Taste of Green Papaya", director Chen Yingxiong sketched a beautiful and moving picture of life in Saigon, Vietnam for the audience.
A well-known film in Vietnamese history, The Taste of Green Papaya was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1993.
The film tells the pure and beautiful love story of a Vietnamese girl in the Eastern Way, and also permeates director Chen Ying's memories of childhood and oriental introversion and longevity.
<h1>01, Oriental meaning</h1>
The Eastern Zen master Tianzhu once said:
"One flower is one world, one leaf is one clean."
Different from the unrestrained nature of the Western peoples, the people of the Eastern peoples are restrained and restrained by nature.
Different from ordinary movies, this film has few lines from beginning to end, and the director mostly uses the expression method from far to near, from the surface and inside, to present the audience with an oriental paradise.
Whether it is the character image in the movie or the details of the costume, it is full of oriental aesthetic concepts, indifferent to Mingzhi, quiet and far-reaching.
The film uses the natural landscapes that can be seen everywhere to express the ultimate Buddha-nature of the deep face of the Eastern way, which is poetic and full of beauty.
The winding corridors in the distance, the pavilions down the stairs, the pleasant silk and bamboo music, the fruitful melon wood nearby, the kitchen under the melon shed and the wooden fish sound of the grandmother with a Buddhist temperament have reached the depths of the audience's hearts.
It is understood that this film has director Chen Yingxiong's memories and nostalgia for his childhood, which is clear and vague.
Based on his own personal experience, the director presents the beautiful hometown and childhood life in his memory to the image, bringing the audience a different kind of thinking.
<h1>02, Eastern style "restrained" love</h1>
In this film, the love of the characters is restrained and delicate, with oriental restraint and rational love.
In the oriental attic, the grandmother who lost her husband in the early years knocked on the wooden fish every day, burned incense, and even did not want to go downstairs for half a step.
This grandmother seems to be hiding a more mysterious and untold story.
Don has been pursuing grandma since he was young, however, in the case of the rejection of the marriage proposal, he did not give up, and guarded her side until the grandmother moved, and Don followed closely.
Even if grandma never wanted to see her again, even if grandma never went downstairs again.
For Tang, being able to look at her from a distance was already satisfied, even though she had changed from "green silk" to "white hair", but the heart of guarding love would still not change.
The famous poet Yeats wrote the classic sentence in the poem "When You Are Old":
"How many people love the joy of your youth, the beauty of you, whether false or sincere, only one person loves your pilgrim's soul and your aging face."
The author thinks that there is no better poetry that can express this thought and protection than this.
Not just the love of Don and Grandma, even in Mei's body, is a typical Oriental love.
When she was young, Mei met the young master's friend Ren Hao and fell in love with him, however, the disparity and gap in identity seemed to doom them not to be together.
After letting Mei grow up, she was sent to Ren Hao's house as a maid, facing the noble and wealthy Ren Hao fiancée, Mei tried to wear the wedding dress sent to her by the young grandmother, which attracted Ren Hao's attention, and finally, Mei's oriental elegance and introverted temperament impressed Ren Hao, and they lived a peaceful and comfortable life.
This kind of love is extremely restrained, and the traditional conservative love of the East has overcome the open love of the West.
<h1>03, Oriental-style turquoise imagery</h1>
"Those papayas, hanging from the trees one by one, ripe papayas, with a pale yellowish brilliance, ripe papayas, taste sweet and silky ..."
Color is an important part of the film and television picture.
In the East, green represents vitality, represents vigorous vitality, is the iconic color of nature, in the oriental culture, green is given a light and simple meaning.
In the film, green is the main background color and background color of the film, and the shots of green plants and green papaya appear many times.
The director uses a large number of turquoise intentions to express a fresh and vibrant temperament, such a paradise, the greenery that can be seen everywhere makes the film more Zen and poetic.
Whether it is the street, doors and windows, or the costumes of the characters, or even the various insects in the depths of the grass, they are dominated by cool colors such as cyan, white and gray, and the beauty is transparent and natural.
There is such a detail in the movie, on the background of the papaya and green leaves, the low milky white juice on the papaya flows slowly, and the stems and leaves of the papaya are quite flowing under the breeze...
It reveals an artist's gratitude for nature and the good wishes of man and nature to live in harmony.
Director Chen Yingxiong turned his longing for his hometown into green, densely laid out in all corners of the picture, expressed his love for his hometown with the color full of life and memories, highly restored the grass and trees of his hometown, and whitewashed and sublimated the theme of truth, goodness and beauty of the film.
This touch of greenery is also Chen Yingxiong's traceability of his roots and the soul color of the film.
The costume of the protagonist Mei is also blue, from teenager to adult, there are also slight changes in relative unity and coordination.
In the movie, Mei, dressed in a blue dress, reveals a hint of humility in her stability.
She always bows her head and bends over, walking on every inch of the land like walking on thin ice, which also shows the submissive and quiet nature of Vietnamese women.
Then, Mei's family declined, and her clothes turned dark red and the color changed, but she was still cautious, holding each other's measures with her heart, and her meekness and obedience never changed.
When she put on the red cheongsam given to her by her grandmother, she secretly painted lipstick, and the woman was pleasing to herself, and this color change also represented the expression of her love with Haomin.
In this poetic world full of Zen colors, there are no too many lines, no grander scenes, but the true image of the Vietnamese silent spirit show is exhausted, revealing the poetic space and the beauty of Zen.