The image is from the Jianshu App
The domestic feature film "Xiangnu Xiaoxiao" is adapted from Shen Congwen's novel "Xiaoxiao", which tells the story of a rural child bride who is full of warmth and bitterness in old China in the 1920s.
In the beautiful land of Xiangxi, in the early morning when the river flows quietly, people still get up early to repeat the day's labor, 12-year-old ignorant girl Xiao Xiao is going to marry Yang Jia'ao, who needs to walk more than twenty miles of mountain roads, but in that feudal society, Xiao Xiao sits in a flower car, even if she is in a hurry, she cannot open the car door, and finally Xiao Xiao can only solve it in a petite.
In this way, Xiao Xiao was carried into her mother-in-law's house and began the tragedy of life with an uncertain future and doomed by the times. She was twelve, her husband was only two years old, and on the day of marriage, her little husband was still playing with the dog, crying, and his mother fed him. Xiao Xiao is a church with a rooster, and this seemingly absurd marriage is normal in the eyes of the villagers.
Where the child knows what to marry, Xiao Xiao and even the "round house" do not know. In addition to doing housework every day, she plays with her little husband and teaches him to sing nursery rhymes: "The moon goes, I also go, there is a dog in the moon." "In that isolated mountain village, singing has become a way for people to express their emotions.
The rolling mountains floated with a very national rhyme, and the song could escape the shackles of the mountains, but people could not escape the fences that surrounded them. However, the song also brought feelings, there is a young man in the village named Hua Dog, who is a long-term worker of Xiao Xiao's family, his arms are very strong, he usually likes to sing, he teaches Chun Guan a lot of songs, under Shen Congwen's pen, the ink of the flower dog is not much. But what is impressive is that he will sing many "yellow songs", and the lyrics are always full of sexual innuendo.
It is in the process of singing love, xiao Xiao, who has just opened up, gradually came together with the flower dog, love came quickly and fiercely, such as dry firewood, in that closed era, the performance of sex is in a very obscure way, the passion of the flower dog and Xiao Xiao, with the collapsed grass stack, the rotating stone mill, the sound of rushing water, people can't help but think of the opening of the film, the undulating water cellar, very local ethnic characteristics, it seems to have a moment of freedom, but this freedom will face a severe test, because Xiao Xiao is pregnant.
After the widow Qiao Xiuniang and a man are caught pursuing free love, the man is cut off his legs, and the woman faces a sinkhole (that is, hanging on a scale and sinking to the bottom of the lake). Which scream of Qiao Xiuniang's sinking into the pool directly poked Xiao Xiao into Xiao Xiao's heart. Xiao Xiao proposed to the flower dog to escape together, but the flower dog refused, but instead packed up his things and slipped away, leaving Xiao Xiao alone to face the fear.
In order to beat the child in the belly, she ate the incense ash, but life is so tenacious, even if it is so tossed, Xiao Xiao still did not have a miscarriage, and finally simply fled by herself, after being caught, she originally planned to sink the pool, but the people of that era were extremely superstitious, afraid that Xiao Xiao would become a big belly ghost to disturb the family. Perhaps it was this ignorance and superstition that saved Xiao Xiao.
The fate she faced was to either be sold or give birth to a boy, perhaps by heaven, Xiao Xiao gave birth to a boy as she wished, even if she left a queen for the Chunguan family, this matter would not be resolved. "I only built a small Greek temple, and this temple is dedicated to human nature." Shen Congwen's words appear in the film, the word "human nature" pokes directly at the key parts, and the love between Xiao Xiao and the flower dog is like Qiao Xiuniang, which is a challenge to the strict family rules.
When Xiao Xiao's son was two years old, she still married her son a child bride who was several years older in accordance with the family rules, continuing the absurd marriage, and another "Xiao Xiao" repeated her past tragedy. However, from Xiao Xiao's eyes, there was no sense of resistance, everything was so natural.
The same women, but the female students are a different kind of person, people say that they do not have pigtails, like nuns, the money spent on school can buy several buffaloes. People in the village talked about the female students and lamented that they were "bad manners", "evil deeds", and "the etiquette of the ancestors are not needed". In the original work, it is written that "from the eyes of the countrymen, these people are almost people who have survived in another world, dressed strangely, and their behavior is even more incredible." Whenever schoolgirls appear in the city, everyone looks at the Western scenery as if their "freedom" is so out of place.
In contrast, Xiao Xiao indulged in a traditionally repressed life, with a skeptical and sarcastic attitude toward progressive ideas, and Lu Xun's "feudal etiquette" has polished their insensitivity and sense of no resistance into a silent majority. This is the root of the tragic fate of Xiao Xiao and Qiao Xiuniang.
When chunguan stood in front of the mountain when he grew up, it was as if he were asking the world: "When will this ignorant nation awaken?" In the end, however, he had no choice but to flee.