This article is written by Chuan Meimei
"Swim until the sea turns blue", I have long heard this famous saying, and I know that it comes from Yu Hua's mouth. After reading Yu Hua's "Alive", "Brothers", "Wencheng" and other works, I like it and powder it.
On September 16, Jia Zhangke's film of the same name was released, and immediately went to the scene, the original prose film, through 18 chapters to tell the past of China since 1949, with three writers born in the 1950s and 1970s Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua, and Liang Hong as important narrators, ah, there is also a late writer Ma Feng, by her daughter to narrate on behalf of the narrator. They re-annotate individuals and families in the midst of social change, becoming a 70-year history of the Chinese psyche.
If you're looking for a complete storyline, this movie will let you down. Jia Zhangke used his preferred oral history form to let the interviewee express his emotions, almost breaking through the screen through the lens of the camera. The whole film rarely uses documentary images, takes into account the characteristics of film and literature, reduces the composition of observation as much as possible, and constantly forms a divisive effect with the design that is usually used in documentaries. Show the audience that, here, the documentary is subjective and the narrative of history is personally real.
The film is not just a simple interview with a character, but actually a writer's more personal and emotional reflection on the social changes of the last century. The social state it tells is in striking contrast to the subsequent clamor of modern consumerism. In the complex interweaving of China's social progress and loss, in the serious narration of these carved faces, we can find the answer to these changes in Chinese society.
Let's comb through --
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" >01 Ma Feng</h1>
Ma Feng, born in 1922, read his "Biography of the Heroes of Lüliang" when he was a teenager, which is a heroic story describing the eight-year War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the bloody struggle of the People of Jinsui, and is an epic of the blood and fire battle of the people of Lüliang. The writer has passed away, and his daughter Duan Huifang spoke in front of the writer's statue.
Ma Feng is known as the barometer of China's rural areas, he has been working in the countryside for a long time, he wrote in simple language the achievements and problems of rural work in that era, the thoughts and lives of peasants, representative works include "My First Superior" and "Three Years Early to Know".
The next 2 ordinary old people in Jiajiazhuang told the story. At that time, people had no food, only grass, and even running water, but they were the first to try free love. This is obviously saying that in the rural remote areas of the 50s, the wind of civilization has blown into the isolated countryside.
The realistic style of the film comes from the beginning, the old man trembles and sits down with a support, recalling that there are three treasures in Jiajia Village: bitter vegetables, willow buds and reeds; there are three more: playing bare sticks, selling children, and begging for food. It's so poor here that no one wants to marry here. So a mutual aid group and a cooperative were set up, and the people ruled the water to control the saline and alkali land, and "slowly the clothes became a ridge and a ridge of alkali", and asked for grain from the land. It is also interspersed with some propaganda posters of the time, and it is conceivable that the changes and joy brought to the peasants in the process of rural co-operation can be imagined.
However, some local operas, such as Qin Cavity, Folding Zi Opera and other scenes, let you capture the traditional elements of rural culture, which the people like to hear. Even the big writers, including Nobel laureates like Mo Yan, watched from the stage with relish, reminding you that this is when the writers' "rural writing" is underway.
Yes, in the first Lvliang Literature Season held in Fenyang Jiajiazhuang on May 9-16, 2019, the figure of the writers we are familiar with appeared on the screen, and contemporary famous writers such as Mo Yan, Su Tong, Ah Lai, Ge Fei, and Ye Zhaoyan all appeared and spoke on the stage. Even the scene of three generations of villagers sitting around making dumplings also appears in the movie screen. This jump narrative seems a bit confusing, but after watching the whole movie, there are some connected memories. This is the characteristic of Jia Zhangke's film - a true and vivid commentary of the times.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="79" >02 Jia Pingwo</h1>
Jia Pingwa said that "hometown is also a bloody land", and it is difficult for a person to erase the background of his hometown in his lifetime, which is shocking and I deeply believe it.
Born in Shangluo, Shaanxi Province, Jia Pingwo mainly recounts the past of his father, a rural teacher who was overthrown during the Cultural Revolution and implicated himself. When the military and political examinations failed, the Workers' and Peasants' and Soldiers' University was not qualified, and even the water conservancy and engineering technology were not available, but they had no way to go, but to pick up a pen.
Recalling the past, he said: The greatest pain and greatest joy of my life was at that time. At that time, Jia Pingwo was very young and wanted to write everything, but two years later, he still did not write. Finally, he returned to his hometown and rode around the countryside every day on a bicycle, feeling happy and free. But once I used a small clinic injection needle, I was infected with hepatitis B, and it took 15 years to be cured. This was the backward rural medical condition of that era, the injection needle was reused, put in the pot and boiled, and the disinfection was very irregular.
But it was also at that time that Jia Pingwo found inspiration, he took his father and fellow villagers as the prototype, and wrote about the changes in the rural areas of the northwest, especially after the reform and opening up, and his representative works were "Impetuous", "Gao Laozhuang" and "Qin Cavity". He also specifically said "Waste Capital", which is the bitterness and wandering of his own thinking during the social transformation. Life is really a huge source of creation, "Waste Capital" I have read, filled with a decadent atmosphere, the writing is very sophisticated, I still remember the male protagonist's name Zhuang Zhidi's almost perverted sexual performance...
Somewhat funny is that the appearance of Jia Pingwa's daughter is a back shadow, Teacher Jia said very directly, it is good to publish poetry collections, but do not confuse poetry with life, first life and then poetry. Thinking of the discussion on the Internet about and poems a while ago, I can't help but be funny.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="80" >03 Yuhua</h1>
This writer from 1960, I like very much, and have read some of his novels and essays. He's very casual in the film scenes, especially when it comes to his boredom as a dentist. He said that when he was studying, he just caught up with the Cultural Revolution, and when he wanted to read, in addition to the political books, it was Lu Xun's books, he loved to read and couldn't get books, so he got some novels that either had no head or no tail, so he added his head and tail, and over time he was also eager to try to write novels.
He talked interestingly about his experience of submitting papers, starting from the highest level of literary publications, the newborn calves were not afraid of tigers, and when they were rejected, they studied and demoted them. At that time, there was a postman in the house, and with a "bang", the original manuscript was smashed on the ground, and he knew that his novel manuscript had been returned.
Finally, in 1983, the editor-in-chief of Beijing Literature called him and asked him to go to Beijing to revise the manuscript, and he was ecstatic that the travel expenses could be reimbursed, haha, so interesting.
He bought a station ticket from Shanghai to Beijing, and the publisher was able to make up the difference in the price according to the normal sleeper ticket, and he earned it. The writing was so good, the work became lead, he began to become famous, and the economy improved. This paragraph is fun and reflects the livelihood problems faced by people in that era.
There is also a description of the morgue, he mentions Heine's verse, "Death is a cool summer night", saying that this is not what it feels like for me to take a nap lying on the cement slab in the hospital morgue? Such witty humor adds agility and brilliance to the whole film.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="81" >04 Liang Hong</h1>
Professor Liang Hong's "China in Liangzhuang" after the 70s has a great response in the literary circles, which is a true portrayal of the decaying countryside. Young people have gone out to work, and only the elderly and children in the village have stayed behind. Even some young men do not go home for a few years outside, women are depressed, this is a living contemporary rural reality, reform and opening up people have become rich, and new problems have emerged.
Professor Liang Hong is more sad in this paragraph, she recalled that her mother had a stroke at a very young age, her father has been taking care of her, and the eldest sister only took the entrance examination for a secondary school health school in order to share the economic pressure of the family, and wanted to come out early to work to support the family. She choked up and wiped her tears several times, and you can imagine how difficult it was at that time, the pressure of life, the difficulty of living, the premature death of her mother, the pain and sorrow brought to the family, so that the audience also accompanied the tears.
But no matter how hard her parents insisted on letting their children read, Professor Liang came out of the barren countryside, graduated with a doctorate, and is now a professor at the College of Letters of Chinese Min University. Her son, who is 16 years old and studying in Beijing, no longer speaks Henan dialect, and his mother says a sentence that he follows. This is very real, the child was born in Henan, settled in Beijing, knowledge changed the fate of this family.
Hemingway said, "To write everything is to write a true word." Jia Zhangke's film adheres to this purpose, from beginning to end, there are fellow villagers appearing, and writers string together the changes and events of the Chinese countryside for 70 years. In the meantime, there are the real lives and feelings of the writers themselves, which are vividly displayed in front of the audience. The real is alive, which has aroused the resonance and admiration of the audience, and such a novel and large-scale stroke actually supports the grand narrative structure of the countryside, which is amazing.
The ending is very beautiful, the writer Yu Hua stands on the seashore of Haiyan Town, the blue sea reflects his not great body, but his eyes are clear and transparent. He said that when I was a child, my friends and I swam here, and the water was yellow and turbid, and I thought, I swam all the way down until the water turned blue. The distant sea and sky seem to never reach the other shore, but it is so fascinating, the waves under our feet crash on the shore and wash the reef, indicating that life is always difficult and dangerous, but we are still brave to move forward.
It's an open-ended ending, with philosophical echoes that echo with the roaring waves. A row of words on a white gray background appeared on the screen, "Swim until the sea turns blue," and the title of the film is only revealed at the end.
(Image from the Internet, copyright belongs to the original author)