What is life?
When Ji Xianlin talks about life, he believes that life is such an unpredictable kaleidoscope, which is not clear, and the more he talks about it, the more confused he becomes.
There is a lot of debate about this "talk." For example, a very popular saying: "I have listened to many philosophies of life, but I still can't live this life well", which sounds kind and stuffy. Writer Wang Shuo believes that loving to talk about life is a disease. In the eyes of the blind date, the person who loves to talk about life is the second son. Some people commented on the move, "I have not experienced any suffering, why talk about life, or someone else's life." Not all talk about life is offensive. Lu Yao's novels "Ordinary World" and "Life" are all grand life words, but the realistic description of the struggling life has aroused strong resonance in the hearts of readers, and the influence has inspired generations.
Today, we will talk about this classic movie adapted from Lu Yao's novel of the same name, "Life".
At the beginning of the movie, the yellow land with wild grass, a hoe in one stroke ... "life" two cursive characters occupy the screen.
From near and far, the Loess Plateau occupies most of the picture, a very small figure, face to the loess, back to the sky toiling. Land, old man, Xintianyou, sheep, Loess Plateau, Yellow River... Like a chinese painting, the desolate scene of the Great Northwest comes into view.
The film tells the story of a rural youth's life choices in the midst of social change.
Regarding life, Lu Yao quoted such a passage at the beginning of the novel "Life": Although the road of life is long, there are often only a few steps at the critical point, especially when people are young.
No one's path of life is straight and without forks. There are some forks in the road, such as political forks, career forks, personal life forks, you take a wrong step, you can affect a period of life, you can also affect a lifetime.
Sartre said that man is faced with endless choices all the time, which is both the reason for man's existence and the helpless situation of man.
This film with the theme of life choices, in the majestic space of the Northwest Loess Plateau, interprets a deep and thick picture of beauty.
The protagonist, Gao Garin, was born in one of the poorest families in Gaojia Village, and his parents were old and had children, so they spoiled him extraordinarily. Even if the family is surrounded by disciples and there is no labor to earn work, he still works hard to provide him with the county high school. Gao Garin failed the college entrance examination (none of them were admitted in their class) and returned to Gaojia Village to become a private teacher, which was a decent and promising profession for him.
But you will never know, tomorrow and accident, which comes first? The movie begins on the night that Gao Garin's private teacher was replaced by Gao Sanxing, the son of gao Minglou, the secretary of the village party committee...
Gao Garin's fate is to struggle and tangle between the "peasant body" and the "city heart". His peasant origins are like the gravitational pull of the earth, which cannot be said to be decided, but affect the height of his life.
Through his studies, love, submission to social relations, and hard struggle, Gao Garin constantly fought and escaped from this lowly, poor, and humiliating origin for him.
He has been studying abroad for a long time, and his hometown is only a leisure place for him to spend his winter and summer vacations. His athletic physique did not come from rural labor, but from the fact that he was an athlete in school.
The private teacher who naturally belonged to him was replaced by a person who was inferior to him in any way, and he had the unconvincing feeling that "I will fight with the boy of Gao Minglou when I give up this life".
In the bitter days when private teachers were replaced, the "Gai Man Chuan" in Gaojia Village, Qiao Zhen, who has a heart of gold, comforted his bitter heart with fiery and sincere love. But after working in the county seat, he resolutely abandoned the rural girl Qiaozhen.
Gao Garin went to the county food company to pull dung, and was ridiculed and humiliated by the well-dressed classmate's mother, he ran to the river, threw the dung bucket into the river, and swore in a gamble: "I must come here, I have knowledge, culture, I am worse than the young people here." ”
When Gao Garin felt that he would work on this land for the rest of his life, his uncle who was a soldier transferred to the local labor bureau, and the deputy director of the county labor bureau snuggled with the leader and went through the back door to give Gao Garin a position as a reporter in the county party committee. Although he knew that it was arranged through the back door, he did not refuse.
After working in the county seat, the identity changed. High school classmate Huang Yaping felt that their identities were equal, and wrote romantic poems to pursue Gao Garin. Gao Garin chose to fall in love with the city girl Huang Yaping, not only because of the same hobbies, but also because Huang Yaping is about to return to Nanjing with her father to work, relying on Huang Yaping's father's relationship, Gao Garin has the hope of seeking a position as a reporter for the provincial newspaper in a big city in the south...
In the end, Gao Garin went to the back door and the east window incident (reported by Huang Yaping's ex-boyfriend Zhang Yanan's mother), was sent back to Gaojia Village as a farmer by a piece of official document, and her former lover Qiao Zhen was also married as another woman.
The peasant identity, this thing that made Gaugarin angry, the more he wanted to get rid of it, as if the more he could not tear off the label on his body.
From his body, we can see that in that era of new and old changes, the prejudice brought about by the gap between the rich and the poor and the division of classes has been vividly displayed.
Not just Gaugarin, each of us is fighting against our origins, we all have a Gaugarin in our hearts, we are all struggling and fighting in an arena of life without a whistle.
Gao Garin and the rural girl Qiao Zhen, Grandpa Deshun and the girl who sang the west mouth did not come together, and the tragic ending of love made people sigh.
I can't help but think, what is love? What does love mean for men and women? Compared with life, freedom, ideals, and reality, which comes first and which one comes after?
The moonlight is misty, illuminating a river of crops like ink. In the lovely moonlight, Grandpa Deshun talked about his love affair with Lingchuan...
"Live, live, as long as I don't die, she will live, she will carry it in my heart all her life."
After Qiao Zhen heard that Gao Garin was going to work in a more distant provincial city, she shed tears and said, "Brother Garin, I understand what you mean!" Go ahead, I won't drag you down, Galingo, I've thought about it many times since you went to work, and even though I love you to death, I know I don't deserve you anymore. I don't know a word, can't help you, and drag you down... You go yours and go outside and find a better object..."
In contrast, the love between Gao Garin and Huang Yaping is more willful and mutual use. Also for the sake of Gao Garin's ideals, how did Huang Yaping say: "With your ability, you should not be trapped in such a small place, you deserve a broader world and a more wonderful life." In order to be with Gao Garin, Huang Yaping threw out the last bait: as long as Gao Garin was willing to be with her, let his father arrange a better job for him in Nanjing.
Similarly, how Gao Garin thinks about Qiaozhen's love: "If I marry her, I will be tied to this land in the future, and there will be no day to emerge." The first time he kissed QiaoZhen, a feeling of depravity lingered in his heart.
In order to satisfy his romantic imagination, Gao Garin has always wanted to buy Qiao Zhen a red turban. Because when he first fell in love with Qiaozhen, he remembered that on a foreign oil painting he had seen, there was a beautiful girl who looked very much like Qiaozhen, but the girl on the picture was wrapped in a red turban. Out of a kind of romance, but also out of a kind of commemoration, although in this hot summer, he also had to personally wrap this red turban on Qiaozhen's head.
Love is nothing but an external thing for men, but it is a whole life for women.
Qiao Zhen's love for Gao Garin is touching, profound, and unequal. In terms of love, women may be very strong or they may be very cowardly. Either she loves others or accepts the love of others, and once she is in love, she will be willing to obey if she is ordered to drill into the fire.
Although, the time and space of the movie "Life" is set at the junction of urban and rural areas in the northern Shaanxi Plateau during the reform and opening up period. But the life choices portrayed in the film do not have the limitations of time and space, and Gao Garin is a microcosm of all sentient beings.
The countryside is backward, with poor living conditions and poor sanitary environment, which is synonymous with the reality of suffering and poverty. Cities are civilized, modern, superior, and synonymous with ideals.
In the period of change between the old and the new, on the brink of urban-rural differences, temptation is bound to cause great commotion in the human heart and cause dissatisfaction with the reality around them.
Under the tide of the era of social change, many times, the choice is helpless.
Gao Garin left the land and changed his destiny, this is his obsession, the only option that Gaugarin can grasp is self-struggle, once he can show his value, his ambition, he can give up everything. He can work for hours in order to interview, regardless of the danger to his life, in order to publish the manuscript. Gao Garin has a fierceness towards himself.
But the gap between reality and ideals is at the root of the tragedy of his life.
Gaugarin's choices at the critical points of life are involuntary, and fate is not in his own hands. Failing the college entrance examination, the quota being replaced, going through the back door to find a job, the defendant sending back to his hometown, the passive choice at the crossroads of life is also a choice, why shouldn't we be so.
In "Farewell to the Overlord", it is said that even if people have all kinds of abilities, they cannot withstand the destiny of heaven in the end.
Life is like this, if you don't work hard to fight, there will be regrets and regrets, but even if you try your best to fight, you may still not be able to have. At that time, even if there are more unwillingness and regrets, you can only choose to accept. Life, in fact, is nothing more than a synthesis of contradictions and choices, regardless of right or wrong, but only in whether we have the courage to make choices in contradictions and bravely bear all the consequences.
This is life.
"Life" was filmed in 1984 and directed by Wu Tianming. Now, many young people may not have heard of the name. However, in the history of Chinese cinema, Wu Tianming was once a myth.
In the six years that Wu Tianming served as the director of Xi'an Film Studio from 1983 to 1989, Xi'an Film Studio ranked first in the country and was once known as the holy land of national cinema. He also boldly used Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang and other young people with artistic innovation ability, and cultivated the "fifth generation of Chinese directors", who can be called godfathers.
In the filming of the "Life" movie, Wu Tianming faced life directly, faced the yellow land that raised him, and consciously associated life with the yellow land and connected life with nature. A series of large-scale visions, panoramic shots and empty shots, which integrate the majestic beauty of nature in the Northwest Loess Plateau and the kind, simple and broad beauty of the northwest people, make people feel the deep and incomparable love for the land, and it is a good film that is natural.