Note: This article contains spoilers
The shepherd's child drives the flock, unaware that there are eyes looking at him. At the moment when he is targeted by the evil man, his fate is like a dead bird next to the sewage and the mutton on the board, destined to be slaughtered.
This is the first image that came to my mind when I reviewed the opening of "Burst into Silence". Next, the child goes missing. His father, Zhang Baomin, a mute miner who digs coal in the field, rushes home and begins the search for a son, thus becoming involved in the entanglement of interests between Chang Wannian, the mining boss of illegal mining, and Xu Wenjie, the lawyer who helped him exonerate. A food chain is formed.
Chang Wannian, played by Jiang Wu, is ostensibly a charity entrepreneur who donates to poor primary schools, but in fact he is a predator with a triad and blood stained on his hands. The fierceness of a lion makes him take it for his pleasure to eat sheep. And Zhang Baomin is the sheep, at the bottom of the food chain, waiting to be eaten and having nowhere to make a sound. Lawyer Xu Wenjie is sandwiched in the middle, as cowardly as a rabbit, knowing that he should not eat it, but still wants to eat it for his own benefit. Greed and lust at the top of the food chain can be seen everywhere in the film. Whether it is eating lamb and tomatoes in large gulps, or the vaulted private rooms that resemble caves, and the room full of taxidermies and bows and arrows in the office, they all show the bloody primitive desire of Chang Wannian.
Director Xin Yukun said in an interview that the original inspiration for "Bursting Into Silence" came from a report on the theme of "Chinese billionaires form a group to hunt in Africa." It says they will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars hunting, and then spend millions to transport specimens of prey back home. These people's love of the shock and excitement of bloodlust and shooting is exactly what the commercial society needs. Chang Wannian in the film is the ultimate embodiment of this barbaric desire.
"Bursting into Silence" is Xin Yukun's second feature film, but it is the first one he wanted to shoot in the first place. In order to make the "debut" have its own style and better control at the same time, he wrote the location of the story in his hometown of Inner Mongolia. The regional characteristics of Inner Mongolia are also suitable for the story direction of this film, driving half an hour from the city center, often experiencing prosperity and chaos, towns and villages, and further down, it is the mountains and wilderness, that is, mines and wealth.
Director Xin Yukun
So we see three people with completely different backgrounds tangled together, strung together into a visible food chain. At the same time, the sense of vastness of the northwest mountains makes the whole film cover a depressing tone from beginning to end. The mountain is thick and silent, and it can bury sin or suppress the weak. When the mute Zhang Baomin runs in the mountains and can't find the child, the feeling of powerlessness that wants to shout but can't shout is doubled.
Zhang Baomin is an "outlier" in Gufeng Village. He was the only person in the village who refused to sign the compensation agreement for land expropriation, and he could be said to have refused to participate in the game of "eating sheep", but coincidentally and absurdly, it was he who was eventually involved in the "eating sheep" machine and became a victim of the desires of the upper class. In defiance, he only had a pair of fists, but the fights were all in vain. At the bottom, even violence is desperate.
The aphasia at the bottom of the food chain stems from greed at the top. The maintenance of Chang Wannian's flashy shelf, the pleasure and sense of existence he obtained through the hunting of the weak, is the source of suffering for countless miners and villagers. The aphasia at the bottom is accompanied by deafness. In the scene where the three meet in the second half of the film, Xu Wenjie and Chang Wannian have a well-known dialogue with each other -
"Did you know that his son was lost?"
"I know his son is lost."
Zhang Baomin could not understand their voices because he was excluded from the truth. In the three-man confrontation, he was always in a state of "absence in the presence". His son is missing, and Zhang Baomin is a victim and an implicated person, but he knows nothing about his troubles. The outside world information is not open to him, he cannot express his own demands, and the real bottom is isolated. Originally, the main line of the film was That Zhang Baomin was looking for a child, but after being involved in the entanglement of interests, he became an outsider. At the heart of the second half of the film, in the lawyer.
As intellectuals who have a certain right to speak, lawyers have not assumed the social responsibility of speaking out for the bottom, but have become accomplices of profiteers. Lawyers, as a medium, should serve as a channel for the underclass in a state of aphasia to convey their voices. But perhaps the most disappointing thing is that knowledge, in the end, also turns to profit.
Compared with the exquisite non-linear narrative of "Labyrinth of Hearts" released in 2015, "Bursting Silence" is a linear narrative with a relatively simple structure. The plot this time is still absurd, but it no longer makes people cry and laugh, but has more tragic colors. In terms of viewing effects, this is a very complete suspense film, of course, I personally feel that it will be cleaner and neater to end at the top of the mountain collapse.
The novelty of this story is that its focus is not on who is the murderer, but on the choice of the murderer. At the end of the film, the police asked Xu Wenjie what else to explain, and after Xu Wenjie was silent for a long time, he put on his glasses and replied with two words, "Gone." In a few moments, the mountains collapsed, and human nature sank. Lawyers use their right of choice to declare the demise of hope.
At the end of Pulp Fiction, Jules points a gun at Rose about why he let him go: "You're the weak, I'm the wicked." But I try very hard to be a shepherd of mercy. Because Jules wanted to be a good guy, Rose took back a life. Because Xu Wenjie selfishly chooses to protect his own interests, Zhang Baomin will never see the hope of finding his son. The sad thing is not how the wicked choose, but the right to choose, in the hands of the wicked.
When Xu Wenjie said "no", I sat in the movie theater and lost my voice with him. Everyone is faced with a choice, and when they have the right to choose, who can guarantee that they will not act as evil and lose their voices like lawyers?
In the film, Zhang Baomin is not completely unable to speak, but when he was young, he fought with others and bit off his tongue and was unwilling to say it again. What he loses is not the physiological function of sound, but the social function. It's like the active aphasia that Ida chose in "Piano Lessons" to rebel against male power. When language loses the meaning of communication, it is said or not said, it is a loss of voice.
Compared with their fathers, the contrast between the fates of the two children in the film is even more heart-wrenching. One of them is articulate, and one of them has not said a word in this film. One can be called back to reality by his father when he is dying, and the other has no chance of being called back by his father. Perhaps only in another time and space can they achieve true equality, and they can run hand in hand to the top of the mountain to see the city where adult society is full of evil and filth. But at least in the current society, there is no ultraman to protect it.
Near the end of the film, facing the mountain where sin is buried, Zhang Baomin's wife hugs the sheep and cries bitterly. Being slaughtered is their destiny, and being alive is suffering in itself. The child died, but ironically, his soul was liberated.
(Image from the Internet)
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