Masahira Imamura, the director of The Kaoru Matsukaku (1983), is one of the few Asian directors who has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival twice, and has established him as a master in the international film world.
In 2018, the "Mt. Kaishan Festival: 4K Restored Edition" was launched. On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the film's appearance, it is meaningful for fans to have the opportunity to watch film classics on the big screen. The restoration version extracts the restoration material from the original 35 cm negative film, positive film copy and video tape, etc., 24 frames per second, and each frame is gradually stored and repaired with electronic 4k scanning, and strives to restore the true appearance of the film copy.
The story takes place in ancient Shinshu, Japan, where there is a custom of abandoning the elderly in the poor countryside of the deep mountains and remote countryside, and the children have to carry the 70-year-old man in the family to the mountain to let him fend for himself. The 69-year-old Aunt Ah Ling (Sakamoto Chengzi) has arrived at the mountain, and she is still in good health, she deliberately knocks out her front teeth to create her old image. She was worried that her eldest son, Tatsuhira (Ogata), like his father, would not dare to carry her up the mountain, causing ridicule from the villagers; she also worried about the marriage and livelihood of her son and grandson, and made proper arrangements for the family before going up the mountain, bowing down and paying until the last moment...
The film is based on the novel of the same name by Japanese writer Shichiro Fukasawa, the title of the book is roughly a reference to the song of Kajiyama, and there are three adaptations directed by different directors: the 1958 version of Keisuke Kinoshita, the 1983 version of Masahira Imamura, and the 1999 version of Kanto Shinto. Masahira Imamura was the assistant director of Yasujiro Ozu, the 70th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, and specially arranged for the world premiere of "The 4K Restoration Edition" to be screened in Cannes, which shows the director's heavyweight weight in the international film world.
Masahira Imamura, one of the "Four Great Directors of the Japanese New Wave", is hailed as an anthropologist among directors. His images strive to be realistic, and when he wrote the script in his early years, he spent a long time in the library, read a lot of books by sociologists and anthropologists, accumulated profound social science literacy, and realized his observation of human beings and Japanese society through filming. He specializes in excavating the sacred and the secular, the upper and the inferior, hidden in Japanese culture from the basic level of human needs such as life and death, sex and love, and excavating the deep inner nature of the Yamato nation's soul through images.
Imago Changping pays attention to the authenticity of rural scenes, especially in an abandoned village in Otari Village, Kita-Azuma County, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, which was filmed for more than a year and cost 500 million yen to shoot the scene of people struggling to survive in the snowy weather, overlooking the isolated countryside.
The director filmed different xx scenes of farmers, such as Tatsuhei and his new wife having sex, the second son Risuke was unwilling to find animals with him due to physical odor, and the grandson Jie Zuoji and his fiancée Asson were in the wilderness, and these pictures alternated with the scene of hunting and devouring. The director also filmed his fiancée Asong's family stealing the villagers' grain due to hunger and cold, and the villagers decided to bury the whole family alive together, everything that happened in the poor countryside, conveying that human beings and all things are the same, facing the cruel process of survival and elimination under the laws of nature, and realistically shooting the cruel face behind the appearance of rural harmony. Now it seems that the views are still sharp, the images are fierce, and they have a deep shocking power.
It is worth mentioning that Sakamoto, who was 45 years old at the time, played the 69-year-old mother of Ogata's mother, Ah Ling' mother- In order to make the role more realistic, she cut off 4 front teeth and lost 10 kilograms, which is admirable. At the Awards Ceremony in Cannes that year, Sakamoto received the award on behalf of Sakamoto and received the trophy from the legendary director orson welles of "Citizen Kane", and for Sakamoto's dedication, Orson Welles also gave her a special kiss to greet her.
Legendary director Orson Welles presented the Cannes Palme d'Or to Sakamoto.
The film spends most of the time laying out the process of settling down at home before Ah Ling's mother-in-law went up the mountain, she found a new wife for the widowed Tatsuhei, asked the neighbor village woman to solve the physiological needs of the second son Lisuke, avoided him being looked down upon by the whole village, taught the new daughter-in-law to be diligent and thrifty, caught brook fish to increase the grain for the family, and the grandson found a new wife soon after his fiancée's family was buried alive, representing another person to eat in the family. She understood that the time to go up the mountain would eventually come, and took the initiative to express to the elders in the village that she should go up the mountain, so that the eldest son Tatsuhei went from hesitation to carrying his mother up the mountain.
In the second half of the film, Tatsuhira carries his mother up the mountain, following customs along the way, and the mother and son do not talk. At the top of the mountain, Tatsuhira was shocked to see the bones of the ancestors scattered everywhere in the village, and couldn't help but hug his mother and was reluctant to leave, but Ah Ling's mother-in-law slapped him and urged him to hurry home, while facing death calmly to Tianhe. Tatsuhei drifts the first snow of winter when he goes down the mountain, comes home to see his wife Ayu, Sukezogi's new wife sitting by the fire, the belt brought to his mother is wrapped around the waist of two new members of the family, the second son Toshisuke sings the song of death, Tatsuhei finally realizes the merciless reincarnation of life, he will also go up the mountain like his mother, facing the final moment of death.
The director arranged a control group to compare the open-mindedness of Ah Ling's mother-in-law and the struggle of the neighbor's grandfather before his death. Also facing the 70th limit of "Shanglin Mountain", Ah Ling's mother-in-law actively arranged the aftermath and persuaded her son Tatsumi to face it calmly, but the neighbor's grandfather showed the true humanity of "better to die than to live", and as a result, his son cruelly tied his father and pushed him off the cliff and fell to his death, allowing the vulture to eat. Tatsuhira witnesses all this on his way back, but he doesn't stop his neighbors because he did the same thing, and in order to keep his family alive, they all maintain the custom of abandoning their old age in different forms.
Director Masahira Imabari said: "Grandma Ah Ling understands that going up the mountain has cut off her life for the sake of the next generation. Taking the initiative to die to prolong the lives of others is equivalent to dying for others, which is the meaning of her life. When death equals 'the meaning of living', it allows her to enrich her life before dying. She believed that going up the mountain when it was snowing was her best and ultimate destination, that she could accept death in order for the next generation to survive, and that the ruthless Heavenly Dao would continue to circulate from generation to generation.
Finally, Imamura Masahira concluded with the words of director Masahira Imamura in 1983: "This work adapted from the abandoned old legend "The Examination of the Mountain Festival" is cruel at first glance, in fact, as long as you look back at the modern era, can you still say that the setting of the work is cruel?" Will the grace of society bring true happiness to mankind and enrich the meaning of life? Rather than setting up nursing homes for the elderly, is abandoning the elderly more suitable as a way to end life? Facing the global environmental pollution and population explosion problem... How is this different from a small village where someone is born and someone dies? I want to explore Ah Ling's mother-in-law's concept of life and death to understand the most core meaning of life. ”
Looking back 38 years later, whether it is the film or the director's thoughts, they transcend the limitations of time and space, and re-watching this timeless classic can cause more reflection.
#影视杂谈 #