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Today I recommend the analysis of a classic domestic old film ——
"Changing Faces"
The film tells the story of the relationship between the jianghu artist King and his "grandson" bought from the trafficker.
The Face-Changing King is alone, and all the belongings are nothing more than passing on the children without passing on the female legend, the face-changing skills that are not passed on inside and outside, a broken ship that can be used for shelter, and a monkey that understands humanity.
The living Guanyin Liang boss accidentally watched the skill of the face-changing king, was impressed by it, and persuaded the face-changing king not to let this unique life be lost, under the point of Boss Liang, the face-changing king who had no heirs bought a "grandson" dog doll from the trafficker.
Just when the Face-Changing King decides to raise the dog as his own grandson and teach him his skills, he discovers that the dog is actually a girl.
The face-changing king decided to drive away the dog, leaving the dog under the dog's bitter pleading, and the title changed from "grandpa" to "boss".
The dog baby is filial and sensible, but when she peeks at the face, she accidentally caused a fire in the boat and burned the boat, and the dog baby faceless face the face-changing king and left silently.
The doll once again falls into the hands of the traffickers, rescues another abducted male doll, gives it to the Face-Changing King in return for his kindness, and leaves again.
Unexpectedly, Tianci is the grandson of a large family who has gone missing, and the face-changing king has been wrongfully accused of being a human trafficker and imprisoned.
DogWa found Boss Liang for help, and spared her life only to save the Face King.
In the end, the face-changing king was released from prison, and he also taught the unique skill of changing faces to the dog baby.
A game of reason and reason
"Changing Face" is undoubtedly a realistic theme work created by the fourth generation director Wu Tianming, but the pulse warmth revealed from it just confirms the sentence that Wu Yigong, who is also the fourth generation director, once said:
"Our group of directors has a very strong ideal color."
Therefore, the chaotic world of the rivers and lakes shown in "Changing Faces" has blossomed into a flower of hope that blends affection and reason.
The Face-Changing King appeared as a lonely and lonely figure at the beginning, and after being mentioned by Boss Liang, he finally realized that he did not have any descendants to inherit his skills, so he decided to "buy" a boy to inherit the mantle.
When he entered the "market" where children were selling, Wu Tianming did not pay too much attention to this cruel and chaotic picture, but let the face-changing king naturally shuttle through this dark intersection, and the background sound was mixed with the sounds of various cars and horses and the sound of trafficking, showing that the current society was accustomed to this phenomenon, and the side revealed the pathology of society.
The face-changing king searched for a circle and did not find a suitable child, and just as he was about to leave, the dog baby's "grandpa" stopped him.
The camera shifts from the face-changing king's turn to the close-up of the dog's face, and the original cold and dark light is converted into a soft light, making the appearance of the dog baby full of "hope".
This can be used as both an objective display shot and a subjective viewpoint shot of the face-changing king (in the eyes of the face-changing king, the dog doll at this moment has undoubtedly become his "hope"), and the innocent face of the dog baby comes into everyone's sight, which is a moment when the fates of the two tragic characters intersect.
At this moment, people's emotions shift from resentment of the dark social reality to a sense of mutual recognition of the two characters.
That "grandpa" is not only awakening the face-changing king who feels indifferent to human feelings, but also inspiring the audience's truth, goodness and beauty.
In traditional Chinese culture, clan blood relations have always occupied the main position in ethical affection, and because men occupy the right to speak in inheriting the bloodline, a male offspring has inherited incense and become a "heart disease" of the face-changing king.
This is also why when the face-changing king learned that the dog baby was a girl, he no longer let her call "grandpa" instead of "boss".
The enlightenment significance of "Changing Faces" lies in breaking the feudal concept of heirs, and the conventional etiquette system is replaced by the true feelings between people who are not relatives than relatives.
DogWa is a Mulan-style character who doesn't let her eyebrows be shaved, although her youth is not enough for her to support such a sense of life.
She knows that the plight of her female identity makes her "sell" to others as a coolie only by playing a male, and when the Face Changer discovers that she is not a boy, she confesses that she has been changed hands by traffickers many times, and it is precisely because she is a girl that she has been abandoned.
At the moment when the Face-Changing King took her back to the boat and accepted her as a "grandson", she experienced family affection for the first time in her life, and even if the Face-Changing King wanted to abandon her because she was not a boy, she jumped into the glacier without hesitation, in exchange for the Soft Heart of the Face-Changing King.
In ancient times, Hua Mulan served in the army for her father, and in "Change of Face", in order to wash away the grievances of the king of changed faces, the dog baby fought with her life and jumped off the roof of Boss Liang's acting, just to let the general who watched the drama on the spot take over this unjust case.
This is obviously a landing beyond the restrictions of blood and gender, a petition, but also a blow to break the old concept and the old tradition, and a sword finger to break through the barrier between love and reason.
In the end, the face-changing king was released from prison, not only treating the dog baby as a blood relative, but also passing on the unique skill of "passing on the man and not passing on the woman" to this girl with tenacious vitality and not losing to the man at all.
The sharp contradiction between love and reason is resolved between truth, goodness and beauty, and the two individuals who were originally lonely finally rely on each other in the chaotic world.
The improved nature of cultural criticism
The environment in which they grew up determined that the fourth generation of directors and the fifth generation of directors had a complete rebellion against traditional culture, and the fourth generation of directors had a deeper attachment to traditional agricultural civilization, so that when they criticized the ignorance of civilization, they always fell into the affectionate gaze of the long and long charm of ancient China.
Although "Changing Faces" explores the injustices of the feudal tradition, to some extent it also dilutes the critical intensity due to its overly idealistic drama.
Wu Tianming touched the sense of inequality between men and women in the feudal tradition with the watchfulness and mutual assistance between relatives in traditional Confucian thought, trying to reconcile this contradiction with family affection, and the conservative psychology of traditional folk artists in the face of the issue of inheriting culture was also finally cracked in the warm pulse, and it seems that a more powerful critical attitude is lacking.
Using family ethics to solve the national cultural psychology is what traditional Chinese film masters are good at.
From the beginning of the birth of China's first national film "Orphans Saving Ancestors", there is no shortage of chinese films that are linked to the fate of the times.
Whether it is the second generation of director Cai Chusheng's peak work "A River of Spring Water Flows East", which connects the intricacies of family relations with the anti-Japanese background and reveals the antagonism of class contradictions, or the third generation of director Xie Jin's "political melodrama" called by Nick Brown, making up for political pain with the completeness of the family, using family/family affection as a cultural gene to solve problems to take root in traditional film directors, although the fourth generation has a certain degree of improvement, it is still a kind of reformism. This reformism did not evolve into a radical cinematic revolution until the fifth generation of directors.
A return to tradition
However, does Wu Tianming's "Changing Face" really lose the strength of cultural reflection?
Apparently not.
Even if the content of the film's criticism of feudalism does not enter into the discussion of the collective unconsciousness of the nation and the inferiority of the nation like Zhang Yimou and others, the rare value of "Changing Face" lies in the mellowness of his nationality.
Dai Jinhua once borrowed the theory of postcolonial cinema to evaluate some of the films of the fifth generation of directors as a "tiny crucified butterfly" in the Western vision, and the fifth generation of directors gradually became the "other" in the Western vision in order to enter the international stage, in the display of pseudo-folklore and spectacle.
When "Changing Face" shows traditional Chinese culture, it does not refer to itself as a barbaric and uncivilized civilization, but more of a humanitarian sentiment to express sympathy for the survival of folk traditional artists.
At the same time, this kind of attention to traditional culture does not infinitely amplify his exotic colors like the fifth generation, but more objectively depicts a folk jianghu.
Wu Tianming's early films paid attention to the portrayal of folk customs, such as the traditional wedding ceremony in "Life", the funeral scene in "Old Well", and "Changing Face", as Wu Tianming's representative work in the later period, adhering to his consistent spirit of realism, telling the traditional culture:
Sichuan opera opera, face change, robe culture, Buddhist beliefs, dialogue between the characters is full of the regional characteristics of Bashan Shudi, the reproduction of these folk customs not only enriches the connotation of the film, but also shows the deep national character and national psychology of the Chinese nation through objective folk appearances, which is very different from the spectacles such as the fifth generation of "upside down palanquins" ("Red Sorghum") and "hanging lanterns" ("Big Red Lanterns Hanging High").
Similarly, the world that "Changing Faces" tries to depict is also different from the feudal national fables that the fifth generation tries to create, and the film is filmed in Leshan, Sichuan, which is antique and full of Miao charm, and the subtle and blank emotions match the ink tone of the film.
When the fifth generation devoted himself to writing about backward society, Wu Tianming combined social ills with sentient and righteous rivers and lakes, revealing deep warmth in sorrow.
Therefore, unlike the fifth generation, the main theme expressed in "Changing Faces" is not entirely critical, but in the process of writing about nationality, calling for the return of nationality, which is both a call for traditional culture and a call for traditional morality.
After entering the 21st century, the fifth generation of directors have thrown themselves into the wave of commercialization, and "Changing Faces" is wu Tianming's first film after returning to China in 1994.
In 1994, when the Chinese film market introduced the "ten blockbusters", the suppression of entertainment films in the era of the planned economy was suddenly liberated, and art films did not fall to the margins they are today, but they also looked shaky at the time.
As a director with a sense of cultural responsibility, Wu Tianming's "Changing Face" is like a wake-up call, which not only rings the inheritance of the traditional artists in the film who pay attention to the mantle, but also awakens the conscience of the filmmakers.
Wu Tianming, the big brother of the Chinese film industry, feels deep regret in the era of consumption, he is like the face king who sits alone on the bow of the ship in "Change of Face", leaving the audience with a lonely back, and the ending he waits for is obviously not as full of warmth and hope as the King of Change of Face, but the call of "Change of Face" believes that it can always wait for the echo.
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