Let's live together faithfully

Domenick 2022-04-22 07:01:42

Today, I watched Francois Truffaut's "Ancestor and Zhan", and then I couldn't control the hands that were about to type on the keyboard. First of all, this name really reminds us of the classic film "Across the Four Seas" by Brother, Fager and Honggu. Yes, even the names of the two male protagonists are the same. It turns out that there is indeed a tribute to the 1962 French "Ancestors and Friendship". The intention of "Occupy", I just selected two classic stills to put at the beginning, let's see, even the characters' positions are the same, which makes people love and pity. Presumably this is the eternal harmonious dialogue between great works and great works. Of course, no one will arrogantly show off their little reading experience and say that the latter is plagiarism, and the similarities in the details may be said today. In the era of plagiarism, it will also be called: tribute.



Of course, "Zu and Zhan" contains much more motifs and thinking than the latter. The original work is "Zu and Zhan" by Henri-Pierre Roche. But if you want to have a happy dream of happiness, you will probably want to relive the Zhan and Zu between brother and fat brother countless times. Obviously, this comparison itself may be a mistake, and the two films are not in the same time and space.

"I fell in love with Napoleon when I was fifteen, and fantasized about meeting him in an elevator, having a baby with her and never seeing him again" is Catherine. The director made such a woman so...indescribable in one word. Slutty? Not quite, although her love follows her heart, and it revolves around the few men she loves. Pure and faithful? Incomplete, but the meaning of love, even the concept of metaphysical love, is 100% pure. If only the "love as you like" style heroine who is loyal to love actually exists in many films, it can be Rachel in The Notebook, Ellen Page in Juno, or Ye Tong in "Youth on Fire" can be Shu Qi in Hou Hsiao-hsien's "The Best Time"... And Catherine is much more complicated. She always feels that she has too much faith in her uninhibitedness. This belief may be too small. Only one infidelity can be tolerated between two people who love each other, perhaps only with all one's heart and soul. But she is a man's wife, she is the mother of a child, she is the lover of several men. She taught, she read Shakespeare. She has her own criteria for judging, there must be people with temperament in the dust, not just talking. Rest assured, the plot will not be vulgar enough to teach you how to infiltrate and teach you ethically. Hey, this is a French New Wave work!


Presumably the author and director still let us experience a story of harmonious love. Truffaut's interpretation of non-contradictory love is the coexistence of Zu, Zhan and Catherine. "I can live with his infidelity, but please don't let her leave." Oh, Zu, that's a somewhat repressed man, he's not as energetic as Zhan, he's more stubborn than Zhan. So in order to keep Catherine, he offered to divorce and let Zhan and Catherine share the same bed, while the three of them were still under the same roof, going on outings and living. Such romance must have come from the French in such a way, yes, that crazy romance. I'm very happy that although the title of the film is "Zu and Zhan", Catherine is a rare center shape, even if her name does not appear in the title, I feel that this is the best state.


The shooting details of the whole film are also touching in many places. Not long after the three first met, they ran a race on the long bridge. It must have been a handheld shot, and the audience became out of breath; Zhan and Zu and Catherine's daughter rolled against the grass, making people want to stop, it must be the joy of life one of the moments. There is also a shooting scene that I like very much. When I came back from the battlefield, Zhan gave Zu and Katherine's other lover, Abba, about the experience of a gunman and his crush on the battlefield. Well, let me write down the movie lines. ——“I remember a gunman in the hospital. He met a woman on a train while on vacation. From Nice all the way to Marseille, he kept writing letters to her on the battlefield for two years, writing on wrapping paper by candlelight. On, the more dense the mortar blasts, the more intimate the words become. In the beginning, I called her Miss, and by the third letter, I called her Little Fairy, and then I kissed Little Fairy, kissed your hand, kissed your forehead, Referring to the pictures she sent him, he would say how he fantasized about the breasts under his coat, and soon said: I love you mad. Once he wrote to her mother that he wanted to marry her, although he never saw her again, he I was officially engaged, the war continued, the letters were getting closer and closer, I hugged you tightly, held your breasts in my hands, pressed your naked body against me, and the reply was a little cold, so he begged her not to be coy, because He was dead at any moment...On the eve of the announcement of the truce, the operation failed and died, and he wrote the last letter to his fiancée, your breasts are the only bomb I fell in love with." On the lawn that day, three men who loved Katherine So sitting together quietly, listening to the movie scene where Zhan told such a story, it is so nostalgic. It is said that dialogue is not easy to film, and I think the same is true for such storytelling monologues. At that time, I seemed to be sitting with them. The world is quiet. But the story he tells is a cruel reality that goes against the peaceful scenery, and it also reflects the director's thinking. As for other favorite scenes, there are too many to mention. The scene of singing that song translated as "The Vortex of Life" is so classic that I don't think I have the guts to talk about it.


As for the end of the movie, thinking about it quietly is the best way to end it. Zu may really feel at ease, no longer embarrassing himself for the love, not afraid of the love running away again, not afraid of the flickering of the sun.


The plot in "Across the Four Seas" is obviously a Hong Kong-style flavor, and the thinking it contains is far less than that of "Ancestors and Zhan", but as I said before, the two are not the same, the plots are too different, and they are not in the same time and space. But no matter how they both love each other, each has its own merits. So I will never want to ask whether John Woo and Hongdou will join the drama too soon after watching it earlier.


Well, anyway, let's live together faithfully if we can.

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Extended Reading

Jules and Jim quotes

  • Catherine: [singing] When the first time you knew and the second time too, It was just right for you, Why say adieu, When you feel in your heart it's right from the start, Then you mustn't part. So we set off together anew, Spinning through life, just you and me, We whirl on through life this way, Embracing till this day. Embracing till this day. Embracing till this day.

  • Catherine: Don't cause suffering, Jim.