——A brief analysis of the film "The Big Red Lantern Hangs High"
The film tells the story of a female college student who was helpless and married to a feudal landlord as his concubine, and then fell into this life surrounded by feudal ethics step by step. By describing the sad life of an ordinary woman in the Republic of China, Zhang Yimou expresses the great harm that the dark feudal etiquette has brought to women. In the feudal society where patriarchy prevailed, women were just "dolls" for men. It can be said that Songlian is a microcosm of the society at that time, which is not only her personal sorrow, but also the sorrow of the whole society.
As a classic work of director Zhang Yimou, his personal artistic creation style is reflected everywhere in the film: for example, the use of color in the film, the distinctive composition method, and the detailed metaphors. Put on your own stamp.
The reason why director Zhang Yimou is called "formalist master" is because of his madness about the color of the film. If you are careful, it is not difficult to find that this is the consistent creative feature of director Zhang Yimou. From "Raise the Red Lantern" to his first commercial film "Hero", without exception, they rely on highly rendered colors to achieve visual impact and ideological connotations. The red lanterns are particularly evident in "The Big Red Lantern", and this extreme color distribution is not only to make it echo the title of the film work. At the same time, the red lanterns in the movie also represent the lust of men, and the red cheongsam that the third wife wears is more like to indicate that she is just a tool for Chen's lust. Such a warm red in the movie makes the lifeless Chen Mansion even more terrifying, and it symbolizes the open and secret struggles in the Chen Mansion. As the saying goes, the wealthy family is as deep as the sea, and the Chen Mansion is a sea where one can't see the edge. This sea seems calm, but the underwater is actually turbulent. As a symbol of Chinese feudal society, lanterns carry the deformed social culture. And, in combination with red, it turned into a symbol of feudal patriarchy.
The story of "High Red Lanterns" takes place in a deep house compound, and the scope of the characters' activities is extremely limited, which makes the director have to improve the expressive ability of the camera language. In the film, there have been many aerial and peaceful shots of Chen's house, and without exception, the characters in the play are all in the center of the camera. What's more special is that the doors and windows, as well as the overall structure of the compound, just form a "mouth" shape, and people who are placed in it become "prisoners". This ingenious composition vividly expresses the sadness of the women in the deep house, who are trapped inside and unable to resist. They are not only blocked by the high courtyard wall, but also bound by the feudal ethics. The deep house is the sad product of the feudal society, even the aloof Master Chen is no exception. Although he represents the "predator" at the top of this "biological chain", he still fails to escape the shackles of feudal ideology. middle.
If the entire compound is the materialization of feudal ethics, then Master Chen is a virtual symbol. In the whole movie, as the master of the compound, Mr. Chen has never shown his face, and even a few faces are blurred. The reason why the director made this arrangement is that what Master Chen represents is not an individual, but a landlord and patriarch in the entire feudal society. At the same time, the housekeeper often said that the "rules" of the mansion were handed down by the ancestors. The rules mentioned here are the ethical guidelines of feudal ethics, and Master Chen is the maintainer and successor of the rules. There is a scene in the movie. When Song Lian first entered the Chen Mansion, she stood under a wall full of small seal characters, and all the ancient rituals were engraved on it. The intentional metaphor here is that as soon as Songlian enters the compound, she is bound to be swallowed up by this cannibalistic feudal etiquette. The tall wall formed a huge oppressive force on Songlian. Under this environment, she was powerless to resist, and could only continue to lose herself in this deep sea until she became a victim of the feudal society.
The courtyard is deeply locked in Qingqiu, and the youthful years of countless people are buried in the courtyard, but no one cherishes it. In that dark feudal society, "feminism" is still a new word, and they can only have the so-called "privilege" given by men, just like "whoever lights a lamp is qualified to order food" in Chen's house. It is also these poor "privileges" that make women give their all. This is the tragedy of women, but also the tragedy of an era.
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