Text / Cai Zhenzhen
Art needs to "take the risk" in order to shock the soul. Therefore, many creators often face social events or historical themes in extreme situations, and the narrative strategy also reflects whether they really have the courage to face hardships and the wisdom to transcend conventions. As the Japanese design master Yohji Yamamoto said: "A powerful character is tempered in the deep collision with powerful people, things and things. Deep collisions naturally have various pains, even deep pains. To collide with powerful external objects, you must also dare to go deep into the depths of your dark subconscious, so that you can see more magnificent scenery and temper a stronger self.” In layman’s terms, the creators dare not face the suffering. , How to face it not only tests whether he has the top-level strength of a master, but also whether his works can show the magnificent momentum and "epic" temperament. This is an important reason why "Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire", despite its blood and cruelty, has swept the world and achieved the dominance of "the first American drama". In recent years, Hirokazu Koreeda, who is famous for his growing popularity and showing the warmth of his family, has also encountered this moment.
In 1988, the appalling "West Suga duck abandoned baby case" occurred in Japan. The cause of the incident was that the Tokyo Sugamo Office received a complaint from a landlord within its jurisdiction: there was a rented apartment that had been short of rent for many months, no adults were found, and only children lived in it. After investigation, only a 14-year-old boy and two girls, aged 7 and 3, were in the apartment. The house is like a garbage dump, there is no gas or electricity, and there is a stench everywhere. Later, a few months old baby's body was found hidden in the closet of the apartment. The body had turned into bones. It is speculated that it should be caused by the mother's hastily tidying up and not properly disposing of it after she fell ill and died. After further investigation by the police, it was found that a 2-year-old sister was missing. It was only after the eldest son confessed that the youngest sister stole the instant noodles from her brother and friend because she was hungry, and was abused by her brother and friend to death. Throwing corpses in the mountains. The reason behind the child's life from being dependent on each other to the outbreak of tragedy is that the mother abandoned her responsibilities, concealed and left her child, lived with her lover, only occasionally called back to inquire about the status quo, or only took a small amount of money for the eldest son for family expenses. After the incident, the mother who abandoned the child was sentenced to three years in prison, suspended for four years. The eldest son was convicted of causing death and abandoning the body, and was sent to a juvenile correctional institution. His friends were also sent to different correctional institutions. .
At that time, Hirokazu Koreeda, who just graduated from Waseda University, heard about the Nishi Sugamo incident and decided to start writing the script. After fifteen years of careful polishing, he came up with his famous work "Nobody Knows" and was shortlisted for the Cannes Film Festival in France in the same year. The Palme d'Or and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, however, did not win. In the film, the violent and selfish eldest son becomes the gentle and forbearing Ming. In order to take care of his younger siblings, he calculates what vegetables to buy and what to cook every day, carefully keeps accounts, and keeps the house in good order. As the money runs out, the days are getting tighter, but Ming still does not give up. Due to the rent arrears, the water and electricity were cut off at home, so Ming took them to the park to pick up water and wash up, and they were happy. When the convenience store clerk asked him why he didn't seek help from the Social Welfare Institute, Ming replied, "Then we can't be together." Later, Xiaoxue, who was sick and had a fever, unfortunately fell from a height and died. Ming asked his friend Saki to borrow money, bought Xiaoxue's favorite model of the airplane, packed her in a suitcase, and buried her on the open lawn of the airport, because he had promised to take his sister to see the plane.
Compared with reality, the plot of the whole movie has almost taken a surprising turn. The reason for making such an arrangement is because Hirokazu Kore-eda believes that the eldest son in the West Sugamo incident has never abandoned his younger siblings, and must have acquired care and warmth from his mother's daily lifestyle. As he said in his essay collection "The Speed of Walking": "Movies are not made to judge people, and the director is not God or a judge. Designing a villain may make the story world easier to understand, but not doing so will make Let the audience think about the problems in the movie into their daily life." Therefore, Hirokazu Koeda maintained his consistent attitude towards the mother who left her children, without moral criticism or condemnation. On the contrary, we can also see mothers and children happily eating together, carefully painting their daughters' nails. However, it was Hirokazu Koreeda who didn't even think--perhaps he didn't dare or wouldn't, that the reason why the eldest son did not abandon his younger siblings was because they had no one to take them in, not to mention that he and his friends were still responsible for the murder of his younger sister. Such a "smart" plot setting was a complete lie and fairy tale from the very beginning. It was Hirokazu-eda who neither exposed the sins of human nature nor deeply reflected on the flaws of the child assistance system. No wonder Dai Jinhua praised Hirokazu Koreeda for being good at "expressing the moments of daily disability and trauma, slow but not boring", but also implicitly pointed out that his problem is that he has always maintained an "extremely introverted, reconciliation-seeking attitude, which makes He touches society with sensitivity, but not sharpness."
Generally speaking, creators have at least three different "combat methods" when expressing tragedies: one is "charge war", a frontal attack that directly causes visual impact, such as Yang Dechang's "Guling Street Teenage Murder Case" , Jiang Digui's "Taichi Flag Fluttering", which nakedly reflects the myth of the family and country in a special era; one is "war in trenches", which fully draws on and uses artistic skills to make the works show "flowers of evil", such as Yu Hua's early days. His novels mostly imitate the defamiliarization technique of the French novelist Robbe-Grillet, deliberately creating a dream-like alienation effect, and like Wang Xiaobo's "black humor", which generally comicalizes death and violence. Another example is Ang Lee's "The Fantastic Drifting of the Young Pi", which uses countless metaphors to describe a real disaster of living in the wilderness, killing people and eating in a magical and magnificent way, and the Bengal tiger is day and night. The confrontation also symbolizes the struggle between the juvenile faction and the evil of human nature; the last one is the "sacrifice war", that is, a large number of moral or emotional factors are used to inject abundant power into the work. For example, Zhang Wei's novels always continue Lu Xun's revenge. Spirituality and ideals, such as Kim Ki-deok's "Samaritan Girl", is nothing more than the last scene of the father teaching his daughter to drive before the arrest (a metaphor for the daughter's adulthood).
It is a pity that these at least three narrative strategies are all discarded by Hirokazu Koreeda, and instead indulge in excavating the unreal family warmth, just like the ancient Roman naturalist Pliny described an ostrich, in the face of "danger", he deceives himself and digs his neck into it. In the grass, turn a blind eye. Perhaps, it is the "sharpness" that Hirokazu-eda lacks in the intense collision with pain. It is precisely because Ang Lee can become the first person to win the Academy Award for Best Director twice with "Brokeback Mountain" and "The Fantastic Drifting of Young Pi". The "depth" of Asian directors.
Fortunately, after that, Hirokazu Kore-eda's films began to show slow and mature changes. If "Nobody Knows" still lacks a human war, then "Never Stop" is a "dark battle" between parents and children, and when "Nobody Knows" Like Father Like Mother is an intertwining of "open war" and "dark war", blood relationship and emotion, morality and greed, choice and betrayal, tearing back and forth, full of tension.
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