All that started from "Li Yaohui, why don't we start from scratch", this incomplete and partial standard, I think it is a kind of openness to the future. Maybe all the time, maybe all the laughter and pain, maybe all the sinking and awakening.
one. Spatiality and the Fallen Feeling of Waterfalls
"When I first arrived in Argentina, I didn't know the place. One day He Baorong bought a lamp. I thought it was very beautiful. The two of them really wanted to find the waterfall on the lamp, but it was very difficult to find the name of the place. After crossing the waterfall, we can return to Hong Kong, but I lost my way." - Tony Leung
's spatial conception of "Breakthrough", Wong Kar-wai said in an interview, "I myself am like Lai Yaohui and He Baorong in the play. For lovers, I am tired of constantly being asked what will Hong Kong be like after July 1, 1997? I want to leave Hong Kong and come to Argentina on the other side of the world to escape reality, but I find that the more I want to escape, the more reality follows me. No matter where you go, Hong Kong exists."
Space is related to the understanding of the way of existence, it is a pre-determined thinking condition for existence, and it is also a condition for understandable behavior. Hong Kong people around 1997 did not seem to have the same understanding of themselves as the mainland. As Wong Kar-wai said, escape became a way. It is indeed a way to escape to the end of the world, to understand an alien space, to be free from thinking about the uncertainty of the future. The great escape-style background cuts off the trajectory of life like a sharp knife, with the spatial meaning of "Li Yaohui, it's better for us to start from scratch". All origins from escape, the extreme extension of escape in time and space, finally made the film.
If it is really according to director Wong Kar-wai's conception, then "Happy Spring" is a work that has elements of escape, wandering, seclusion and even a sense of self-exile. It doesn't matter whether the characters are male or female Now, what is important is the variability of the space in which all stories take place, and the deviation of the place may determine the character of the characters in the film. For example, he put the place where the story of "Evil in the East and Poison in the West" took place in a desert without any time attribute. The characters have strange personalities, as if they only exist in this inexplicable place. If in a real space, this or It is more or less embarrassing, and it will cause many lines and words to become meaningless, and the behavior will be stripped into a kind of boring. This is due to the director's style, and it is also a kind of layout technique. In "Breakthrough", these specific spaces are the result of the director's construction, such as "Iguazu Falls", "The End of the World", "The Best Place in the South American Continent" "South End", like the Desert Inn and the Yellow Sand Oasis, is nothing more than a setting of a heterogeneous space.
I guess the story probably begins with a table lamp in a waterfall, and it is this lamp that opens the main theme of the search for the whole story - the search for the self, the search for the other, and the search for the Iguazu waterfall. Iguazu Waterfall occupies an extremely important position in the spatial elements and imagery of the film, and fragments of the waterfall appear many times in Wong Kar-wai's films. About ten minutes before the end, about three minutes of footage was given to Iguazu. Staring at that panoramic shot, when that exotic music played, at that moment I admitted that even my music blind was overwhelmed by it, slow and rhythmic, but in those three minutes, what I felt was not Spanish. Music, but the solidification of space at that moment, this kind of space connects the eternity of time in an instant. The waterfall itself is a strange space, it can repeat forever, the fluidity can become static, it is the combination of space and time.
This psychologistic view of time and space is not the point. The point is why the image or element of waterfalls has become an important part of Wong Kar-wai's films. In my opinion, the reason is that there is a sense of depravity in the image of the waterfall. This sense of depravity comes from the finality of the waterfall in the film - the calm flowing water loses its center of gravity in an instant, falls to the bottom of the valley, and everything can no longer be restarted from the beginning. This sense of depravity is nihilistic and aggressive. I think Wong Kar-wai's intention is very clear. He will not take such a long time to shoot a waterfall in the southern hemisphere for no reason. What he wants to do is to make the audience feel a kind of falling through the screen. The power, I think he did, he's a successful campaigner, remember the first time I saw this movie, I was blown away by that panorama shot. The sound of hundreds of millions of years, the water mist of hundreds of millions of years, the roar of hundreds of millions of years, hit you in an instant, and it was impossible to refuse to be there. For the first time, I was suffocated by the picture of a movie. Or from the other side of the planet.
I didn't know the meaning of Iguazu, and I didn't want to know. By chance, I saw an introduction in a geography book. The world's widest waterfall is Iguazu Falls, also known as "Devil's Throat", located at the confluence of the Iguazu and Parana Rivers on the border between Argentina and Brazil. 23 kilometers upstream, in 1984, it was listed as a World Natural Heritage by UNESCO. It turned out that they were going to a place in reality, but I don't know if Wong Kar-wai knew this alias. A movie about depravity should have a metaphor and a prophecy. I have seen many film critics arguing about who is the male lead in "Happy Together", Leslie Cheung or Tony Leung. But I think the question is from which point of view, from the time of appearance, or from the theme of the film. If it is admitted that this is a theme of depravity, then the degenerate is undoubtedly Leslie Cheung, and the waterfall is said to be good. For example, Liang Chaowei's line "When I stood in front of the waterfall, I felt very sad. I always felt that there should be two people standing here." It was Zhang's fall and exit that led to this ending. This is the most basic plot. Line, before the start of the film, the two may have broken up several times, or they may have reunited for a certain time. This is the time meaning of "Li Yaohui, it is better for us to start over. And the waterfall lamp bought from the street stall and the Iguazu Falls they decided to go to suggest a depraved fate and an unreachable ending, just like Iguazu, which is actually marked on the map, but walks away. When I get lost, I get lost, and the opening chapter that floats up has a vague taste.
Wong Kar-wai also told a fallen story in "Fallen Angels", but falling in that film can understand the development results of the distance and loneliness between adults and people, and the audience can face the inner world of the fallen through the lens, just like experiencing In the loneliness that comes from the pavement, the audience is psychologically prepared for the arrival of this fate and accepts the reason for depravity. But it's a pity that in "Breakthrough", the "present" (borrowing Derrida's term) is only Li Yaohui played by Tony Leung, and the depravity of the "absent" is an important feature of this film. This kind of "absence" is one of the essential manifestations of the concealment of the world that I will talk about below. From the perspective of space, the space we can know belongs only to Li Yaohui, and we know a little about He Baorong (the shots given to him are not without, otherwise it would lead to this character being like Maggie Cheung in "Evil in the East" and "Poison in the West" , is only a conceptual existence, and the expressiveness of the characters is far lower than the needs of the plot itself, so the two are also concealed, but the degree is definitely different), degenerate willfulness is the biggest feeling he gives to the audience. This is the same for Li Yaohui, even far less than the audience. It is the invisibility of this object that creates his loneliness, waiting, pain, and also makes this good film. He not only plays himself, but is also a mirror of He Baorong - He is capricious and withdrawn, but the whole world only sees his embarrassment and sadness, so in this sense, Tony Leung is the number one man, I absolutely agree.
two. The concealment of the world and the other end of the phone
"I always thought that I was different from He Baorong. When I was lonely, everyone was the same." - Tony Leung
In the 1999 film "The Matrix", the Wachowski brothers used a telephone line to connect the virtual Matrix and Zion. The wired telephone was an extremely important element of the film, and many viewers still remember the heroine to this day. The scene of looking for a phone everywhere. I can't remember if it was Slavoj Žižek or who said that the telephone line as the only means of contact with the Matrix of the mother revealed that there must be an umbilical cord like the umbilical cord between the fetus and the mother as a material symbol of connection to escape from the illusion, but It seems to me that this imagery reveals the invisibility of the object itself on another level. The audience can accept the information that the telephone leads to an unknown world, or it is the concealment of the object from the subject that makes the telephone necessary. , and the hidden features of Zion City in "The Matrix" can also justify the unknowability of the other end of the phone. This characteristic is shown in modern police and gangster films. The big bad guy is often the one who hides on the other end of the phone and controls the overall situation. As the phone rings, the case gradually develops. Because of this, the phone itself also has the property of removing occultity.
In 1997, Wong Kar-wai had no chance to hear this kind of philosophical discussion about the telephone itself, but he has always been a master at using the image of the telephone. Andy Lau and the telephone, these undoubtedly show that the object's concealment brought by the telephone and its own "disappearance" at the same time are well understood and utilized by him. As mentioned earlier, we can say that the "present" characters in "Happy Spring" are mainly Li Yaohui, and most of He Baorong's experiences and emotions are "hidden" from the audience. Or it can be said that most of the film is one-way, with Li Yaohui as the first point of view (except for the last scene where He hugs his head and weeps in the hut), not the almost parallel shots in "Fallen Angels", giving Enough information for the audience, most of the information about He Baorong is missing here.
The result of this first-person narrative style is the same lack of information about He Baorong by Li Yaohui. In the first half of the movie, the meeting between Li and He was separated again. When Li went to work in a restaurant alone, and when the two met again, He, a hidden object, reappeared in Li's dull, lonely and boring life by chance. . The lack and concealment of this kind of information to Li was revealed in the subsequent phone shots. In a noisy and crowded residential area, a phone call broke Li's peaceful life. This dispelling function was not something he could refuse. Yes, just as He Baorong's, "It's better for us to start from scratch" is also something he can't refuse. He starts to understand He Baorong's life again, and the spatial narrative changes from concealment to convergence.
Spatially speaking, the other end of the phone is a completely hidden space. All the joys and pains related to He Baorong are unknown and unknowable to Li Yaohui. The world is narrow and partial to each individual person. In the eyes of every bounded rational person (Kant), there is no so-called panorama. As Yang Dechang expressed in "One One", everyone has no Possibly see the back of his head at the same time. I think this is because the cognitive object and the subject exist in the same level of time and space (of course, it may also be the limitation of cognitive tools, such as Buddhists believe that there is a cognitive mode beyond the "six senses"): if one can imagine, someone If you design a space and time, and then design every individual in this time and space, then their every move and even every psychological change cannot escape the designer's observation. Similarly, if someone in our real time and space can recognize all the hidden spaces, then he must not belong to this time and space. According to the Christian point of view, this designer is the omniscient and almighty God, who transcends time and space and belongs only to the high places where he is located. first-level space-time. Therefore, in my opinion, whether it is Bentham's vision of a panoramic prison, or the so-called complete transparency of society and closed-circuit surveillance in all fields, it is a delusion of leaping like a god.
The conclusion drawn here is that the occultity of space is due to the limitation of cognition (but on the other hand, the limitation of time is avoidable in Newton's view of time and space. We will talk about this problem later, the absolute view of time is There is no doubt that everyone can be placed in the same time), but this philosophical analysis seems to have nothing to do with this film, but it is not. It is this inevitable concealment that determines the film's Narrative incompleteness, back to the title of this article, the spatio-temporal narrative of spring light, if only from the perspective of space, the front part and the back part can only be regarded as hidden narrative, or a one-way narrative, itself is handicap. But in the following, I will add the question of time to spatiality. Through this combined analysis, we will see that all the stories, all the stories that started from "Li Yaohui, it's better for us to start from scratch" are all showing a story about love The proposition of , or in the spatial concealment in the confluence, time is the place of the absence of the emotional process. This is the true time and space narrative of "Spring Light".
three. Time issues and love
"I have never told He Baorong about some things. I don't want him to recover too soon. The days of his injuries are the happiest for me and him." - Tony Leung
According to Heidegger, the existence is also the same Inseparable from time, the several states of Dasein are undoubtedly the unfolding of time. Whether it is a sinking state or a throwing state, there is always a ductility of time. This is the deviation criticized by Husserl. The deviant psychologistic tendencies of orthodox phenomenology. I think this is the greatness of Heidegger, pulling the dream of phenomenology as the cornerstone of a pure science to man himself, and the latter is more philosophical. Also in Wong Kar-wai's narration of time and space, the state of Dasein in time is also the object of this narration.
1997 is a strong time signal in the movie. As mentioned in the beginning, escaping from Hong Kong belongs to the category of spatial narrative, while 1997 itself is a concept of time. Others include news reports about the death of Deng Xiaoping and Zhang Zhen's journey to the end of the world. In January 1997, these words about time reminded the audience of the passage of time, just like the scene where the Obelisk Square appeared many times, the one-way passage of time clearly beat the audience's heart.
Leslie Cheung's line "Leslie Yaohui, it's better for us to start from scratch" is an important part of the film, but the obvious problem here is that as a temporal narrative, this sentence is contradictory to the one-way nature of time— - To start over is to go back to a certain point in time and start again, but time cannot be retraced and traversed. But Li Yaohui said that he had no way to refuse this sentence. The reason was that this retrospective point in his heart was what he longed for, or it was the "sinking state" that he did not come out of, so he was very easy. Accept it from scratch. It is easy to explain this variability of time in Heidegger's term "indulging in the past". Perhaps we can try a lame definition. Love is a psychological appeal that goes back endlessly to a certain point in time. "Li Yaohui, why don't we start from scratch" is about an infinite backtracking attempt. "I have never told He Baorong about some things. I don't want him to recover too soon. The days when he was injured were the happiest for me and him." This monologue of Tony Leung clearly shows this kind of infinite retrospective psychology, because infinite times The backtracking is equivalent to time permanently stopping at that backtracking point, just like he said that he has been waiting for that sentence in his heart.
Obviously, the object of this analysis is Li Yaohui. This kind of psychology is a kind of negative psychology. Just like Li Yaohui secretly hides He's passport, this attempt is essentially just a form of self-protection. In this sense, the lame definition above can only be a negative definition, so what is the positive definition?
At the end, Zhang Zhen went to the end of the world. When he stood on the lighthouse at the southernmost tip of the South American continent, he said: "Suddenly I wanted to go home, although I was far away from them, but at that moment I wanted to go home. The feeling is very close." Zhang Zhen said that the reason why he left was because he still had some problems that he had not figured out, and maybe the dispute with his parents might be due to doubts about life itself. At the end of the world, further south is the Antarctic. He suddenly wanted to go home and felt very close to them. At that moment, I think he had figured out all the problems, and he had found a reason to go home. ; The same is true for Li Yaohui, the relationship with his family is also like his monologue: "It was very hot in Argentina in December. I was on vacation that day, thinking of writing a Christmas card to my father, but the longer I wrote, the longer I wrote. I was afraid to talk to him, because there are things I really want him to know. I don’t know what he will think after reading the letter. I told him that I hope he will give me a chance to start over.”
In the definition of positive, I think the biggest characteristic is to come out of the sink. Whether it is the Iguazu Falls or the lighthouse at the southernmost tip of the South American continent, the spatial characteristics are destined to end negatively in time. Just like Liang Chaowei's stubborn facial expression standing under the waterfall alone, or the momentary feeling when Zhang Zhen stood alone at the end of the world, the one thing in common is to get out of Heidegger's sinking, return to real life, and return to self: Liang returned to Hong Kong and Zhang returned to Taiwan. That's really starting over, because here spatiotemporality is no longer an endless backtracking, but a positive state of opening into the future.
When people went to the building, Leslie Cheung wiped the floor over and over again. When he fixed the lamp and saw two people standing under the waterfall, he knew that he would never have the chance to go to Iguazu for two. Wong Kar-Wai used the crying scene that does not often appear in his movies here. He Baorong cried uncontrollably while hugging the blanket. I think the audience's attitude towards He Baorong's character at this moment is very contradictory. Is this the ending for the fallen? I think I actually sympathize with him, maybe in my opinion He Baorong is really the most tragic character in this movie. His willfulness created his depravity, but when I was thinking about why he was so reckless, I thought of Tony Leung's scene in the movie theater, "I always thought I was different from He Baorong. When I was lonely, everyone was the same." In fact, this sentence can be completely said by He Baorong himself, but Wang Jiawei let Li Yaohui say it himself, when he himself indulges and degenerates. I can see that in Wong Kar-wai's opinion, all the missing information about He Baorong can be completely recovered at that moment. The audience can imagine a person who is afraid of loneliness, drunk on the street, and someone who buys drunk in a bar with tears in his eyes. In an instant, all the contempt of the audience can be repaid. In fact, I have not liked the character Leslie Cheung very much for a long time. I always feel that He Baorong is full of the coquettish feeling in his song "Red". This character really shows a female character, affectionate and charming, fickle and impulsive, full of Suspect. But when the music sounded in the ballroom, he danced with a foreign country, and then the screen switched to him dancing with Li Yaohui in the small house, at that moment I thought I didn't have much reason to hate this character. Maybe he is just a playful, willful and ignorant little girl in my opinion.
As I said before, time is not concealed. I think there is no difference between He Baorong's time and Li Yaohui's time. The end of the world is at the same time, but the space is different. What exactly are you doing at that moment. I haven't figured out why Wong Kar Wai's English title is happy together, or why a "Happy Time Together" is called "Happy Together". Now it seems that maybe time and space have achieved together at a certain moment, which is happy. This is how I understand it, each individual has its own space-time track, which may be sequential, such as two cars before and after one track; it may also be parallel, such as two cars on two parallel tracks; It may also be intersecting. The situation of each passenger is unknown to the passengers in the other car, and it is hidden from him, so that this hiddenness can only be removed when the tracks intersect, just like Elements such as telephones are inherently disembodied. The same is true of spring light. I understand spring light as a kind of orbit of life. Everyone has their own tunnel of spring light, which was originally hidden from each other, until the sudden reason deviated from the original orbit and leaked into the orbit of others like a clear spring. Only the interweaving of spring light makes happy together.
So what is love? I want to define it from a positive level: the psychological appeal to the spatial dispossession of the other at the same time. This is the same lame definition as the previous one. The definition was not originally the purpose of this article. It only has one purpose, which is to try to explain why it is called "Spring Comes Together", but this purpose still does not seem to be achieved. The spatiality here refers not only to the object itself, but also to the space in which the object is located. For example, really liking a girl is not about knowing everything about her, but about the time and space where she is open to the future, and I am also willing to be in this time and space. In other words, true love lies not only in understanding, but also in living together, yearning for the disappearance of the past, present and future where she is in the time and space, which is essentially an invasion of the invisibility of time and space orbits. So in that sense, it's okay to say that love is an invasion.
He Baorong is undoubtedly the intruder. The problem is that Li Yaohui is willing or even looking forward to his invasion. This is happy together. In this sense, He Baorong is the interpreter of this positive definition, while Li Yaohui is the interpreter of the negative definition.
Four. The end of the world
"I promised Ah Hui to keep him unhappy here. I don't know what he said that night, maybe the tape recorder was broken, there was no sound at all, only two very strange sounds, as if a person was Crying." - Zhang Zhen
"In January 1997, I finally came to the end of the world, this is the last lighthouse in the south of South America, and then there is the South Pole, suddenly I wanted to go home, although I was with them The distance is very far, but at that moment I felt very close." Hearing this line of Zhang Zhen reminded me of the monologue of Ouyang Feng, played by Leslie Cheung at the beginning of Wong Kar-wai's "Evil and Poison in the West": " Many years later, I have a nickname called "Western Drugs", except that they are both monologues, these two lines originally had nothing to do with each other, but I think there is a very important connection between the two. This relationship comes from Wong Kar Wai. My understanding and application of the concepts of time and space. Ouyang Feng's line is similar to the opening of Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude", which makes the whole narrative instantly open in terms of time, a sense of historical heaviness and irreversibility of time, accompanied by the character's arrogant personality. out. And Zhang Zhen's words show that space is limited and escape is doomed to fail.
The title of "the end of the world" itself has a certain meaning of destiny. On the lighthouse at the southernmost tip of the South American continent, the sea is to the south, and the land to the south is Antarctica. This kind of space is similar to the ends of the earth in Hainan, and it seems that the space ends here. Another logical consequence of the end of space is to escape the disillusionment of the subject itself. "The end" means that there is no escape, there is no way to escape. At this moment, Zhang Zhen's choice is to start over. He wants to understand a lot of things and decides to go back. When he reaches the end of the world, there is no way out. Timing, all that's left is to start all over again.
But in this movie, the end of the world has fulfilled its function as the last position for escapists, that is, Zhang Zhen left all of Tony Leung's unhappiness at the end of the world, and this detail is handled by the movie. The climax of the art, like He Baorong's cry, tells the audience that the story told here is a tragedy. Just like what Zhang Zhen really hoped and did, all Liang Chaowei's unhappy happiness was left at the end of the world, and Liang said that he had nothing unhappy about. Maybe the two voices like crying are not necessarily unhappy, maybe just all the past. Liang also needs to start over, just like He Baorong's line, after all, he went to Iguazu Falls, the place that also has the finality of space.
Conclusion:
The last shot of Wong Kar-wai's fairy tale "Breakthrough". When the high-pitched music sounded, just like the "happy together" at the beginning reignited the passion of life, the fast-moving train seemed to be crossing into a new space, the light cut through the darkness, the picture slowly stopped, and the electricity
The movie ends here.
It is said that after Leslie Cheung's death in 2003, Tony Leung went to the Mainland to perform once. After the performance, a female fan of Leslie Cheung was on his way out. When she saw him walking with a group of people, she cried loudly: "Li Yaohui, do you still remember He Baorong?" Liang Chaowei heard her shout, stopped, looked in her direction, then nodded and hurried away.
Wong Kar-wai is worthy of being a master at creating fairy tales. In an era of unbridled love and the fall of true love, there are still people who believe in the stories of Li Yaohui and He Baorong. I think why we need Wong Kar-wai, his narrative, and fairy tale. This is actually the victory of individual narrative. When the camera's lens points directly at each individual, it is about his loneliness, his humility, his depravity and vulgarity, which is the respect for the individual and the human being, and the progress of every micro-narrative is the greatness of the grand narrative. victory. When people are no longer fascinated by the grandeur of the self, the grand process of history and various so-called ideologies, when everyone faces themselves, accepts their limitations and their helplessness, and in self-knowledge and salvation, they find that life loves life At the time, this may be the awakening of the "that individual" that Guor Kegel chanted.
Many nights when my roommates fell asleep and the surrounding land was so silent that I could only hear my own heartbeat, I listened to Leslie Cheung's Cantonese "I" with all my heart. In a trance, I could feel a kind of happiness, in this infinite For a long time, in this infinitely vast space, I have not become a grain of sand, a stone, or a tree, although one day I will become them, and like them, forever and ever, But before that I'm glad I'm who I am.
It is also fortunate that in such a short and long spring of life, so many people have shone on you, and so many colorful lights have intersected with you. It is also fortunate that you have also shined into the lives of others, either staying or passing by, and the spring light is still so warm all the way. It is also fortunate that there are people who are willing to accompany you all the way, willing to give you the most beautiful scenery, the most beautiful time and space.
Now I think about why Wong Kar-wai's things are so moving. In fact, it doesn't depend on how deep and profound philosophy he is. Just like in my opinion, good philosophy is the same. It doesn't depend on whether to go beyond life, but whether it can be understood in the most real words. Life. Wong Kar Wai is the creator of fairy tales. He tells the truest and deepest stories of people's hearts in strange spaces. In the spring light of lonely life, there are those parallel, intersecting and converging. Or the story of time-space orbits that never intersect.
With this text, I miss my idol, the great singer, actor and artist Mr. Leslie Cheung. Finally, I want to borrow a passage from Han Han: I have no chance to see you in this life, but if I can recognize you in another time and space, if you don’t dislike it, let me write a lyric for you, it will not be too bad Yes, it's just that you have to sing in Mandarin, and sing a bunch of spring sunshine that belongs to you and belongs to me.
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