The peasant class, the class, who have no food to eat, the precariousness of the day, and the numbness to death like running water, but still have their own simple entertainment methods, serious clan concept, mean and snobbish patriarch, and a woman who is severely oppressed by the concept of male and female hierarchies, and has become a part of the system , mediocre, unmotivated, looking for flowers and willows every day, mountains come to the mountains, mountains lean to the water, low-level warriors with no integrity like grass on the walls, barbaric, rude, stern inside, fresh and shameless high-level warriors, vying for power and profit, cruel and unkind, The lord of the shogunate with backward thinking, the wandering ronin who yearned for the neutrality of the chaotic world, talked too much in 129 minutes, and used the appearance of all living beings to constitute this turbulent and changing era.
I have seen movies with similar ambitions like Wong Kar Wai's "The Grand Master". The Grand Master is not a specific person, but from the perspective of each master to observe the survival of the entire martial arts in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. Such a handwriting is undoubtedly a big pattern, but Wang Jiawei loves the role of Gong Er too much, and the writing is too strong, which has made Zhang Ziyi's classic, but it seems that other roles are nondescript, and after all, cannot be changed from individual to era. In comparison, "Qingbingwei" expresses restraint and forbearance. In the same snowy funeral, Gong Er was dressed in white, dazzlingly bright under the icy and snowy sun, while Qingbingwei was shrouded in dim tones, hiding in the crowd, with a restrained expression of sadness and exhaustion on his face. The dark tones of the whole film, the sloppy costumes, the simple shots, and the positive performance make it impossible to feel the director's emotion for the role of Qingbingwei. However, the use of other characters' side foils is rather memorable.
The protagonist Qingbingwei is like a person who has nothing to do with the times. He is not good-looking, does not like pleasure, does not pursue fame, and only takes care of his small family. "It's a big deal to abandon martial arts and follow agriculture", it is hard to imagine that this is a sentence that came out of the mouth of a Japanese samurai. In the film, the samurai Yu Wuzenemon, who was also forced by the times and was displaced, and his wife also died of tuberculosis, was arranged. Unlike Qingbei, Uemon was a typical samurai who valued Bushido above his life. The two are like two forks growing out of the same tree. In the film, many of the two have a back-to-back dialogue, and the scenes with light and dark on one side all suggest this relationship. Unlike Qingbei who sold katana swords, Uemon was obsessed with Bushido and lost his family, was convicted because of Bushido, had to duel with Qingbei because of Bushido, and finally died of his own discrimination against the small sword technique. It is the director's reflection on the traditional Bushido spirit.
Another character that cannot be ignored is the little daughter as a narrator. The character in the film is often ignored as a little girl with few lines, but as Seibei said, "it's like watching the growth of crops or flowers", Daughter is his way of participating in this era, it is his hard work. With the efforts of Qingbingwei, her daughter had a happy childhood, the right to study, and an unhappy marriage that was not arranged by the family, and became a woman who could understand her father's pursuit. This is the harvest and success of Qingbingwei.
Bushido and feudal society gradually fade away, and these thriving flowers and plants are the future of Japan.
The "Grandmaster of the Generation" is cited above as a counter-example, but there are actually positive examples - Tsui Hark's "Once Upon a Time in China" trilogy, the English name Once Upon a Time in China shows Tsui Hark's ambition to take us from the late Qing Dynasty to martial artists. from the perspective of the era of change. The length of the three films makes Tsui Hark calm in dealing with this big picture and taking into account the commerciality.
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