The movie "Alive" tells the legendary half-life of a rich boy named "Fugui". From the 1940s to the "after", the protagonist Fugui experienced the tragic story of losing all his family property due to gambling, participating in the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, losing his son during the Great Leap Forward, and then losing his daughter during the Cultural Revolution.
His life was full of drama, from a rich boy to a poor man overnight, and then lost his parents and children one after another. As an audience, some people sympathize with Fugui, praising him as "heroism" in his struggle to live, some sympathize with his wife Jiazhen, and feel sorry for her suffering in Fugui's house, and some out of their parents Lian Ai feels sorry for their children who died young. In any case, almost all the audience who watched the movie were shocked by the narrative view of the movie "Alive".
This kind of shock comes from two levels. The first level is the deep excavation of Fugui's efforts to live, and the other level is the director's ingenious portrayal of the background era. The two levels are seamlessly integrated, combining the hero's legendary experience with the absurd era, which condenses the shocking power of this film, making the interpretation of the era and the praise of life unified at a higher artistic level.
"Alive" depicts the changes of the times very finely. Whether it is a novel or a movie, the protagonist is struggling to survive under the tight pace of the times. However, "Alive" is not the first to describe the background of the times and the changes of the times. This kind of film narrative method is very common in movies. However, with a unique aesthetic taste and an attitude of trying to restore the background of the times, the director discovers the good quality of the protagonist's hard work in the deformed era, which is not what every movie can do.
Talk about a unique aesthetic taste. The original novel is set in the southern countryside, but the director Zhang Yimou changed it to the countryside in the northern Guanzhong area, perhaps because the director himself is from Guanzhong, so he can better grasp the customs of the Guanzhong area, but it may also be the uniqueness of the Guanzhong area. Folklore can better express the story on the screen. For whatever reason, shadow puppets, Qin Opera, Huqin and other elements with Guanzhong characteristics appear in the film, which play an important role in promoting and implying the plot line.
At the beginning of the movie, Fugui was gambling in the casino. At this time, the shadow puppet team in the casino played shadow puppets, sang Qin Opera, and held a high huqin as the background, which opened the prelude to the story of "Alive". This scene reminds me of the beginning of the American movie "Once Upon a Time in America". The beginning of "Once Upon a Time in America" is the scene where the protagonist "Noodles" is smoking opium while watching a Chinese drama in the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. Drugs and Chinese Drama The peculiar tone of the film is blended with water and milk, which perfectly reproduces the sluggish mental state of the protagonist "Noodles" at that time. The opening of "Alive" may be a nod to the opening of "Once Upon a Time in America." The beginning of "Alive" uses the same combination, the combination of gambling and shadow puppetry, to show the audience in detail the protagonist Fugui's sluggish mental state. In the first gamble shown at the beginning, Fugui lost, but Fugui didn't care on the surface, but he took the shadow puppet team and said that the shadow puppet team sang unpleasantly, like a donkey barking, to accuse the shadow puppet master who gambled against him. Dragon two. Long Er had the wishful thinking of Fugui's house in his heart, and naturally he did not dare to have any opinion on Fugui who lost money, so he asked Fugui to sing a few words. As soon as Fugui heard it, he really ran up and took Qin Qin from the hands of the actors of the troupe. From what the troupe sang before, it turned into obscene words and erotic songs, which aroused the interest of gamblers and cheered for Fugui. When Fugui heard this, he was very happy. He came out of the haze of losing money, walked out of the door, and went home to sleep. In the second and final game, Fugui lost all his family property by gambling, leaving nothing left in his family. At this time, Fugui's face was embarrassed. At this time, the background was still the combination of gambling and shadow puppet team, but this time, the shadow puppet team no longer sang ordinary dramas in a strict manner, nor did they sing obscene lyrics and erotic songs that attract people's attention, but accelerated With the speed, more and more urgent, more and more urgent, the shadow play has also changed from a literary play to a fighting play. In the shadow play, a character was beheaded by a guillotine! The film does not directly show Fugui's embarrassing, tangled, and tense psychological activities, but through the rapid sound of the huqin and the transformation of the shadow puppet plot, it shows Fugui's psychological activities on the side. This storyline is expressed through the director's ingenious and unique aesthetic level.
Shadow puppets are an extremely important image in the whole story. Fugui lost all his family property in the shadow puppet show. After being poor and white, he borrowed shadow puppets from the Longer family to make a living. When performing on the street, he was forcibly terminated by the Kuomintang army and was taken as a strong man. fight with the communists. After Fugui was captured by the communist army, he sang shadow puppets to the soldiers of the communist army to comfort the soldiers of the communist army. After receiving the salary of the Communist army and returning home, he caught up with the land reform to determine the family composition. Because he once sang shadow puppets for the Communist army, the Communist Party sent him a certificate, which made him an "urban poor" and could be exempted from the land reform policy. For this reason, Long Er was also shot five times for him. During the Great Leap Forward, the steel-making campaign was carried out. Originally, the mayor wanted to take away the rivets on the shadow puppet box and the iron wire supporting the shadow puppet, but Fugui's wife Jiazhen also said that he could sing shadow puppets for everyone while they were making steel. , so the shadow puppet stayed. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the rebels broke down the Four Olds, and the shadow puppets could no longer be preserved. All the shadow puppets were burned as the Four Olds, but the shadow puppet boxes were preserved. The grandson became the nest of the chicks. At the end of the movie, the shadow puppet box finally no longer holds shadow puppets, but a new life.
Throughout the whole movie, after Fugui took over the shadow puppets from Long's Second Hand, he was like a shadow puppet, always living passively, and for many years he was submissive in order to survive. He sings shadow puppets for livelihoods, sings shadow puppets for the PLA revolution, and sings shadow puppets for political movements. In fact, in that generation, not only he was lucky, but everyone in the town he was in was running around for political movements. Maybe people at that time really believed in surpassing the UK and catching up with the United States within five years, and believed in the production of 10,000 catties per mu. , I believe there are capitalist roaders among our cadres. But after the Cultural Revolution, only later people realized that the enthusiasm they gave at that time eventually became the bubble after the political movement ended. The people of that era were almost like puppets in shadow puppets. They had no feelings and no ideas, but had nothing but revolutionary enthusiasm under the control of politicians. The scene that shocked me the most was when Fugui's daughter was bleeding profusely after giving birth. The doctors in the hospital were all labeled as "reactionary academic authorities" and sent to the cowshed to pick up dung. There were no doctors in the hospital, only a few red soldiers. The soldiers acted as nurses, but how could they have seen such scenes of heavy bleeding, watching the blood-stained medical gauze thrown into the trash can, watching the unstoppable blood flow down Fengxia's calf, watching Zhu Jiazhen was holding Fengxia, whose face was gradually pale, and my heart was twisted into a ball at the moment. Fengxia died of bleeding in the end. The gynecology professor I finally got from the cowshed didn't help. The Cultural Revolution indirectly led to Fengxia's death. And such accidents, how much more than this one during the Cultural Revolution?
Director Zhang Yimou used shadow puppets to string together the storyline of "Alive", and at the same time hinted at the real image of people in a political revolution - shadow puppets manipulated by the nihilistic revolutionary concept. The director changed the southern rural background in the novel to the northern Guanzhong Plain, and used the folk art of Guanzhong—shadow puppets as the carrier of the underlying connotation throughout the film. Zhang Yimou obviously designed it carefully, not because he likes Guanzhong. Culture, like to cooperate with the great musician Zhao Jiping to add elements of shadow puppets and Qin Opera. If the director is adapting the cultural background of the original for personal preference, then obviously such a high-level adaptation will not be completed.
Many people regard Fugui as a symbol, a symbol that has gone through the times, but is still tenacious and tenacious. But I think it's read from a novel perspective. Zhang Yimou's "To Live" is a film adapted from a novel. Since it is an adaptation, more content should be interpreted from it. Through his unique aesthetic taste and his attitude of trying to restore the real social background, Zhang Yimou provides us with a new perspective, especially at the moment, each of us should reflect on ourselves through the perspective of shadow puppets, and we will have nothing to do with others on the Internet. Are we really in control of our consciousness when we quarrel over meaning? When you press the report button without hesitation, do the beneficiaries really include yourself? When you indulge yourself in the gentle township promoted by the media, is there really no crisis lurking? We should look at life with suspicion, and never live for the sake of living.
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