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Farming Poems
Roberto 2022-09-23 05:28:37
The film of nearly three hours is indeed a bit unbearable. Fortunately, the film has a brisk pace, like flowing water, which seems flat and straightforward, but full of poetry. According to Acheng’s revelations, the filming of the film was the director himself, and the actors were all extras. It was not easy. What makes me curious is that those farming scenes are as similar as I remembered, such as when peeling corn. The happiness of farmers couldn't be simpler. Taking advantage of the snowy night, bury the collected chicken manure in the ground, so that it can provide some warmth to the seeds, and they can mature faster than other people's in the coming year. It is not difficult to find that farming is an extremely trivial scene with many plots, and there are no contradictions. Therefore, the director has to solve two things when dealing with this movie: 1. Find a place to end; 2. Open up the seemingly impossible panorama of farming. For the first thing, it is obvious that if the director does not set a clue to the beginning and the end of the image, then the film will take more than three hours, and it can be filmed without limit. In the film, the director chose Minluck to go to school as a clue in the film's narrative sense. And the second thing, opening up the seemingly impossible panorama of farming, is like the "meaning" that Paul Deman borrowed from Hegel but injected a new meaning. In Derrida's words, the allegory is a non-historical narrative, so it is closer to the allegory, but more plain than the allegory. Through trivial, yet stable and cohesive images, the director turned his own photography into a kind of incomplete photography. So I don’t think this film expresses a complaint. On the contrary, it expresses a kind of comparison. Accusations are more powerful, richer, and more powerful than resistance. Such power comes from an allegorical narrative, from an impossible possibility (it is neither used for violence nor used for anti-violence). It is a poem about farming.
Extended Reading
The Tree of Wooden Clogs quotes
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Batistì: A peasant's son going to school. What will people say?
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Anselmo: Haze around the moon, snow is coming soon