People, sheep, trees and charcoal seem unrelated at first glance, but the director connects him/it/them in a unique cinematic way. Of course, the connection between sheep, trees and charcoal can be traced and can be seen as a transformation of matter: the sheep lost their way in the mountains and finally disappeared silently in the snow (presumably died beside a big tree); winter When spring comes, the lambs will probably decay, become nutrients, and become part of the tree. At this time, people in the town went to the mountains and cut down the trees to celebrate their festival; finally the trees were sawed into small pieces and sent to the construction site to burn charcoal, which was transported back to the town for the townspeople to use.
We can fully understand the relationship between sheep, trees, and charcoal in terms of material transformation, but the relationship between man and sheep is rather peculiar. The story begins with "people". The old man lived by herding sheep in a small town. He took sheep to the mountains to graze every day, and used goat milk to go to church in exchange for ashes. He drank the powder in water at night to save him from coughing. suffering. One day he accidentally left powder in the mountains and died in his bed that night. As soon as the camera turns, the ewe gives birth to a child. This turning point seems to tell the audience that the lamb is the "reincarnation" of the old man. Of course, we can think from an ecological point of view, saying that the old man is buried in the soil to become nutrients, nourishing the grass, and the mother sheep eats the grass and turns it into nutrients to support the lambs in her belly. But the setting of churches and Christian rituals, shepherds and sheep in the film, it is really hard not to draw people out of this metaphysical abstract connection.
However, there is no concept of "reincarnation" in Christianity, there is only "incarnation" of "incarnation". The director's clever switch reveals where his ecological consciousness lies. Undoubtedly, the directors of the last three parts of the film express how man and nature are interconnected and interdependent on a material level. Of course, humans are also matter, and we can also understand the relationship between humans and nature from the above point of view; but it is difficult for us to reduce humans to matter only, and ignore the “super-matter” (such as soul) of human beings developed in Western civilization. ideological tradition. Facing the tradition of Christian theology, the director uses the analogy between "man reincarnated as a sheep" and "Shinto adult", reflecting the idea of ecological theology: man may be higher than nature, but it is also nature, just as Christ Jesus is higher than man God, but also human.
The audience saw the main characters Man, Sheep, Tree and Charcoal, not only because of the director's split, but also because of the guidance of the Chinese subtitle. In fact, there is another "protagonist" throughout the film, and that is water. Before the film tells the story of the shepherd, there is an empty shot of the process of burning charcoal—also the process of making charcoal at the end of the film—and the last set of shots stops at the water vapor spewing from the air holes on the charcoal-making hill. . This water vapor is not only present on the charcoal hills, but also permeates the entire film and the entire nature. This water vapor seems to have become a metonymy of "human soul" and a metaphor of "God's Spirit" in ecological theology: God's Spirit runs on the water, starts the process of creation, and has always permeated the nature of the earth In history, keep the world and promote history.
Another noteworthy feature is that there is no dialogue in the whole film, that is to say, the film has only sound, and does not constitute a "language" meaningful to human beings. This is, of course, an experiment by the director in terms of technique. It takes back the ideographic system of silent films and simply lets the picture "speak", so that the audience can focus more on the picture. On the other hand, this technique achieves two other effects on the theme of the film. First, let the audience feel that the sounds of nature can skip the language system and directly shock people's emotions. Just like the scene where the lamb is struggling to stand up after birth, the picture shows the lamb trying to stand up constantly, and the sound is the lamb's high-pitched cry after another. From then on, the audience will be able to experience the reality of the suffering of nature. Secondly, language has always been one of the boundaries between humans and birds, because humans have language, so humans have history and culture, and Western philosophy also uses this to distinguish humans from animals. But the film takes away the human language. The old shepherd only has a coughing voice, which is no different from the sheep's croaking. The director uses this to turn human beings into a species of all things.
The charcoal, which appears at the beginning and end of the film, becomes a substitute for human language. The difference between charcoal and sheep and trees is that charcoal is "born" from trees (and grass and other materials) with "technology". Make the movie "live". If this is the position the director thinks the film should occupy, then the final scene of the play is intriguing. Trucks bring the charcoal to the town, workers distribute it to the townspeople's homes, and then we see a plume of white smoke coming out of the chimney on the roof: the charcoal turns into water vapor and goes back to nature. If charcoal is a metaphor for the movie, then the director expects that after the audience consumes the movie, they can "give birth" to "spirituality" and return to nature; this "spirituality" does not belong to the audience (the townspeople). , also do not belong to the film (charcoal), but are "born" in their mutual contact consumption (burning).
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