2007, the great director Yang Dechang, known as "the scalpel of Taiwanese society", died at the age of sixty.
A year later, his ex-wife Cai Qin released an album called "No Regrets". There is a song in the album called "Love Letter to Filmmakers", which was composed by Hong Kong director Luo Qirui and Li Zongsheng. There are a few lyrics in this song:
The world is just where you live, the galaxy is where your
soul
wanders Dreaming in a dream outside the body, I have always felt that this song by Cai Qin was sung to Yang Dechang. The person has passed away, and the entanglements in the past marriages have been blown away by the wind as early as time. It's hard to say how much resentment against Yang Dechang still exists in Cai Qin's heart, but it is clear that, as one of the people who know Yang Dechang best in the world, Cai Qin knows well what Yang Dechang's death means for Taiwanese films and Chinese films. What does it mean for the art of cinema? When Yang Dechang died, Cai Qin wrote in an open letter: "As a former partner, we were young and struggled together; as a woman, he gave me more loneliness than sweetness; as an audience, we lost a sharp record. time will give justice to all his works, and his efforts will not be lonely." I don't know what kind of waves Yang Dechang will have in his heart because of his knowledge. Before talking about this "Terrorist", I suddenly thought of this "Love Letter to the Filmmaker", which is a kind of memory for the master. There are many good directors in the Erhua - language film industry, but very few can be called masters. Some people say that the best directors in China are in Taiwan, and I agree. No matter how high the standard of "Master" is, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Yang Dechang are enough to occupy two seats. Hou Hsiao-hsien talks about his perception of the world, while Yang Dechang shoots his own experience of life. It's hard to compare the two, but for me, I like Yang Dechang a little more.
Many times, Yang Dechang is like a child, watching everything around him innocently, and greedily recording the society he sees with his eyes. He is like an old man who has gone through countless vicissitudes. He keenly captures the imperceptible danger factors that appear in life, and tells people the truth of the world in an indifferent tone.
In "The Terrorist", his early film, the 41-year-old Yang Dechang used his precise and imaginative lens language to examine this seemingly peaceful but unusually restless society. , Taipei is not just Taipei, it is more like Pompeii before the apocalypse, and there is a dangerous atmosphere everywhere. No one can achieve peace of mind, everyone has all kinds of problems, and they don't know why.
The marriage between San
Li Lizhong and Zhou Yufen is like a cup of plain boiled water.
Zhou Yufen writes, Li Lizhong doesn't care what she writes. When Zhou Yufen was troubled by the lack of clues in writing, Li Lizhong would only say: "Take it easy, how can writing a novel become such a terrible thing?" He didn't know that for Zhou Yufen, writing a novel was not a terrible thing. , I have nothing to say to my husband, and living a life without change is the most important thing.
Zhou Yufen wrote this passage in the film: "That day is the first day of spring. If you understand the seasons, the change is just a repetition of reincarnation. This year's spring is no different from usual, for a couple like them. , the biggest problem is..." The
film doesn't say what the "biggest problem" is, but all viewers will understand that the biggest problem is that there is no difference.
And Li Lizhong is precisely such a "no difference" person. He seems to have no hobbies working in the hospital, mechanically repeating the life of the previous day every day. His life has long been stereotyped, and even the time to wash his face in the bathroom every day seems to be fixed. Yang Dechang repeatedly gave a close-up shot of Li Lizhong washing his face in the bathroom. Under the dark red light, the sound of the water seemed to have emptied all his human emotions. He was like a machine, and he seemed to feel no repression. The audience was overwhelmed.
Li Lizhong is not a successful person at work. No background, poor speech, careful, but difficult to get promotion. After the team leader passed away due to illness, he played tricks and wanted to take the opportunity to climb to the position of the team leader, but he fell short. We don't know how many such little people are around us, but they never seem to appear in our field of vision. They are really ordinary and can't be ordinary, and ordinary can't be ordinary.
Zhou Yufen and Li Lizhong are just the opposite.
Zhou Yufen, who writes for a living, is probably an idealist. She doesn't want to live in endless cycles of reincarnation. As she said in a long monologue later, she got married for a new beginning, wrote a novel for a new beginning, wanted to have children for a new beginning... whatever she does for a new beginning.
"A new beginning" doesn't seem like an unattainable goal, but for a husband like Li Lizhong, it is just unattainable.
Si
Xiaoshen appeared.
The appearance of the role of Xiao Shen is not abrupt at all. In the married life of Li Lizhong and Zhou Yufen, his appearance was an inevitable event to a certain extent.
Xiao Shen had a relationship with Zhou Yufen when he was young, and it was precisely because Xiao Shen married another woman that Zhou Yufen married Li Lizhong and wanted a "new beginning". Now that Xiao Shen is divorced to start a business, and to meet Zhou Yufen again, this creates an opportunity for the rekindling of old love.
More important than the old relationship is Xiao Shen's understanding of Zhou Yufen.
Speaking of Zhou Yufen's novels, Li Lizhong doesn't know anything, and he will be puzzled "how can writing novels become such a terrible thing". And Xiao Shen would tell Zhou Yufen that he read her novels, and felt that the protagonist of one of them was himself, and expressed regret for the past.
Li Lizhong respected Zhou Yufen and treated Zhou Yufen very well, but he seemed so polite and distant. On the other hand, Xiao Shen has a deep appreciation for Zhou Yufen. He praises Zhou Yufen's ability and invites her to join his company. It is obvious which way of getting along is more useful to Zhou Yufen.
So when the two met for the second time, the conversation became more and more ambiguous, and the smiles became more and more. The camera switched from a face-to-face conversation to two people lying naked on the bed, naturally speechless. .
Here, Yang Dechang's control of the narrative means is unparalleled. As a narrator of a story, it is really amazing to be able to convey his thoughts so sharply but naturally.
In "Terrorist", the switching of shots is dazzling, and sometimes people have to feel that two shots are connected together. In Yang Dechang's case, it is not an addition, let alone a multiplication. It simply transcends the obstacles of time and space. As a true film master, his use of montage techniques is amazing.
Speaking of which, I have to mention the montage in the film with "Smoke get in your eyes" as the background music. In the dark room, the sound of music recalled that Shu'an, a delinquent girl brought home by her mother, was restless in the silence. Her mother didn't know what to think. Suddenly, the camera turned, and Shu'an's photos appeared in front of us one by one. The photography boy Xiaoqiang and his girlfriend appeared in the picture. The music stopped abruptly in a mess, leaving the audience with unlimited imagination.
Five
is a textbook film with multi-line narrative, although the line of the bad girl Shu'an and the line of the photographer Xiaoqiang are not as strong as the dramatic conflict of the main line of Li Lizhong, but they are important clues to promote the whole story.
After accidentally photographing Shu'an escaping from the crime scene, Xiaoqiang is madly infatuated with this girl. In fact, what Xiao Qiang is obsessed with may only be the Shu'an captured by his camera, the pure and clear-looking Shu'an with a hint of rebelliousness.
As a child of a wealthy family, what Xiaoqiang yearns for the most, or in other words, the most difficult thing to have, is the freedom of rebellion. As he was about to serve in the military, he deeply felt the sense of restraint that he could not break free from. And seeing Shu'an running away under the nose of the police, he seemed to see what he wanted to be, and a life he could never live.
But fantasy is fantasy after all, Shu'an and Xiaoqiang are people from two worlds. The throbbing in Xiaoqiang's heart was just a unilateral lust, Shu'an stole his camera and took away his last thoughts about the ideal world.
So Xiaoqiang found his girlfriend, he understood that happiness in reality is traceable.
But Shu'an had already disrupted the reality of others. Bored at home, she completely destroyed Li Lizhong and Zhou Yufen's already crumbling married life with a harassing phone call. This arrangement seems absurd, but it is very ingenious.
When Liu
Shuan's phone rang, Yang Dechang gave an empty mirror. Under the dull phone ringing, we looked at the empty furniture, as if we were looking at Zhou Yufen's blank face.
After receiving the call, Zhou Yufen left home and left this life that made her see no new ideas.
Li Lizhong didn't know anything. He didn't understand why Zhou Yufen ran away from home, and why Zhou Yufen packed up and separated from him when he returned home a few days after leaving home; he didn't understand why Zhou Yufen was distressed because he couldn't write a novel, and he didn't understand why Zhou Yufen wanted to A new start.
In Li Lizhong's life, everything is obsolete, where can there be a new beginning?
After Zhou Yufen left Li Lizhong, her novel was a success, like a satire, until this time, Li Lizhong had never read his wife's novel.
However, Xiaoqiang discovered the ins and outs of the matter. He who had been peeping at Shu'an knew what was going on with the phone call. So he told Li Lizhong the truth.
Li Lizhong, who knew the truth, still didn't understand why Zhou Yufen didn't want to believe him, and why Zhou Yufen wanted to leave him.
He said in the film that Zhou Yufen "likes good things and a comfortable life, but he can't give it". In fact, he has no idea what his wife wants.
People are most afraid of having a tower of Babel in a room.
Qi
Li Lizhong, who lost his wife, also lost the opportunity to be promoted. He should have become the team leader and he did not get what he wanted.
He didn't understand the rules of this world, so he lived in a twisted and tangled life, always being overwhelmed by life, and lived with a poker face, and eventually even forgot how to laugh.
Fortunately, he also has a friend who is a police officer, and this friend has a gun.
In the last ten minutes of the film, he took the gun and killed the director who didn't let him get promoted, killed Xiao Shen, and pointed the gun at Shu'an who was teasing him. Everything only appeared in Zhou Yufen's dream, and Li Lizhong killed only himself.
When Cai Qin's song "Please Pretend You Will Reluctant Me" rang out, Li Lizhong collapsed beside the bathroom of a police friend's house, blood dripping from his head, but he seemed to have died a long time ago.
What killed him was the heavy life that made him breathless.
Only life is the real terrorist.
In the horror of everyday life, everyone is a terrorist. When terrorists spread in the air, accompanied by the noisy cars and dogs barking in the film, we will understand how fragile the relationship between people is and how small the seemingly trivial things in life are. fatal.
Eight
"Terrorists" was released in 1986, when Miao Qianren was 28 years old, Li Liqun was 34 years old, Jin Shijie was 35 years old, and Yang Dechang was 39 years old.
That was the best era. The old actors Li Liqun and Jin Shijie in our eyes were already actors at that time, and Yang Dechang was still in his prime at that time.
Miao Qianren had ended his relationship with Chow Yun-fat at that time, and he made movies such as "Departing to the Furious Sea" and "Favorite", and won the Hong Kong Film Award and the Taiwan Golden Horse Award. But now she has long been married and became the wife of Wang Ying, who filmed "The Joy Luck Club". I believe that many young people do not know the name of Miao Qian, nor have they seen her beautiful appearance.
In Yang Dechang's eyes, Taipei at that time was as depressing as Li Lizhong's life. People are busy running around for a living, but they don't seem to be happy. Anxiety and agitation are hidden under the plain, revealing extraordinarily terror.
Thirty years have passed, and our lives seem to be the same.
Thirty years have passed, and it seems that there has not been a new beginning as Zhou Yufen said, and everything is still as usual.
But life always goes on, even if there is no new beginning, it cannot stop.
The film was screened at the Beijing International Film Festival this year. At the end of the film, the audience stood up and the applause lasted for half a minute.
A really good movie stands the test of time.
above.
This article was first published in: Movie Crawler
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