Known as the "Epic of Taiwan" and flowing through a broad humanistic spirit, "Sorrowful City" won the title of Venice and won the Golden Lion Award in one fell swoop. This incident not only marks the expansion of Hou Hsiao-hsien's historical vision and his artistic demeanor, but also shows that the inexhaustible cultural creativity of "Taiwan's New Cinema" has been revived again.
The new Taiwanese films with Hou Hsiao-hsien and Yang Dechang as the main characters rose in the early 1980s, with "The Story of Time" (1982) and "The Son's Big Doll" (1983) as their origins. The Story" (Chen Kunhou), "My Childhood" (Hou Hsiao-hsien), "Terrorist" (Yang Dechang), "Rapeseed" (Wan Ren), "I Live My Life Like This" (Zhang Yi), "We All Have" This is how I grew up" (Ke Yizheng), "Banana Paradise" (Wang Tong) and other masterpieces came out, showing a renewal of aesthetic concepts from tradition to modernity.
The elite groups of new films represented by Hou and Yang are mostly the new generation born and raised after World War II. Their creations are imbued with a modern aesthetic spirit, which is reflected in two prominent features: First, the local The germination of consciousness and the corresponding attention to the real situation of man. The new film is not only different from the "healthy realism" films represented by Li (Xing) and Bai (Jing Rui) in the 1960s, but also different from the escapist films indulged in "Kung Fu" and "Romance" in the 1970s. They are devoted to discussing their own situation and their growth experience, and staring at the historical process of Taiwan's transition from a simple agricultural civilization to a modern industrial civilization and its various secular states, all of which are closely related to their growth experience; secondly , the awakening of film ontology consciousness and the corresponding reconstruction of film narrative pattern and mirror language system. New films reject Hollywood-style classic narratives, that is, deliberately weaving stories and forming a one-way narrative characterized by a straight line of cause and effect. The interest and philosophy contained in life itself are characterized by the curve accumulation of paragraph events, metaphors, symbols and other techniques to form a complex narrative. In this way, they liberated the film from the shackles of the kitsch commercial film system, and made the film a "film with creative intentions, artistic inclination, and cultural awareness", which not only has original content, contains a sense of history, but also has a conception. Each has its own appearance, and the mirror language is different. For example, in Hou Hsiao-hsien's works, he has discovered a consistent and unique oriental poetic rhythm.
Among his peers, Hou Hsiao-hsien is known for his perseverance and enterprising tenacity. His film creation has a distinct sense of mission of cultural creation, and in general, he has formed an exclusive character: when he is worried about the country, he is close to reality, and he uses Taiwan Experience as an artistic motif - closely tracking the historical changes of Taiwan after World War II, radiating from personal experience, depicting the modern style of Taiwan's customs and customs in the turbulent times. Just like "digging a well", starting from the early 1980s, the more "digging", the deeper and deeper, until 1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien dedicated his 10th work to people - the epic movie "Sorrowful Sorrow". City".
In fact, Hou Hsiao-hsien's creation also has a process of gradual maturity. In the early 1980s, the three works such as "She Is Yoyo" still bear the influence of Li Xing, Lai Chengying and other predecessors. Although there are times when the true taste of life and true knowledge shine, they generally fail to break out of the pattern of their predecessors. . Beginning with "The Man from the Wind Cabinet" (1983), followed by "Winter and Winter Holidays" (1984) and "Love in the Wind and Dust" (1986), the creative attitude has changed, gradually getting out of the "chaos" based on intuition The state of filming has formed a special originality and own style, and has been noticed by people. "Wind Cabinet" and other three films prominently present the autobiographical brushstrokes of Hou Hsiao-hsien and his script collaborators, Zhu Tianwen, Wu Nianzhen, and others. The director expresses his mind in a poetic way, describing the growth process of Taiwanese teenagers after the war. , such as pastoral nostalgia, restlessness in adolescence, innocence in first love, knowledge and dignity acquired when first entering life or performing "adult ceremony" through military service, all of which are written in plain words and come out of their own accord; At the same time, it also spreads out, touching on the differences and interpersonal mentality of townships, mining areas and urban life in the 1970s and 1980s. The "Childhood Memories" (1985), which was shot during this period, seems to symbolize Hou Hsiao-hsien's "adult ceremony" and gained international fame. The sudden death, the death of the mother, and the life changes of the old grandmother's long-term sleep - these episodes of life and death are accumulated in a curvilinear way, setting off the life experience and growth of the young protagonist Ah Xiaogu, and bringing the life experience and growth of the young protagonist A Xiaogu to Taiwan. The unresolved "mainland complex" of the two generations (the passage of the old grandmother's search for Meijiangqiao, which was sublimated into a poetic statement of "nine deaths"), is the same as the new generation's naturally born "Taiwan". Consciousness” (A Xiaogu refuses to recognize the old grandmother’s knot in Meijiangqiao, but takes root in Taiwan to do his own thing), intertwined and progressive (the death of the three people highlights the course of A Xiaogu’s growth and the changes of the times) , in the change of generations and the transfer of fortunes, a poetic cohesion and improvement are made step by step, which are gradually derived and refracted as "the memory of the times" (Chen Guofu's comment).
It is worth noting that, from the "wind cabinet" to "childhood" (for the time being, ignoring "Daughter of the Nile", which reflected the urban distortion of Taipei in 1987), the focus of the narrative and its referentiality are generally still stuck in self-report. "personal memory" in the form of "personal memory" that does not involve major historical or political events. For example, in "Childhood", the "August 23" artillery battle in 1958, the "counter-attack on the mainland" in 1961, and the death of Chen Cheng in 1965 were mentioned, but they were only limited to background-style spotting, which euphemistically reflected as A kind of "memory of the times"; however, in "City of Sadness", this personal memory-style narrative pattern has finally been broken through. It can be said that Hou Hsiao-hsien gained a kind of liberation of historical view, expansion of historical vision, and creative realm in it. A new height has been reached: from personal memory, to "people's memory" - an intrusive historical consciousness.
On the evening of February 27, 1947, six investigators from Taiwan's "Monopoly Bureau" cracked down on illicit cigarettes in Taipei. They shot one citizen and injured two others. The next day, students and citizens protested and went to the office of the Taiwanese Chief Executive. petition before. The crowd was outraged, but after waiting for a long time to no avail, they rushed to the door of the office. At that time, Chen Yi, chairman of the Chief Executive's Office, ordered the military and police to open fire, killing more than 30 people on the spot and injuring countless others. This is the so-called "February 28" incident. In the form of conflicts between the natives and other provinces, it triggered people's protests against the tyranny of the Kuomintang government, and developed into a large-scale people's uprising. Fearing that the situation would continue to expand, Chen Yi once ordered martial law; forced by the situation, martial law was lifted once again as a means of delaying the troops. When Chiang Kai-shek transferred his troops from the mainland to Taiwan, he declared martial law again, hunted down progressive intellectuals, slaughtered wildly, and was full of white terror. And the first 40 years of martial law, the "martial law" was lifted in 1987.
"City of Sadness" takes the "February 28" incident as the narrative focus, and takes Taiwan's "complex of origin and foreign provinces" as an internal structure, which is re-imagined. As we all know, there are three types of people in Taiwan: aboriginal people, local people (referring to the immigrants from the mainland from the 17th century to before World War II), and people from other provinces (referring to the immigrants from mainland China after World War II). The Lin Alu family in the film was a native of "the province" who operated the Yidan Room in Keelung during the Japanese occupation period. This family has been surrounded by war since the period of Japanese occupation. The second child Wenlong traveled to the Philippines, and the third Wenliang was conscripted to Shanghai, and they all became cannon fodder for Japanese militarism (the survivors suffered bad luck and became idiots); After the recovery of Taiwan, the old and young raised a longing for victory, and Yidan changed its name to "Little Shanghai Restaurant" (the sustenance of returning to the embrace of the motherland), decorated the lights and opened the business. However, after a short period of time, due to the struggle of the local underworld forces, due to the contacts between the old four Wenqing and the progressive intellectuals Wu Kuanrong and Mr. Lin with socialist ideals, they were involved in the whirlpool of the "February 28" incident (Wenqing was initially only a Sympathizers are politically ignorant, and they are deaf and mute. This also contains a metaphor that "people from the province" are repressed, while the opposite "people from other provinces" seems to have become the authoritative political ruler of the Kuomintang. Synonym), was arrested twice, and although no explicit account was made at the end of the film, the fate of the protagonist Wen Qing was self-evident when Chiang Kai-shek suppressed the "February 28" massacre. For Lin Alu, an old man in his twilight years, the four sons, all of whom endured bad luck, became the three sacrifices of Taiwan's historical turmoil and the Kuomintang's political reaction. The great tragedy of Taiwan is also the great tragedy of Taiwanese.
In this way, although the narrative frame of the film only involves the historical changes in Taiwan from 1945 to 1949, in terms of the narrative connotation and the historical reference of the artistic image, it can be seen through the destruction and catastrophe of Lin Alu’s family. Through the vicissitudes of life in this large "grey area between darkness and light", "tracing the crux of Taiwan's 40-year political mythology" (Jiao Xiongping's comment), it is picturesque, poetic and tragic to describe the 40-year history of Taiwanese people. A suppressed historical tragedy.
The significance of "Sad City" is not only that it broke through a "historical forbidden area" (it is also a "historical blind area" in people's memory) that was blocked by the Kuomintang's authoritative politics for more than 40 years, and aroused people to re-examine and contemplate the history of Taiwan , and in practice to write a new page in Taiwan's history; at the same time, in terms of artistic attainments, the film is undoubtedly a milestone in Hou Hsiao-hsien's creative path, marking that he is becoming more and more advanced in grasping the poetic narrative style.
The overall pattern of its narrative adopts a poetic approach: ① It happens to avoid the frontal approach from a political point of view, and does not seek the grandeur and magnificence of "history", but instead pursues the purity and beauty of "emotion" (such as Wenqing and Kuanmei). Romance and historical tragedies blend together); ②Writing tragedies, instead of emphasizing dramatic plot entanglement and the turbulent power of conflict, adopt multiple narrative strategies and accumulate in scattered paragraphs, such as clear springs slowly gushing out, chanting again and again Chanting, in the boundless temporal and spatial changes of history, brings out the realm and evokes contemplation; ③ From the big picture of history, from the details of life, to observe and see the changes in the historical situation with the destruction of a family; ④ Mirror language Self-contained series, mostly long shots of medium and long shots, and the complex movements of the depth of the picture are highlighted by fixed camera positions to contain the historical tension of "inducing but not provoking". At the same time, every metaphor and symbol used in the images, such as Taiwan’s recovery and the birth of a baby, as well as the silent harbour, the tranquil Jiufen mountains and other empty scenes are presented like a song, all of which are metaphors for the hidden power of history in Taiwanese folk;5 In the interactive relationship between sound and sound, it is self-contained, and the protagonist Wen Qing is deaf and mute and speechless, and uses the subtitle skills of the silent film period, supplemented by the lyrical monologue of women in the style of Kuanmei diary and Axue's letter, and then supplemented by music. . The proper insertion of songs forms a variety of tensions in the contrast and dislocation of pictures and sounds, and renders the artistic conception of "poetry and painting blending" in Chinese painting; ⑥ In editing, Liao Qingsong is required to cooperate and operate independently, and does not pursue the lens of the montage school. Impact and passion, while focusing on a "big squeak" style of momentum and charm, the single scene is quite slow, and the transitions are quite fast (often "sound first and then painted"), resulting in omissions and jumps The free-body narrative of the style implies a desolate and vigorous historical tone.
As one of the judges of the 46th Venice International Film Festival, Xie Jin said in one sentence: the momentum, pattern and mind of "Sad City" are unimaginable from a young director.
It is true, nothing else, it is history that makes him precocious. The deeper the "sorrow" of history is, the wider the aesthetic realm must be. This is the dialectical law of art.
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