The sound of hammering feet is what every woman in this yard yearns for. The sound of hammering feet is like a devil gnawing at a bone-a demon named feudal gnawing at Songlian's pride as a woman in the new era. The joy is raised, the lantern is raised, and the story begins.
Through Song Lian's cruel experiences from college students to brides to demented wives, the film successfully shaped the image of women who were exploited under the feudal system, reflecting the rigidity and misery of the feudal system of husband's power at that time, giving people a depressing and dull movie watching. feel.
Color - strong color contrast
In reality, the red lantern is a symbol of joy and joy, but in this film, the color of the red lantern is very dazzling, especially in the extremely cold background color, which highlights the disharmony of the bright red lantern. In summer-autumn-winter, the background tones are often very obscure and monotonous.
In the marriage scene, the red color of the wedding room is more pink, and it has a kind of aggressiveness in the ambiguous and oppressive atmosphere. . In the film, Song Lian holds the lantern and looks at herself crying in the mirror. We can deeply feel Song Lian's uneasy and sad emotions. On the one hand, it is the experience brought by the actor's acting skills; on the other hand, in this scene, The red of the lanterns in the marriage room is not as bright as the lanterns in the third wife's room, but an almost unreal pink tone, which not only reflects Songlian's innocence and the anxiety given to her by her marriage, but also dazzling in the hazy. In the tone of the film, the persecution brought about by patriarchalism in the feudal society can be faintly detected, which is also the overall tone of the film.
Although the film is titled "High Red Lanterns", many of them use extremely cold tones, which are more obvious in the bleak blue and white snow scene, dim and pale sky, and the more obscure ones are reflected in the characters' clothes, room decoration, etc. Things, the makeup of the actors. First take the blue and white snow scene as an example. In reality, the snow is pure white, but in the film, the snow is added with a dazzling blue color. First, it complements the equally dazzling red lanterns. Secondly, the blue and white snow scene is widely used in the dark night. In the middle, the gloomy and miserable tone became more and more prominent. In the end, the blue and white snow scene intertwined with the overlapping courtyard roofs, making me dizzy, and more importantly, it magnified the hopelessness and misery of the women living in this courtyard.
Red, white, pink and blue, these four set up the color framework of the film in a very discordant way. As the story progresses step by step, the characters and even the main idea of the film become heavier.
Form - a coercion constructed from perspective and symmetry
At the beginning of the film, in the close-up of the heroine Song Lian's face, it is not difficult to find that the character's face is located in the center of the camera, and the placket, bun, and even the two lines of clear tears are extremely symmetrical. A depressing experience, it also sets a dull emotional tone for the whole film.
The use of a large number of perspectives is also a major feature of this film. Song Lian walked to the compound alone, and when she had a conversation with Butler Chen in the pavilion, she zoomed the camera away and took a bird's-eye view of the conversation between the two. The walls of the northwest courtyard are tall and thick with bricks, making the composition very heavy, and then exaggerating and magnifying it makes me feel an inexplicable coercion. In such a large space, the characters are so small and exaggerated to the extreme, which shows the powerlessness of the characters, especially the women, under the oppression of this courtyard, and at the same time they appear cold and gloomy, and Devil May Cry.
When we go back to the symmetrical composition again, we will find that such symmetry is intertwined with the extensive use of long-term perspective, and the desolate feeling formed is indescribable. In the marriage scene, the lens is placed far away, and the walls, The bed and the objects also form an ingenious symmetry. When the two are displayed in the same scene at the same time, with the use of aggressive colors, Song Lian's powerless and restless state of mind is directly conveyed to the audience, until the end of the film. At the time, the powerless despair lingered in the hearts of the audience for a long time.
Italian - House of the Dead and Women's Emancipation
Speaking of the House of the Dead, we have to mention the role of the third wife in the film. The death of the third wife is not to be called tragic. To be hanged in such a terrifying house of the dead is a shock to everyone in the Chen family compound. However, in my opinion, the third wife is the closest contemporary female character in the whole film, which is different from Song Lian's college student status. Confucius and Mencius were imprisoned, and she cheated on Doctor Gao, which can be seen as a resistance to the society of husband's power. Unlike the smiling tiger like the second wife, she spoke arrogantly and put her emotions on her face. On the way to the house of the dead, she still beat and kicked in resistance. She eventually died in the dead man's house, but she also died, rebelling against this unfair society.
Let's analyze the house of the dead. If you look closely, you will find that it is at the highest point of the Chen family compound - that is the place closest to the sky, we can extend it: if the sky represents freedom, then it is the place closest to freedom, then similarly, the dead The house can be seen as death. So we have a conclusion: the women of the Chen family compound will never be able to touch freedom, except death: nothing is above freedom.
Obviously, the third wife, who was the only one who died in the Dead Man's House, was finally released and freed. But Song Lian, who was a female college student, was trapped in the Chen family compound forever, like a ghost that couldn't get out of it. Death, in such a cruel social context of cannibalism, does not seem so scary anymore,
The fact that death is actually the only way to freedom seems too cruel. However, what is even more cruel is that those women who live in the compound are bound by a set of "rules", like a tame animal. Looking at the sky cut into squares, I don't know what freedom is. At this point, the theme of the film is ready to emerge: female liberation.
The women of that era did not bind their feet or bow down, but they were still not free because they were not emancipated in their minds. So there are four seasons without spring year after year. At the end of the film, Mr. Chen married his fifth wife, and Song Lian was surrounded by newly married red lanterns, wandering like a ghost but unable to find a way out. There is a person in the red lantern, and there is a "prisoner" there. Faced with this ending, shouldn't we reflect on it?
To this day, in some countries or regions, this concept of taking the husband as the god still exists, poisoning countless women. For this reason, we should stand up, speak up for them, resist for them, and let the "Song Lian" be a little less and a little less, and let more and more women be liberated.
View more about Raise the Red Lantern reviews
