Richard Walter once said in his book "The Script": "Art is a lie, but it tells a greater truth." Richard Walter is a famous film professor at the University of California, USA. His "Script" One book is the desk bible of many screenwriters. So what he calls "art" actually means movies.
Cinema is an art of illusion. It mainly relies on the three organs of human vision, hearing and consciousness to build a fictional world in a short period of time, in which all kinds of love, hate and hatred are unfolded. This fictional world may be very similar to the real world, or it may be very different, but it is still a shadow of the real world.
So, to enjoy a movie is to watch the shadow of the world, so as to stimulate your innermost feelings. These feelings have hidden desires and moral pursuits, but in the end, as Richard Walter said, we will discover the truth of the real world in this shadow. (This is also the source of the name of this public account "Guanshiying".)
The Lebanese film "Shame" is such a film that lets people see the truth, and after watching it, I feel as if I have put down a lot of burdens and feel a sense of relief in my heart. I don't feel wrong. It was nominated for the 2018 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and was also shortlisted for the Venice Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion Award for Best Actor, proving that the world's film industry is extremely recognized for it.
Lebanon is a completely unfamiliar country to many people. But she has two well-known neighbors, bordering Syria to the north and Israel to the south, and she is also a Middle Eastern country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. When it comes to the Middle East, except for Israel, people often think that all countries there are Muslims. But Lebanon is not entirely an Islamic country, and the country also has a large number of Christian Maronite followers. This denomination has existed since the early days of Christianity and is almost one of the oldest Christians. Therefore, Lebanon is a Middle Eastern country that the Western Christian world pays great attention to.
So many introductions are made to give everyone a better understanding of the plot. The plot can be summed up as: a religious-political conflict detonated by a sewer pipe.
The hero Tony Hanna is a Maronite, and he is also a loyal supporter of the Lebanese Christian Party (official name: Lebanese Falange). He is 46 years old, but still rents a house in the capital Beirut. Fortunately, he has his own auto repair shop and married a beautiful young wife, Shireen. Shireen is pregnant with a girl, and in a month or two, his wife will give birth. He was going to save up money to buy the house he rented.
Such a difficult but exciting life was disrupted one morning. In the community where Tony rented, a team of contractors was repairing illegal buildings on the street, and the contractor was Yasher, a Palestinian refugee.
Tony watered the flowers on the balcony, and the water flowed down the pipe to the street, just in time to water Yasir. Yasir was a little angry, but still went to Tony's house and told him that the pipeline on the balcony was an illegal construction, hoping to connect his pipeline to the sewer so as not to affect passersby.
Surprisingly, Tony rejected the offer completely and with anger. An angry Yashir immediately ordered the workers to saw off Tony's pipes and forcibly connected the sewer for him. As a result, Tony heard the sound of construction, and took a hammer to smash the installed pipe. An angry Yasir scolded Tony's wife in front of "fucking prick" (I don't understand Lebanese, the English subtitles show this.)
Tony insisted on this, found Yasser's boss and asked for an apology. Of course, Yasir's boss felt that Tony was making a fuss and hoped to convince Yasir, but Yasir did not agree. The boss had no choice but to bring chocolates to visit Xilin and get Xilin's understanding. After Tony found out, he was even more angry. He brought the chocolate to the construction office, threw it down, and still demanded an apology in person. The boss had to come to Yasir's house and force Yasir to apologize.
Yasil, who was not happy at all, had to come to Tony's repair shop. Tony played the speeches of the former leader of the Christian Party, and those speeches were aimed at Palestinian refugees, and Yasir was already very upset when he heard it. To make matters worse, before Yasser's apology was spoken, Tony had already started insulting the Palestinian refugees, quoting the Palestinian enemy, the Jews, and finally saying "I hope Ariel Sharon wipes you all out!"
Ariel Sharon was a former Israeli Prime Minister and a general in the Israeli army. He participated in five Middle East wars. After retiring, he founded the Israeli far-right party Likud. During his tenure as prime minister, he adopted a very tough policy on Palestine many times, causing a large number of Palestinians to flee their homes and become refugees. Palestinians see him as a "butcher".
Even if I don't introduce the background of this sentence, ordinary people can feel the vicious murderous intention. If you know who Sharon is, you can better understand the serious insults and threats. In a fit of rage, Yasil punched Tony in the abdomen and fractured two ribs!
The butterfly flaps its wings and will roll up a catastrophic hurricane.
Tony decided to take Yasir to court, and Yasir knew that he was wrong and voluntarily surrendered to the police. But in court, Tony's toughness made the judge very uncomfortable. In the end, the judge asked about the affair and acquitted Yasir. An angry Tony said the judge took a bribe and was expelled from the court. This time, Tony suffered even more humiliation.
Depressed, he had to prepare money for the future, and got up in the middle of the night to work. The resulting broken rib caused shortness of breath and heart disease. Shirin found him and rushed him to the hospital. Shireen exerted too much force, causing her daughter to be born prematurely. The born daughter could not breathe on her own, so she had to rest in an incubator, her life was at stake. The chain reaction is no longer humiliation, but a family disaster.
After Tony left the hospital, he found a well-known lawyer, Wajidi Webb, and prepared to continue the lawsuit. Wajidi is a pro-Christian lawyer who has defended the former Christian party leader. As soon as he heard that it was a lawsuit with Palestinian refugees, he immediately agreed to Tony.
As the audience must ask, why do Lebanese Christians hate Palestinian refugees so much? In world public opinion, aren't Palestine refugees all objects of sympathy?
This goes back to during the Lebanese Civil War. On April 15, 1975, the Palestinian guerrillas clashed with the Lebanese Falangists, which eventually led to a 15-year civil war. This is the immediate cause of the civil war, and the underlying cause is the long-standing conflict between Lebanese Christians and Muslims. The Palestinian guerrillas entered Lebanon as refugees because they were attacked by Israel, but they became mercenaries. The leader of the Palestinian army at the time was Arafat.
Before the civil war, Lebanon was the most stable country in the Middle East. After the outbreak of the civil war, Lebanese Christians, Islamic Sunnis, and Shiites all participated in it. Later, Syria and Israel were also involved in the war. The United States, the Soviet Union, France, Iran and other major powers also manipulated behind the scenes. In the end, after 140,000 deaths and tens of billions of dollars in economic losses, the new government backed by Syria quelled the civil unrest and achieved a temporary peace.
Christians in Lebanon were the leaders of the regime before the war, so they became the targets of all factions. Many people died in the civil war and eventually lost their dominant position. The Palestinians, the initiators, naturally became the object of hatred by the Christians.
If you know the past history, you can understand Tony's behavior. But it can also be inferred that Tony's lawsuit is a dangerous attempt that will stir up ethnic and religious hatred and bring about a chain of huge political reactions.
Sure enough, the "war" in the courtroom soon spread to the courtroom. Palestine refugees and their supporters of Islam have fought back against lawyers Tony and Wajdi as Jewish accomplices. Tony receives an unfamiliar phone call that threatens the lives of him and his family. Finally, the President of Lebanon came forward to mediate the conflict between the two, hoping that the two would reconcile. But Tony still refused.
So far, Tony is like a patriotic angry young man, regardless of the indiscriminate, right and wrong, he has to go his own way to the end, and he doesn't even care about the safety of his wife and daughter. The lawyer who defended him, Wajdi, also made a lot of appearances in court, and was dismissed as useless by Yasir's lawyer.
It is worth mentioning that Yasir's lawyer Nadine is Vajdi's daughter. Nadine took the initiative to find Yasser to defend him, and his motives stemmed from sympathy for the Palestinian refugees. The contradiction between the father and daughter in political concepts is also a highlight of the film worth exploring. Unfortunately, the director did not go deep.
Therefore, Tony is actually humiliating himself. If things continue, what awaits him will not be humiliation, it is likely that his wife and children will be separated and his family will be destroyed. His obsession will not only lead to a dramatic change in his own destiny, but even lead to a new civil war in Lebanon.
But in fact, Tony is not without showing a good side. When he and Yasir walked out of the presidential palace, Yasir's car (Note: Yasir originally took the bus, which is an interesting change, which proves that this lawsuit has a national impact.) Unable to catch fire, Tony took the initiative to come back and use his car repair skills to repair the car for Yasir.
Then why was he so obsessed with Yasil bowing his head to apologize?
The turning point comes when Wajdi seeks evidence for his defense, which reveals the truth. Wajidi discovered that Tony was from Damour, a village a few dozen miles from Beirut, a 20-minute drive away, famous for its banana production. But Tony hasn't returned to his hometown in over 40 years.
On January 21, 1976, Palestinian guerrillas fought fiercely against Falangist-led Christian troops in Damour. In the end, the Palestinian guerrillas occupied the place and then slaughtered all the 500 people who remained in the village, men and women, young and old. Tony and his father are survivors of this massacre. Tony, who was only 6 years old, was fled by his father on his back, while his mother, siblings all died in the massacre. So he refused to return to the sad place.
Shireen didn't know about this experience. This is also the direct reason why he is middle-aged, but has just started a family. All his suffering came from this massacre, but few people in the world know about it, even in Lebanon. Most people know about the plight of the Palestinian refugees, but no one knows about the plight of Damour. Therefore, everyone sympathized and understood Yasil, but no one understood Tony's persistence. Knowing all this, Yasil suddenly felt sympathy with Tony. Because they are all refugees, all living in foreign countries.
In the middle of the night, Yasir came to his repair shop and made him punch himself twice in a way that angered him. The grievance between the two ends here. The court also acquitted Yasser. After walking out of the court, the two smiled at each other. It also represents the reconciliation of the religious and political groups behind them.
The director used his own unique way to draw an end to the dispute caused by the sewer pipe. It was very complete, and it made people feel a sense of relief. As a film work, that's enough.
But in real life, this is far from enough. In the Middle East, where politics, religion, and ethnicity are very complex, this explanation is obviously insufficient. It cannot be said that you are also a victim, and I am also a victim, so that everyone will coexist peacefully. The Palestinian guerrillas created the tragedy of the Lebanese Christians, and the tragedy of the Palestinians began with Israel's tough state policy. But Israel, the Jewish state, was also a victim of World War II. Germany, which launched the Second World War, was the victim and humiliated of the First World War. This way, there is no end, no end.
In the end, there is no nation or individual in this world that is not a victim of war. As the Chinese historian Tan Qixiang said, "No one is unjust, and all sentient beings are sinful." The novelist Jin Yong read this sentence and was deeply touched. Tianlong Babu", which tells the story of "When will the grievances be repaid". I don't need to retell these stories.
Because history is a cycle. Once upon a time, Islam and Christianity were at war with each other in the Middle East. Going back further, Lebanon is a descendant of the ancient Phoenicians. As early as the 9th century BC, the Phoenicians also expanded their territories around the world and colonized the Mediterranean coast. Did colonization have less war and slaughter? Abundance and prosperity are not groundless.
Reincarnation has already begun, and the struggle in reincarnation has never stopped and will never stop. Therefore, in the end, everyone is a victim, and every nation will suffer the fate of being massacred and humiliated.
It is because of the suffering in reincarnation that human beings created religion. I hope that the legendary Messiah, God, Allah, and Bodhisattva can rescue themselves from the sea of misery, hope that they can go to the heaven and the other side of peace and happiness, and hope that there will be a transcendent power to judge the right and wrong in the world, and give a fair and reasonable explanation.
But human greed also turns these religions into inner attachments. Before these attachments, people knew that wars and strife were for practical gain. With these attachments, people's greed is not only about profit, but also about being right and realizing imagined justice.
When everyone in the world thinks that they are right, and every country and nation thinks that they are the side of justice, at this time, right and justice are at a loss and do not exist at all. This is one of the paradoxes of human society.
It's just that the real world doesn't allow paradoxes to exist. Temporary strength, one's own right and righteousness become glory. But those who have lived in the weak for a long time will not only suffer physical damage, but also suffer constant humiliation. Strong and weak are not permanent, the replacement of strong and weak must be war. War is a serious devastation to people's body and mind, a serious injury to a country and a nation, and of course, a vicious humiliation.
That's why Yasser felt so outraged when he heard the name "Ariel Sharon". But he didn't know that even as Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, he would be furious when he heard the words "Hitler should wipe out all the Jews." In fact, each generation of Israeli prime ministers has adopted tough political tactics against the Palestinians, not necessarily the aftermath of the Holocaust. After being humiliated, people are unexpectedly sensitive and furious, and so is a nation.
In the far reaches of the Middle East, anger can still be attributed to harsh political struggles. In China, which has been at peace for more than 60 years, the scenes in "Shame" are constantly being played out. What should it be attributed to?
No one is wrong, and all sentient beings are sinful, because we are in a cycle of reincarnation. What causes reincarnation is our attachment. We are attached to a rich material life, to a convenient environment, to the recognition and praise of others, and to the realization of self-worth...
There is no end to attachment, and our pursuit will never be complete. In the constant pursuit, we suffer setbacks, take this setback as self-humiliation, and then take greed as courage and continue to persevere. In such reincarnation, the children and grandchildren have to bear the debts in front of them, and the children and grandchildren are constantly creating new attachments for more children and grandchildren. The humiliation in samsara is a form of suffering, and we refuse to give up samsara. Even, expecting an afterlife in order to continue unfulfilled attachments.
When the Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975, no matter which faction thought it was right, that it would eventually take power in Lebanon. Because Lebanon before 1975 was the only country in the Middle East without wars and a prosperous economy, no one, no group, no religion did not think that they should have more rights, a better life and a better future. But who would know that their attachment to each other will eventually bring each other endless humiliation and endless disasters. To this day, Lebanon is still full of ruins of war.
What is the difference between the Chinese in 2018 and the Lebanese before 1975?
People are like this. They look forward to a better future and do whatever it takes for this future, but in the end they are led to the abyss of suffering by their beautiful persistence. This is the only real attachment in samsara, and discovering this only attachment is discovering the truth.
(over)
This article was created by the public account "Guanshiying". If you need this film, please pay attention.
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