"Judou" is a film with the theme of "contradiction between ethics and rationality" co-written by director Zhang Yimou and Gong Li. It tells the story of Yang Jinshan, the owner of a dyeing workshop in a rural town in China, who married a young girl Judou as his wife to carry on his lineage. He secretly fell in love with his adopted son Yang Tianqing and gave birth to a son Tianbai. When he was four years old, Tianbai accidentally drowned Yang Jinshan, who was paralyzed in his lower limbs, into the dyed land. Due to the etiquette of cannibalism, Judou and Yang Tianqing still live a life of superficial aunt and nephew relationship. The grown-up Yang Tianbai angrily killed his biological father, Yang Tianqing, who had committed adultery with his mother. Judou was in despair, and set fire to the Yang family's ancestral property, "Yang's Dyeing Workshop.
This is a tragedy of a Chinese-style family under the feudal ethical culture, and human nature has become the main cause of this tragedy. It makes people involuntarily think, what makes all this happen and then destroy it? Is it human nature, or desire, or ethics?
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