lead
When it comes to this movie, my earliest perception is the 1983 version by Imamura Shohei. When I was in elementary school, every Monday between 12:30 and 12:45, a program called "World Movie" would be broadcast on Heilongjiang TV. This program was edited in 15 minutes. The screen and plot commentary, introduce a classic movie to the audience. I was a TV fan at the time. Every time the show started, I stared at the small 14-inch black and white TV, and then went to school after watching it. One of the episodes talked about the movie "Narayama Festival Exam". What was specifically mentioned in the program has long since disappeared from my memory with the passage of time. Only the last part of the movie was snowing heavily in the mountains, and the old woman was sitting The scene of waving goodbye to my son in the pile of bones is deeply imprinted in my memory. That heavy, depressing, sacred shock is still very strong in retrospect.
Maggots
The mountains are covered with snow and ice, and the camera is an overhead shot of flying over the mountains - different from the strong stage play in Kinoshita Keisuke's version in 1958, Imamura Shohei introduced the film's perspective from the perspective of God from the very beginning, and used the camera to progress progressively. The layers, like peeling an onion, peel the village at the center of the story from its closed corner of the vast world. The heavy snow blocked everything, and the snakes and rats hid in the dark corner of the house. This arrangement of shots not only foreshadowed the hidden crisis, but also shaped the dark and heavy tone of the film. At the beginning of the film, there are no characters, but the surrounding ecology that the characters are placed in is written in detail. In such an environment, the characters observed in Imamura's lens are more like observing the survival of this group of people in the way of observing wild animals.
In the frozen winter, they are dormant like all things, but the superficial dormancy cannot stop the desire for survival - the mice attacked in groups, and the scene of eating the coiled hibernating snake is very symbolic. a metaphor. The relationship between the Chenping family also showed signs of cannibalizing each other, and the calm on the outside could not cover up the intensification of internal conflicts.
With the gradual arrival of spring, the snow and ice are becoming more and more active, and the birds and beasts are also active. People are also in it, repairing the horse pen, hunting hares, and working in the rice fields... The beginning of the recovery of all things, the end of the cycle of life and death, abandoned babies can also be used as " Fertilizers" are fermented in paddy fields. In this mating season, everything in the world begins their happy life without shame. The male and female love between Kasakaji and Asong cross-cut the mating of two snakes, the cuckoo cuckoo in the foreground, frogs mating in a pond, and a pair of swallows building a nest under the eaves. The taste of the Book of Songs. The concept of the unity of heaven and man, which is connected with nature and all things in the beginning, is constantly strengthened in the narrative of the film. This feature runs through the entire film structure and will be used and mentioned many times in the future. In Kinoshita Keisuke's version, the important themes of the natural environment and the changing seasons are completely staged, and the characters' own emotions are strengthened and exposed through the stage setting and lighting transformations that are directly visible to the audience, which can be said to be a highly refined. The two processing methods make the temperament of the two versions completely different - the version of Shohei Imamura in 1983 strives to make the story real, and the moral torture of what is a human being contained in it is more obscurely melted into the film narrative; while Keisuke Kinoshita conceptualized the story in a stage setting, highlighting the concept of "compassion" that emerged during his moral torture. I don't want to make a rash judgment here, but for my personal taste, I prefer Imamura Shohei's version. (Or maybe it's because the snow-white Mimi can be seen in the dim light? ^O^ ).
At the height of summer, all things grow wildly and kill each other, swaying life under the clear sky, it seems that death is also a happy carnival. The structure of the film is guided by the state of animals and plants in the natural environment every time it involves important time and plot nodes. These animals, plants and weather conditions are linked with the state of the characters to depict a picture of human beings fully integrated into the environment. . The crisis of food scarcity temporarily took a backseat, and the sexual urge took over. The marriage problem of the eldest son Chenping was finally settled after the mother's various arrangements; the grandson Kasakaji had A Song who was running around with a bare buttocks, and his life was of course moisturizing; His sexual desires have nowhere to vent, tormenting him as pathetic and pitiful as Teddy in heat. He peeped, fucked the dog, prayed to the gods, and tried his best, but he was beaten all over by the grumpy elder brother (the elder brother's anger was partly because he felt that this useless bastard had lost the face of the whole family, and it was probably more because his mother insisted To go up the mountain, his love for his mother and the conflict of customs made his inner contradictions tangled, and he accumulated a bad anger to vent on Lizuke).
The theme of sex fermented into a life-and-death struggle as the midsummer faded away. The male moth will die soon after the moth copulates; the female mantis will eat the male mantis immediately after mating to supplement nutrition; and the distorted pain of the childbirth snake shows the essence of the power of life —To achieve joy between reaching death and pain.
The theme of autumn begins with the watchful eagle eye, the blood-colored sunset and the raccoon stealing chickens. For the benefit of food and our own survival, we humans have never stopped killing aliens. In this paragraph, the director's scheduling method is particularly important. In fact, the processing of different scheduling directly shows the director's expressive intention. Just as snakes in Japanese culture symbolize spirituality, fertility, and a mixture of sneaky horrors to form shadowy beauty, the sequence of killing Assong's entire family is also associated with the rat, an animal with universal symbolic meaning. Shohei Imamura's footage is full of chaotic footsteps and cries. The entire scene is violent, crowded, panicked, and cruel at the same time, without too much pity and sadness. Its main purpose is to highlight the animal nature of this behavior. People, at this moment, have been sliding endlessly in the direction of maggots.
organization
At the beginning of the film, the Chen Ping family is all on the stage - the mother, A Lingpo, is already 69 years old, and she will soon reach the age of "going up the mountain", but her mouth is still very good (although she is old, but the personnel are not yet available); the eldest son Chen Ping is the head of the family , is also the future heir to the family; grandson Kasakaji is the inverse of the family, often acting as a "Xiaoyao faction"; Chenping's younger brother Risuke plays the role of the lowest air bag in the family's organizational structure. Such a family structure design forms a condensed feudal social structure - the elder of the family, Alingpo, is in the dominant position; the eldest son, Chenping, as the leading executor of the family affairs, his status corresponds to the "prime minister" or "the highest "Administrator"; grandson Kasakaji is the prodigal son of the family, and sometimes speaks sharp truths because of his willful truth, the corresponding role is "jester" or "poet"; he was born with the help of bad luck It is the incarnation of slave labor. At this point, this small structure can be said that "the sparrow is small, but it has all the internal organs."
Human society has developed to this day, and it has become a systematic organizational structure to continuously improve the utilization of limited resources. This operating mechanism is very amazing. The Japanese's social organization ability and degree of rigor are also very prominent. The original novel of this film and other literary and artistic works such as the two film versions derived from it often become a model of a multi-layered longitudinal section of human society from behavior to belief. . Compared with the 1958 version of the 1983 "Narayama Festival Kao", it is more objective and comprehensive, and even gives us a complete sample for analysis (although this story is not necessarily true, this custom of abandoning the elderly is historically Many ethnic groups have existed in certain stages of development. At the same time, because their works show the comprehensiveness of this closed mountain village society, although it is a literary and artistic work, it allows us to see the anthropology of Japanese society and culture behind it. content).
The skeleton of the whole movie revolves around the preparation of Lingpo to go up the mountain in the second winter. The main story is that she made a firm decision to take the initiative to leave the world, and spent this year dealing with various pre-existing events, and successfully carried out the "transfer of power".
First of all, she forbears the irony of her mischievous grandson Kasakaji, which also shows the important position of ballads in Japanese folk culture. The Japanese folk songs are beautiful in tune, and the lyrics are closely integrated with life. What happened in the village and the surrounding people is immediately compiled into the ballad, which is very similar to the habits of some ethnic minorities in Yunnan and Guizhou in our country. It was compiled into a ballad, and the whole village was singing it. From this foundation, the foundation of literature and art is born. If it continues, a certain story that is sung is constantly being added to by people, and it may develop into a grand epic. This kind of forbearance and connivance of Alingpo is on the one hand the doting of different generations, and more on the perspective of an inherent traditional morality. When she is old, she is still in good health and does not face the ultimate belief of faith - going up the mountain to die , is already unclean at the spiritual level; coupled with the past, Tatsuhira's father failed to complete his final "mission" and disappeared in the mountains, leaving a perennial story for the village (you must know that Japanese society is a strong "shame society" type, people In the relationship with people, they value the evaluation of the people around them very, very much, and only through the evaluation of others can they establish their own position and existence), this knot has always been biting in the depths of her soul. So as a dignified elder, she was apparently indifferent to this childlike laughter.
The next thing she needs to face is that after she leaves, there is no woman at home to take care of the problem that will inevitably mess up. It seemed destined to go up the mountain. It just so happened that a widow in the neighboring village could marry, and she happened to be revealed to her by a wandering child trafficker. When the director was dealing with this episode, he deliberately broke the moral cognition of modern people. We only saw that the businessman brought two children with him when he came, and one more child when he left. There is no deliberate exaggeration in the camera, and it returns to In the context of the local drama at the time, it wasn't a big deal about buying and selling a child with such low productivity. In the summer, the new daughter-in-law was finally settled, and Granny A Ling's teeth were happily knocked out by herself. Finally, she once again stood at the highest moral point. The dim fire shone on her face, she opened her toothless mouth, and while burning the fire, she gently reported the good news to the dead Azhu (Chenping's dead ex-wife), the night was suddenly unusually calm and peaceful.
When Asong and her family were put on trial by the whole village for stealing, and were finally brutally exterminated by the villagers in a planned way, the whole film unabashedly showed how ruthless the people who were organized in the face of survival were. But in this incident, did Aling Po really not hesitate to become an accomplice in eradicating dissidents? We will see that the first time Asong was caught stealing, the entire Chenping family tolerated and protected her, but as time went on, the child in her belly became bigger and bigger, and she ate more and more (film) Many scenes of eating are used to strengthen the foreshadowing), and the silly girl Asong failed to see who was the brain figure in this organizational structure as soon as possible, and was eventually abandoned by the entire organizational structure. Chen Ping's attitude towards Asong was ambiguous, and he was unable to summon the courage to drive her away, and it was indeed a thorny issue to contradict Asong's behavior. It was she who used a scheme to send Asong home, so that she and her family were buried alive.
Asong returned home happily with the potatoes that A Lingpo gave her. The family had just experienced house raiding and beatings. At this time, her daughter came with food to give help in the snow, and the family hugged each other and humbly ate potatoes The scene is particularly moving to the audience. But the sudden violence, the scene of a group of thugs rushing out of the door in the background, is a shock in film history. This scene always reminds me of a certain revolution that broke out in a certain country. The minority who were excluded and abused probably suffered the same misfortune.
After the incident, the perpetrator was left with silence. When confronted by her son Chenping's questioning, Alingpo took this opportunity to solemnly announce "I'm going up the mountain", the implication is to finally help you deal with the mess in this world. From a spiritual point of view, Alingpo looks forward to reuniting with the deceased after going up the mountain and reaching mutual understanding on a spiritual level. Although this set of reasons and rhetoric is almost impeccable, it still can't stop the sadness from spreading throughout the family, Chen Ping weeps silently, and even the crazy Risuke who is tortured by sexual problems on weekdays hides in the corner and sings cry.
So far, A Lingpo has completed the self-building of her moral idol, standing at the peak of her satisfaction in the last period of her life.
Imamura Shohei is unusual. In this scene, he expresses the complex and multifaceted aspects of Lingpo and the emotional entanglement of people when they face the problem of life and death. Compared with Kinoshita Keisuke's version, the portrayal of Alingpo highlights her kindness, even catching thieves, burying alive and other plots to isolate Alingpo's family. From the perspective of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law) to show a kind of moral compassion, I feel that it is a bit deliberate or even contrived.
divinity
There is something idiosyncratic about Japanese culture. On the one hand, it pursues the ultimate nobility, purity, detachment and rigor, and on the other hand, it does not shy away from showing its inferiority, filth, sophistication and nonsense. In this seemingly contradictory structure, a dynamic structure of yin and yang is formed, with ups and downs between destruction and construction.
This film is not something that makes you happy to watch. The director cuts open the human body lying in front of you like a scalpel, and tells you - here is the intestines, it is slippery and greasy, you use it Squeeze your hands and there may be unexcreted shit; here's the heart, it beats, you cut it, it bleeds a lot... But we're missing something, it can't be done in any scientific or anthropological way Anatomy, go to simple definitions, we can hardly even describe it in precise words. But in order to tell it, I will take the liberty to call it - divinity for the time being. It is beyond the muddy reality we usually face, beyond the boundaries that reason can be attached to. But we can feel it because countless national epics are trying to tell us that we are God's creation, that we have pieces of God, that we have and can feel the Divinity.
Chen Ping's father, as a person who failed to complete the mission of entering the mountain in the previous generation, was constantly mentioned, and even became a knot lingering in the hearts of the mother and son (Chen Ping himself was emotionally attached to his mother, and his mother had doubts about whether he was strong enough. , very unwilling that he would be ashamed of his family like his husband), the film always reminds us of this existence beyond reality. A person who has died, Lipin will become a "ghost" from time to time looming in the film. We never really saw the ghost's existence, but a mysterious and gloomy atmosphere suddenly came, the whirlwind blowing around the big tree, and the villagers often talked about the so-called "missing Liping" they saw on the mountain. All manifestations lead us to some kind of unknowable. In the late autumn season, the scene where the mother and son told the real reason for their father's death under a tree wrapped in a gust of wind was full of the "divineness" I mentioned earlier. On the surface, this play reiterates a story of "Oedipus", but behind it is a reconciliation with the unknowable "soul", which is free from bondage at the spiritual level.
It's finally time to go up the mountain. There are striking similarities between the 1958 version and the 1983 version. They both used nearly 1/3 of the length of the film to write about it. It can be seen that this mountain road is difficult and dangerous. Difficult to walk, has a strong symbolic meaning. In the 1958 version, the ceremonial sequence before going up the mountain used a long, long shot. Today's audience may find it difficult to accept this rhythm. This kind of deliberate arrangement by the director is like a huge boulder lying in front of the audience, which cannot be swallowed or spit out. It is in line with our cognition of this painful and helpless life, and it also makes this ritual about death unbearable. Come back and let’s talk about Imamura Shohei’s version, the part about the mother going up the mountain also took the trouble to shoot Chen Ping carrying his mother in the mountains, how difficult the road is to climb, how to cross the river, how to climb the rocks, but the process of entering the mountain is still essential, it is more like It is comparing the course of our entire life - difficulties and obstacles, not forgetting the original intention. Only those who have experienced all this and still include belief in reaching the end are eligible to share in that divinity. At the same time, this mountain road once again shows the ambiguity of divinity (the mother suddenly disappeared, and suddenly sat there with the fog). oracle.
Looking back three times, the time to parting came, and the sky actually snowed...
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