Choosing to watch Jia Zhangke's "The Three Gorges" on the first day of 2007 does not seem to be without special meaning now. It 's like the last sentence in the movie's own story introduction:
"Pick up some that should be picked up, and discard some that should be discarded."
In fact, it fits my mood very well. We always need a symbolic time to give an account of our past and a direction to our future. The characters in Jia Zhangke's films, however, always seem to be in such a moment, living in an era of rapid change, with the torrent of time engulfing them. In a film review about "Xiao Wu", there is a passage about Xiao Wu that has always stuck in my memory:
"This young man seems to understand the changes that have come quietly at all times. This attitude is very touching, but He will still be overwhelmed by these changes."
This short, disheveled, and bespectacled county gangster hides a great pain and a deep sense of powerlessness behind his indifferent expression. Equally powerless are Xiaoji and Binbin in "Ren Xiaoyao", two street teenagers who fantasize about robbing banks. They seem to be unaware of this era. As the roadside TV crowd cheered for China's bid to host the 2008 Olympics, the camera panned to their stunned faces. However, whether they understand the era they live in or not, they seem to be doomed to be overwhelmed by the era.
"Xiao Wu" and "Ren Xiaoyao" deal with the present of the 1990s, and the characters are in time; while in "Platform", whose plot spanned the entire 1980s, time is more like an outside temptation , full of promises of all kinds. It brings the protagonists into the infinite vision of the future and ideals, and then plunges them into even greater loss and distress. Cui Mingliang and Yin Ruijuan are at a loss between a passion that yearns for change and endangers the crowd, and a lazy and stagnant daily life that lacks stability and warmth. The details that I can't forget are Yin Ruijuan's solo dance in the office as a county tax collector. The old dreams and suppressed nostalgia seem to have been released incisively and vividly at this moment, but they are so calm. Behind the film, Cui Mingliang and Yin Ruijuan are married, one is napping on the sofa, the other is hugging and coaxing the child in his arms. Everything seems to be back to normal daily life, but is this really what they want? Maybe not even Jia Zhangke himself can tell us.
However, in "The Three Gorges Good Man", all these have changed. Compared with Xiaowu and Xiaoji's powerlessness and confusion, Cui Mingliang and Yin Ruijuan's restlessness and anxiety, Han Sanming and Shen Hong are calm and powerful. They have endured the pressure of time silently. Whether it is two years or 16 years, they know what to give up and what to persist. Faced with an unknown fate, the workers who demolished the building still decided to follow Sanming to dig coal in Shanxi; the woman who helped Sanming find a younger sister, carried a package and went to Guangdong to work, without a word. I especially like that Boss He. When his hotel was painted with the word "demolition", he said "ruthlessly": "I have been in Fengjie for decades, and I still have a few friends." Let me Thinking of Shen Congwen's writings, the old man who supported the boat all his life. They each received and shared their own destiny, calmly and firmly. In a city with great changes in space and time, they constitute the long and permanent background, just like the "still lilfe" (still lilfe) of tobacco, wine, tea, and sugar in the movie, supporting the face The courage and dignity of the world. There is only that little brother, who seems to have been "living elsewhere", living in an imaginary "past": "We don't fit in this era, we are too nostalgic." And he is also the only dead character in the film.
Perhaps it is the inspiration from these characters. Although it deals with such a background where time and space are changing drastically, the film shows a rare calm and atmosphere, unlike "Ren Xiaoyao", which is full of vitality but a little messy. Emotional but often overflowing. The picture in "The Three Gorges" is almost like an ancient scroll of landscapes, slowly unfolding in front of the audience. Although it is said that a building will be demolished in two days (Jia Zhangke even expresses this in a "magic" way), the dilapidated factories, crowded piers, and grassy riverbanks in the long shot are even more impressive. A sense of time stagnation.
No matter how time goes by, what remains unchanged is the surging river, the pace of running around in this river, and a determination that needs no words:
"The old county town has been submerged, and the new county town has not yet been built. Some should be picked up. To pick up, and to give up what should be discarded."
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