"Return" is a film that tells the story of love and family during the Cultural Revolution. The alias is also known as "Lu Criminal Yanshi", which is based on Yan Geling's novel of the same name. However, the whole film has greatly reduced many parts of Lu Yanshi's stay in the United States, his relationship with his wife, his life during labor reform, and other children in the original work. A little emotional scene between wife and daughter. Such deletions will make people who have read the original feel empty and dissatisfied. However, for people like me who only take the movie as their first viewing angle, such a large area of blank space and implicit narrative will bring Come to the point to the end, sincere and meaningful effect.
Zhang Yimou's films over the years, we have to say, are simply worldly and extremely kitsch. We can see from the turbulent waves of "Golden Armor in the City" that he is trying to seduce the audience. From "The Hawthorn Tree", "the world is so chaotic, who can pretend to be pure?" The embarrassment of lack of money, from "Three Guns" to see his important determination to "serve the people", from "House of Daggers" to see that he is committed to making a very colorful film. Zhang Yimou himself said, "As a director, I always have a principle, that is, not to let investors lose money." Indeed, he has also fulfilled this wish very well. If it is compared to a primary school student who is eager to get 100 points in the final exam, Zhang Yimou should have scored 1 million points in the business of making money for the producer.
However, Zhang Yimou's worldliness and kitsch still can't hide his popular. At the end of the last century, when the Chinese film industry was a cultural desert, Zhang Yimou brought his cheesy film "Alive" to win the Grand Jury Prize in the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival. At that time, the world was very skeptical and uneasy about Chinese culture. The attitude of recognition is earth-shattering. Up to now, many scholars and netizens still generally believe that the two most landmark films in Chinese films are "Farewell My Concubine" and "Alive". "Farewell My Concubine" was released a year earlier than "Alive", and the response was also very high. However, in my opinion, in terms of expressing Chinese characteristics, such a bright and snowy "Farewell My Concubine" is far inferior to Liba's "Alive".
"Farewell My Concubine" can be recognized internationally because it expresses the artist's personal twists and turns, the emotion of human nature, and is unique. Its international power is like a beautiful phoenix pavilion standing alone among the noisy chickens. The phoenix itself is gorgeous, just like Cheng Dieyi is gorgeous. With this beauty and sadness, everyone can be desperate. And no one in "Alive" is "splendid". To put it simply, everyone is dressed in shabby clothes, and you can easily see the two capitalized words in the stupid eyes of the people--- --Idiot, these people are too far from what we call "civilization". However, Zhang Yimou is very good at capturing the sincere emotions among these laity people, simple and simple relationships. This kind of "plain" feeling cannot be revealed by how carefully polished it is. Just like the very precious jade in Chinese tradition-----Hetian jade, it does not show its value after polishing. Players who really understand know that the most important point of Hetian jade is its "moisturizing", and this kind of "moistening" pays attention to It is the natural shape of jade that has not been carefully polished. It is called "hand piece" when you play with it on weekdays. After a long time, the "moistening" of jade will become one with the human body.
Saying this kind of "Park" and "Run" is probably to express my feelings about Zhang Yimou's works, as well as the traditional culture he showed. From "Alive", "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit", to this "Return", we can see the extremely sincere friendship from the very delicate emotional performance of the characters, and the joys and sorrows of people from the unpretentious expression , hesitation, pain. It can be seen that people are persistent, stoic, and obtuse in the face of the living environment. In this way, the typical Chinese human nature of an era, a "purified jade" group that is far different from Western civilization in China in recent decades, has a very special form of expression, but the essence of human nature is very consistent. It is precisely because a group is far more difficult to express than an individual, and a special image that cannot be deciphered in the world is even more incomprehensible except for the Chinese themselves. Of course, Zhang Yimou was the one who best described it among the Chinese people. That's why I think "Alive" is better than "Farewell My Concubine".
Zhang Yimou is under pressure to show the image of a group of people. Just like the laity, living in the world is stressful. You can make movies like Ang Lee, but you have to have a wife who can support you and help you pay for it. Zhang Yimou is a typical self-reliant Chinese. Under the pressure of survival, his films must always face the pressure of pursuing essential literature and art and the world of kitsch. This kind of pressure is not suitable for those literati with "characteristics". In fact, they have never experienced the real pressure of survival, because when they have just experienced a little, they may have decisively decided on the "Qingfeng Daogu". Ideals without confronting or surviving are just exile at will. And Zhang Yimou has such a profound experience in this regard. This question is "how does a person seek to survive", and it is precisely this profound experience that enables him to express the profound connotation of human nature in the film. Survival is human. Especially for the Chinese, it has a different meaning.
Finally, let's talk about "Return". I think, first of all, this "Return" is nowhere near as good as "Alive". From this era, it is unreasonable to make a reasonable literary film itself. At a time when people are generally just enlightened, and in the face of brain-dead films like "Havoc in Heaven", they can reap huge box-offices, making a film that returns to simplicity itself is very rare. On this standard, I give Homecoming as high a score as possible. In addition, "Return" is a movie that is seen from the point of view. From the beginning, it actually didn't have such great ambitions, and it never thought of retelling history and objectively summarizing the people and life of an era. Talk about things, start with a relationship, and end with this relationship. The face is small and the expression is very delicate. I admire Laomouzi very much on this point. It is very rare to know what to express, patience and exhaustion, rather than rushing for quick success and lofty ambitions, and it is precisely this way that we can see the sincerity of our feelings. There is not much description and characterization, just plain expression, but it is the most touching.
In general, I hope that Zhang Yimou will make persistent efforts, and under the appearance of the real tacky world, he can really dig out the things that return to the basics as he wishes.
View more about Coming Home reviews
