Narrative Consciousness in "Suzhou River"

Deondre 2022-04-20 09:02:35

Ma Ma is a young man who rides a motorcycle to deliver goods all day by the Suzhou River in Shanghai. He took advantage of the opportunity to often pick up Peony to go to his aunt's house to get in touch with this cute girl with two pigtails. During their brief relationship with Ma Ma, Peony falls in love with Ma Ma, who is taciturn and will take herself out for a drink and a ride. However, the truth of the matter is that Ma was used to kidnap Peony. Peony couldn't accept this fact and jumped from the Suzhou River, which became the legend of a "mermaid" on the Suzhou River. After many years, Ma was released from prison. He has been looking for Peony, but in a bar, he happened to meet Meimei who looks exactly like Peony. So Ma wants to continue the pure and beautiful love with Meimei, but all this seems a little plausible and confusing.

Peony and Meimei are like Veronica's twin flowers, one has a pair of cute pigtails, carries a student backpack, and often holds a mermaid-shaped Barbie; the other is a mermaid show in the bar The strange woman, wearing dark eyeshadow and lipstick, chewed gum and blew smoke rings in the dusty "Great Shanghai" singing. At first, the audience would be like Ma, wondering if Mei Mei was a Peony who grew up a few years later. It was not until the bodies of Peony and Ma were salvaged from the Suzhou River that the audience and Mei Mei saw the fairy tale being severely beaten. The cruel reality after the shatter.

"Suzhou River" uses superb narrative techniques to constantly travel on the border between fairy tales and reality. Not only are the audience fascinated by the ambiguous and ambiguous narrative, but even the people in the play must struggle between exploration and the truth. struggle. First of all, after being released from prison, Ma Ma mistakenly thought that Meimei, who performed mermaid swimming in the bar, was Peony back then, and he kept telling Meimei the love story between himself and Peony back then. However, Meimei is not a peony. But she was moved by the charming fairy tale-like love story told by Ma, and she even wanted to play the role of Peony, and posted a peony pattern on her thigh to cater to the love story Ma told. Rather than saying that Meimei finally fell in love with Ma Ma, it is better to say that Mei Mei fell in love with Ma Ma's pure love fairy tale. But in real life, Meimei was forced to remain sober. She kept asking her boyfriend, "If I leave, will you look for me like a motor?" After getting a positive answer every time, she went down The unequivocal assertion "you lied". This kind of doubt and suspicion about love in reality reflects the myth and fascination of urban young people with love stories in fairy tales.

Director Lou Ye broke through the unchangeable narrative perspective of traditional drama films and completed a bold subversion with remarkable results. Lou Ye first described the encounter and love between "I" and Meimei from the perspective of "I", and then used the carrier of newspaper news to explain the love legend of Ma and Peony, which once caused a sensation in the city, and finally the movie became It has an omnipotent third-person perspective, but occasionally inserts "me"'s knowledge and feelings. This frequent and flexible change of narrative perspective is extremely rare in the category of Chinese-language films and even world films. The movie keeps reminding the audience of the story with "this kind of love story is everywhere, I can make it up", "maybe there is something else happening behind the story", "maybe Ma Ma can continue this story by himself", etc. The narration process, which is different from the attempt to completely silence the voice of the narrator in traditional drama films, is a high degree of self-consciousness about the narration itself.

There is a person in the film who is never seen by the audience, but is extremely important, and this is the "me" behind the camera. And "I" plays a cameraman who preaches "My camera doesn't lie" in the film. He participates in the story as well as witnesses it; plays a character in the film and at the same time is a powerful metaphor for the director himself with the camera. With the perspective character of "I", the film uses a large number of subjective shots, which are constantly shaking to imitate the human eye, as if "the person with the camera" is really this "I", thus making the difference between fiction and reality. became extremely ambiguous.

As a representative of the sixth generation of directors, even in a romantic film, Lou Ye's reflection and criticism of reality can still be seen. Peony's father made a fortune by smuggling wine, old B confronted Xiao Hong because he wanted to pocket the stolen money, and Happy Bar was soliciting business through explicit mermaid performances, etc. These embellished plots are constantly interrogating people about survival and morality. The relationship between. After Meimei left, "I" can still "wait for the next love", but the corpses of Ma and Peony salvaged from the Suzhou River are a tribute to eternal youth.

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Extended Reading
  • Antonetta 2022-03-20 09:02:57

    Not just Zhou Xun. There are also Lou Ye and Dou Peng. There are also experimental breakthrough Chinese films. There are also the shattering of legends and the drifting of reality. And, also, the beauty of hand-held shaking and the poetry of poverty and filth.

  • Alvina 2022-03-17 09:01:09

    Zhou Xun is good at acting this kind of baffling stuff...