- The Cultural Revolution in "Sunny Days" narrates the
Cultural Revolution as a "spectacle" of a Chinese-style catastrophe, and presents an absurd comedy-style performance of historical tragedy. The erased memory is also in the history of Chinese film, the historical material of some famous Chinese film directors shooting various films, for example, Xie Jin's "Reflection Trilogy", "The Legend of Tianyun Mountain", "Furong Town", "Wrangler", Yang Yanjin "Small Street" by Ding Yinnan, "Blue Kite" by Tian Zhuangzhuang, "Farewell My Concubine" by Chen Kaige, "Alive" by Zhang Yimou, "Sunny Days" by Jiang Wen, "Beauty Grass" by Lu Le , Gu Changwei's "Peacock", Zhuang Yuxin's "Love's Teeth"... Obviously, the age of the film's plot and the film's production and distribution are the decisive factors for the final form and values of the film. Therefore, the Cultural Revolution has become a new era. An important source of Chinese film creation, this article will focus on the personal writing of Jiang Wen's "Sunny Days" on the history of the Cultural Revolution.
In the 1970s, a group of teenagers in their adolescence squandered their boiling youth in the hot summer. Their arrogance, deviance and excess energy dedicated to teenagers constitute a rebellious youth story. The traces of postmodernism can be seen everywhere, with unique perspectives, crazy youth, broken narratives, chaotic memories and a lot of banter. The audience was deeply impressed, and in the scene where everyone celebrated Liu Yiku and Ma Xiaojun's birthday, the voiceover's reversal of the plot made the audience feel the uncertainty and uncertainty of our memory in laughter. Absurdity. The film places the Cultural Revolution in the context of personal life, and "historical memory" is even tampered with or fabricated as a youthful daydream by "personal memory".
The famous writer Liu Xinwu once described his feelings after watching this film in his work "The Edge of Light": "This is not a so-called 'Cultural Revolution film', the creator of the film not only has no intention to praise or criticize the 'Cultural Revolution' It can even be said that it deliberately eliminated many of the 'Cultural Revolution symbols' that people are familiar with, such as big-character posters, criticism meetings, 'rebels', 'Red Ocean'... It tells the stories of young people, But there are no 'Red Guards' in it... Fundamentally speaking, this film is trans-political, trans-ideological, trans-'Cultural Revolution', and trans-national and trans-national. It ultimately reveals human nature and leads to the common The emotions and fate of concern are big propositions." Liu Xinwu's words are very accurate and basically match my overall impression of the film. We all know that Liu Xinwu's work "Class Teacher" is an important masterpiece of "scar literature". Therefore, what he agrees in his heart is that the era of the Cultural Revolution is an era of national persecution. Taking this into consideration, his objective attitude towards this film is very admirable.
Director Jiang Wen's views on the Cultural Revolution may be different from Liu Xinwu's. First of all, he is a person full of passion, and his "Sunny Days" is the expression of passion and romance, "It seemed that it was always summer at that time. "It also proves that teenagers are carefree, and it also proves that it was indeed a hot era. Second, the heavy blow of the Cultural Revolution to the country may not be borne by a teenage child, so parents are likely to realize it. To not leave them with the relevant impression of the suffering of the Cultural Revolution, the protected children may be less worldly than other children of the same age, so the cruelty of the Cultural Revolution naturally did not leave that deep in his upbringing. 's imprint.
From time to time, the film shows offense to the mainstream narrative and the public's "common sense". Jiang Wen uses poetic and romantic pictures and narratives to downplay the tragic color of the Cultural Revolution. For example, when his family was also hurt by the Cultural Revolution, he only let My mother expressed her grief with the phrase "Grandpa is dead", but did not show the scene of Grandpa being "knocked down" in pictures, and did not fully criticize the devastating blow to the entire country caused by the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, some people criticize the film for destroying the cultural expectations established by conventional sayings, and only achieve a "sunny day" with the sound and painful youth of a group of teenagers during the Cultural Revolution. In fact, these "children in the courtyard" were a group of superior red privilege holders at that time, and they must also be a group that was less negatively affected by the Cultural Revolution, but it cannot be said that Jiang Wen did not have any views on the Cultural Revolution to the people in the film. Criticize the suffering caused, because after all, “it was a civil strife that was wrongly launched by the leaders and used by the counter-revolutionary groups to bring serious disasters to the party, the country and the people of all ethnic groups.” Therefore, we can see that when people will When the "little villain" was raised and cheered loudly, the smiling face of Wang Shuo who played the "little villain" contrasted with the portrait of Chairman Mao in the background, and the bottom of the portrait was also surrounded by Chinese people from 56 ethnic groups. In this way, it constitutes some kind of self-evident suggestion, followed by Jiang Wen's voice-over - "little villain" is later stabbed to death by several 16- or 17-year-old children who want to replace him.
Jiang Wen's previous name was Jiang Xiaojun, so this film can almost be regarded as his autobiographical lyric poem. I remember that after he filmed "Let the Bullets Fly", he was interviewed on CCTV's "Xiao Cui Talking About Things", Cui Yongyuan asked Whether his works are full of metaphors like everyone said, Jiang Wen's answer is: "There are no metaphors, what I say in my movie is the real thing." However, I personally think that the real thing is after a pseudonym. The re-enactment of , is actually a metaphor. In the film, the voice-over also explained that the older children either went to the countryside or went to the army, so this city became their world. Children", "ballast frame", do all kinds of evil... These deviant children are the incarnation of Jiang Wen and his childhood friends.
But these children are not necessarily the "bad boys" in Milan's mouth. On the contrary, they are actually very simple. I will list two specific examples here. The first is that Yu Beibei, a "wild girl", came to the boys. In the bathroom where they took a bath, they all hid in fear, and when one of the children "straightened", they were ridiculed by their companions and slapped by Liu Yiku's "reward". Another example is that when Yu Beibei snatched his "first kiss", Ma Xiaojun's reaction was anger and sadness, and there was no satisfaction and pride after "intimate contact" with the opposite sex. From this point of view, perhaps, the cynicism of these children is just like what Professor Dai Jinhua described: "It is the sense of shame behind the pretentious shamelessness, and the vulnerability and creativity behind the cold-faced laughter." The Japanese version of the film's poster, It is also the silhouette of this lonely teenager who is full of melancholy and anticipation wandering on the roof when the sun goes down. In addition, by the way, what follows is an interesting transition - Ma Xiaojun, whose face was flushed by Yu Beibei's lipstick in the last game, is wearing a red face in the next game, happily with everyone. Dancing to welcome the visit of an important leader. The next two scenes, one sad and one happy, are more ironic. The tragedy of the times inevitably left its mark on everyone.
It is worth noting that there is a fool who appears from time to time riding a stick. I always feel that he is actually the external expression of Ma Xiaojun's mood. For example, when Ma Xiaojun is in a good mood, the state of the fool he encounters is also riding. He was happy with a stick, and when Ma Xiaojun was in a low mood because of Milan, the fool even cried. There is also a small detail that when Ma Xiaojun and his friends were waiting for Milan at the gate of the compound, Milan was late, so everyone said They wanted to wait for them in the back mountain, and leave the sheep to accompany Ma Xiaojun to wait for Milan. When they told Ma Xiaojun, Ma Xiaojun did not nod, but the fool kept nodding, as if everyone gave him the task of waiting for Milan. In addition, at the end of the film, the former friends are famously riding on the streets of the modern Beijing city in good cars. The hypocrisy of the adult world has replaced the passion of the green years, and they unexpectedly meet a fool who has also grown up. , when they shouted "Gu Lunmu" to the fool, the answer they got was no longer the familiar echo from their boyhood - "Oba", but "Silly B", probably Ma Xiaojun (or Jiang Wen) at that time I also feel that my youthful years are no more, the world is no longer sunny, but black and white (expressed by the change of the color of the picture), and I have also become a secular "successful person", or maybe it is "Silly B" is an external manifestation, maybe they are not as carefree as a fool in their hearts. In this way, we can even say that the fool is a witness to Ma Xiaojun's life and a history, and this witness is much more detached than many of the parties involved. Perhaps, Jiang Wen also wants to tell us that nothing will not be changed. The passage of time and the growth of teenagers are the most irresistible forces. When we recall our youth, we may find that it has long since been refuted and will no longer be refuted. Unable to restore.
The most important female character in the film, Milan, is the "goddess" in Ma Xiaojun's heart. In his book "Honor", Professor Su Mu of Beijing Film Academy compares the heroine Milan of the film with Dai in "Once Upon a Time in America". Compared with Bra, he believes that Milan and Debra have very similar positions in the hearts of Ma Xiaojun and "Noodles" respectively. The two girls are the embodiment of beauty in the hero's heart, and in the end, the two protagonists also feel the beauty and disillusionment. Skin pain. Milan is an incarnation of unreal beauty, because when Ma Xiaojun found the photo of her wearing a red swimsuit in his memory, he found that it was just a black-and-white photo of an ordinary shirt, so, then Is the color photo of Zhang witnessing a naughty and youthful teenager just a little joke from memory? And at the end of their teenage years, the estrangement of their partners also witnessed the cruelty in human nature being decisively volatilized, allowing the audience to experience the visual pleasure given by a piece of blue, but also deeply experience To the pain and suffocation of innocence and beauty being shattered by cruelty.
The role of Mr. Hu played by Feng Xiaogang is also quite interesting. Mr. Hu is actually a stern person. When he wrote the words "Sino-Russian Nerchinsk Treaty" on the blackboard, he was aware of the misunderstanding in the class. The movement was a little unusual, so I carefully observed the student's expression, and checked the words written on the blackboard again and again. There are only briquettes in it (it feels like the students are "mocking" the teacher). Afterwards, two uninvited guests suddenly came to the class, and rushed out of the window with lightning speed. An arrogant student even asked Mr. Hu to throw his shoes out. Mr. Hu wanted to maintain his dignity, but The student actually threatened him. In fact, he was actually scared after being threatened by the student, but he still said with great face: "Joke! What am I waiting for? Are you going to find someone to beat me? Are you going to stab me? Bicycle tires?" And that's exactly what he meant - come and puncture my tires, but please don't ask someone to hit me. This also represents that the status of teachers in that era determined their disrespect in the minds of students. If it is named after Feng Xiaogang's film, it can also be regarded as Jiang Wen's commitment to the Chinese philosophy of "respecting teachers and valuing Taoism". "A sigh" that the traditional virtues of the nation were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.
Jiang Wen seems to be a person with a train complex. He seems to want to represent the abstract "the wheels of the times are rolling" through concrete and sensible trains. For example, in this "Sunny Day", his mother's sentence "Grandpa is dead" Afterwards, a train approached the audience, and Ma Xiaojun’s family returned to his mother’s hometown. It is self-evident that the Cultural Revolution had hit a family like Ma Xiaojun’s mother hard, and how many people were “silent a lot” like Ma Xiaojun’s mother. In "Let the Bullets Fly" and "The Sun Also Rises", there are trains, and even in Gu Changwei's latest film "Favorite", Jiang Wen also made a cameo as a train driver (some people say that this is Jiang Wen's chasing Salute yourself, hehe).
Go back and look at the many films listed in the first paragraph of this article with the "Cultural Revolution" as the backdrop, although their specific creative motivations and styles vary, and for a younger generation who did not experience the Cultural Revolution. , The so-called "Cultural Revolution" is first of all a distant "story" retold by others. Due to the different identities, positions, positions, genders, world views, etc. of the narrators, the content of these "story" Although there are similarities in the plot, its format and details are ever-changing, showing various gestures. In that special era, a space for looking back and lingering was opened up due to the personal viewpoints of different creators. The narration in this film is undoubtedly only a slightly more eye-catching one among them, and he wrote a sunny poem with the feelings of a teenager.
References:
[1] Dai Jinhua, Landscape in the Fog - Chinese Film Culture 1978-1998 [M], Peking University Press, 2006-2.
[2] Liu Xinwu, Light on the Edge [M], Chinese Dictionary Press, 1996-8.
[3] Jiang Wen, Birth - The Birth of a Film [M], Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 2005-8.
[4] Su Mu, Honor (Revised Edition) [M], People's Literature Publishing House, 2007 -4.
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