We are a nation that refuses to think about death. Death is a taboo in our culture, and the starting point of all thinking with true philosophical significance stems from thinking about death.
Everyone is alive. Like Camus said, they don’t seem to know about death. Until one day, they began to have doubts about this seemingly normal life. The pendulum stopped and the wall collapsed, so I began to think about why. .
All of you are friends who love literature and art, so please answer one question. In the history of Chinese cinema to the present, is there a master who can compare with Bergman or Kurosawa?
Please think without any prejudice for three minutes before answering.
No, this is my answer.
Although I always thought that Mr. Cai Chusheng represented the highest artistic achievement of Chinese film, and I thought Mr. Wu Yonggang's "Goddess" is the most perfect Chinese film, but if I tell the truth, they have not yet escaped the traditional narrative and The lyrical style lacks a true humanistic spirit. Mr. Xie Jin's works seem to bring a little attention to the individual, but unfortunately they are inevitably a victim of politics. To paraphrase Napoleon's words, politics is destiny.
The answer lies here, because our film or culture lacks three main elements. One is thinking about death, the other is concern for the individual, and the third is that the opposition between the individual and the outside is not well displayed.
These are the essence of Western culture.
Perhaps in the eyes of many people, especially foreigners, the works of Akira Kurosawa have typical oriental-Japanese characteristics, and I think there is no more oriental director with a western touch than his films. His works, especially some of his early masterpieces, clearly reveal his own profound accomplishment in Western classical literature, especially the thinking on the soul, the doubts about human nature, and the strong humanitarian spirit in the Russian literary tradition. I think that the revival of a nation is always inseparable from the revival of ideas. It is precisely because of the intellectuals like Akira Kurosawa that after the war, Japan began to inquire into the souls of people, bringing Western suspicion and critical spirit to the Japanese. , There was reflection and revival. This is what a truly conscientious intellectual did to his nation. He not only revived Japanese films, but also re-established his nation’s image in the world. Like other Japanese film masters of his time, he established Japan. The position of movies in the world.
And our film workers, it seems that apart from ruining the ancestors, they are playing entertainment first in a way that fools the audience. I am not saying that people don’t need entertainment and treat those film masters as models. After all, geniuses are in the minority, but apart from Entertainment should also be something serious. If we all go for entertainment and no one thinks about it, what a terrible thing it will be!
Some people say that I am an angry young man. I am almost forty years old. At best, I am an old angry young man. What I am afraid of is not anger, but one day I am numb and no longer angry.
Hegel once said that the weakness of Eastern philosophy is the neglect of special things. Among the Easterners, special things are vacillating and destined to be eliminated, lacking subjective reflection, and all subjectivity and particularity disappear in vain. But in the West, the particularity has its place. And Lovett pointed out that the European spirit is essentially a critical spirit, and it is with this spirit that Europe can make continuous progress. What we lack is this kind of emphasis and critical spirit for the individual. At best, it is a kind of selfish and pirate destruction done by a few people.
The Spring Festival is here again. I don't know when the road to hometown has become so bumpy and long. Even going home, our favorite word among Chinese people, has become a symbol of horror. I saw several people who went home dying on the road. Perhaps the deaths of these people will be forgotten for us like many deaths in the past, and our nerves have been numb. Whenever I see the empty first-class cars of the D car, I wonder. Why always build Beijing-Tianjin-Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway? Why not build more railways to remote areas? Build some cheap trains for more people?
Because the children upstairs kept playing ball and making noise, I had to ask someone to install a sound-absorbing board on the 30-square-meter house, at least to write without earplugs. Two Shandong workers-they have long since stopped farming, so don't call them migrant workers, they are workers. They said they would take the boss' car home tomorrow after finishing their work. They were very lucky because they couldn't buy train tickets at all.
Before leaving, I said, I wish you a safe journey.
This is the only thing I can do.
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