There have been many moments when I've seen the young men and women around me struggling to keep up with their dreams, as if I've seen a glimpse of a predictable future.
There are a lot of people in life who often use those disheartening examples to quench their passion for art.
Later, in Gu Changwei's lens, I found a way of life that I had tried to discover but had refused to face up to.
Watching the sadness and happiness unfold over the course of the nearly two-hour movie, perhaps every lost and struggling soul will find the courage to grow from it.
It wasn't until I watched "Spring Breakers" that I suddenly remembered that there was such an ideal in my life.
When watching this movie, it was easy to think of Ann Hui's The Postmodern Life of My Aunt.
Leaving Spring continues the consistent theme of Lee Boom's Peacock and The Postmodern Life of My Aunt - the reluctance of the little people
Both films were written by Lee Boom, and so dictate their are similar in flavor, but completely different in style.
Ann Hui is the kind of gentle and subtle type, preferring to be gentle and subtle;
Gu Changwei, on the other hand, is the kind of person who is in the thick of things, whether it's in pain or in contention, and always has to make a noise.
These are the kind of people who would be happy to see a movie like this.
When I first went to college, I hesitantly wrote in my diary that I was "determined to cultivate myself into a literary youth."
At the time, I thought this was a noble name, a very good attitude to choose from after climbing out of the quagmire of the analytic geometry of the morning and evening lines.
But a few years later, I was horrified to find that the term "literary youth" had gradually changed.
Today, it's almost like a word that stinks on the street, right down to "You're the artistic youth! Your whole family is literary youth!"
Today, it's a term that's almost as bad, right down to "You're the literary one!
In the tidal wave of reviews for Spring, Wang Cailin was bundled with the slogan "artistic young woman".
It is equivalent to wearing a big hat of cow ghosts, snakes and gods, on the surface seems to have nothing to say, secretly has been a nail carpet laying down, penetration is deeper look down and contempt.
I remember when I watched "Life", Gao Jialin's bones are very despised the yellow earth countryside , including the face of the yellow earth back towards the sky farmers.
The movie brings this young man back to the yellow earth after a trip to the city.
The woman who loved him like a treasure, Qiao Zhen, is married to another woman, and his own ideal country has gone to Java with the yellow sand.
In a word, it interprets the essence of the little man to the bone to the extreme.
Gu Changwei's "Spring" is naturally not as high as this, where a group of would-be artists in a small northern town live with no gain in love or career.
If Wang Yu had seen the movie, he would have shouted, "I want to leave every day, and I don't know when I'll be able to change my bones and reincarnate.
To be honest, when I was watching the movie, I still had some ****ing feelings with those who cried out to go to Beijing.
I've dreamed of going up north countless times before. But I hate myself as much as I hate myself, and it's hard to get attached to a movie like Spring Breakers.
Neither the use of foreign environments can be more comfortable and natural than those who adapt to them.
"Spring" is a 2008 drama starring Jiang Wenli, Zhang Yao, Li Guangjie, and Jiao Gang.
The film tells the story of Wang Cailing and other artistic youths in a small county in the 1980s, who struggled painfully with the contradiction between their dreams and reality.
The star of the film, Jiang Wenli, was honored as the Queen of the 2nd Rome International Film Festival and the Best Actress at the 27th Golden Rooster Awards.
The film was rated 8.1 on the Beanstalk and 8.6 on the IDMb, and was not well received at the box office.
The image reveals a strong humanist concern and the narrative direction that the sacred will eventually fall into the secular, giving people a sense of helpless sadness with a sting.
But in fact, this film uses the folk festival of "spring in the cold" as its main metaphor.
The so-called "artistic youth" of the social transition period are just some of those who can't tell the difference between sticking around and running away.
Or the hypochondriacs who think they are struggling to realize themselves.
The ultimate disillusionment or imaginative continuation of their "persistent pursuit of ideals" is the most quotidian and humble charm.
This is perhaps one of the reasons why Gu Changwei calls Springtime a work of brutal realism.
Gu Changwei said "Spring" is a story of dreams and inspiration.
In my opinion, "Spring" is rather a story about dashed dreams.
As it turned out, the lack of success of The Rising Spring versus The Peacock would have been unexpected.
I can't get over the fact that some people have criticized Launching Spring for not believing that there are real-life deviants like Wang Cailin, and have said that it's just another "meat" film that deliberately shows the dark side of Chinese society to impress foreign critics.
The film is a scandalous portrayal of the main character Wang Cailin, with buck teeth, acne, and legs...
On the one hand, it's an elegant opera with a saintly heart, but on the other hand, it's full of self-deception and vulgarity.
19th century Romantic literature, the law of beauty and ugliness, used in literature due to the lack of direct recourse to the image, or can produce unintended effects, once the implementation of the image, the ugly is unbearable to see, hindering the identification.
The opposition of beauty and ugliness not only refers to the opposition between the appearance of the character and the heart, but even in the heart of the character is also divided.
On the one hand, we feel the sublimity of Wang Cailing's pursuit of their dreams, and on the other hand, we pity their self-deceiving fantasies.
Wang Cailin is not the perfect unity of appearance and heart in "Peacock", and the coexistence of vulgarity and sublimity gives the audience a feeling of wavering.
The three siblings in Peacock, although also slightly different, but overall quite normal, representing most of the ordinary people with dreams, so it is easy to get most of the audience's recognition.
The main characters and ideas are far away from the masses, so the niche becomes the alternative.
So, the audience look at them, afraid to sympathize, more pitiful, deplorable outside, perhaps also hate it.
And all this is a woman called "Wang Cailin" caused.
Who is Wang Cailing?
It's every single person in the ordinary life who is not willing to be mediocre and walks alone on the road of pursuing their dreams.
She is not in tune with the environment, but has always been like a warrior who refuses to give in, she is the epitome of every person who struggles between ideal and reality.
She is similar to the poet, who has the wings of the sky, but never gives up on the construction of his spiritual world.
A line in the opening credits seems to imply a certain mood: Spring is here, can warmth be far behind?
It is at this point that the heroine, Wang Cailin, stands out.
Wang Cailin is definitely a cultural person in this little-known city of Heyang.
She can correctly and completely explain the meaning of "silk is not as good as bamboo, bamboo is not as good as meat": "Silk is the strings, bamboo is the wind music, she said this phrase means that the strings are not as good as the wind music, wind music is not as good as the human voice."
Coincidentally, Wang Cailin used her life (the human voice) to validate this idiom, also correctly and completely.
Such an ugly woman has arrogant ideals and ridiculous pride, she is so out of touch with the world, she is an anomaly in that city.
The good news is that she still has a voice.
As a music teacher, Wang Cailin had a good voice and could sing a very beautiful opera.
"I was penniless and unattractive, and God gave me a good voice, and apart from that, I was a waste."
Wang Cailin likes to sing "Twilight Spring", as the lyrics say, "life is so cruel to me" as if it were a cry of injustice to her fate.
No matter day or night, Wang Cailin's crying projects the despair and helplessness of the ideal broken, but in reality, but again and again with lies and deception to deceive themselves and others.
In terms of conditions, Life is thinner than paper, but her heart is higher than the sky: want to get into the Central Conservatory of Music, after learning to become the Central Opera House's chief soprano her only goal in life.
In order to do this, she learned Italian, made her own performance clothes, practiced Schumann's piano music, which are all "trivial".
In the film, she spends more than 30,000 dollars to ask someone to do the Beijing household registration more people can see her determination.
What happened to Wang Cailin reminds me of Pan Hongxia in Jiang Yun's novel "Hidden Blooms".
An ordinary woman in a small city with a dream of not wanting to be mediocre, and a love that she envisions for herself.
Under the depressing atmosphere of the small town, her spiritual struggle is no match for life and destiny, but the dream has always been stored in the bottom of their hearts and never forgotten.
Everyone understands that a beautiful woman can be loved by everyone, but an ugly woman can only love herself.
Beijing's arts organizations are bloated, the first impression of the selection criteria is only based on looks, so she can't get in at all;
Beijing's hukou can't do it, and her level can't reach the field score line, the Central Conservatory of Music has become unattainable to her;
As a foreigner, she is not even qualified to work as a temporary worker at the Central Conservatory of Music.
Wang Cailin's life reminds me of Yu Jie's master's thesis, "The Book of Freaks," which focuses on social alternatives like Yu Dafu, which is really quite sad.
In an inland county in the early 1980s, Huang Sibao, a steel worker, dreamed of Van Gogh, was passionate about painting the human body, and failed repeatedly to get into the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Wang Cailing, a music teacher at a pedagogical school, is obsessed with opera and dreams of singing at the Paris Opera House, claiming that the Central Opera House wants to transfer her, and running to Beijing again and again to get her household registration.
Hu Jinquan, a dance teacher at the group art center, is known as the Second Pancreas (a misogynist), and has been known to dance ballet in street performances in this small, remote city, causing the crowd to roar with laughter.
They are anachronisms, a bunch of lady bodies born with maiden lives.
However, they do not succumb to fate, knowing that it is not possible to do, and time and again, tireless, unrepentant death to the fate of the onslaught.
They are actually like the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus who pushed the stone up the mountain, although every time he pushed to the top of the mountain, the stone would fall, but the value of life does not lie in obedience, being in the fight against the fate of despair.
Resisting despair...
While we lament the cruelty and ruthlessness of fate, we can't help but be touched by these hopelessly impacted tender individuals.
This is also a theme Lu Xun is passionate about.
Standing in the 21st century, it is like a lifetime ago to look back at the 1980s when we were born.
What is easily overlooked is that if the keyword of the 1990s was "economy", the theme of the 1980s was "culture".
Thinking about the intellectuals of the 80s, I am reminded of Wang Xiaobo's quote in The Bronze Age:
Perhaps the ultimate in cultural development is the proliferation of liberalism, which is a predictable outcome in China, leading to this eventful period in the movie.
The first person to wake Wang Cailin up from her dream of being an artist was Hu Jinquan.
The world's "second pancreas" loves ballet, and as a crane among chickens, he's been subjected to the twin accusations of being an "art of the tight pants" and a single man all his life.
As Hu Jinquan himself said, he was a fishbone stuck in the throat of the city. One snowy night, Hu Jinquan, on the verge of collapse, proposes a fake marriage to Wang Cailin.
"Just get a marriage license, nothing else will happen." .
Wang Cailin did not want to do "cannon fodder", flatly refused.
After an attempted rape in broad daylight, Hu Jinquan was jailed.
"I have finally been pulled out of this fishbone," said Wang Cailin, who listened to Hu Jinquan during the visit, and looked at the tip of his toes in his prison shoes, shedding tears of guilt - that snowy night, if she did not refuse! ...
Hu Jinquan's imprisonment is like a smothering blow to Wang Cailin, who is in the same situation.
With no hope of going to Beijing, she is perhaps the next fishbone in the city ...
We wouldn't dare say that at this point in her life, Wang Cailin was in complete despair over her goal of becoming a leading soprano, except that she hadn't sung an opera since Hu Jinquan's imprisonment, not a word.
Just as Wang Cailin's dream of opera was fading, the second person who woke her up from her dream appeared "in time" - Wang Cailin's neighbor, Ms. Xiao Zhang.
The neighbor is an absolute beauty and naturally married to a civil servant from the tax office.
Wang Cailin, who was suffering from stomach pains, went to her neighbor's house to borrow medicine. The love between the female neighbor and her husband made Wang Cailin envious.
Plus, when her parents came home at New Year's Eve, they were expecting her to start a family soon, and she finally stopped thinking about the opera.
When Wang Cailin began to use local remedies to beautify herself, the last and most powerful awakener appeared.
Bei Bei, a bald, talented singer, uses her cancer to impress Wang Cailin, who in her opinion has "Beijing connections".
Wang took Beibei and her midget mom to Beijing, and spent all of the $12,000 she had left over from her own Beijing hukou on Beibei's entry.
In the end, Beibei came in second. Just as Wang Cailin and Beibei realized their unfulfilled dreams, Beibei's mother and daughter suddenly fell to their knees.
It turns out that Bei Bei's cancer was a lie, "It's too hard to be famous, there are so many people who are good at singing, and we're from a small place, so we can't get out without some special means."
A girl who is so "impure" can actually sing. This completely shattered Wang Cailin's artistic dream.
The blows continued. Immediately after, the female neighbor's husband took all the family's savings and disappeared.
This made Wang Cailin lose confidence in marriage.
In fact, Wang Cailin is still self-aware, she understands her own situation, but can not help but think that she is a piece of material that can excel.
Until the sun y stung eyes, the middle of the night in a low voice sobbing.
At the end of "Spring", instead of getting married, Wang Cailin adopts an orphan with a harelip.
Perhaps after experiencing all the circumstances brought about by the pursuit of her ideals, she compromised with her fate and began to lead a calm and quiet life.
Raised this child by selling pork and gave her plastic surgery.
After curing her daughter, she taught her to sing nursery rhymes, and she took her daughter to Beijing.
The ideal of a young woman of art and literature comes to an end.
The finale of the film is a female singer singing Puccini's famous Aria at the Chinese Opera House, which I watched a bit ruefully, over and over again.
When I saw the scene where Mr. Hu, who was jailed for intentionally committing the crime of hooliganism and indecent assault in order to prove that he was a normal man, ends up standing on his tiptoes in his prison uniform to comfort the sad Wang Cailing.
This man, who I spurned at the beginning, made me respect him when I finally saw him.
Idealists are honorable and pathetic at the same time. Their honor lies in their adherence to their ideal world, and their patheticness lies in their incompatibility with the real world.
There are two ways to end up as an idealist: either you blend in with reality, or you die in the ideal world you made up.
First among Wang's friends are two self-proclaimed "artistic youths", Huang Sibao and Zhou Yu.
The self-appointed Huang Sibao likes to paint his own canvases, and wants to get into the Central Academy of Fine Arts, but fails time and again.
Zhou Yu, whose dream is still alive, always bemoans the fact that fate has made him useless, and that he has wasted his voice for nothing.
Two people who are equally different are so small and humble in front of Wang Cailin.
The hypocrisy and self-promotion can't stand up to the test of time and the trials and tribulations of life.
Zhou Yu's appearance is to prove that Wang Cailin, who is sublime because of her art, will not give herself up to marrying a pseudo-literary enthusiast;
Huang Sibao's appearance is to prove that Wang Cailin is a normal woman who enjoys the opposite of the opposite of what she enjoys.
In addition, Gu Changwei "piggybacks" on the other path taken by the literary youths, Wang Cailing and Hu Jinquan, to fall in the tide of the market economy.
In other words, take them out, Wang Cailings tragic character development trajectory is still clear .
The appearance of ballet dancer Hu Jinquan and singer Gao Beibei once made Wang Cailin's life sprout a certain kind of touch, but this kind of touch has become cold in the end.
Hu Jinquan can't stand the world's eyes, and wants to get married to Wang Cailin to cover up his sexuality, but after being rejected, he is so desperate that he can only rely on public humiliation of his own students to prove himself, even at the cost of cold handcuffs.
And Gobebe's deception is clearly an affront and a desecration of art, leaving her near-collapse.
In her eyes, the nobility and purity of art is not to be adulterated, and the blasphemy of art is far greater than the blasphemy of herself.
Ms. Zhang, who lives next door, is a confidant who is young, beautiful, and has a family of her own.
She is filled with a sense of superiority because she has such an ugly and single neighbor, even screaming in the middle of the night, afraid that the next door neighbor will not hear.
The natural superiority of her capital, she always said her husband is much better, pretending to be kind to Wang Cailin cure black spots of the earth, and even to her to buy a sex toy .
And when her own husband lifted all the property far away, no capital she began to know what is called the same disease.
So they, in front of Wang Cailin, are all midgets.
Perhaps you are asking, what is art? And what is an ideal?
"I must sing to the Paris Opera House" , Wang Cailin said this time and again, but she knew that all this is just a beautiful fantasy.
On the train to Beijing, she longed for art and for love. "If only this were a train to Paris"
The longing of the two begins to go too far, so when a word of rejection wakes her up, looking around remains infinitely cruel.
Huang Sibao, who was drunk on the platform, and those scattered easels and horseback together in the bottom of the eye, as the audience, we also lamented the ideal and the reality of the world.
When Gao Beibei cried on TV with flowers and certificates, we also lamented that the realization of this ideal is so dishonorable and even bleak.
When Hu Jinquan was still spinning on his toes with his cloth shoes in prison, we no longer lamented because the "ideal" was so heavy that it flattened the soul.
Therefore, the "art" in "Spring" is more like a kind of anesthetic for the soul.
As Gu's second film, it's inevitable to compare it to his masterpiece, Peacock.
The Peacock is about the Cultural Revolution, which led to the distortion of human nature, and Spring, which shows people who have suffered from repression and psychopathology.
In all fairness, Spring is not as heavy as Peacock, the characters are not as reasonable as Peacock, and the shock to the audience is not as strong as Peacock's.
This is the first time I've seen a movie like Peacock.
But one of the highlights of "Spring" that "Peacock" doesn't have is Jiang Wenli's post-film performance.
When Wang Cailin made her first turn in the spotlight, I even had a heart attack: that's the national goddess Jiang Wenli ah
Once the actor is poorly handled, the styling brings the audience to an aesthetic expectation that only exposes the actor's inadequacies and makes the character fake to the point of being disastrous.
As far as the details are concerned, Jiang Wenli's deep acting skills allow Gu Changwei to dare to use long shots.
Gu Changwei's long lens also allowed Jiang Wenli to realize a more complete performance, and the character of Wang Cailing became more real and believable under the language of the lens, which is the closest to documentary.
From the beginning, when she pretends to be high and mighty, to the end, when she is with her adopted daughter, she radiates a motherly glow.
The obsession in Wang Cailin's eyes is less and less, the peace is more and more, the vulnerability is less and less, the strength is more and more.
Even she only used a change of expression from joy to grief, said a thousand words in the heart of Wang Cailin.
In my opinion, this is what attracted me most to this movie.
In terms of building the film's historical authenticity through detail, Springtime maintains the same level of quality as Gu's previous film.
The Beijing Asian Games plastered on the bridge, Huang Sibao's old jeans and Zhou Yu's "ancestral" culture shirt;
The 80th version of the fence on Tiananmen Square, the vintage police uniforms, and the "Pink Memories" that echoed through the concert halls;
The Camel ink from the house of Wang Cailings, Beijing instant noodles, and the dunk tanks plastered with the name of the movie, which are the most popular in the world,
Wang Cailin's camel ink, Beijing instant noodles, a lamp with a dunker sticker, the old station logo of China Central Radio 2 on the TV, and Wahaha AD calcium milk in her adopted daughter's hand;
I even saw the poster of Red Sorghum which was very hot at that time, and the Spring Festival Gala of '92.
The historical atmosphere and sense of time that runs through the entire movie is derived from these things.
This line, which suggests the eternal gap between ideal and reality, also maps the distance between the historical imagination and the contemporary expression of Spring Festival.
Many people think of it as the inner spirit of "bleeding my head off but still dreaming", but it can also be seen as the pathology of escaping from a helpless reality by relying on a dream of nothingness.
But I've always thought that the real charm of Leaving Spring isn't in the twists and turns of the story, or the sadness of it, but rather in the fact that it creates a Kafkaesque, absurdist characterization rarely seen in Chinese cinema.
While at the same time glossing over it with fishy, quirky choreography and universal themes about dreams.
It's not that her practice of high art is unacceptable, it's that she's banging her head against the wall to express the innocence and flight of fancy that her body can't carry.
The imaginative fulfillment of singing at the Bolshoi Theater at the end of the film should perhaps be Wang Cailing, which is the greatest solace the audience can get.