That was after the complete fall of Nanjing, and this dance was also the "Nanjing Occupation Celebration" in the eyes of the Japanese.
They took off their coats, put on headscarves, or carried drums, or stood by cars, cruising along the land of China at a slow speed, like ghosts, like monsters coming back from the dead, showing off their victory to the gods in their eyes.
Different from the sufferings of China's soldiers and civilians before, this sacrifice was full of excitement and solemnity, but behind it was a whipping and reflection on Japanese atrocities.
At the beginning of the sacrifice, two topless soldiers beat drums. In the warm drums, the sacrificial procession moved slowly, and the dance procession was uniform and forceful. In addition to the sense of ritual brought by strong visual impact, there are also restlessness that is forbearing but expecting an attack.
This scene is nearly 6 minutes, and the description is the most routine and intuitive. Firstly, the beauty of strength is analyzed through the details of close range, and then the grandeur and solemnity of the queue is set off by the vision in the still life lens.
However, this is a Japanese sacrifice, and the sacrifice is the China people who are in a precarious situation in the dark in the refugee camp.
The torture brought by the ironic effect lashed every aggressor who stood on the land of Nanjing.
In fact, this is the funeral ceremony of Class-A war criminal and Japanese army general Matsui Shigen. It's a military parade. The dance scene in the film was actually edited by director Lu Chuan.
This moral thing is the scene that Lu Chuan dreamed of before filming.
He wrote in the director's notes: "That dream is my motivation to make the whole movie, and this scene is what I have to shoot no matter how hard I spend."
September 2006, Nanjing! Nanjing! When Lu Chuan was building the Youth League, he had a dream one night and suddenly saw a group of Japanese soldiers dancing on the ruins, which made him contact with his own words-"The hell of death for one group of people is the playground for another group."
The dance in his dream was seen in an interview with Japanese film material, which touched him greatly.
Lu chuan thought, why don't we have such things? Why do we only have yangko and square dance? Why don't we have something for everyone to participate selflessly?
In fact, there are only four movements in dance, four movements of labor, all of which evolved from the most primitive folk dance and then compiled into a whole dance.
In order to shoot this scene, Lu Chuan really spent a lot of energy and money.
He found hundreds of actors who played soldiers. First, he selected 12 dance teachers from them for training, and then these 12 people led their team to train others for two months.
At the end of the rehearsal, the Japanese were invited. The Japanese saw it and said no problem. Finally, two drummers were invited from Tokyo, the best drummers in Japan.
Drums are made in Henan. A good drum should be made of cowhide, but money is tight when shooting, and the crew can't afford it. However, Lu Chuan thought it was necessary to have that size, so he used donkey skin.
After the Japanese drummer got off the plane, he came to the scene and knocked on the door. At dusk, the drum stands in mid-air. Take a high platform and stand it up. The two men carried it up and knocked on it. Everyone at the scene heard it and thought this paragraph was going to be filmed.
Lu Chuan said: "We found that their spirit has been passed down and never broken, which is terrible. In fact, these things are all from our side. "
This kind of dance is an extremely violent thing, and it has an intention of trying to control your spirit and desire.
On our ruins, their dance actually means a kind of cultural and spiritual occupation, or aggression.
Now, many years after the war, even if they don't use weapons, they will express their intentions in other ways.
After the film was released, the scene was criticized by many people. Many people think that Lu Chuan "beautified" the Japanese devils and easily led the audience to identify with Japan.
Really? Showing the arrogance of the Japanese devils must be equal to "beautifying"?
I'm afraid Lu Chuan is not so naive, and the audience in China must not be so naive.
Showing the Japanese percussion parade on the big screen is not so much to affirm their domineering, but to create absurd satire and promote strong introspection, because the location of the parade is not Tokyo, but Nanjing.
If it is the former, the effect is to amplify the enemy's prestige and kill our dignity.
But Nanjing is our land, Nanjing is China's Nanjing and the audience is China's audience. We sat in the dark cinema and watched the enemy step on our ruins, dancing and howling, and the resentment that erupted from the bottom of our hearts would not be lower than watching the Japanese army and tanks slaughter our compatriots.
Because the song and dance skills on the ruins of Nanjing tell us the enemy's view of war: in their eyes, they were able to capture the capital of the other country not only because they had overwhelming advantages in military operations, but also because they controlled and tamed each other in cultural spirit.
In Lu Chuan's own words, that is, he once mentioned in an interview, "What is war? War is a foreign culture that dances on our ruins. "
When the enemy's arrogance reaches the extreme, when the enemy not only wants to suppress us by force, but also wants to step on our spirit, we will also be outraged to the extreme.
A scholar can be killed, but not humiliated. Both men and women in China can learn. Lu Chuan used a series of violent and gentle shots to push the audience to the critical point of vision, forcing us to look directly at the ultimate meaning of war: the enemy wants to occupy not only land, but also life and soul. Such a war cannot be fought.
Adding this kind of dance sacrifice to the film, although it vividly depicts the ghosts of Japanese soldiers who died in the battlefield in form, actually expresses that we should remember history and keep us alert to the threat of being conquered through shocking drums; In addition, it is also a lament for the loss of self-culture.
I think this is Lu Chuan's original intention.
(The picture in the article comes from the movie "Nanjing! Nanjing! 》)