For me, after 80 years, this is too old a movie. The reason why I found this movie to watch was due to a chance. Inadvertently saw an interview with Lu Chuan, and when the reporter asked him how he came to the movie, he mentioned "Red Sorghum" and Jiang Wen and Gong Li, which made him fall in love with the movie and decide to devote himself to the movie business.
Lu Chuan's movies are very much in love, just "Cocoanuts" one, is enough to make me fascinated with him for life. His movies are very special, as if they are outside of mainstream cinema. So for everything he mentioned, I was extraordinarily concerned. Therefore, I found "Red Sorghum", but did not deliberately adjust my mind to watch it, in front of the computer eating a bought meal, in order not to appear monotonous, so I put on a movie to help.
The movie is a story told through the mouth of a third person, and the screen fades in on Gong Li's young face. It's a simple wedding in those days, and then there's a robbery on the way. Jiang Wen and Gong Li meet and then live together with no twists or turns. The people in the movie are so simple, even the robbers or the bandits don't show any real evil. Everything is so plain, no one is portrayed as heroic or evil.
Even marrying an old man suffering from leprosy, or falling into the clutches of bandits, killing a robber, killing an old man. It was all carried over lightly. People of that era had an unfathomable resilience to suffering and a historic indifference to life and even life in general.
It seems that China at that time was so kind and simple, and everyone was honest. Whether it is a sedan chair, winemaker, bandits ...... are so plainly settled in their own duties. Can't talk about the sensational love, also can't talk about who is more powerful than who smart and noble. Inside every role is not like a movie, like a simple life happened around. Just like this a quiet and peaceful sorghum field, was trampled by the wheels of Japan.
It was in that sorghum field that the Japanese began their brutal spiritual rule. Let the butchers skin people, and these two reactionaries in the eyes of Japan, one is the bandit San Gun, and the other is Luo Han, who has been out of the country for a few years. In the face of the Japanese, they are both really good men of flesh and blood. Director Zhang Yimou didn't use this to make a big show of the anti-war theme, nor did he translate the Chinese people's deep memories of that period of history into a Q-style depiction in the movie.
No specific picture of Japanese brutality, there is no Chinese traitors fawning villainous face, not to mention the organized and disciplined "armed forces behind the enemy lines", which is just a small corner of that history, is a quiet, no history of the story. There were no patriotic slogans shouting to defeat Japanese imperialism, no so-called heroes who would rather die than submit to the end of the so-called heroes. They are a group of people just to avenge the death of a brother, drink a few bowls of red sorghum wine, take a simple weapon on the "battlefield".
The battle was so peaceful, the blazing sun in the sky, a group of people in the sorghum field leisurely and calmly waiting for the Japanese vehicles to arrive, trips on the ground to take a nap, or drive around the mosquitoes. As they waited too long, they even sent their children home to call for food. The defiance, which is about life and death, is so beautifully and serenely portrayed by director Zhang.
Folk songs from northern Shaanxi often waft through the movie, a rough-hewn man shattering the vast and empty sorghum fields with his songs. There is also the festive suona blown during battle, and the nursery rhyme sung by a child to the red sky. There is no crying, no wailing, no panic ...... This is everything that happens in the red sorghum land, here is the cave of the hero and heroine, the slaughterhouse of the Japanese, the raw material origin of sorghum wine, and the place of combat sacrifice. Sorghum land from nothing, poured also long. The story is also in this sorghum land back and forth.
Sorghum is not red, but the movie has too many red elements. The bride's head and sedan chair, the red sorghum wine brewed, and the harsh and heavy red after the solar eclipse. This is a generation of people's memory of history as a whole, but also the memories that director Zhang wants to show to the audience after half a century. Gorgeous a turn back, no smoke, no artillery, no blood, no screams, everything related to the sound can not be searched for, only that day side of the red, is unable to erase the memory.
Liked the movie's uneventful life, although the marriage is through the sale, although there are robbers and bandits, although there are Japanese devils, but that simple and quiet sorghum field is nowadays material society can not be replaced. Now the love is free, marriage is still not free, there are still so many people around who sell themselves to pursue the so-called happiness. In the past, it was forced by parents, but now it is self-selection. As for the bandits, nowadays there are even more of them, more ferocious than the Japanese.
As the survey proved, there are food and clothing material solid national happiness but in the decline of ...... (omitted countless harmonious speech)
Deeply miss that piece of sorghum land!