Today we are talking about a movie that we have long wanted to talk to you about.
This movie was officially released in domestic theaters this summer with little attention.
That said, you know that this is a domestic movie.
That's right, it's one of the few domestic theatrical movies worth watching this summer - Shouting for the Mountain.
The movie is based on a Chinese novel of the same name written by contemporary Chinese female writer Ge Shiping.
The work won the 4th Lu Xun Literature Prize, the 2005 People's Literature Prize, and was brought to the big screen by director Li Yanting in 2013.
So this year's Shout - Mountain is actually the second cinematic presentation of the original novel.
And compared to the first version, the new version of the movie has more changes to the original, a bolder adaptation, and a more refined picture.
So far, the Douban rating is 7.5,
and even some viewers said - through it to see the hope of domestic movies.
Whether this is an overstatement or not is a matter of opinion, but it is undeniable that
In today's Chinese movie market, where bad movies are all the rage and money-grubbing is prevalent, Shouting at the Mountain is indeed a breath of fresh air.
There is no such thing as fresh meat, and it focuses on a rural subject that is outside of the mainstream view.
The movie is a bit bland, but it's by no means lacking in highlights and moving moments.
The story takes place in a small village in the Taihang Mountains.
The movie opens with a bed scene.
But it's rather coarse and brutal, and not in a good way - "rape" would be a more appropriate description.
The woman pinned to the bed is the heroine of the movie, Hongxia.
She is a mute who cannot speak.
And the rough man is her "husband", Lahong.
This one scene alone illustrates the unequal and dysfunctional relationship between the two. At the same time, it manages to build up the audience's sympathy for the heroine in a very short time.
Even said, we all hope that Hongxia can quickly get rid of this beastly man.
And the next episode also responded to the audience's expectations -
Lahong, while going up the mountain to pick fruits, had his leg blown off by a detonator planted by the villagers, and ended up dying in the poor countryside where there is no medical equipment whatsoever.
The villager who planted the detonator and accidentally blew up Lahong is the hero of this movie, Han Chong.
He wanted to use the detonator to blow up a badger to please a widow in the village,
but he didn't expect to get killed.
People in the village felt that if they reported the murder to the public security bureau, it would affect the reputation of the village,
so they discussed with Han Chong's father and decided to let Han Chong pay for the murder.
And Hongxia is acting "abnormal" - her man is dead, and she's not sad at all.
On the contrary, she took out the long unused, dusty mirror and soap,
and began to dress up,
and even in the Lahong burial can not restrain laughter,
In the face of the villagers put forward the compensation program, she also showed no concern - and told the villagers that he did not want compensation. she doesn't want compensation herself.
This beautiful handwriting is also an ambush
The villagers thought she had gone mad from the excitement, so they had to do it for her - letting Han Chong take care of Hongxia and her two children for the time being.
In this way, the lives of the hero and heroine begin to intersect, and the rest of the story centers on two main threads.
One is the line of memories that keep popping up in Hongxia's head -
Through this line, we finally learn about Hongxia's life and her connection to Lahong.
It turns out that she was born into a wealthy family, and grew up smart and well-educated.
Unfortunately, Hongxia was lost with her relatives when she went out once.
Then she was abducted by traffickers and sold to Lahong.
Even more unfortunate is that one day Hongxia accidentally overheard the fact that Lahong had beaten his wife to death before -
in order not to reveal the news, Lahong used violence to make her mute.
After this, Hongxia lived a miserable life for several years - often subjected to Lahong's ravages and beatings.
It was only half a year ago that she came with Lahong to the village where the story takes place, so no one knew about their past.
To outsiders, it was the sudden death of her husband that broke her, but in reality, it was her welcoming a new life of her own.
This also explains why Hongxia doesn't want the money, as it is related to Lahong.
Yes, Hongxia completed her farewell to the past with an extremely determined gesture.
And what really makes her rekindle the passion of life is love.
The line of love is also another thread of the movie, as I mentioned earlier:
At first, Han Chong was reluctant to take care of Hongxia's family - he was even afraid that Hongxia would rely on him for the rest of her life.
But as they spend more and more time together and get to know each other better, Han Chong realizes that Hongxia is very pitiful,
and also very cute,
and Hongxia feels that compared to her previous brutal husband, Han Chong is simply too kind and reasonable,
to be a good friend to Hongxia.
She is too reasonable and
too understanding.
It is said that love is born over time, not to mention that these two people who spend all day together - one has been hurt inside, and the other feels that he has made a mistake.
So you realize that the love between them isn't exactly pure. The boy's love is laced with debt and sympathy; the girl sees the boy as more of a dependency.
Of course, not every love in the world is pure, but all in all, Han Chong and Hongxia fell in love.
And the movie uses an interesting detail in portraying the change in feelings between the two - dinner.
The first day Han Chong went to Hongxia's house, he brought food and dumped all her old raggedy food.
And early the next morning, Hongxia told her daughter to call Han Chong to the house for dinner.
Between this back and forth, the icebreaker was complete.
But by this time, although Han Chong was eating at Hong Xia's house, they were sitting at two tables -
physically a distance away, and suggesting that the distance between their two hearts was more distant.
And as the drama progresses, the two begin to take a liking to each other -
Han Chong also sits with Hong Xia's family, as if they are a family.
Compare the two screenshots above, and you'll see that the lighting in both scenes is basically artificially simulated natural light,
but the brightness of the light is completely different, with the characters in the former being in a dim light, and the latter in a bright one.
This is the use of light to express the mood of the characters.
But the relationship between the two men did not go smoothly, and Han Chong still had many concerns in the face of Hongxia's love.
After a few moments of hesitation, he decided to lose the money.
The scene is a symmetrical composition, with the camera shooting horizontally, suggesting a confrontation between the two men.
At the same time, the scene takes place at night, and the main light sources used are candles and a small lamp in the corner, again coinciding with the characters' state of mind.
And after this scene, a sad Hongxia begins to ignore Han Chong.
She and her daughter are also the only ones left at the dinner table, and it's nighttime, and the scene is a panorama -
Characters tend to look small and weak in this kind of shot, and the movie shoots it this way to highlight the sad state of the orphans and widows.
These are just a few of the scenes from the dinner scene, which are actually quite ordinary, but when combined and linked to the plot, you'll see the subtlety of it all.
Eating, a fairly common behavior in life, has a special flavor in Shouting Mountain.
That's the brilliance of this movie, and something I personally appreciate - taking rough life scenes and finely choreographing them, and then letting life itself become a metaphor and convey meaning.
To put it in perspective, it's about finding some kind of "myth" in the meaninglessness of the everyday.
And from that perspective, many of the scenes in the movie can be read as metaphors.
For example, on the day of Lahong's burial, the wooden stick breaks the moment the coffin is lifted, which seems to imply that his death was not that simple,
For example, the shot of Hongxia burning old bedding and clothes in front of the fire, which has the flavor of a rebirth in the fire,
For example, in the close-up of Hongxia threading a needle for Han Chong, the difficulty of passing the thread through the needle hole can be read as --
Hongxia's help with the needle.
For example, in this close-up of Hongxia helping Han Chong thread a needle, the thread can be interpreted as if it is difficult for the thread to pass through the hole.
Of course, the most important metaphor of the movie is the word "shouting".
The so-called "shouting" is not just shouting, but also banging gongs and drums, and banging pots and pans -- in ancient times, it was a way to make noise to drive away wild animals.
And Hongxia's participation in shouting is a process from losing her voice to finding her voice,
and also a process from repression to liberation, which can be regarded as the awakening of female subjective consciousness.
In other words, Shouting Mountain is a way to highlight the power of women's nature and call for women's rights through the interaction between human beings and nature.
This is the central theme of the original novel by female writer Ge Ping.
But this theme is greatly weakened in the new Shouting Mountain movie, and in the second half of the film, love becomes the main theme,
Friendly reminder that there will be ending spoilers and analysis next ~
After Hongxia's disregard and deliberate avoidance, Han Chong finally realized that he can't live without her, so he boldly confessed. So he boldly confesses.
But at this point, Lahong's murder comes to light, and the police are on their way.
The villagers decide to drive Hongxia away to get rid of her,
and Han Chong decides to turn himself in so that Hongxia can stay.
But the villagers don't agree with him,
so Han Chong turns his back on the whole village and gets into a fight.
At the end of the movie, the police arrive and handcuff Han Chong.
And just at this time, the love of the overwhelming Hongxia but suddenly turned himself in, told everyone that she killed,
It turned out that she had long seen Han Chong set the detonator, and then deliberately let Lahong to pick fruit,
And after the bombing Lahong did not die directly, it is she made up for the knife again -
The police arrived at the end of the film, tortured Han Chong. Muffled Lahong to death.
In this way, Hongxia was taken away by the police.
And the movie ends with Han Chong chasing the police car, falling down and getting up with a look of both resignation and resignation.
Friendly reminder that the spoilers are over, so check out the analysis below~
I have to say, this looks really touching, and the love between the two of them is touching enough.
But the movie's shortcomings are also obvious - the thickness of thought in the original text, is greatly weakened.
Though Han Chong does stand up for the oppressed women in the face of the villagers' ruthlessness,
his gestures and motives are equally dubious.
To put it bluntly, he still sees himself as the savior of women - "I want her to be my woman."
And Hongxia is touched by his patriarchal confession.
And so the awakening of the female subjective consciousness is completely reduced to the repayment of love or the sacrifice of love.
Of course, in addition to being a little weak on ideology, the movie also has one controversial point, which is that it has no sense of age.
The beginning of the film is written in 1984,
But there are contemporary buzzwords,
1978 accidentally killed the villagers to pay 20,000 set is obviously unrealistic,
Hongxia recalled their own home, some furniture actually with a Republic of China,
As for the costumes, props, characters, language and style of the misplaced more, I will not go into details here.
As for the costumes, props, and the language style of the characters, there are more mistakes.
The director of the film said that because he didn't have the experience of living in that era, it was better to go against the grain and create a visual experience that wasn't constrained by the context of the era.
Director Yang Zi
Actually, that would be fine, but wouldn't it be better to remove 1984 from the beginning of the movie?
All in all, this is a Chinese movie with both highlights and flaws.
It's not as heavy as the previous abduction themes, and it's not as dead as the usual literary movies.
Some people say it's not as realistic as Blind Mountain,
but I'd say that Blind Mountain's realism is only one of the forms of real mountain villages,
and it doesn't represent all of China's mountain villages.
From a cinematic point of view, those mistakes make the movie less rigorous, but from an ornamental point of view, its unconventionality adds some character to the movie.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm still most attached to our domestic movies.
It's easy to pick holes in a movie, and even easier to spit on it, but in the face of a serious Chinese movie with both strengths and weaknesses, I'm still willing to -
use my greatest goodwill to dig out its flashpoints, and use my most sincere comments to look forward to its progress.
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