By chance, I recently finished watching an art film in the cinema of China Film Archive. It's a long name, and it's called "Tell them I went by crane". I forgot where I saw Amway before. Anyway, I was lying in my list. I just came to Beijing. When I saw there was a screening in Xiaoxitian, I took my teammates with me.
Before I went there, I always thought it was a documentary, but I didn't know it was an adaptation of Su Tong's novel until the opening, and it adopted a lens style similar to that of a documentary, which was quite interesting. But in the end, I didn't know what to say for a while. It's been a week, and I've finally come back to my taste. I dare to make a judgment and make some criticisms.
The story happened in a remote rural area of Gansu at the beginning of this century. An old man who was good at painting white cranes in the local area was ill, and his time was running out, but he was obsessed with going to the grave and "taking the crane to the west". However, cremation has been practiced in the local area, and children are also quite helpless about the stubbornness of the elderly. The old man had to hesitate in the emotional interaction with his grandchildren and the fantasy of "white crane" ... and finally went to a desolate tragedy.
Rebellion of the Soil
At first glance, this film is very "yellow land" and a bit like Jia Zhangke. However, it is more individual. In today's full-screen blue-green tone or black aesthetics, low saturation bombing and high contrast style, there is a scream of earth.
The picture of the movie is very beautiful, and there is blazing sunshine in the real northwest scenery. This kind of sunshine is not only the real poisonous sun in the picture, but also the vitality like weeds with muddy water. Bright colors and strong saturation outline a picture of the northwest that conforms to the realistic image and is not in the stereotype.
When you see children rolling around naked in the mud, taking a bath in the canal, watching men and women cutting water plants in the sun and waves, and watching old people playing chess and gossiping under big trees, you may not immediately think of C'est la vie, but you will certainly think of the smell of kitchen smoke and thatch.
mockumentary's aesthetic style also magnifies the advantage that the film is all appeared by amateur actors. These folks, friends and relatives in real life are clumsy and shy in their interaction, but they are also familiar with and trust in details.
It's like the slapping between grandchildren and grandfathers, the euphemistic complaints and temptations between brothers and sisters on the phone, and the casualness and frankness of old men talking about death and burial. And the original local accent that I personally like very much, instead of the "magic change dialect" which was dubbed and awkward in the later period.
The people in this land are like a group of clay pots with distinctive style and naivety. They are dusty in the corner on weekdays, seemingly inconspicuous, but they reveal the childlike beauty that you have to get close to.
But when you brush away the dust of prejudice and look at it carefully, you suddenly feel that your heart is gripped, as if you naturally share the same ancestor with them. You have also tasted the watermelons planted in the fields this year and the flower cakes dedicated to the moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival. You will also lie on the thatched pile and do nothing in the sun, and also take advantage of the adults' inattention to touch the newly laid eggs, fry them in the earthen stove and swallow them, leaving their lips and teeth fragrant.
because it is natural, it is taken for granted, and because it is taken for granted, it is naturally beautiful. There are disobedient sheep in the village, low adobe houses and backyard where flies fly around. The minibus and the Jinbei car met in a narrow road on the dirt road, and the advertising language on a white background was painted on the far wall. The dilapidated canteen at the head of the village was slowly blackened by the exhaust of the car.
The rebellion of the soil is silent, just like the score of years on the face of my old father. There is no pretense under the lens of truth and no taboo, but I see the beauty stubbornly growing in the dirt, and the director's love for his hometown is frank and sincere. I sincerely agree with such aesthetics, and I look forward to it being more on our screen.
However, visual beauty can't save the gaps in rhythm and structure, and the dependence on music and natural sound effects can't achieve the easing effect in the director's intention. This is a great failure, at least reducing the movie's rating by one star out of thin air.
Of course, the standards here are based on art films, but art films should also stress basic narrative clues and film rhythm. Literariness and artistry can tolerate the triviality and leap of time and space, but they cannot forgive the castle-in-the-air laissez-faire.
this film uses a lot of local music and natural sound, but it can't make up for the lack of musicality. The director's understanding of musicality seems to have fallen into some strange misunderstanding, and the deliberately dragged narrative clues have almost become unrelated essays. The requirement of musicality for mobility is separated and filled with landscape exhibition-style "sales promotion".
Yes, sales promotion, which forcibly blurs the center of gravity and focus of the narrative, and then gives the audience some wonders that are not wonders, strange feelings that are not exotic feelings, or wonders that are not toxic. There is no sensory stimulation that has been flooded for a long time, and there is no suspense brought by causal development. It really goes back and forth in the minefield where art films are easy to talk to themselves, again and again. After all, today's urban youth are not completely "modern children" who have never seen pigs run, even if they hang in the countryside again.
what is musicality? It is the time that flows in a certain rhythm structure, and it is to take a step back and look at the life displayed. Rather than the mechanical patchwork and awkward cooperation between notes.
You can easily find that the film is caught in such a "musical paradox": the cut narrative does not flow, but the visual performance is more rhythmic than the deliberate soundtrack. But this is not the most deadly problem. In the above-mentioned aesthetic imbalance, the focus of the story has also drifted and blurred.
Except for the climax at the end, there is only one paragraph that directly shows the core contradiction in the whole film, but the painting style of these two places together is broken with the aesthetic orientation of the whole film, like drums and wind instruments that deliberately make trouble and think themselves humorous in the symphony orchestra, which makes people wonder what to do. It seems that the conductor of the performance is old and faded, and he is like a class teacher who is flustered in the face of a room full of teenagers with hormonal explosions.
It seems that the creative writers have fallen into some paranoia about blank space and implication, but they have forgotten that implied praise or criticism is not without praise or criticism. Criticism can be an implication but not a noise. Please stop holding your voice when you can speak up.
The subtlety of art films is also its privilege. When it's time to serve hard dishes, don't put the cooking bag.
This story can be summed up by the word tragedy, but it is a pity that this tragedy is not convincing or even confusing.
just like the title of this article, I can't help asking: my old friend has gone by yellow crane. What's free here?
It's really strange that the works made by our creators are full of enthusiasm and sweat, but they can't convey their artistic pursuit well. Are our standards and requirements for art films also blurred and out of focus?
It is possible to be willful for art films to stand alone or enjoy the spring snow. However, the so-called "art film" is just to resist the shackles imposed by the market on commercial films and leave room for the creators to breathe freely. It does not mean that the standard of art films is completely different from other films, and they still have to follow the basic logic. Otherwise, it's not an art film, but an image experiment. Art films should also tell stories, but also tell good stories. Don't fall into a strange circle of narcissism and self-argumentation after finally avoiding the stereotype of labeling and typology.
remote and old but vibrant villages, simple and stubborn old people who have moved to their homeland, the requirement of cremation in the new era and the sense of security in the local society can finally be called extreme story trends. . . Ben told an excellent story, but all these elements inexplicably "emerged" in the distorted musicality.
For example, the display of the image of the white crane in this film. Although there is no crane life in northwest China, the crane, as a "mount to communicate with the celestial world" in traditional culture, has its own rationality in terms of the image appearing on Shoumu.
However, the only correspondence between "white crane" and "going to rest in peace" and "waiting for white crane", a quite postmodern drama bridge, did not show its logical basis.
what I find most strange is that if the old man insists on "being buried in the ground", there is no convincing relationship between it and "driving a crane to heaven".
is there a strong cultural meaning of white crane in the local area? Or does the white crane have irreplaceable characteristics of other images of past life? Except that it can be inferred that the old man is a famous local Shoumu painter, who is good at painting white cranes, he uses and only uses white cranes to represent the "rest in peace" recognized by the characters, but he does not fully explain the reasons, even if there are no clues about the details and dialogue actions in the lens perspective or the corners, this is not the "blank space" that the film should have.
But if what the old people want is to build a monument on the grave and have a coffin and a coffin (which is the only way to correspond to "turning into fly ash after cremation"), they end up adopting such a "method" that "no one can find it" to achieve a compromise with reality. Apart from strengthening the emotional accusation of "one size fits all", it seems that it can't be recognized by all the audience.
It should be noted that I haven't seen Su Tong's original work, so I don't know the processing and logic in the original work, so I only criticize the film's processing and display. It is not an enlarged criticism of the original work.
I just hope that the creators of art films, in addition to pursuing art, can also understand that their audiences need not only beautiful performances and enjoyment, but also kindness and truth. The latter can not only complete beauty and art, but also enrich people in the end.
and this is also the greatest value of film art.