Buñuel (1900-1983)
Every year in April, a Flag will be erected in the heart, just waiting for the Beijing Film Festival to call: spring to Beijing to see the best movies! Like thousands of movie fans in Beijing, I began to cross through the theaters in the East City and the West City. Good days are like flowing water, thinking that they can continue year after year, but this year, they are suspended. The sudden and continuous epidemic has made the planners of the North Film Festival can only do live video broadcasts online. True to that line: The world is unpredictable.
On Weibo, I saw that some readers recommended a classic, saying that if you don't pick it up at this time, I'm afraid you won't have a chance in the future. Yes, I also took advantage of this and swept the books on the shelf again. If everything stops, you can only live at home, and you can calm down and soothe your emotions, then you are reading. But the same row of books, at this time can even measure the priority of the epidemic, is really caused by human instinct. When the epidemic first began, it was always the title of "The Approaching Plague" that jumped into view in an instant. Later, wearing a mask to go out became a daily routine, and the eyes did not fall on this kind of thing. The same goes for watching discs. The first is also a disaster film such as "Infectious Disease", and the later it is, the farther away I am, the better. That's how Buñuel's films and books hit my agenda. But paradoxically, when I put a DVD with his name printed on it into the saucer, I found that it was another escape film, "Death in the Garden", which may not be counted into his masterpiece sequence at all, but at this time, it is like a mysterious shock wave pushed by the hand of fate in an extraordinary period.
Of course, watching him this year is also a good reason. Because 2020 is the 120th anniversary of his birth, and his birthday coincides with mine, which is what the Japanese call cat day. This mysterious coincidence made me want to find the slightest connection with him for no reason. Perhaps, Pisces is such wishful thinking and illusion. On the desk, the biography "My Last Sigh", published and given by xiaomei, a business friend, has not been read since it was in hand. Open a page and see this passage: "If someone asks, can you live for 20 years, what do you want to do in the 24 hours of the day in your lifetime?" I will answer: please give me two hours of activity time and 20 hours of dreams. "Proper is a Pisces-style rambling.
I really want to do a review of his works, and I have to thank the habit of buying and storing discs that has been continued for many years. Looking at his stack from the overlapping pressure of the new disc and the old disc, it can almost be judged that it was saved by the worship of a master when he was young, and after twenty years, the picture quality is still clear. Some of them are also accompanied by tidbits, which is actually more surprising than finding resources on the Internet.
The works are all incomplete, but the important ones are still there, and it is decided to go down according to the chronology of creation. The colors vary, but they are all his marks. From Spain to France, and from France to Mexico. I've been a Mexican citizen for a long time, so some important movie scenes were shot on that land.
When he was young, he shot such a shocking work as "An Andalus Dog" and "Golden Age", but at the same time, he also made such a realistic documentary short as "The Land without Grain". The filming budget was won by a friend who won the lottery.
To say that Buñuel is a master of surrealist cinema, in fact, under the lens, it is not all daydream-like scenes. Even the "surrealism" that covers the coffin means for a director like him who has a creative process of more than half a century, and he has to go back to his creative context and look at it again. "The real goal of Surrealism is not to create a new type of literature and form, nor to create a new philosophy, but to bring about social change and change lives." In this way, he also had its own basis for filming "Land Without Grain", which was difficult to mourn the people's livelihood in the same period.
Summarizing and reviewing the surrealist ideas by himself is naturally much easier to understand than various theorists, in part because this is the tone of an old man looking back on the past. Life is always greater than art, and an artist who usually feels incompatible with his own emotions and is difficult to understand and guess will feel that he understands something more when he goes deep into his life trajectory. Not to understand art, but to understand the course of life, society and world history. After all, he also came all the way from the beginning of the 20th century. He was a witness to the turmoil of the European continent, and back to the level of art history, he was also a participant in important art movements. In his memoirs, he has a private confession about himself, and to others, he also has an undisguised denial. Hates Borges and likes Sade, loves daydreaming and hates too much information. Even if it is its own film, it is not all like a family treasure. It is such a more sentence and a less sentence to tell the review, and it is also the best reference for his works. Memory is like fireworks, and for us it is the glimmer of a candle in the dark, a little closer to the mystery he has created. I thought I could use this to temporarily escape the surging epidemics, but I gradually found that they were also helping me understand the reality of my body.
In Buñuel's films, there is always some unprovoked Caton. In "Angel of Destruction", there is obviously no barrier around, and the people with heads and faces who attend the party can't walk out of the big house. In "The Prudent Charm of the Bourgeoisie", it is the banqueters and those who invite people to the banquet, and all kinds of behaviors and hallucinations that are confusing, misunderstanding and nonsensical in the middle. A group of people walking on the main road in the field again and again, which can be called a reward for confusing behavior. Putting aside his usual sneering at a certain glamorous class, the caton's act itself is closer to a daydream—Buñuel himself did not suggest: "The dream creates obstacles that I know and can distinguish." "But now, I feel that there is no longer the word "caton" that can better describe human beings in the epidemic." The global village, which thinks it is far-reaching, is no longer mobile, and people everywhere are self-isolating and protecting themselves, although they are working tragically for survival, but at the level of understanding, they are far from reaching the synchronization of "mountains and rivers are exotic, the wind and moon are the same as the sky". All kinds of catons: psychological, cultural, medical and administrative, medical conceptual, and inter-state... Sometimes it makes people anxious, it hurts, and it makes people helpless.
The plague, in this way, has exposed the chronic diseases of mankind to the front again.
Speaking of plague, Buñuel, a director who likes daydream scenes, also experienced the Spanish flu of the last century. I don't know if the "subject matter of epidemics and plagues has attracted me in the past" that he said in the talks has something to do with this, but there is indeed something related to plague in his works.
"Nazarin", a film with a black-and-white tone like a clear water white wall. In the story of the priest, there is a scene of him preaching along the way, crossing the plague zone, and doing his best to soothe the sick. And when he devoted himself to exhorting the female patient to pray to God, the female patient earnestly called out the name of a distant lover. Throughout the film, the priest's situation is not good, and all he encounters along the way is interrogation, even two female believers who follow him all the way, one of whom turns back to his home, and the old mother looks at the fire: Are you a believer? Eighty percent of you are in love with him. This point does not matter, and faith is suddenly beaten into mortal dust.
"But I now understand that for everything that comes and goes, God is eternal, but what resides in the object is not God, but love; now I know how to taste the eternal peace from the moment." 」 Is Andrei Kidd's "Food on Earth" the voice of this female patient?
Buñuel has spent his life dealing with his relationship with religion through art, but his films on religious themes are always inexplicable. It is no wonder that the so-called believer looks at his faith, and the doubter looks at his doubt, and it is no wonder that the same "Nazarin", which some people think satirizes the plight of the clergy in modern society, on the other hand, the religious community is eager to hand him the certificate of honor.
And when I watched his Simon in the Desert, the saint who climbed up the high pillar always made me want to laugh inexplicably.
These serious and comical religious roles presumably bear Bunuel's questions about religion. But I also clearly felt that he was attracted to the mysteries in the doubts, and then wanted to explore endlessly. Therefore, the road to Santiago's "Galaxy" is also secretly laid out in Buñuel's different films, leading people through the complex aspects of history and the human mind, exploring and arguing about the spiritual existence of truth, faith, and heresy on the way. When he finally utters the words, "I'm an atheist, thank God," he's putting himself on hold in the midst of all these contradictions. He further said: "I have lived my whole life quite comfortably in the midst of countless contradictions, and I do not want to resolve these contradictions. Countless contradictions are part of myself, and I myself naturally have an uncertain aspect. ”
Faithful to self-experience and respecting imagination, how many people can truly resonate with the images created by Buñuel in this way? It is often strange that when I am anxious to make up the memorable words, I cannot restore them to the role, or rather, to the speaker. Such as the sentence in "The Girl": The days pass day by day, and they will always end.
To say that in the midst of the epidemic, which Buñuel film is more suitable for alleviating anxiety, I think it should be "Robinson Crusoe". It was also filmed in Mexico, and the whole film was a strong tropical tone. Robinson's outfit, first a gentleman, then a beggar gang, is itself a progressive song of desert island survival. Looking at his unschooled weaving, planting crops, and hand-making pottery, he is simply a male version of Plum Ziqi. No, it's much more three-dimensional than plum ziqi. The beautiful girl only shows the quiet of the years, while Robinson also shows the loneliness of human beings and many stream-of-consciousness illusions. The soundtrack is also excellent, creating a dynamic and humorous character gait, which makes Robinson's figure turn around and flee like an alien when the footprints of the wildlings appear on the beach, which is particularly joyful. And being alone on an isolated island, nagging at the cat, dog, dog, and dog gods, in the midst of the epidemic, it is too understandable. The Colorful Movement is on the Christmas Festival, when the ear is hot with wine, Robinson Shengsheng uses the stream of consciousness to support a brilliant one-act play. This can test the skills of the actors. After reading it, sure enough, the actor was nominated for an Oscar.
In Buñuel's films, there are not many people who can repeat the plot so pleasantly and clearly, but this is obviously not an indicator of a director who evaluates his position. If there's anything I've gotten so excited about watching some of his films, it's the church bells. The bell is always hanging high, the bell rings, and the camera is a big close-up: there is a swinging pendulum, and a crowd of people who stop and look at it.
Back in Buñuel's life memories, the village where he grew up, the church bells were always connected to death. Later, the small town of Toledo, which left him endless good memories, could also hear the bells everywhere. One can't help but wonder whether he was an atheist or not, Buñuel was after all accustomed to and obsessed with the bell, perhaps because it was more than the existence of language.
One of the film critics on the tidbits once said of Buñuel: "Pursue mystery, reject rational things, refuse to belittle them." ...... Buñuel understands the things that artists must understand, namely that our work itself is richer than we think. Films produced from sincerity and honesty are always deeper than expected, beyond the subject we want to express. We must respect this additional depth, which can be an opportunity to communicate with the audience. ”
In 2020, during the epidemic, I hid in the bed to watch his movies on countless anxious nights, as if trying to capture the mysterious message transmitted by this bell.
Author: Sun Xiaoning Editor: Pan Xiangli, Qian Yutong Responsible Editor: Shu Ming