During this period of cinema, domestic movies are very lively!
Whether it is the praise of "Wolf Warrior 2" or the depreciation of "Three Lives and Three Worlds and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms", it is enough for people to talk about it for a long time.
But today I want to talk about a less "hilarious" film - "Soul on the Leather Rope".
The film is based on two short stories by Tibetan writer Tashi Dawa: "Tibet, the Soul Tied to a Leather Rope Knot" and "On the Way to Lhasa", directed by Zhang Yang. Not long ago, Zhang Yang's other "pseudo-documentary" "Kailash" with a good reputation, in the strong crushing of "Transformers 5", it was forced to cut a path and complete a counterattack worth studying in art films. So, can Soul on a Leather Rope replicate the success of Kailash?
A "not good" movie
Some viewers left messages under the relevant comments of "surging drama", bluntly saying that "Soul on the Leather Rope" is not good.
Indeed, watching this film, your perception will not be very comfortable, because until the last moment, you can not do without the "brain-burning feeling".
The film begins with several scenes that are atmospheric, but seemingly unrelated and a bit headless:
Clue 1: The girl who is facing the Buddha is in distress on the way, and before she dies, she wants to give the holy relic Dzi to the little boy, but the boy refuses. A deer picked up the Dzi from the little girl's hand, but was unfortunately killed by the hunter Tabe. Tabe was killed by heaven, but was later revived by the Living Buddha, and has since embarked on the road of redemption by escorting the Dzi into the Holy Land.
Clue two: A Tibetan boy, claiming to be "Tashi's son," killed a man named Tabe.
Clue three: A man named Gedan with a dog follows Tabe all the way unhurriedly.
Clue Four: Two gangsters, employed by people, are also pursuing Tabe in order to get Tabe's Dzi.
Of the several story lines, the easiest to understand is Tabe escorting the Dzi. Most of the time, this seems to be the main line of the whole story. The most confusing thing is probably that the Tibetan boy killed Tabe. Who is the boy? What is the relationship between the two tabe? That's where the uncomfortable feeling begins.
When I can't understand it, I can't help but pull out my mobile phone Baidu on the spot. But Baidu's video introduction is very engaged:
"The film tells the story of a hunter who bears the original sin and the world's vendetta, and who comes back from the dead and comes back to life through the point of the living Buddha, surrenders the demons all the way, and finally escorts the holy relic Dzi into the palm of the Lotus Master."
"Original Sin", "Worldly Hatred", "Inner Demons"... Well, it looks like a really fascinating story. Tabe escorting the Dzi should be the main line of the film.
But the results are astonishing! The mysterious man Gedan is the real being, and Tabe is just a fictional character in Gedan's novel. The main line of the story is actually: Gedan encountered a dilemma in the creation, did not know how to let Tabe's story end, so embarked on the road of pursuit.
A "pursuing" film
Director Zhang Yang once elaborated on the intention of the film's structure in an interview: "If you come up and tell the audience that this is a writer, the film will be boring, and the audience will have begun to reject it." What we have to do is not let the audience know who is who,...... It is to confuse and not let the writer's line be exposed to the audience prematurely. He also said that in his film, the audience had to see the last second to sort out the clues in the story.
Well, I admit that his creative intentions have been achieved, and I sincerely pay tribute to a director's creative pursuits that are loyal to his heart. But the story itself has its innate deficiencies. Writers encounter difficulties in their creation, and such subjects are not new. Even the expression method of overlapping fictional time and space and real time and space of fictional characters used in this film is not new.
In 2006, in the horror film "Ghost Domain" starring Li Xinjie, the female writer abandoned the manuscript because of the difficulty of creation, and then entered the fictional space composed of her unfinished characters.
There is propaganda that the "brain-burning" of "Soul on the Leather Rope" and "Inception" have a fight. Can "burn the brain" need to be supported by content. The lack of innovation makes the moment when the mystery is revealed, not only does no one feel refreshed, but it seems to be a bit mysterious.
In the film, the writer Gedan always passes by the place he imagined Tabet passing, and asks Tabe if he has come. When people told him he didn't know Tabe at all, he went from calm to suspicious, until he finally jumped up and slapped the table in excitement and knocked the wine and dishes to the ground. When the audience is unclear, it looks like suspense. But the moment the question was answered, I only thought of one sentence: writers are crazy!
Zhang Yang believes that his film focuses on the confusion, pursuit and redemption of the individual. And I felt that in a sense, I was very close to the feeling of the writer Gedan. I see all of this in the film. But what I want to say more is that perhaps the more valuable of this film lies in the fact that it more truly reflects the difficulty and hardship that is difficult for ordinary people to understand by literary and artistic creators.
How far is "pursuit" and "good looking"?
It should be said that the birth of every literary and artistic work condenses the creative ideals and pursuits of creators. Even the word-of-mouth "Three Lives and Three Worlds and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" has more or less pointed out the theme of growth through yehua and bai qian: people, how to accept the past, and how to face the future. However, not all pursuits can be recognized by the market. "I Am Marbury" is not up to "Wrestlemanship! Daddy" is so "good-looking". Of course, "good looking" is not the only criterion for testing a movie, but there is no creator who does not want his work to be recognized by a larger audience.