When Xu Wei meets the Paradise Cinema

Ink Grape Scrolls The Palace Museum is selected from Shaoxing Xuwei Art Museum "Deformed Green Vines - Xu Wei Calligraphy and Painting Works Exhibition"

Chen Chengyi

Xu Wei and "Paradise Cinema", the two are fierce, Xu Wei's era has no movies, not even electricity, and Toto in the Italian town does not know Xu Wei, a Ming Dynasty man. But when Xu Wei's five-hundred-year-old exhibition met the release of "Paradise Cinema" in China, it was really interesting to think about, and they had a lot in common. Needless to say, Xu Wei and Toto are both genius-like characters, Xiao Toto has no teacher for everything about movies, and he has loved movies since he was a child, he picked up the camera and became a director. Xu Wei, at the age of eight, "slightly understood the meaning of the scriptures", was appreciated by Liu Fu of Shanyin County, and after reading Xu Wei's article, he criticized: The boy can read the meaning of the text... Period in Dentons. Sure enough, he became an all-rounder in poetry, books, and painting. The endless flow of people at the newly opened Xuwei Art Museum in Shaoxing shows that even five hundred years later, his calligraphy and painting works are still touching people, and some people even say that painters from the north and south have come to the exhibition hall. What's more interesting is that he also wrote the script "Four Voices of Ape", "Yiqi Haoda", which was "suspected to be a yuan person" by Yuan Hongdao. In this way, Xu Wei is still a predecessor of director Toto.

In terms of life path and emotional experience, Xu Wei and Toto are so similar, there is not much difference between ancient and modern China and the West. Both Xu Wei and Toto were young and lost. When Xu Wei was 100 days old, his father Xu Yan died. He was the successor of his father, Miao, and his birth mother did not say a name, not even a surname. In traditional China, such children, unless favored by their fathers, have a very low status in name, and may even be called "wild breeds". His two older brothers were both in his twenties, and such a family situation made Xu Wei unhappy, sensitive, and nervous in this family since childhood. Fortunately, his mother-in-law Miao Clan was still good to him, and Xu Wei said to himself that "Wei Bai was in his body and mo reported it". But when he was ten years old, Miao shi was still dismissed (sold?). Xu Wei's biological mother, in Xu Wei's "Malformations" in his later years, used the phrase "the one who snatched my birth mother", which is a rather harsh accusation. This is another trauma to the body and mind of the teenager Xu Wei. He became suspicious, insecure, and eventually encountered ups and downs, psychological problems, suicide, wife killing, and mental illness that plagued him for more than twenty years. Are these all honings for a genius?

Toto's father went to war and never returned, and toto, who was intelligent from childhood, learned this fact very early in the movie, which is actually the only exit of this town to the outside world. But the mother refused to admit it, and when Toto said "Daddy won't be back", he gave him a sad slap. Fortunately, Toto has a cinema, and movies bring him joy and endless possibilities. Of course, there is not a father like the father of the film projectionist Alfredo, they are like a father like a son, but also like a teacher, the same love of movies, the operation of the film machinery, Toto will see it, this even Alfredo feels incredible, but also extremely pleased. When Toto desperately saves Alfredo, who nearly died in the fire, their lives seem to be integrated, a handover has been completed, and the future life story will be written by Toto himself. Alfredo told Toto: Don't look back, don't come back, I don't want you to come and see me, I want to hear people talk about you! With such a life mentor, Toto is happy. "Paradise Cinema" is a return visit of life, and Xu Wei's "Deviant Spectrum" is not.

Xu Wei's life has been full of ups and downs, but he also has a short moment of happiness, at the age of twenty, "entering the mountain yin to learn all the students, having to meet the township department, and hiring Pan Nu", it is really a spring breeze.

"Cover the double beard embroidery fan new, when we meet each youth. The people whispered and listened, and the Tao was a member of the Immortal Society. Xu Wei recalled the beginning of his relationship with the thirteen-year-old Pan Nu in this way--is this the gentle entanglement unique to the people of Shaoxing? Because his brother was not good at management, the family road was in decline, and he could not get enough dowry, Xu Wei had to enter the Pan family. Father-in-law Pan Kejing attached great importance to Xu Wei, not only took him with him, but also knew that he himself had a son, when Xu Wei died of his brother, the family property was taken away, and his father-in-law treated him and actually had white hair. In the sixth or seventh year of the Pan family, "Weng Zhi respects and loves someone like a day".

Wife Pan Xiang, she does not have a name, "with its Jie like Wei ye, the name is similar, the word Jie Jun", she and Xu Wei are in love, many places are the same as Xu Wei, so Xu Wei gave her a similar name. The next year they met, they got married, and soon after, they received an obituary from their eldest brother Xu Lu in Yangjiang, Guangdong, and Xu Wei had to return to his hometown to mourn. Of course, Xu Wei misses the newlyweds very much, and there is a "South Sea Song" that reads:

Fifteen people with a height of one foot, Ai NongYun is timid and nong sheng, and recently the sea has not been long, and he wants to send a tortoiseshell hairpin.

Similar temperament, endless tenderness, to the young Xu Wei to give the greatest comfort. Pan Seems to be particularly considerate of Xu Wei psychologically, "Speaking with Wei Zheng, we must choose and then send." Fear of Wei Guessing, Doing What You Do", with someone as sensitive as Xu Wei, she handles it just right. But the good times are not long, happiness is always easy to destroy, before giving birth to a son Xu Ming, Pan seems to have been sick, and after childbirth, she died less than a year later, when she was only nineteen years old. Obviously, Xu Wei cannot accept this reality, and "Sending Brother Pan Wu to the North" expresses this discomfort:

Last August, I entered the department, and the second sister opened the curtain to send the fifth brother. Today, the fifth brother returned to the north, and the room was empty and the mirror was light. In February, pear blossoms a few tree clouds, nine curves of the Yellow River thousand feet of waves. Suddenly, I thought about it like a dream, and when the sun set, there was a lot of smoke in the boat.

In one year, it has been separated from each other, and it is really like being in a dream. Even ten years later, Xu Wei still missed infinitely, and even shed tears. There is a poem "Ten years after the death of the inner son, his family is in the nephew's house, slightly returned to the mother's service, Luzhou red shirt, neck sweat shangjing, Yu Wei wept for several lines, when the night and the day rained and snowed":

The gold little Nucy shirt is warm, and the sleeve folds still have traces of the case. Open the box without knowing the tears, the court is full of snow and a light.

After copying so many poems, it is not difficult for us to see that Xu Wei has a deep love for Pan, although they have only been together for six years, but for Xu Wei, who is very affectionate and righteous, he has left a deep imprint in his heart. Although there were still several marriages between him and those who did not succeed in the future, they were not happy, and even after the mental stimulation, he accidentally killed Zhang Shi, which also brought him a seven-year prison disaster. His life has since fallen to the bottom. In the future, only illness and poverty followed him like a nightmare, he sold mink, sold chimes, sold paintings, and sold books, but he still could not make ends meet, so that he did not even have a family, and could only follow his younger son Xu Yu, who was also a rich man, to live in the Wang family, Tao Wangling wrote that he "slept through the grass", that is, the field where he slept on straw. The evening view of genius is really lamentable.

Toto's love life is like Xu Wei's, they are the kind of people who have only talked about love once in their lives. At the beginning of the movie, the elderly mother calls Toto, and she regrets that it is a different woman who answers the phone every time. For thirty years, Toto heeded Alfredo's advice and never returned to town. Except for his first love, who couldn't love him, he probably never really fell in love with anyone else again. The young Toto took over the job of Alfredo at the Paradiso Cinema after the fire, and he soon grew up, picked up the camera, and patted everything in the town— slaughtering cattle, giving birth to cubs, everything he could take with the lens, was novel to him, and his life began. The beautiful Elena inadvertently walked into his shots, and these wonderful, uncertain shots became his first works and the most important works of his life. Toto pursues her, standing at the new year's window, hoping to get a response from Elena, but no, and he walks disheartened through the streets full of fireworks. Unexpectedly, Elena took the initiative to find him, and they fell in love. Then the yin and yang went wrong, Toto went to military service, Elena went to college, and they missed it again. In the nearly three-hour director's cut, Elena came to the cinema to find Toto and left a note, while Alfredo didn't tell Toto that he had given Toto a direction for his future life, to go out into the outside world and do what you wanted, rather than live a mediocre life in a small town.

Small details, small props, small toto, all kinds of pleasant and warm memories, all kinds of small, careful thinking, but also without a sense of history, humor. I'm afraid that's why so many people love this movie, but it's not the ultimate goal of the director. Therefore, there is a director's edited version produced ten years after the first screening, and I think this should be the original intention of the director: the sorrow of love and unavoidable, full of sorrow and regret, and this lack is based on the joy of the teenager Toto immersed in the film world. In the second half of the director's cut, the accomplished Toto returns to his hometown and meets the daughter of his first girlfriend, who intuitively feels that is, so he tracks, stands outside the house and dials the phone, just like when he was a teenager standing at the girl's window, the woman told him that it was a former thing, go back. In the end, he found Toto by the sea and did what they did not do as a teenager, as if falling into a cliché (since it is a routine, of course, it has been imitated, NJ in "One-One" dating his first love in Japan, and the result is that his first love is deserted and escapes; in another domestic film, Zhou Wei finds Yu Hong and comes to a small hotel, and the result is that both sides are extremely stiff and embarrassed). Toto asked what to do in the future, and she replied that she would remain the same as before. So Toto returned to Rome to see alfredo's last gift: all kinds of kissing shots that he did not see in his youth, as if life was a dream, a dream of life!

Precisely Xu Wei also has "Two Songs of Dreams", he describes the dream:

Berau began to open, and the swallow could not stay. Why didn't you fly away in the dream of this night? Pity the male, sneer at the evil couple, the two intentions fall into the smoke, and the tears outside the door are like rain.

Stomping and maggoting, just like yesterday, the four hooks of the shoes are idle. Tang Pear Blossom stepped on the yellow mud, and the whereabouts could not reach the Perch Mandarin Pavilion.

In college, my graduation thesis was on Xu Wei, which was very unusual, and this was the beginning of my relationship with Xu Wei. In the first film appreciation class, Mrs. Husin (we called her Old Lady twenty years ago, and should be older now) chose this movie, in a very old staircase classroom, almost holding her breath for two hours. Since then, I have begun to look for various movies to watch, and I believe this is also the experience of many students. Also in the face of poverty and boredom, at that time, weren't we just little Toto who didn't know anything about the world?

Source: Wen Wei Po