Text: Overnight flowers
In 1985, the feature film "Good Family Woman" produced by Beijing Film Studio was directed by Huang Jianzhong, written by Li Kuanding, and starring Cong Shan and Zhang Weixin. It tells the story of the "child bride" in Qianbei in 1948, in the tragic fate, 18-year-old Yu Xingxian bid farewell to the "little husband", walked out of this deformed marriage, and began to pursue a better life.
This film is a masterpiece that cannot be ignored, both in terms of content theme and audiovisual language. The screenwriter of this film used "the most respectable" and "the most pathetic" to describe these women under the pressure of feudal etiquette. While telling their tragic fate, this film does not adopt the mode of accusation, but praises their spiritual strength and portrays the real mountain village people.
01
The beginning of the film has a strong symbolic meaning, first interpreting the meaning of the word "female" (kneeling on the ground with her hands crossed in a meek posture) and the word "woman" (a woman with a broom in her hand for housework), and then metaphorically portraying the role of women as male vassals in feudal society by showing the image of women in thousands of years of change. In these pictures, "pushing and grinding", "beating" to "getting married", "sinking pond", "weeping and mourning", all symbolize the objectified women.
As a representative of the fourth generation of directors, as early as the previous two works "Little Flower" (assistant director) and "Ruyi", Huang Jianzhong has begun to explore the modernization of film language and the nationalization of style. "Good Family Woman" is still an exploration of this path, it has neither a dramatic story nor a traditional creative thinking of blind accusations, but emphasizes the ideography of the film language itself.
The soundtrack of the film, Shi Wanchun, adopts Gu Xi, which is similar to the soundtrack made by the well-known composer Zhao Jiping for Zhang Yimou's "Ju Dou", and its tune conveys a deep and penetrating hint of weirdness, giving people a sense of simplicity and making people feel depressed at the same time. The picture of the film also adopts cold tones such as blue, blue and gray as the main color, combined with the smoky and wet environment of the Qiandi Mountains, which visually strengthens this sense of serenity.
The film itself is not strongly dramatic, and the narrative also uses more lens expression instead of textual expression.
For example, the film depicts Yu Xingxian and Bingge's love at all, without words, and directly through a series of shots: Yu Xingxian cooks for Bingge, picks up dishes and chopsticks after meals, and shows a satisfied smile after seeing him eat.
In the expression of the resistance suffered by Yu Xingxian's love, it is also more with the help of lens language. First, the "little husband" Yi Shaowei hid the ring that Bingge gave him, and his first trick was young and naughty; the second time he blocked it was that he felt lost after hearing their conversation and felt that the "sister" was about to abandon her and took the initiative to tease her. 6-year-old children do not yet understand these marriages and loves between them, so they seem sad and a little absurd, and the reflection of the film is further strengthened.
02
In terms of character shaping, the main characters in the film are complex and three-dimensional ordinary women. Their spiritual power has not been consciously elevated, and the creators have not chosen to amplify certain characteristics and characters of the characters. The touching aspect of this film is reflected in the embodiment of the most authentic and unambiguous human nature.
Yu Xingxian is not the typical anti-feudal benchmark woman who often appears on the screen, nor is Wuniang an old stubborn whose thoughts are poisoned by feudalism and seem ignorant. Even the "negative characters" who represent vulgarity, backwardness, and decay are not traitors and evil people, but only the beauty and ugliness of human nature itself.
Yu Xingxian (Cong Shan) has a traditional side, she is an ordinary woman who grew up under feudal etiquette, and her understanding of family, love and life cannot be separated from the small peasant thought and traditional female thinking. The film has no intention of elevating in this regard, so she does not want her husband to do official business, thinking that these will make people dirty, she only hopes that her husband is honest and stable, pays attention to filial piety, and attaches great importance to love. Her love for Bingge is more from human instinct, and her yearning for simple and beautiful feelings under the traditional model has not yet reached the level of breaking free from the feudal shackles and resisting cannibalism. And her difficulty in giving up her husband's family under the arranged marriage is not only because of the feelings cultivated in the day and night together, but also because she does not have enough independent consciousness from her personal consciousness to think about breaking with this way of life. This kind of "de-patterning" is also the biggest feature of the film's character shaping.
Until the arrival of Comrade Qu after liberation, she had more courage to resist this deformed marriage, but this was still because of the pursuit and desire for beautiful emotions in her heart, and she had a kind of tenacity in her bones. Whether it is Li Xiuzhi in "Wrangler" or Yu Xingxian in "Good Family Woman", Cong Shan's temperament always carries a stubbornness, and this tenacity determines that the character she portrays has a strong personality force after all.
Yu Xingxian's 26-year-old young mother-in-law Wuniang is a tragedy in the "child bridesmaid" model, most of the time her eyes are gray and sluggish, as if she has been bent by thousands of years of stereotypes and bad habits, grinding down her will. Just when the audience thinks that this is a character who is deeply affected by traditional ideas, the film shows another side of her. She has a good temperament and is sympathetic to the apricot fairy. At the end, when she agrees to Xingxian leaving the family and presents a bracelet to show her blessing, she reaches a "reconciliation" between the two, which is similar to Xie Fei's "Xiang Soul Girl" in which Xiang Erjie's release of Huan Huan, but it is not the same. In this film, the fifth lady played by Zhang Weixin has seen through this tragedy from beginning to end, but she is deeply buried in her heart, unable to resist, and has to suffer silently.
Yu Xingxian is sympathetic to her mother-in-law, and has the same disease and pity for similar fates; the feelings for the "little husband" are more of a sister's pampering of her brother, which is based on the real emotional interaction between them, so it seems real and credible. They are the bondage to her happy life, but she still has a subtle affection for them, which reflects the complexity of real life itself and the real human feelings.
03
The most powerful thing about the film is its strong tribute to human nature, which is done through the enhanced use of imagery.
The film shows a skillful film language in portraying the glorious male character of Bingge, rather than simply portraying it through lines. In the movie, Bingge can be described as a character who cherishes words like gold, which is most likely the creator's intention. Bingge is a traditional laborer, and he has the excellent qualities of a traditional male laborer: strong, spontaneous and optimistic, with an almost fierce wildness, and a strong will to life.
The film takes two details, one is the labor scene of farming in the field, and the other is the scene of eating a big meal, in these two details, the director pays attention to the contrast between Bingge and Yi Shaowei - a mature man with a stable personality and a child who is not dry, at this time, the symbolism of the picture, the meaning of the director is self-evident: this is the worship of power under the original will to survive. In Zhang Yimou's "Red Sorghum", "My Grandfather" Yu Zhan'ao and "My Grandma" Jiu'er interpret this worship of power to the extreme. The worship of primordial vitality is certainly not the patent of the fifth generation of directors, and many of Huang Jianzhong's later works have similar characters that highlight the beauty of power, such as Shen Junyi in "Mountain God". (In addition, there are many details of the cult of divine power in the film, which will not be repeated here.) ）
In the presentation of female characters, the director has strengthened the symbolism of the imagery. It is not uncommon to use "water" to symbolize women, and such an analogy of Jia Baoyu in "Dream of the Red Chamber" has pushed this image to become the common psychological identity of the whole nation, which is also the most condensed gender concept embodiment in "Dream of the Red Chamber".
In this film, the water has many forms, static lakes, trickling streams, rushing waterfalls, but also moving and static, women's strength also has a variety of manifestations, they either silently bear it silently, or resist in their own way. They are the victims of feudal rituals and the slanderers of ignorant thoughts, but they bear it in their own way, and their spiritual strength is like "water" warm and delicate but long-lasting, and this tolerance and fertility are the concentrated embodiment of women's tolerance and stoicism. The dialectical depiction of seemingly the most gentle and delicate woman with an inclusive mind and a long flow of willpower is a potential embodiment of the idea of reconciling yin and yang in traditional Chinese philosophy (which, from a modern perspective, belongs to the simple materialist dialectic).
In the intensive use of imagery, the film's humanistic care and sincere praise for human nature are fully demonstrated.
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