Chapter 66 Section 4: Cultural Reflection on "Exploring Movies": "Yellow Earth"

Around 1984, a group of young directors with a spirit of exploration emerged in the Chinese film industry. Most of them were the first batch of graduates of the film academy after the "Cultural Revolution", including Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Huang Jianxin, Wu Ziniu, Zhang Yimou, etc. According to the Chinese film industry In the stage of development, they are collectively referred to as the "fifth generation" directors. The way of symbolism reflects the profound historical and cultural connotations in the well-designed images.In terms of self-reflection and commitment to the spirit of national culture and the awakening of national vitality, the "fifth generation" directors and the "root-seeking literature" writers of the same period formed a corresponding trend.

"Yellow Earth" directed by Chen Kaige is the representative work of the "fifth generation" directors. The opportunity to create is because the whole story takes place on the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi. "Yellow Earth" has become the core image of the entire film: the composition of the picture is always dominated by a large area of ​​loess, with continuous gullies and plateaus, mountain-shaped landforms that have been eroded by the years, with ups and downs, and the plateau is desolate, without any trace of life. The "yellow earth" looks warm, or indifferent, or barren, or deep, and always conveys a particularly heavy and depressing feeling. In the film, its significance is far from being a simple background of the story. The personified symbol of the nation.

When explaining the director's intention later, Chen Kaige said that he wanted to "take the northern Shaanxi Plateau, which has nurtured the Chinese nation and produced a splendid national culture, as the basic modeling material, and through the ancient and harmonious relationship between people and land that have existed since the clan society, The display of the most eternal relationship" to elicit some "useful thinking" Closed, conservative and helpless.The storyline of the movie is mainly to see the ignorance and backwardness of the people in this ancient land from the eyes of an enlightened person: Gu Qing, a literary and art worker of the Eighth Route Army who collected folk songs on the Loess Plateau, awakened the local girl Cuiqiao's yearning for a free life, But she couldn't resist her tragic fate as a woman. What she faced was the relatives who raised her, the kind of ignorance in peace and warmth, and finally she paid the price of death for her choice. The symbolic meaning of "Yellow Earth" lies in the conservative character deposited in the depths of national culture and the tragic sense of being unable to break free from destiny.

However, the value of the film does not stop at this conclusion, which clearly embodies the spirit of modern rationality, but expresses the complex feelings for the "yellow land" on a deeper level.This is expressed through the comparison of two big scenes in the movie, namely Ansai waist drum and farmers praying for rain.In the previous scene, the shaking camera, which is rare in the whole film, was used. In the mountains and plains, hundreds of young farmers were happily playing their waist drums, releasing their joy and endless energy, as if everything happened in an instant. It becomes lively; the latter scene is very depressing, with countless thin old farmers running slowly towards the end of the picture, conveying a feeling of bewilderment.Both of these scenes symbolize power, but the former signifies the aggressive force of life itself, the latter the blind, endless force.The film obviously intends to show that both are elements of the character of the Chinese nation, and they are the inevitable two sides of the national culture formed on this "yellow land"; and at the end of the film, Cuiqiao's younger brother is praying for rain The scene of running against the flow of people symbolizes that he is investing in a new life, and it seems to imply that the young vitality that has been suppressed under the ancient loess for a long time must be awakened and spurted out. one day. [[Comment:]]

1 "The "Root" of Literature" was published in No. 4 of "Writer" in 1985. 2, first published in the seventh issue of "Shanghai Literature" in 1984. 3, first published in the sixth issue of "People's Literature" in 1985. 4 "Shangzhou Chulu", first published in the fifth issue of "Zhongshan" in 1983. 5 The first four generations of Chinese film directors are: the "first generation" when Chinese film was born; the "second generation" in the 1930s and 1940s; the "third generation" in the 1950s; Middle-aged directors are the "fourth generation".

6 "Yellow Earth", adapted from Ke Lan's prose "Echo of the Deep Valley", written by Zhang Ziliang, produced by Guangxi Film Studio in 1984. 7 Chen Kaige: "How I Filmed "Yellow Earth"", "Selected Works on Chinese Film Theory" Volume 2, Culture and Art Publishing House, 1991 edition, p. 566.