For me born in 1980s, this is an old movie. I found this film by chance. I accidentally saw an interview with Lu Chuan. When the reporter asked him how he got on the road to film, he mentioned Red Sorghum, Jiang Wen and Gong Li. It was this film that made him fall in love with movies and decided to devote himself to the film industry.
I like Lu Chuan's movies very much. A movie "Hoh Xil" is enough to make me infatuated with him for a lifetime. His films are very special, as if they were out of the mainstream. So I pay special attention to everything he mentioned. So, I looked for Red Sorghum, but I didn't deliberately adjust my mind to watch it. I ate the food I bought in front of the computer. In order not to look monotonous, I played a movie to entertain me.
The film is a story told through the third person's mouth, and the picture fades into Gong Li's young face. It was a simple wedding, and then I met a robber on the road. Jiang Wen and Gong Li met and lived together without twists and turns. The China people in the movie are so simple that even the robbers or bandits don't show real evil. Everything is so plain, and no one is deliberately described as brave or evil.
Even if you marry an old man with leprosy, or fall into the clutches of robbers, kill a robber and kill an old man. Be despised. People in that era had an incomprehensible tenacity to suffering and a historical indifference to life and even life.
It seems that China at that time was so kind and simple, and everyone was honest. Whether porters, brewers, robbers ... they are indifferent to their duties. There is no vigorous love, and no one is smarter and nobler than anyone else. Every character in it is not like a movie, but like a simple life around him. Such a quiet and peaceful sorghum field was trampled by Japanese wheels.
It was in that sorghum field that the Japanese began a cruel spiritual rule. Let the butcher skin people. In the eyes of Japan, these two reactionaries are a bandit with three guns and a Lohan who has been away for several years. Facing the Japanese, they are all real heroes of flesh and blood. Director Zhang Yimou did not take this opportunity to show off the theme of the Anti-Japanese War, nor did he turn China people's deep memory of that period of history into a Ah Q-style description in the film.
There are no concrete pictures of Japanese brutality, no flattering faces of traitors in China, and no organized and disciplined "armed forces behind enemy lines". This is just a small corner of that history, and it is a silent historical story. There is no patriotic slogan shouting against Japanese imperialism, and there is no so-called hero and tough guy who would rather die than surrender. They set out to avenge a brother, drank several bowls of red sorghum wine, took simple weapons and went to the "battlefield".
The battle is so peaceful, the scorching sun is in the sky, and a group of people are leisurely and calmly waiting for the arrival of Japanese vehicles, or taking a nap on the ground or driving away mosquitoes around them. Because the waiting time was too long, I asked the children to go home and find someone to deliver the meal. The life-and-death resistance was described by Zhang Dao as so beautiful and peaceful.
There are often folk songs in northern Shaanxi in movies, and a rude man uses his singing to crush the vast and empty sorghum field. There are also festive suona played during the war, as well as nursery rhymes sung by children against the red sky. No crying, no complaining, no panic ... This is what happened in the red sorghum field. This is the bridal chamber of the hero and heroine, the slaughterhouse of the Japanese, the raw material producing area of sorghum wine, and the place where the battle was sacrificed. Sorghum fields have grown from scratch, and they are still long after falling down. The story is repeated in this sorghum field.
Sorghum is not red, but there are too many red elements in the movie. Bride's hijab and sedan chair, red sorghum wine brewed, fierce and heavy red after the solar eclipse. This is the overall memory of a generation of history, and it is also the memory that Zhang Dao wants to show to the audience. It has been half a century. Gorgeous looking back, no smoke, no gunshots, no blood, no screams, all things related to sound can't be found, only the red on the side of that day is an indelible memory.
I like the plain life in the movies very much. Although marriage is a business, although there are bandits and Japanese devils, the simple and quiet sorghum land is irreplaceable in today's material society. Now that love is free, marriage is still not free, and there are so many people around who betray themselves and pursue so-called happiness. I used to be forced by my parents, but now I choose by myself. As for bandits, they are now a dime a dozen, even more ferocious than the Japanese in those days.
As the survey proves, the happiness of China people who have food and clothing is declining ... (saving countless harmonious speeches)
I deeply miss that sorghum field!