Comment on Farewell My Concubine
Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige won the Palme d 'Or at the 46th Cannes Film Festival. The film tells a sad story about drama, dreams and life.
Peking Opera, or Peking Opera, has been flourishing and declining for more than 200 years since it was introduced to Beijing from Huiban, with the inside information and external appearance of authentic Central Plains culture. So many people regard Beijing Opera as the essence of traditional culture. Around Farewell My Concubine, the film shows the joys and sorrows of Duan Xiaolou, Cheng Dieyi and Juxian, which spans from the Republic of China to the Cultural Revolution.
When Cheng Dieyi played Yu Ji, she really reached the realm of "not crazy, not alive". This traditional culture has a peculiar charm, coupled with Cheng Dieyi's peculiar childhood experience, so Cheng Dieyi really sank into his "drama dream", changed his gender and personality, and became madly attached to Peking Opera, concubine and overlord Duan Xiaolou. This obsession and selflessness seems to have doomed his tragic fate from the beginning. In the alternation of times, he caused disaster by drama and avoided disaster by drama. He is obsessed with selflessness but decadent because of reality. The external expression of Beijing Opera loyalty is Cheng Dieyi's loyalty to Ji and his overlord Duan Xiaolou. This selfless love has created a beautiful life that is erratic and helpless. In the vicissitudes of life, Die Yi is destined to be born of drama, be infatuated with drama and die of drama. Drama is his dream and drama is his life.
Duan Xiaolou seems to be a more rational and realistic neutral figure. The overlord in the film seems to be struggling more in the cruelty of reality. He is more in a dilemma between his infatuation with Juxian and his younger brother Cheng Dieyi's "brother-loving complex". If Cheng Dieyi's attitude towards this drama is meticulous, then Duan Xiaolou is even more "degraded in personality". If the fate of Cheng Dieyi is exactly the same as that of Yu Ji, then the fate of Duan Xiaolou and Xiang Yu also has the same or similar metaphorical meaning. His personality determines that he is slow to respond in the cycle of history. Without Juxian, he might have been run over by the wheel of reality. Duan Xiaolou's play is always a real play, a new play, and his dream is destined to be an ideal and incomplete dream, and his life is full of glory and vicissitudes.
Juxian's special status determines that she will always be a realistic person. As a prostitute, she was saved by Duan Xiaolou as Duan Xiaolou's wife, so she always maintained Duan Xiaolou realistically, because if storytelling is Cheng Dieyi's dream, Duan Xiaolou is Juxian's dream. In the changes of the times, Juxian maintained her dream with her extraordinary wisdom. However, did she really get all of Duan Xiaolou? Did you really protect Duan Xiaolou? Don't! Half of Duan Xiaolou is destined to belong to the dramatist and his younger brother Cheng Dieyi.
Cheng Dieyi played by Leslie Cheung in the film is really superb, and ZhangFeng yi's performance seems to be somewhat feminine and domineering. Gong Li, the actor of Juxian, still has a touching charm.
Aesthetic and Cultural Imagination in Farewell My Concubine
The film Farewell My Concubine is adapted from the novel of the same name by Li Lihua, a Hong Kong woman writer. Li Lihua, who has many years of experience in film and television drama creation, is very good at describing the little people who are struggling between history and reality, dreams and reality, life and death, and are tortured by love. For example, in director Guan's "rouge buckle", a brothel woman becomes a ghost in order to find a lover; In Green Snake (directed by Tsui Hark), a thousand-year-old snake demon dedicated to love; "Heroes of the Qin Dynasty" is immortal for the journey of his lover through two thousand years (directed by Cheng Xiaodong); And in Farewell My Concubine, a famous Peking Opera actor whose heart is in the ancient times, regardless of drama. These characters, who are neither "ghosts" nor "demons", are ill-fated, and their souls are full of irretrievable conflicts between morality and love, dreams and reality; This contradictory character continues to create and continue their tragic fate. Full of infatuation and sympathy, the author writes elegies for these pathetic lower class or marginal figures with strange, sad and beautiful brushstrokes.
The reason why so many excellent film directors favor Li Bihua's novels is probably because the characters in Li Bihua's novels are detached from history, their fierce collision with the sense of morality and history, their reluctance to the secular, their transcendence of seeing through the world, and their vague disappointment that they don't know what will happen today and tomorrow, which inspired them to sing deeply.
Of course, as far as Farewell My Concubine is concerned, Chen Kaige made some changes to the original novel and made his own distinctive mark on the theme of the work. In a series of his films, Chen Kaige always pays attention to the characters' living conditions in extreme situations, and insists on expressing individual life choices: either weak compromise, or struggle, or generous death, or drag out an ignoble existence-the characters in his films are often thrown into extremely rebellious predicament for no reason at birth, and their life experiences are ups and downs, such as duckweed on the river; Most of their personalities are "forced" by the environment. When they encounter adversity, they force themselves to form a strong character the day after tomorrow. The core of this strong personality is transformed into a highly idealized infatuation and a fanatical dedication close to religious believers in the film. It can be seen that Chen Kaige borrowed Li Bihua's character situation and vague atmosphere, and at the same time greatly strengthened the paranoid side of the character, so that the symbolic meaning of reason can be accommodated.
Regarding the movie Farewell My Concubine, Chen Kaige said: "The movie is about the emotional story of two Peking Opera actors and a prostitute. This emotion lasted for fifty years, and experienced the vicissitudes of China society, as well as the great changes of their feelings and destiny. Leslie Cheung's Tsing Yi actor Cheng Dieyi is a dreamer in real life. In his personal world, the boundaries between ideal and reality, stage and life, men and women, truth and illusion, life and death are all fused together, so that when he finally drew his sword and committed suicide, we still felt that we were watching a beautiful drama. This character image tells us what infatuation is. " Based on this, we will focus on Cheng Dieyi.
Cheng Dieyi, a figure who only knows infatuation, has been abandoned and betrayed all his life. As the son of a prostitute, he was abandoned by his biological mother at the cost of amputation. In the arduous process of learning drama, he had to betray his gender for the ideal of life, and even completely abandoned the reality and plunged into the drama, regardless of gender, true or false; He and his brother Duan Xiaolou forged a brotherhood for many years, but they also broke up because of the latter's love with the prostitute Juxian. Xiao Si, an orphan apprentice raised by himself, not only betrayed his master, but also took the opportunity to fool him during the Cultural Revolution. Even Peking Opera, which he was crazy about until his death, was abandoned because of his stubbornness in the drama era, so that he could no longer perform on stage. Only at the end of my life did I "fulfill" myself: I drew my sword and killed myself on the stage or in front of the overlord: "That's it".
Then, let's briefly review the fate of Cheng Dieyi, and see how fate and history have created his infatuated character, and how his character has constantly caused him new tragedies. The evolution of Cheng Dieyi's drama career and his psychological course can be roughly divided into three stages:
First, the stage of "learning drama":
On the surface, this part of the author's pen and ink focuses on the deep brotherhood between Xiaodouzi and Xiaoshi in the process of learning drama, but actually reflects the transformation process of Xiaodouzi's identity-from rebellious character caused by humble origin to seeking spiritual ideal destination. His mother cut off his extra finger with a knife, suggesting the fate of Xiaodou from a man to a woman, which is quite symbolic of the castration of feudal cultural spirit: to survive, not only must you lose your personality (especially six fingers), but you must also lose your natural characteristics. The deep inferiority caused by humble birth made him burn the robe left by his mother angrily, in order to let his disciples see that he was "drawing a line" with his biological mother. Small beans have gone through countless hardships and tried to escape during the period. And my colleague's little lazarillo de tormes committed suicide because he couldn't bear the severe punishment under the crime of escape, which made him understand that people with his background really couldn't live without learning drama. Master Guan's teaching about Farewell My Concubine made him fully agree with the principle of self-realization, which actually strengthened the mythical highest ideology that individuals must belong to the collective belief in disguise (Chen Kaige's early film "The Military Parade" focused on the subtle psychology of individuals who are both rebellious and eager to belong to the collective power system). After that, Xiao Douzi gradually "realized" the play, "from male to female"-from consciousness to subconscious, she gradually recognized her gender/identity as a female role, which naturally reminded people of Qu Yuan's self-metaphor of "vanilla beauty".
As for the implication of Peking Opera itself in this film, many experts think that China's Peking Opera art "integrates traditional literature, music, dance, painting, folk art and acrobatics in one furnace, and integrates the essence of China's unique freehand aesthetic system", so it "has the implication that China's traditional art is a symbol of China's traditional culture" (the cultural implication of Luo Yijun's Farewell My Concubine). On the other hand, Farewell My Concubine, a traditional Peking Opera, praises and publicizes traditional Confucian values and ethics that have lasted for thousands of years, such as loyalty to the monarch, patriotism, chastity, chastity and so on. Even if it rises to the level of national spirit in the film, it is not an exaggeration. In the film, the disappearance of the natural character and nature of Xiaodouzi and the death of his small body also reveal the hypocrisy and cruelty inside this cultural spirit from a certain angle (people who leave the system and betray it will not come to a good end), just like Lu Xun's "cannibalism" feudal old culture.
Almost inhuman harsh training in the troupe and eunuch Zhang's abuse of Xiaodou further strengthened his identity as a woman, which can also be said to be from stubborn rebellion against traditional cultural spirit to compromise and even dedication. As a result, Xiao Douzi was finally completely "transformed" by the cultural spirit represented by Beijing Opera, and he could never jump out again. The main line of the film is Xiao Douzi's performance of Xiang Fan, which shows the process of gender/identity alienation from the innocent Xiao Douzi in karma to the charming and endless romantic on the stage. It can also be seen that in the old society, how history and culture hand in hand with fate left an indelible mark on a person's personality. These are the latent and initial stages of Cheng Dieyi's personal tragic fate after his humble birth.
Second, the stage of "singing opera":
This part focuses on the subtle relationship between Cheng Dieyi, Duan Xiaolou and Juxian, and the incompatibility between artistic ideal and real life, which can be regarded as the deepening of Cheng Dieyi's personal tragedy. The further alienation of Cheng Dieyi's personality/identity can be seen from his words and deeds in the three-person relationship. On the stage, he is like a duck to water, reaching the realm of "both men and women are present"; Under the stage, he is also "neither crazy nor alive": he regards his brother as his "overlord" and is crazy about him, dreaming of singing with him all his life. Juxian's intervention made him jealous. Please note that although from Cheng Dieyi's point of view, Duan Xiaolou's infatuation with another woman is a real betrayal to him (and this woman is a prostitute just like his mother), what he hates is not Xiao Lou, but Juxian. For Xiao Lou, he is just sad. At this time, Cheng Dieyi was almost the same as the abandoned wife in feudal society, and the ethical consciousness of feudal women had been implanted in his soul. As a man, he was assimilated by the female ethical consciousness in the feudal patriarchal society. So, he just begged for mercy and resented Duan Xiaolou, similar to the crazy jealousy of his wives and concubines towards Juxian. Further, it was Ju Xian who pulled Duan Xiaolou Xiao Lou from the idealized drama stage to the secular life, getting farther and farther away from the beautiful world of butterfly costume, which made Cheng Dieyi angry and desperate, reflecting the irreconcilable relationship between art and survival, ideal and reality, persistence and speculation.
After parting ways with Duan Xiaolou, Cheng Dieyi took care of nothing but drama: truth, shame, good and evil. He smokes a lot of cigarettes, fooling around with drama master Yuan, giving concerts for the Japanese, and living a decadent life. However, from the perspective of human nature, the director did not simply judge the character's right or wrong, but endowed the character with moral ambiguity, and attributed all his behavioral motives to his "love and hate" for the small building, which made the character more unified and three-dimensional in character and emotion.
If we interpret it from a deeper level, the symbolic meaning of the infatuation part of Cheng Dieyi's personality is more interesting. Cheng Dieyi, regardless of national dignity and national integrity, gave concerts for Japanese officers such as Aoki. This obvious motive can be explained by his concern for Duan Xiaolou. At the same time, it is also because he subconsciously idealized the art of Peking Opera and rose to political power and ideology, so he only recognized "drama" but not "country". As mentioned earlier, Peking Opera is the representative of China's traditional culture in this film, so for Cheng Dieyi, as long as he is singing Peking Opera, he is still a "China" person. Besides, in the history of China for thousands of years, the Central Plains, as the core of Chinese civilization, has been invaded by foreign countries many times, and the political power has also been seized by the so-called barbarian countries. However, in terms of culture, the Central Plains, which belongs to the core of Confucian cultural circle, has always been in a dominant state of cultural output. Every time foreign culture is absorbed, it virtually gives China people a sense of cultural superiority in the replacement of dynasties. This point, in the words of Master Guan in the film, is very clear, that is, "the reason why people are human is to play;" If you don't play, you are not a person. " Therefore, judging from Cheng Dieyi's logic of "treason and never betraying opera", only singing opera itself is the most important thing, and it doesn't seem to matter who you sing for. When confessing the crime of "traitor" in court, "If Aoki were still alive, Peking Opera would have spread to Japan", Yuan's defense of "quintessence of Chinese culture" and who he sang indiscriminately behind the film can all be regarded as meaningful innuendos to the same motif.