Which is more important, Romanian wedding or Stalin's funeral? | "Silent Wedding"

​If your wedding and the funeral of a great leader conflict, how should you choose? I think the Chinese and Romanians have roughly the same memory on this point, that there is no choice.

I would like to recommend a Romanian movie "Silent Wedding". It tells the story of a couple in a Romanian village in 1953. On the day of their wedding, a couple was informed that Stalin had died. What should the villagers do?

The film, shot in 2008, is not long, only 87 minutes. The beginning of the film is a modern story. A film crew went to a deserted place and wanted to shoot some curious stories to record the changes of the times. The mayor told the film crew that this place used to be a village. During the communist period, the village was pushed to build a factory. , Now capitalism wants to destroy this place and restore it to a village and a holiday resort.

However, the film crew saw a very strange scene in this abandoned factory or village. A bride in a wedding dress flashed by, and a group of elderly women in black were holding candles and praying.

The film crew director asked the mayor what happened here, and the mayor brought back the memory of half a century ago, in 1953.

In an ordinary Romanian village, a couple is in love and preparing to get married. Middle-aged and elderly men are playing dirty jokes in a tavern. Political activists are the clowns of the village, and the village chief is a Soviet bastard. The gypsy circus came to the village. Everyone was like the "unseen countrymen" in the classic Eastern European literature. They dressed neatly, took pictures, ate snacks, bought things to watch and had fun. The story here is a bit boring comedy, a worldly one. Peach Blossom Spring.

The first tragedy appeared, the slow-motion cheerful scene, the quiet background music, everything was so soothing and warm, with a sudden heart-piercing scream, the girl's body was found in the woods, her hands She was holding a bloody medal. The murderer was a Soviet army stationed nearby, and the villagers buried the girl.

Then the bigger tragedy began. On the day of their wedding, the village chief brought the Soviet chief to tell the villagers that Stalin had died and all activities had to stop.

The villagers had no room to bargain and had to comply, but not fully. They quietly packed the tables, chairs, tableware, and food, and when they arrived at the couple's home in the evening, the wedding was held as usual, but they couldn't make a sound.

This is the most comedic plot in the whole film, and it is also the part of Biao's acting skills. The cunning of the common people in Eastern European literature is vividly reflected. When the great leader walks by, you should bow and fart silently.

In order not to make a sound, the groom's father put away the cutlery, and the guests could only eat with their hands.

If a person farts louder, he must be watched by all the people.

The musicians blocked the instruments with cloth and played silently.

Children were made to laugh and adults covered their mouths.

When people tell jokes, they can only beat drums and pass flowers.

Until it rained and thundered outside, people felt that the sound of thunder could cover up the sound of joy, and the Soviet army would not find out, so they thoroughly sang and danced.

There are still ten minutes left in the movie at this point, and if it ends here, it's a very good satirical comedy. However, the truth is not beautiful, the Soviets still found them, the tank crashed into the house where the wedding was held, all the men were taken away, only one little boy remained, he was the mayor who grew up at the beginning of the film, the village All the women here have lost fathers, husbands and sons.

That's why the village was abandoned.

After the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, a number of scarred films appeared in the countries of the former socialist camp. These films often carried dual reflections on ideology and nationalism. In these films, the Soviets often played a similar image to the Germans. The invaders who also override the locals, and ideology provides legitimacy and beautification for this override and oppression. It seems that the "class brothers" can transcend the state and the nation, but in fact only one party has to be transcended .

So it's not Ceausescu's funeral (his funeral was presumably a national cheer), but Stalin's, how the death of a foreign head of state ruins the happiness and even the lives of his own people.

"Silent" is an obvious metaphor. Under political pressure, people's only wisdom is how to deal with power. Weddings must be held, not because someone who has nothing to do with them dies. Someone unrelated to you has the power to kill you, so you have to hold the wedding without making a sound.

But the result is crueler than we imagined. Nasir Din's cleverness under the nest is useless. There may be room for loose power, but it must not be laughed at. Looseness is only a technical problem, and being ridiculed is a matter of authority.

In the movie, the Soviet Union plays a powerful and "advanced" image at the beginning, they have tanks, they are going to power up the village, and they will show a movie in the village, of course, the Soviet military parade movie, and the image of the villagers is rude, Men can't do anything but drink alcohol, they speak vulgar and stupid dialects and jokes are vulgar. At the end, the "advanced" power, like law enforcement, wiped out the two-faced people who cheated and played tricks.

From the point of view of the Soviet army, this is probably a story about "indoctrination", bringing technology to the backward areas, but also bringing discipline to them, building bridges, paving roads and pulling wires, and forbidding them to laugh during the funeral of the great leader, As a result, this group of ignorant peasants did not know the good and the bad.

Indoctrination means shaping the collective imagination, which means you have to believe that someone you have never met is important to you, and if you don't believe it and express it at the same time, you will be punished. The fact that Romanians couldn't have weddings because of Stalin's death was just the end result, the story probably started much earlier, even before they knew Stalin's name, Stalin's orders had already started to change their lives.

Fortunately, this centralization means that only a single leader can enjoy the highest funeral honor of prohibiting others from holding weddings, and he can only die once.