Moral stories are put on the screen, and real rural areas are "hidden in dust and smoke"

After watching "Into the Dust", I couldn't get back to my senses in my seat.

After all, the last movie that featured a female star's disfigured acting skills was "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit", which portrayed a northwest rural woman who persisted in resistance. Thirty years later, I never expected that Chinese farmers would still appear on the screen with such a silent, passive and moral image. Domestic film critics have also been busy hailing it as "a long poem dedicated to the land", "a long love poem rooted in rural China" and "filming the inner logic and sacred brilliance of farmers' lives".

Is this a regression for society, filmmakers, or the audience?

1. "Issey Miyake" of a good old man

The core of "Into the Dust" is the story of a good old man. From this point of view, it is not novel and even a bit old-fashioned.

The protagonist is a couple from director Li Ruijun's hometown in the countryside in Gansu. The very beginning is their blind date. The male protagonist Ma Youtie is a poor and dull old bachelor, played by the director's uncle who is an amateur. The female protagonist Cao Guiying is disabled and played by professional actor Hai Qing.

When their elder brother let them go on a blind date like a burden, these two middle-aged people and a donkey started their new life from scratch: moving, farming, raising chickens, building houses, and looking forward to saving money for medical treatment and shopping. TV set. And their means of production are the most primitive - plowing the fields with animal power, building houses with mud bricks, and straw mat roofs, as if they were stuck a few decades ago.

Guiying's biggest need in modern society is to watch TV. Thirty years ago, Zhou Xiaowen's "Ermo" captured the image of rural women working hard to save money to buy a TV.

Because of poverty and disability, they are the lowest and marginalized people in the village. Not only was there no one to help with such a big thing as building a house, but they also had no part in the gossip team at the entrance of the village. They usually had no contact with others and were treated almost like pariahs. When we ask for help, villagers and relatives take the initiative to come to our door and ask for help.

Out of touch with both the times and the surrounding society, Youte and Guiying seem to be two lone heroes, relying only on their own hands to make a living. They moved three times and their houses were demolished three times. After the new house they built by themselves was demolished by bulldozers, the movie ended the "Miyake Issey" of this miserable couple.

Deprived of almost all outside resources, the couple was endowed with the best qualities.

Youtie is not only good at farming and building houses, but he also agrees to other people's requests without hesitation. The third brother asked him to pull furniture for his nephew's wedding, and he agreed; he didn't have a share in the wedding banquet, and was only given a plastic bag of packed food, and he didn't protest; he also took good care of animals and loved his donkey. When demolishing the house, I couldn't even bear to hurt the swallows on the wall.

One of the central storylines in the movie is even more exaggerated: For the benefit of the village, Youtie ignores his wife's objections and repeatedly volunteers to donate blood to the boss who owns the land in the village.

Youtie is portrayed as a fairy tale-like altruist with a strong sense of morality. His compassion for all things makes the audience sympathize with his and Guiying's fate.

Starting from scratch on a piece of yellow sand is a metaphor for the couple's "entrepreneurial" story.

2. Moral narrative with blurred focus

The male protagonist reminds me of a fairy tale once written by Wilde called "The Faithful Friend". The poor gardener Hans had a rich miller friend, who tried every means to take advantage of Hans in the name of friendship. At the end of the story, Hans was caught in a storm on his way to help the miller and drowned in the swamp.

There is nothing wrong with the morality tale itself. Wilde could write it, and Li Ruijun could certainly film it. However, although altruism is a noble character, emphasizing this character in an unequal power relationship always makes people feel that something is wrong.

The boss who rents land in the village is seriously ill and needs a blood transfusion. As the only person in the village with matching blood types, Ma Youtie agrees to donate blood for free under the persuasion of the whole village, because only if the boss survives, can he pay the land rent and water he owes to the village. Pay back the fee. No matter how blind you are, you can see the metaphor of this setting: the blood of farmers is being sucked dry and squeezed out.

The seriously ill boss and his son claimed that they refused to pay the rent because the corn was not sold, but the family still drove expensive cars and lived a life of luxury and entertainment. They deliberately deducted the farmers' money when using corn to pay for the rent. rent.

In the face of obvious injustice, You Ti's attitude is "one size fits all". No matter how others bully him, he will not argue or quarrel. He abides by his moral code of treating others well, repaying evil with kindness, and even does not forget it when donating blood. He told the boss's son to return the villagers' land rent and the village's water fee as soon as possible.

We can praise him for adhering to his creed, but we must also ask: When the boss does not keep his promises to the farmers and only knows how to suck blood, how meaningful is this morality?

Is Ma Youtie's insistence on morality the heroism of "seeing through the truth of life but still loving life", or a false consciousness of "everyone has his own destiny"?

No matter what attitude You Tie holds, he is ultimately powerless. It's just that when a new disaster comes unexpectedly, the audience is gradually moved by the misfortune of the two people. Maybe they only remember to "sorrow for their misfortune" and forget to "anger for not fighting".

This is where the moral narrative is thin.

Although farmers in the real world are as honest and courteous as him, they rarely accept the situation without a bottom line and allow others to exploit them. But the problem is that if the farmers have some resistance, they will not be as morally perfect as the horses with iron. And the director needs the "perfect underdog" to win the audience's sympathy.

Because in real life, rural areas are often synonymous with backwardness and ignorance. But few people would think that under the pressure of a huge unfair external environment, requiring them to maintain "morality" itself is not necessarily a moral expectation.

For example, some land contracted by companies to grow corn is often stolen during harvest time. While accusing farmers of stealing and lacking the spirit of contract, have you ever thought about how companies obtain farmers’ consent when leasing land? Is the land rent farmers receive reasonable? Is there any overt or covert coercion? Is it like the film says that there is a delay in paying the land rent?

The reason why such "immoral" behavior as stealing corn exists is because farmers cannot express their consent through formal channels and cannot obtain reasonable returns. Looking at it this way, this kind of "immoral" behavior is not so unbearable compared to the oppression cloaked in a "contract".

Under such a reality, simply discussing morality without exploring the complex situations faced by farmers can only be a harsh criticism.

And this movie seems to just want to arouse the audience's sympathy for their unfortunate fate through "poetic pictures" and characters full of moral sense. But anyone who has some understanding of China's rural issues knows that farmers don't have to be kind and merciful to deserve sympathy. The injustice they experience is itself worthy of attention and gives them legitimacy to resist.

3. Partial truth does not represent reality

Many viewers thought they had seen real labor scenes in the film for the first time in a long time. On the screen, the audience saw the farming process from sowing, weeding, harvesting, and flour grinding, as well as the house building process from mixing mud and bricks to putting up beams and roofs. Therefore, many film critics' first evaluation of this film is "real".

The most realistic part of the film is undoubtedly the "Three Sides of Light" water channel, named after it is made of cement on three sides. At the end of the film, Guiying accidentally fell into the ditch and drowned. While repairing rivers and collecting water flow, they also destroy the vegetation of the original rivers and increase the flow speed. As a result, drowning accidents often occur in rural areas.

But the reality of the labor scene does not mean that the other settings in the film are so real.

For example, even if mature male laborers like Youtie still stay on the land and work on the land, they often go to work in cities during slack periods for cash income, while women are the heads of the household. In movies, this ideal scene of "men and women match up and work is not tiring" is actually very rare.

For another example, even if Guiying is isolated because of his physical disability, a good old man like Ma Youtie who is down-to-earth and hard-working, and a local, will generally have good popularity even if he is poor, and will not be as lonely as in the movie. .

Ma Youtie's soft-spoken, gentle way of speaking is rarely seen among farmers in the northwest. Even the tender interaction between the couple is suspicious. Many viewers on Douban who had watched the film in February even recalled the experience of the "girl in chains" that outraged the nation at that time.

And Ma Youtie often comes out with philosophical lines about land and life (interestingly, Guiying, who is delicate and thoughtful, has rarely been assigned such lines), which originally came from the simple opinions of farmers. But after being carefully arranged by the director, the film becomes less like the life of an ordinary farmer and more like a fable about farmers.

In a scene where two people are planting autumn vegetables, Guiying uses the length of his feet to measure the distance between sowing seeds. This is a common practice in rural areas. But Youtie popped up another golden sentence here: In this way, you will leave your footprints in the soil.

The most terrible thing is that this unreal life has been called "real" by various film critics. On this basis, the audience also felt moved by the simple workers and even spiritually purified.

If this film makes the audience pay attention to the countryside and sympathize with the farmers, then there is nothing wrong with it. However, I am worried that for people who do not understand the countryside, the film may give a misleading impression of the countryside. For example: Is the decline of rural farmers inevitable? Is it enough to just express emotional sympathy for the "eliminated" farmers? Are farmers really trapped on the land without help?

Can the sense of reality of "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit" still appear in today's movies?

The director had the ironclad words to say: What can Maizi say when it is blown around by the wind? What can wheat say when it is pecked by a flying sparrow? What can the wheat say if it is eaten by its own donkey? Cut off by summer's sickle, what can the wheat say?

It is certainly a good idea to use a grain of wheat to describe the relationship between farmers and the land. But farmers are not wheat. Being silent and willing to be oppressed is not their way of life for thousands of years, and I don't want this film to reinforce this wrong stereotype.

As for those viewers who were moved by the movie, wipe away their tears, maybe it’s time to get to know the real villages and farmers?

图片均为官方海报、剧照或与影片截图

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