It is well known that many of the “forbidden films” made in China can be regarded as masterpieces.
For example, “Furong Town” directed by Xie Jin.
The in-depth criticism of society and human nature is not outdated today.
Uncle Yu just talked with you some time ago.
However, many people do not know that in addition to this one, Xie Jin has another work, which is called “the first forbidden film in China” by netizens.
The scale is not inferior to Furong Town.
In the play, there is a love between old and young people who “destroy the three outlooks”.
In addition to the drama, it involves a serial murder case that has caused nationwide sensation.
Moreover, even if the gag of forbidden film is removed.
This work 30 years ago is still exciting and thought-provoking today.
The creative concept behind it echoes the current problems of domestic films – “The Old Man and the Dog”
In recent years, this film has become popular on the short video platform.
It is not because of the film itself.
But because of the strange news outside the opera.
In the 1990s, there was an appalling case of “dog cannibalism” in Ningxia.
The criminal Cheng Peng killed six people by shooting and choking his neck.
After that, the body was dismembered and meat was removed and fed to more than 20 dogs.
Finally, Cheng Peng was executed according to law, and the “cannibal dog” was also executed.
It is shocking that before being caught, this pervert killer and his cannibal dog were the movie stars who made the most of the show.
In that year, Xie Jin and the crew of “The Old Man and the Dog” started shooting in the film and television city of Zhenbeibao, Ningxia.
Director Xie Jin attaches great importance to the role selection of dogs and recruits “dog actors” from the whole society through radio, television, newspapers and other media before starting.
After a series of auditions, a small yellow dog of Cheng Peng from Ningxia Institute of Forestry Sciences was finalized.
The owner, Cheng Peng, was invited to act as the dog trainer and the stand-in of the leading actor, Xing Laohan, to participate in the shooting.
Therefore, after the incident, when watching the warm picture of people and dogs snuggling closely in the film, it is hard to avoid thinking about it.
Of course, the images in the film are quite different.
In the film, it is a small hyena that is kept in the countryside.
Yellow miscellaneous hair, cute appearance.
He is gentle and kind.
They bark at strangers, but never bite.
It doesn’t make people think of “evil dog” at all.
The dog owner Xing Laohan in the film is also a kind and simple man.
He is an extremely ordinary rural old man.
In his sixties, he was alone.
Living in an old adobe house, this dog is the only one that accompanies us day and night.
But in the general environment of collective production in the early 1970s, his situation was not miserable.
Although there is no land, he is a good hand in labor. He can grow vegetables and drive cars.
The paid work can also guarantee personal food and clothing.
A dog and an old man constitute a warm and unusual picture.
When the old man ploughed, the dog wagged its tail and followed closely.
He will also help dig out some potatoes from the soil and give them to the old man.
The old man is also used to giving a few bites to the dog when eating.
When going far away, the dog will run a long way to see him off.
When he returned home, he would rush forward to meet him excitedly, wagging his tail far away.
The old man has no culture, so he calls him “dog”.
He is always silent, but when he is with the dog, he talks a lot.
I often sit under the eaves and touch the dog while talking to it.
“Where have you been today? Do I have enough?”
Treat dogs as family completely.
However, the film is not about old people and dogs.
It mainly tells the love story between a 60-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman.
Xie Tian, the actor of Old Man Xing, was 79 years old at that time.
Siqin Gaowa, who plays his wife, is still in middle age.
This pair of CP, young and old, will inevitably have a shocking impression today.
But under the special historical background, the warmth and moving far outweighed the strange emotion.
The meeting between an old man and a woman is completely the result of good intentions.
In 1972, the neighboring provinces were hit by drought, and countless victims left their homes to beg for a meal and save a mouth for their families to eat.
A woman is one of them. She has been starving for many days. When she passed the old man Xing’s house, she was exhausted and begged for some food.
Before the words were finished, the dog rushed over and barked, scaring her to the ground.
Old man Xing raised his head when he heard the barking of the dog.
He quickly picked up the fallen woman, comforted her that the dog did not bite, and helped her to sit in the room.
Hearing that she was a poor fugitive, she quickly handed over the sweet potato and immediately made a face under the kitchen.
A hot meal will be served soon.
Seeing the cold outside, I also advised her to take a rest before starting.
The woman was flattered. Although she said nothing, her face was full of gratitude.
They met by chance and buried their gratitude with kindness.
But after being stirred up, this feeling has other meanings.
When the production team saw that old man Xing was absent from work, they came to find out the situation.
I learned that there was a refugee woman in the family of old man Xing. There were two children and father-in-law in the family, but there was no man.
After this exchange, he moved his mind.
He tried to persuade the refugee girl to stay and cook a meal for old man Xing.
After hearing this, the refugee girl reacted vaguely.
She knew that this meant that she no longer had to live in the streets and starve.
But she also understands what it means to live together with a man and a woman, not to mention that the other party is an old man and she has two children.
She didn’t respond clearly and looked shy with her head down.
But gave the answer with action——
When Old Man Xing went out for a while, she scrubbed the stove clean, and the bottles and jars were neatly arranged.
The room with messy black paint suddenly lit up.
The two people live together formally.
Old man Xing shaved off his beard, cleaned it up on purpose, and became much younger.
He also bought a new dress for the refugee girl, and took her to the market to eat outside.
There is a feeling that young people are in love.
The embarrassment caused by the age difference has also been gradually erased in daily life.
At first, they slept on one side across the kang table.
Then they lay together naturally.
Old Xing’s back itched, and he was not ashamed to call for a woman to scratch.
When the refugee girl approached, she suddenly hugged him and cried her gratitude.
Old man Xing was also deeply moved, saying that he did not expect to feel love and kindness after living for so many years.
Dogs have witnessed their emotional changes throughout the process.
From barking at a woman at the beginning, to gradually letting her touch, wagging her tail and rubbing it affectionately.
When shouting at others again, the woman turns back and comforts others, “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t bite”, and has become the hostess.
Later, for some reason, their feelings changed and the two parted ways again.
The woman stood at the intersection and watched the old man go away with tears in her eyes.
She didn’t leave a word to the old man, but she held the dog tightly and shouted her repressed feelings at it.
Dogs have become the emotional connection and spiritual consolation between them.
Women’s special feelings for dogs are not just about loving the dog.
She can feel the familiar loneliness and warmth from the dog.
The old man began to ask the woman’s name, and the woman was stunned and said, “You can call me” female “.
It is very similar to family members who have no name but call them “dogs”.
They are all the same. They have no name and nothing to rely on, but they have unexpectedly regained their value and love.
When I watch this film again today, the biggest feeling is actually “absurd”.
The love between the old and the young is feudal in avantgarde and sad in sincerity.
As in The Horse Shepherd, this is a marriage in a special era that is “matched” and “matched” by the organization.
Fortunately, the protagonist in the film happens to be a kind and simple person who can hold the heavy suffering.
At the end of the film, the reason why the old man and the woman are separated is also ironic.
A woman is a rich farmer. In the words of the characters in the film, “it is more difficult than she has a man.”.
Finally, women are tired by birth, unable to move, and unable to leave their children, so they choose to leave home.
After the woman left, another new movement came.
Dogs were killed on the grounds of “insufficient production and saving rations”.
The absurdity of the times has completely broken through the bottom line that ordinary people can imagine and understand.
The film focuses on the fate of the bottom workers in such absurd years.
Old man Xing is a farmer who only knows how to work hard.
I don’t understand political trends, have no stand or inclination, and live by intuition and experience.
His relationship with women is not so much love as the mutual warmth of two poor people in a lack environment.
One is a refugee woman, and the other is an elderly man.
Cooking in partnership and cooperative production are the unique marriage relationship of that era.
However, because of the alienation from politics, a vivid image of the bottom workers shows a glimmer of humanity beyond the times.
The old man’s innocence and sincerity often seem out of tune with secular laws.
For example, the old man could not move the house for women, and when he saw that women were worried about their children and mothers-in-law, he said generously that they could take over and raise them together.
The old man saw that women like dogs, and said to the woman, I’ll call you a dog his mother.
In the face of the already distorted environment, the old man’s naivety does not show his foolishness, but makes him a rare person to tell the truth.
When the refugee girl whispered that she was from a rich peasant, he wondered what about the rich peasant. Now, not all of them are so poor.
In order to catch up with production, the leader launched a “dog beating campaign”. He said bluntly:
“I have never heard of any family that let dogs eat poor, and I have never heard of any country that is poor because people keep dogs. In the old society, beggars also lead dogs!”
The essence of this film is similar to the expression in “Furong Town”.
The difference is that there is no hideous and distorted negative image in this film.
Everyone is as reasonable and kind as the old man.
When they saw that the old man had married a young woman, they were happy for him. They shaved the old man tenderly and bought clothes.
When seeing the woman leaving, comforting the old man, he also spoke for the woman, saying that she must be in trouble.
The real killer behind the dog fight pushed the invisible “above” in their mouth.
The political environment has been highly abstracted into bursts of torrential rain.
What we can see is the people who are under duress. It seems that they have done nothing wrong, but they have no choice. They have gone to the bottomless suffering step by step.
The old man doesn’t want much.
Without a nominal marriage, it is acceptable to live in partnership.
After being abandoned, you can also live alone with the company of a dog.
But at the end of the compromise, there was nothing.
Even his dog was taken and killed
Like the end of “Hidden in the Dust and Smoke”, the little light on the bottom of the small people has also been completely extinguished, and life has slipped into a complete tragedy.
Naturally, this film is bolder in scale, with many frank criticisms and satires on the historical environment.
At that time, Xie Jin also said that he did not expect to pass the examination.
Moreover, he was not only subject to censorship.
From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, there was a cultural debate about Xie Jin’s film model.
Thanks to Xie Jin’s early creation of a large number of mainstream ideological films, such as “Women’s Basketball No.5”, “Stage Sisters” and “Legend of Tianyun Mountain”, which were widely praised by the public.
Some critics accuse his works of being too stylized, catering to the traditional morality that good people are suffering and bad people are affected, and lacking modern consciousness.
Others support him, believing that he has a strong sense of historical mission and national anxiety.
After the debate, Xie Jin filmed “The Bell of Qingliang Temple” and “The Last Noble”.
Although the box office and public praise are not good, they are deliberately breaking through the previous model and style, trying to alienate the grand narrative and expand individual experience.
After that, “The Old Man and the Dog” is more like a return to the original heart.
He went back to the 1970s, where he was familiar with, and continued to relentlessly attack the history of blasphemy, and the camera was once again aimed at those kind but poor little people.
It is just that there is no violent conflict and rugged plot in the early works, but it becomes more peaceful and diluted.
This film is also valuable. Even under the pressure of censorship and public opinion, Xie Jin made such a critical film.
There was no compromise for review and no compromise for public opinion.
In art, there is no self-replication, but continuous exploration and refinement in the consistent expression.
His courage stems from his trust in the market. He said, “I believe that there is a market for fine arts in China.”
This is not so much his blind optimism about the environment as his adherence to his own beliefs.
Because, he also said that only the artistic conscience of generations of creators can awaken the conscience of viewers and reshape the film market.
So far, 30 years have passed, and the era of light and shadow led by Xie Jin has also gone.
The film “The Old Man and the Dog” only attracted attention because it involved a bizarre murder case, but back to the film itself, there are obviously more problems worth paying attention to——
Today, 30 years later, the film environment has changed and the era proposition has changed.
But there is always something that is more worth sticking to than change.
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