"Hidden in the Dust": The Love Myth of the "Forsaken"

 　　"Hidden in the Dust" was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival in February this year. It is also the only Chinese-language film in the main competition unit of the three major European international film festivals in the past three years. The whole play does not mention suffering, but the bitterness is beyond the sky; the whole play does not mention love, but love goes deep into the bone marrow.

　　"Hidden in the Dust" is a film that is difficult to define easily. It is like a documentary. It has no ups and downs, only laborers. You can even learn how to farm, raise chickens, and harvest food. It is completely out of mechanical automation. It is also like an "Oriental Fable" in which the protagonist sits on the ridge and speaks philosophical lines. Many people questioned that this is not like the men and women in the rural northwest, but more like a utopian fantasy. But no matter what, the movie made the audience cry.

The local wind blows the deepest love

　　The story takes place in Huaqiangzi Village, Luocheng Township, Gaotai County, Zhangye City, Gansu Province, and is about the trivial life of two farmers. The man is called Ma Youtie, and he is the fourth oldest in the family. His brothers were called gold, silver, and bronze, but he was the only one who was "iron", as if he was born with a hammer.

　　After the death of his parents and two older brothers, he stayed at his third brother's house to work for a long time. He is taciturn and only knows how to work hard. He only has a donkey, and he is a broken bachelor who is ignored by the village. The villagers introduced him to a person named Cao Guiying. Guiying's fate is more tragic than Youtie. She was abused by her family since she was a child. She slept in a donkey shed, was beaten a lot, suffered from an unnamed disease, had urinary incontinence, and always wet her pants. She had scoliosis, trembling hands, and she walked with a limp. Gui Ying, who lost her fertility and ability to work, was undoubtedly sentenced to a social death sentence in the countryside. She disliked her brother and sister-in-law and threw her to the bachelor Ma Youtie like a piece of junk. So, two people who were abandoned by the whole world picked up each other.

　　Gui Ying can't express more than horses have iron. This cowardly woman rarely speaks, but the first time she speaks loudly is for horses to have iron. Zhang Yongfu, the richest man in the village, is ill and needs to lose "panda blood". Only Ma Youtie and Zhang Yongfu have the same blood type. Standing beside Ma Youtie, Gui Ying said timidly and firmly, "We won't go!" Director Li Rui said in an interview, "Gui Ying feels that she, who has never been treated kindly in her whole life, has finally found her in a man. Since she has the most basic right to be cared for as a human being, she also has to fight for Ma Youtie." But in the end, Ma Youtie went to donate blood. The pressure of the villagers is like an invisible gun against Ma Youtie: Zhang Yongfu still owes the village a lot of rent and utility bills. If he dies, everyone's money will be gone.

　　Guiying and Youtie went to donate blood in Zhang Yongfu's son's BMW. The first time, Guiying accidentally urinated in the car, and the second time, the back seat of the BMW was covered tightly with plastic film. Every time they go to donate blood, Zhang Yongfu's house will be filled with meals to entertain them, but every time they don't move their chopsticks, they just insist: You must remember to pay back the money to the villagers. Gui Ying looked at the man uneasy, worried that the blood would be drawn to death. It is between these two "broken" people that the most healthy feelings in the world are born.

　　You Tie led the donkey cart and went to the city to help Sange pull furniture. By chance, he saw a pink coat in a clothing store by the roadside. He was obsessed with buying this coat for Guiying to cover her pants that were always wet. But the reality is that he can't even come up with 80 yuan. Zhang Yongfu's son passed by in a BMW, bought the coat, and gave it to Youtie. You Tie also knew that if you took this coat, you would have to go to donate blood in the future. You Tie brought new clothes and drove a donkey cart when he saw Gui Ying who was waiting for him to go home at the bridge at the entrance of the village. She took a flashlight and shone on the dark night road, stood crooked in the cold wind, and took out a hot water tank from her arms-she ran home four times before the hot water could keep the temperature. She tossed like this just so that Youtie could take a sip of hot water as soon as possible. This is also the first time that two clumsy people have prepared a gift for each other.

　　There is very little dialogue between the two in the film, and the shots only change with the seasons. Director Li Rui said: "We are all waiting for more time, waiting for the arrangement of time and destiny, just like farmers give their destiny to the land and time, we also give the fate of the film to the land and time. "In summer, when the wheat has set ears, there is iron using 6 grains of wheat to press a small flower in Guiying's hand, and Guiying weaves a little donkey out of weeds. The couple climbed onto the roof to sleep, and You Tie would use a rope to tie Gui Ying to the waistband of her trousers, lest she would roll off the roof. In the autumn, Guiying got the wheat rash. You Tie took her to take a bath in the ditch and rubbed her back. The lights of the roadside came over, and the two laughed in fright. There is iron to carry Guiying to the donkey cart, and a groove will be laid on the wheat stack in advance to make her sit more stably. In their lives, nothing happened that deserves attention in urban discourse. It's just farming, harvesting, driving cars, fetching water, building houses, raising chickens, and feeding donkeys.

　　However, "Love is the only fair thing God has given to mankind", and can also contain great power in the life that is not cared for.

reincarnation of wheat

　　In this family of "broken people", there are no children, but many animals surround them. And the relationship between the two and the animals reflects the way they treat the world - the people at the bottom will have compassion compared to the animals at the bottom of their own. They are reluctant to watch animals suffer, and would rather suffer themselves, which is a primitive kindness.

　　Ma with iron almost never rides his donkey. He always walks ahead, leading the donkey to move slowly. At the beginning of the film, the donkey stole the wheat from the house, and the third brother was so angry that he beat the donkey. Youtie was so uncomfortable that he couldn't even eat, so he went to comfort the donkey secretly. Yutie went to the city to pull furniture. After walking all day, it was dark when he got home. The third brother scolded him for dawdling. .

　　In order to raise chickens, You Tie borrowed 10 eggs from the neighbors and hatched chickens at the temperature of electric lamps. "Chicken babies come out of their shells, and whoever they see is the mother at first sight." The two marginalized people embrace the simple fertility ideal and protect the chick like a child.

　　However, kindness cannot be exchanged for the preferential treatment of fate. Youtie and Guiying's "home" was torn down 3 times. The old houses in the village were demolished and the villagers were compensated with 15,000 yuan for an old house. With this 15,000 yuan, the two homeless people had no fixed place to live. Every time the house is torn down, Youtie cares about what happens to the swallows under the eaves. The swallow can't find its home, where does it go?

　　The village is divided into buildings, and you Tie and Guiying are regarded as "tools" to seize the quota. They are led into a concrete model room and moved to the building. What about the donkeys, chickens, ducks and pigs in the family? What about two acres of land? It is too high and too far from the land for a farmer who makes a living by farming to adapt.

　　"Whether the donkey or these two people, they both use the land as the carrier. Whether people can leave the donkey or the donkey can leave the person, all of this is inseparable from the land." Director Li Rui said.

　　In the northwest countryside, loess is always on the face, hands and clothes. The loess turned into dust, fell into the bowl of porridge, and drank into the shriveled belly. And for the peasants with iron and the wider world, soil is the cleanest thing. When the steamed buns fell into the soil, Gui Ying persuaded those who had iron not to eat them. He said lightly: "The soil doesn't despise us, so how can we despise the soil?" Director Li Rui also repeatedly expressed the same sentence: "Whether you are rich, powerful or penniless, if you plant a bag of wheat, it will allow you to reap dozens of bags. This is the logic of the land."

　　And the land tied them down. Guiying sighed her fate on the ridge: "It's better to be a human being. People can walk around with feet, unlike crops growing in fields, where they are gnawed by donkeys, pecked by sparrows, and cut by sickles. Life and death are exposed to the wind and the sun. Working in the field." You Tie replied inadvertently: "Where can we run when we have long feet, we are not firmly tied to the ground, what do you think farmers can do if they leave the ground?"

　　You Tie worked hard all summer . The well-built adobes encountered a sudden torrential rain. The embarrassed two middle-aged people covered the adobe with plastic sheets over and over again, but they were blown away by the strong wind. "A lot of bags were blown away by the wind." "It's blown away, you put your clothes on, don't catch a cold." They kept wrestling in the heavy rain. Laughing out loud in the mud, he didn't forget to laugh at himself "crying and laughing, snot stirring urine". After Guiying accidentally shoveled out the bright green wheat seedlings, she felt distressed, and there was iron to comfort her: "Just shovel it out, let it be used as fertilizer for other wheat. Whoever has the fate. The same is true for wheat. , in the summer, not all are cut off by the sickle." The

　　complex philosophy of life, for a farmer, turned into a reincarnated ear of wheat.

　　You Tie and Guiying worked hard to plant the land for a year, and the harvested wheat was finally exchanged for 3974 yuan, and the 4 yuan fraction was wiped off by the harvester, and the 1570 yuan for seeds, pesticides and fertilizers was removed. Money, the income of two people for a whole year is only 2,400 yuan.

The two most marginal bottom-level characters interpret the love myth of life and death.

The solid script of this film, like a trickle, shows us the details of life in poor rural areas, and it is like a knife that quietly peels off the strands, showing the cruel side of life without reservation, shocking the hearts of the audience.

　　Guiying couldn't carry the wheat stacks in the field, so she threw the ears of wheat on the ground again and again, and Yutie jumped out of the donkey cart and gave her a hard shove. For farmers, every grain of wheat is money. "The degree to which rural people cherish and understand this thing is based on his contribution. Many things are not bought with money, but are paid in person. But people who work in office buildings in the city may only need to buy eggs from their snacks. Come back to this step. The cognitive value of the life behind the food is different, and the degree of respect is different." Director Li Rui explained why the always gentle horse has iron, but is anxious because of a stack of wheat.

　　A few years ago, when Li Rui was shooting the movie "Home in a Place with Lush Water and Grass", an old villager who participated in the film hoped to keep the portrait photos in the play as a posthumous photo. After the photo was given to the old man, other old people in the village also came to Li Rui to take a photo of his death. Li Rui didn't quite understand it at first, but finally found out that most of the photos of the old people in the village were scanned from their ID cards, which were blurred and blurred, and even the anti-counterfeiting marks on the ID cards could be seen on the photos. This story also seems to be integrated into the ending of "Hidden in the Dust".

　　Cao Guiying died on the way to deliver food for her husband - drowned in a ditch. After Guiying's death, there was no photo that could be used as a posthumous photo. Youtie had to go to the photo studio and let someone scan the photo on the marriage certificate.

　　It is hard to imagine that there are still people who are willing to make a film that has nothing to do with entertainment. In the author's opinion, the special feature of "Hidden in the Dust" is not only that it shows the concrete and contagious bottom life in the domestic cinema movies that have been neglected and suffering, but also that the film revolves around the neglected after entering the new century. Village life unfolds. The film's display of the land is different from the grandeur of the fifth-generation film and the rebellion of the sixth-generation film. The protagonists of the film, farmers Ma Youtie and Cao Guiying in the northwest wasteland, are very typical "aphasia" at first glance, but "Hidden in the Dust" shows another "common people" voice beyond the stereotype. The film also shows the budding love between the two through calm details. As Godard said in "The Passion": "Everyone should love labor or strive to love."

　　"Hidden in the Dust" shows exactly such a fate, struggling between the survival of necessity and the non-necessity between love. And this kind of display is invaluable at the moment: it proves that the film still has such power.