淹没

 Before the Flood, which is the most problematic documentary film so far, is indeed a film that seems like it wants to provide the raw material of daily life in the town of Fengjie before it was flooded. Honestly, it is not a readable and pleasurable film from an audience perspective. However, to criticize the film is not the main purpose of this article. Here, I would like to talk about the experimental structure, the organized content, and the complementary relationship between the director and the audiences.

As a verité-style documentary film, the director faithfully documented the residences of a thousand year old town that were forced to relocate from their hometown in order to make way for China’s greatest project, the Three Gorges Dam. This documentary film records local citizens who are not content with the local government’s bureaucratic mismanagement. The ancient town is going to be submerged in several months; everyone shows their anxiety, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction regarding the government’s evacuation policy, including unequal compensation, an unfair lottery for apartments, and a complicated beneficial relationship during the relocation process. All of them play a victim-witness double role in the film.

The opening and closing parts of this film are very poetic to some extent. The opening part starts with Libai’s poetry, Early Departure From Baidi Town. However, after this flood, all of the spectacular scenes will disappear forever. Here, Libai’s poetry depicts the natural views to the readers. At the end of the film, the most impressive shots are the explosion scenes. Having witnessed the collapse of the city, the dense smoke rapidly moves toward the camera and then devours the entire screen. This part is also very poetic to some extent. But it is a poetic collapse. The poetic feeling, no matter if it is the natural scenes depicted by the intellectuals, or the accumulated poetic human civilization left by our ancestors, will be soon destroyed. Another shot is the collapse of the church’s wall, after haggling and deceiving; the people finally dismantle the church. This story also symbolically and metaphorically shows the loss of the faith. The whole dislocation process is a trade between the citizens and the government, between the past and the future, between tradition and modernity, between the individual’s benefits with Chinese collectivism. Before the flood depicts different individual citizens of the town. Especially Xiang Haiyu, who joined the army during the Korean War and owned a hostel in Fengjie. He tries to best find a new place for himself and his wife, as well as his shabby hostel. When the camera follows him climbing up, down and under the bridge in New Fengjie, I felt a pain in my heart. The pain reached its climax when Xiang wept in front of the lens.

In this film, the director requests that the audience play an active role in the film instead of responding negatively. The director seems to want to make the film tedious and verbalized to some extent, and one question that often occurs to the audience is, why does the director made such a huge effort on documenting. Nevertheless, it is still a film that presents the reality of the past time. Bill Nichols divides documentary films into six modes: Poetic, Expository, Observational, Participatory, Reflexive, and the Performative mode. This film belongs in the category of observational mode. The opening long sequence shows the camera moving freely in order to follow the daily life of labor workers who used a large plastic bucket to carry fishes from port to the market. The camera faithfully records what happens. It ostensibly give the audiences the impression of recording the ongoing process of this event faithfully, but in my opinion, the director already picked the scenes according to his taste. The contemporary film that we watched this semester shares a similar feature. Most of which demands the audiences’ participation. “The filmmaker’s retirement to the position of observer calls on the viewer to take a more active role in determining the significance of what is said and done.” (Nichols, 111) The whole film follows an informative logic: to tell the audiences the truth. As indicated by the director, Li Yifan, “use a simple constructed way to criticize and refute an elite’s interpretation.” He did not impose any ideological conclusion on this event but provides the audience with a terrific feeling, and an overwhelming display of humanity and morality, which is echoed in the title of the film.

Works Cited
Bill Noichols. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2001. Print.

怎么说呢, 只能说 太真实了. 比沿江而上真实. 真实的让你感受到人性在利益面前是如何扭曲的, 是如何被淹没的. 其中反应了的问题在当今非常之普遍, 是现在拆迁的前奏. 怎么说呢, 现代社会的总总阴暗面归根结底都会回到体制上, 一个200万人的县城的拆迁, 搬去哪里, 是县委会的一句话. 根本没有规划, 没有计划, 连水电都没有, 让人搬家去住. 所谓的基督教徒的家人根本就不理解什么是教义, 什么是信仰, 藉由过世人的信仰来骗取钱财. 人在利益前太渺小了. 最底层人的生活的艰难, 为了糊口, 甚至失去生命. 当看见垃圾 看见污水, 我还提出了问题, 就是 难道这些都沉在长江底么, 难怪长江现在如此浑浊, 而且, 这长江水要怎么喝? 长江要经过多久才能够恢复自我的生态系统?

我特别能够体会到导演自己说的那句, 我自己最初的那些感受, 那些文艺, 那些悟性, 被长江水淹没了. 在那里待了11个月, 经历了县城的消逝, 绝对是人生中的一次影响深远的过程. 导演应该会感谢这次体验,或者说觉得这次的体验很值得.

为什么没在国内上映, 不知道为什么. 难道是太底层了? 呵呵, 中国的现代化, 老百姓买单.

一个城市被河水淹没，居住多年的房子即将拆迁，人们应该如何面对？《淹没》纪录了这种焦虑，包括人们为了自己所在团体如何争取利益，对补偿金不满时如何在断水断电情况下坚持自己的初衷，甚至不惜在街头拉扯；老红军在拆迁办求助无门，而街头闲谈，也始终围绕房子这个话题打转，人们在面对社会巨大变迁时的心态变化历程，全在里面表现得淋漓尽致。李一凡在放映后的回答时谈到，当时他就是想拍改革开放发展十年来，人们的心理历程、价值观的变化，而恰好有三峡工程这么一个强烈的背景，原本至少要花十年才能拍到的东西，他们在奉节呆了11个月就完成了。这是一次非常好的机遇，而他们恰好捕捉到了，包括影片开头时人们原本的日常生活场景，政府机关里的民众的争执，以及后来拆迁楼房爆破等场面，完整的撑起了片子的骨架，使之言之有物。这是一部胸有成竹的片子，从影片的节奏、分镜头等看得出他们在剪辑方面下了很大功夫。
有人问到为什么被摄者怎么会同意公开那些较有冲突的场面，李一凡回答说，那是因为都觉得自己问心无愧，是为公家做事，包括在财务上做两本帐。但他们把一些稍微涉及隐私的场面都放弃了，保留下来的，就是被摄者愿意公开的。