The movie "1942" that Feng Xiaogang worked so hard for but no one cares about is just because the reality is more miserable.

A lot of great things happened in 1942. China, the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain and other countries signed the United Nations Declaration of Independence, Guo Moruo created the historical drama "Qu Yuan", British physicist Stephen Hawking was born, and Chinese female writer Xiao Hong died of illness in Hong Kong at the age of 31.

Also in the same year, a famine shocked the world in Henan, which was on the front line of the Anti-Japanese War. Tens of millions of people were displaced and nearly 3 million people starved to death.

This extremely tragic and major historical event has rarely been recorded in Chinese history books, and people today know very little about the truth.

Finally, in order to review this period of history that has been almost forgotten by this nation, the well-known writer Liu Zhenyun visited the survivors of the disaster and finally wrote an investigative novel called "Reviewing the Past 1942". He thus became the only chronicler of this disaster.

Director Feng Xiaogang was deeply moved after watching it: "During World War II, the whole world knew about Hitler and the Nazis' massacre of Jews, but in 1942, a drought in Henan, China, killed 3 million people from starvation, but very few people Not only foreigners, but also Chinese people don’t know. Liu Zhenyun wrote a book about it, which I saw in 1993. It was very shocking.” "1942" was adapted into a narrative historical film called "1942", and Li Xuejian, Zhang Guoli, Chen Daoming, etc. were invited to join the cast with a large sum of money.

Warm reminder: You can click on the card below to search and watch this movie for free. Please prepare tissues in advance.

The film tells the story of an old boss who went to Shaanxi to seek refuge during a drought in Henan, but was turned into a refugee before he reached his destination. He witnessed with his own eyes his son, daughter-in-law, and wife, died tragically one after another, and the government The corrupt rule of the country and the invasion of the Japanese made this disaster even worse. In the end, only the owner was left. On the way back to Henan, he adopted a little girl who also suffered the same loss of her family.

Movies reflect life, but sometimes life is crueler than movies. These are the stories that have been put on the screen. Those scenes of "exchanging children for food", "selling children and abandoning daughters", "wild dogs eating corpses" and "thousands of miles without people, starving people in the wilderness", how can they be told in just two hours? Can you describe it?

In fact, drought began to occur in Henan in the autumn of 1941, and harvests in many places had already stopped. Farmers began to scrape bark and dig roots for food. In the autumn of 1942, drought lasted for a year. The drought has become more serious, the bark and roots of the trees have been basically dug out, and the victims have begun to die in large numbers. The photo shows the victims of the famine in Henan Province at that time. All of them were disheveled and unkempt, waiting for relief from the government.

Although the government at that time took disaster relief actions, it had no plan and did not try its best. All regions were watching each other, shirking responsibility and concealing the disaster.

Due to war and famine, some women took the initiative to sell themselves to human traffickers in exchange for some food or a small amount of money in order to keep their parents and children alive.

In the spring of 1943, there was still a drought in Henan. Many victims chose to flee with their families in order to survive. The villages most severely affected by the disaster were basically all ten rooms with nine empty houses. Thousands of people flocked to Shaanxi, fleeing the famine. It is impossible to count the number of people who died of starvation, fell from the train, or were run over. It is currently accepted that the death toll in this disaster is 3 million, but the true number has forever become a mystery.

In the movie, in order to present a real era, the main cast of refugees represented by Zhang Guoli not only started practicing Henan dialect six months before filming started. We also lost weight collectively during filming and truly experienced the feeling of chronic hunger. Zhang Guoli said, "When you are really hungry and weak, you will find that many of the characters' lines are redundant."

After 78 years, most of those who witnessed the Great Famine have passed away. Even those who are still alive are at least 80 or 90 years old. There is only a short mention of this matter in Henan's "Gongxian County Chronicle" One sentence: "In the 31st year of the Republic of China, there was a severe drought and almost no harvests. In addition, the Japanese invasion caused great disasters. Farmers often used bark, wild goose excrement, and Guanyin soil to satisfy their hunger."

When we feel that the atmosphere of the movie is too When you are feeling heavy, you must know that these bloody scenes really happened at a certain moment in history.

At the beginning of the film, the tone of the entire film is set. Most of the film is shot during the escape process. On the way to escape, there are natural disasters on one side, war on the other, and broken limbs everywhere. Broken arms, wailing all over the land, and the people are in dire straits.

The director mostly uses dark tones to express this process, symbolizing the dark life of the people at the bottom. Most of the picture is arid land, and a very small part is the sky. This picture It gives people a depressing feeling, implying the oppressive rule of the government.

At the same time, the director used close-ups many times to show the tragic situation of the refugees, such as a close-up of a group of wild dogs eating the bodies of refugees who died on the way to escape, which gave people a great psychological impact.

At the same time, long-range shots are used many times to show the large number of refugees, which also gives people a great visual impact.

In the film, there is a sharp contrast between the rags and rags of the victims fleeing the disaster and the lack of food and the well-fed, stable and worry-free government officials.

At the beginning of the film, it was mentioned that "Chairman Chiang specially reduced two dishes because of the famine in Henan to show his support for disaster relief." This sentence hinted at the ending of the people's betrayal. When filming this content, the director cleverly used warm colors, mainly yellow, to highlight the ruler's comfortable life.

1. Landlord Fan Dianyuan (played by Zhang Guoli)

Fan Dianyuan was originally a landlord in Henan, with two children and a well-off family. Because the hungry people "eat the big households", his son was killed in a scuffle between the hungry people and the villagers. In order to keep his family safe, when the famine came, his old boss drove a carriage, took his wife, and pulled food to join the team fleeing the famine.

While escaping from famine, his daughter-in-law became exhausted and starved to death shortly after giving birth to her grandson. There is a very heart-wrenching scene in the movie. After her daughter-in-law died of starvation, her mother-in-law quickly took off her clothes with her newborn grandson in her arms and said she could drink some milk while her body was still warm, but she died. My daughter-in-law has no milk for a long time.

Later, his wife also starved to death, and his daughter was sold to a brothel in exchange for 5 liters of millet.

To avoid being bombed by enemy planes while escaping, Fan Dianyuan hugged his grandson and lay on the ground for a long time without daring to get up. Later, his little grandson was suffocated to death by him.

Immediately afterwards, his long-term worker was stabbed through the throat by a Japanese and died.

His carriage, grain, and silver coins were forcibly "requisitioned" by the local police on the way, which was actually stolen.

The purpose of fleeing famine was to keep the family alive, but after Fan Dianyuan arrived in Shaanxi, he was the only one left. Originally a rich man, he became a fugitive like a tenant. It can be seen that all fleeing in the face of disasters All are equal.

Fan Dianyuan, who had nothing to lose, didn’t want to run away anymore and started to walk back against the flow of people fleeing for famine. Someone told him on the way: "Going back now will mean death." He said silently, "I just want to die and leave." Home is closer."

Fan Dianyuan's desperate state of mind and his exhausted spirit of wandering made his hope as critical as his body.

However, when he turned around the hillside, he met a little girl who was also crying for a lost relative. The little girl told Fan Dianyuan that she was not crying that her father had died, but that everyone she knew had died. .

Fan Dianyuan asked the little girl to call him "grandpa". The little girl raised her face and shouted "Master". So, he took the little girl's hand and walked down the hillside. Corpses were strewn across the fields, and heavy snow was falling.

2. Fan Dianyuan’s daughter - Xingxing (played by Wang Ziwen)

When Xingxing appears in the camera, she always holds a black cat in her arms and would rather eat less food. She also had to take it with her, and after escaping enemy plane bombings, she fearlessly ran out to find the cat.

However, after her sister-in-law gave birth to the child, she told her family to kill the cat. With a piercing cat scream, the cat was killed and stewed in soup. Fan Dianyuan sat next to his daughter and cried: Xingxing, dad is sorry for you! However, Xingxing looked at the skinned cat without any expression, and finally said: I also want to drink cat soup. At that time, she was already so hungry that she panicked.

When the brothel pretended to be a quilt factory to buy girls, Xingxing suggested that his father sell him, but Fan Dianyuan refused. Xingxing persuaded her father: I really can't stand it anymore. I don't even have firewood to eat. Please let me escape for my life! You can also exchange for five liters of millet. She also specifically emphasized to that person that she was literate and well-educated as an "advantage". In the end, she was bought over. When she was serving others, she was so full that she couldn't squat down.

The ending of stars is inevitable. People have no bottom line in the face of disasters. The journey of a small person reflects the experiences of many people under the circumstances at that time, which is really sad.

3. Tenant Blind Lu (played by Feng Yuanzheng)

Tenant Blind Lu is the most useless and pathetic character in the film. For a few bushels of millet, he can ignore his wife being teased. He You can also sell your daughter to exchange for a few buckets of rice to treat your mother's illness.

Although he had lived so limitless, he still did not survive this disaster. In the end, he failed to steal the donkey and fell into a pot of boiling water, leaving behind two children and His wife.

The Blind Deer played by Feng Yuanzheng is the real disaster victim in the film. He lives to eat, as long as he can survive.

Feng Xiaogang did not have his own attitude in "1942", and let the audience decide everything. "What you see is what you see."

There is no need for rendering or processing. We use line drawing to restore the most real scene to the audience. It starts with the small characters and describes a lot of details. It looks like black humor, but it is actually profound. sorrow.

It is said that when Feng Xiaogang approached Liu Zhenyun and said he wanted to make this movie, even Liu Zhenyun himself was shocked: He thought no one wanted to watch such a tragic story.

This film was conceived in 1993 and started in October 2011. In the end, Feng Xiaogang completed the filming in the coldest five months. Because it is a difficult escape theme, the entire crew performed at a maximum of more than 600 people, and at a minimum there were 300 or 400 people, including more than 200 transition vans, and it was a complete zipper shooting.

However, for such a large team, their efforts in details are very moving.

For example, the filming in Chongqing mainly focused on the activities of the Kuomintang and religious figures. This street was designed by the film crew and built with funding from the Chongqing Municipal Government. After the construction was completed, the film crew went to the site and were stunned. These buildings were all built as permanent buildings, and the items sold in the shops were all real objects.

Later this street also became a famous attraction in Chongqing: Republic of China Street.

What impressed the photography team the most was the scene in which the refugees were stealing the train. In order to have a good shooting effect, the filming team moved from Shanxi to Northeast China and finally found a 1942 American locomotive. Can be opened.

However, just a locomotive without carriages is not enough, so the production department made a flatbed truck used to pull goods during the escape based on historical photos of refugees at that time.

During the filming, it was under minus 20 degrees Celsius in the Northeast. The local people kindly reminded the crew not to touch the iron with their hands, otherwise they would not be able to tear it off. However, in order to present a realistic effect, not everyone can wear gloves, so those who wear gloves touch the iron, and those who do not wear gloves touch the wood.

The filming took place in the snow at more than 20 degrees below zero, while the train was moving, and hundreds of extras were sitting on the roof of the train. Photography director Lu Le said that he may only encounter this once in his life, and it can be regarded as his final work.

The six-minute sequence about the train took a month, but it was worth it in terms of the final effect.

The movie that Feng Xiaogang, who is good at comedy, most wants to make in his life is this extremely heavy disaster movie - "1942".

This film can be said to be Feng Xiaogang’s emotional work. He tried to use a human disaster 70 years ago to reflect on the humanity and salvation of the Chinese people.

However, after the movie was released, the box office failed miserably, with a box office gap of nearly 4 times that of "囧囧" released at the same time. In the end, Feng Xiaogang desperately made commercial films to pay off his debts.

Although the success of a movie cannot be measured by the box office as the only criterion, the box office can reflect the public's acceptance and recognition of the content and feelings conveyed by the movie.

Many netizens criticized Feng Xiaogang after watching the trailer, accusing him of "making it difficult for the country to make a fortune", which caused the Chinese people to scream and cry. Sure enough, it echoed Liu Zhenyun's worries back then: No one wants to read such a tragic story, and in today's happy age, people have long been accustomed to avoiding suffering.

Zhang Guoli recalled that Feng Xiaogang even shed tears because of the box office failure of "1942". When he asked Feng Xiaogang if it was because of him that he was used, which led to the box office failure, Feng Xiaogang's answer was very touching. It was not such a reason, but it was precisely because of the failure at the box office that the audience stayed away from suffering, and he felt that he should film it. Such a movie.

Even though Feng Xiaogang’s emotion in creating “1942” cannot be compared with “History”, it has its own unique artistic value. It is a memory and a painful memory of a generation. People who have seen it say it is good, but they dare not watch it a second time.

At the end of the film, the narration read: "Fifteen years later, this little girl became my mother. As far back as I can remember, I have never seen her shed a single tear, nor did she eat meat..." < /p>

These four words "nor eat meat" can profoundly reflect people's contemplation of disaster at that time.

It is said that heroes are made in troubled times, but more of them rely on the devastation of life.

Feng Xiaogang's profoundness lies in not filming "1942" as a natural disaster, but instead introducing the audience's perspective into a man-made disaster. Although the Great Famine was a natural disaster, there were also considerable man-made factors involved.

"1942" is not a current disaster, but it happens again in the environment in which we live. Human nature is always in competition, but it cannot encourage everyone.

The Chinese nation is a nation that has suffered hardships. In modern times, countless tragedies have been staged in China, some for the country and some for the family.

Nowadays, the era of refugees, thieves and bandits, and confusion of right and wrong has passed. What we see in front of us is a new era of prosperity, peace and prosperity for the country and the people.

But we should not forget disasters. We should face disasters, face disasters squarely, and reflect on disasters in order to avoid disasters.