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.

《淹没》是一个关于三峡移民故事的纪录片，在国外拿了很多奖。昨天在小黄那看了，很坦率的说，不知道这片子在说些什么东西，场景很真实的展现了当地02年左右的状况，这一点，对很多人来说，可能具有很强的吸引力，但是这不应该成为一个纪录片的看点，既然是一个关于三峡移民的故事，那么这样一群人他们从过去的生活状态因为三峡而改变的状态才应该是故事的主线，但《淹没》里面没有。
看了《淹没》我想起的是我从小生活过的地方，这样的场景，曾经在中国很多小镇都是雷同的，凌乱狭窄的街道，拥挤的人群，破旧的店铺。关于这一切，我有一个很阴暗的想法，《淹没》给观众（仅仅指片子的粉丝）最大的感受不过是满足了最廉价的自我优越感，一种近乎于无病呻吟的小资情调。我从不认为在这样的小镇中生活的人会有什么所谓的对人文精神的向往，这不是我武断的猜测，一个人的精神状态绝对的与他所处的社会阶层和经济地位是密切相连的。至少，我，无法想象一个三餐不继的人——假设他就是三峡移民中的一员——在那思考三峡移民对社会人文，对人的精神状态有多大的影响。这绝对不是我觉得这样的人群没有这样的能力去思考这些问题，只是，人是一种现实的社会动物，我不排除有天才，但就普通人而言，在思考这样一些问题之前，首先考虑的只是如何让自己的生活更舒服一些，这是人的本性，无可指责。
一部好的纪录片，我以为，它应该有它自己的价值取向的判断，《淹没》中看不到，真实并不等于琐碎的生活场景的堆砌，作为社会话语传播的声音，没有自己的价值取向，就象一个人没有自己的灵魂。片子中唯一我觉得两个地方比较好的就是中间出现的两次婚礼，因为那是一种希望，做为这样一个大工程的移民，我以为，这中间绝大多数人，是希望通过这样一次变化能让的的生活更富裕，很俗气的说，就是有更多的钱，这样的一些移民，他们不象很多看这片子的观众是都市里面的白领小资，他们并没有太多的精力去感叹因为三峡移民而消逝的那些传统文化。就象我曾经去过一个藏区的小镇，在那吃饭的时候和老板聊天，老板说他们那马上作为旅游区要开放了，他很高兴，我当时很惋惜，我说，一开发，肯定会来很多的游客，这里源生态的藏文化就要消失了。那个老板说了句很实在的话，他说他知道，开发后，他们能因为旅游赚很多钱，他们的物质生活会更好，至少，不会一天到晚还担心挺电了。那时，我突然觉得自己是一个很浅薄的人，所有人都权利为了自己更优越的生活而去改变，凭什么别人就为了要满足我们一钱不值的猎奇心理而放弃更好的物质生活？
尽管我们一直不愿意承认，但是，我们不得不承认，类似这样的片子，在国外能拿很多奖的原因，是因为满足了一种居高临下的猎奇心理，同样的原因也可以解释为什么这些片子在国内的受众也是以文化层次和收入相对较高的人群为主。从本质上讲，这应该是一种很病态的心理，一种自我优越感和自卑心理纠缠在一起的体现。
作为一部要立志在国外发行拿奖的纪录片，毫无疑问《淹没》非常成功，但是如果作为一部给三峡的移民看的纪录片，似乎，它是失败的。毕竟生活中喜欢无病呻吟的人并不多。它并没有告诉我们,这样的一群人,他们在想什么,他们希望的生活是什么,他们到底发生什么样的改变

“舍小家，为大家”——最真实的代价！

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