My previous video mentioned that "Dust in the Wind" is another version of "Tiny Times," which stirred quite a few people. Today, I want to present an even more provocative viewpoint: "Farewell My Concubine" is another version of "Wolf Warrior 2."
"Dust in the Wind" and "Tiny Times" seem unrelated, but their core is remarkably similar. Both distort reality through their respective visual lies and narrative logic.
The protagonists in "Tiny Times" live in a parallel world where "everything can be forgiven for those who have resources." The creators let the protagonists shout slogans of personal struggle while they achieve success through connections with the powerful and capital, presenting a naive and schizophrenic state.
On the other hand, "Dust in the Wind" goes to another extreme. The character design is equally unconvincing: Ma Youtie is healthy, skilled, and gentle, yet faces unreasonable rejection from the entire village. This contradicts the basic logic of interpersonal power relations in rural China. In a real village, those with labor skills are sure to be respected; even the most reclusive individuals will inevitably integrate into the rural mutual aid network during weddings, funerals, house building, and harvests.
The core character designs in "Dust in the Wind" and "Tiny Times" appear flat because they are detached from the realities of ordinary people's lives.
In the comments section before, some people told me, "There are indeed people as miserable as Ma Youtie in real life." Those who make such claims merely want to assert that Ma Youtie is a believable character. Does the existence of such miserable people prove Ma Youtie's authenticity? There are also people living in luxury apartments, so does that make "Tiny Times" real? Can you find a hardworking, skilled, middle-aged person like Ma Youtie in reality who is similarly ostracized and discriminated against by those around him?
If you want to perform sympathy, please seek out specific, real individuals who deserve it. What’s the point of idolizing a "collection of suffering"?
At this point, they might say, "It's a movie; it's normal for it to be fictional. If you want reality, go watch a documentary!" But if it's also fictional, how is it different from "Tiny Times"?
In "Tiny Times" and "Dust in the Wind," one character is a gilded shell, while the other is a specimen of suffering; one is a wedding dress studio's color palette, while the other is an oil painting's bourgeois filter; one can instantly dissolve contradictions and deepen sisterly bonds just by recalling "Time Boils Rain"; the other immediately plunges into disasters and family tragedies at the slightest hint of improvement in life.
Both films place these flat characters in extreme environments detached from reality, reflecting their fantasies about unfamiliar social classes. The motivation behind creating such imagined scenes is to satisfy a specific group that does not want to understand real society and only seeks to indulge their emotions.
The reason I say "Dust in the Wind" lacks a degree of sincerity compared to "Tiny Times" is that, as similarly shallow works, its creators and supporters always believe they are more profound than "Tiny Times."
So why say "Farewell My Concubine" is another "Wolf Warrior 2"?
Because the criticisms directed at "Wolf Warrior 2" also apply to "Farewell My Concubine." For example, both films' influence and achievements benefit from ongoing marketing; both feature depersonalized character designs; both have formulaic scripts; both creators enjoy the dividends of their era and face significant issues due to a lack of knowledge, etc. Of course, they both possess the highest technical standards in their respective genres.
Those who praise "Farewell My Concubine" while dismissing "Wolf Warrior 2" feel they are more profound, more knowledgeable about film, and more artistic than those who accept "Wolf Warrior 2." If "Wolf Warrior 2" is "patriotic marketing," then "Farewell My Concubine" is "profound marketing." "Patriotic marketing" is not true patriotism, and of course, "profound marketing" is not truly profound either.
In character development, "Wolf Warrior 2" has been criticized for being overly simplistic and symbolic, especially regarding its villain, who is portrayed as purely violent, acting without reason or values, merely to highlight the protagonist's righteous image.
In contrast, "Farewell My Concubine" flattens and symbolically diminishes all characters associated with patriotism or the new China to make the protagonist suffer.
For instance, in a scene before the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the public is boycotting Japanese goods. Duan Xiaolou and Cheng Dieyi are blocked on the stairs by protesting students, who question them: "Do you know you're about to become slaves? What are you doing here singing your weird plays? Without a home or a country, do you have the conscience of a Chinese?"
Duan Xiaolou angrily retorts, "Look closely, these are all proper Chinese people; you better see it clearly!" Just as a conflict with the students is about to erupt, the theater owner, A-Kun, intervenes, saying, "Hey, we are all Chinese; Chinese don't fight Chinese." When he says this, the students seem hypnotized and stop confronting Duan Xiaolou. They leave, chanting "Chinese don't fight Chinese."
In the historical context of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Beijing was already on the brink of disaster, with Japanese troops poised outside the city, and the crisis in North China was dire, posing unprecedented challenges to the survival of the Chinese nation. In this historical backdrop, patriotic students taking to the streets to shout, boycott Japanese goods, and raise funds is entirely legitimate and necessary; they are fulfilling their historical mission to awaken the nation.
However, in the narrative of "Farewell My Concubine," this historical scene is cleverly reconstructed. The film places the famous actors Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou directly opposed to the patriotic students. The students are depicted as an indiscriminate group, and their patriotic demands are twisted into indiscriminate attacks on those not participating in patriotic actions. This treatment compresses the complex and rational spirit of patriotism into hollow emotional accusations, effectively draining the substance of patriotism.
Even more intriguing is how the film resolves this conflict. Duan Xiaolou recalls, "Look closely, these are all proper Chinese people." A-Kun diffuses the conflict with the slogan "Chinese don't fight Chinese," a clever design that reduces the students' anti-imperialist patriotism and survival efforts to narrow nationalism, avoiding the real historical choices facing China at the time. This is not merely a matter of identifying as Chinese; it is about the strategic choice of how to save the nation from crisis.
The subsequent dialogue in the film further exposes the creators' historical value orientation. Duan Xiaolou mocks the students: "You all pretend to be loyal ministers and good generals while the Japanese are just outside the city; go fight them! Are you only bullying Chinese?" A-Kun attributes the students' patriotic actions to "not having married a wife? Strong and without money to find a girl, you have to find a place to vent, right?" Cheng Dieyi only focuses on "the one leading the shouting has a good voice; singing five tones is not bad."
These three responses represent mockery, vulgarization, and depoliticization of patriotism, collectively forming a systematic denial of the spirit of patriotism. In today's internet context, it translates to "I don't hate Americans because the ones who bully me in life are all Chinese," "only the lower class cares about politics," and a series of statements like "art has no borders" and "sports have no borders."
For example, in the comments section of my previous video reviewing "Farewell My Concubine," there are often remarks like, "Film is an independent art; don't bring in these ideological political thoughts." In the real world, there has never been an artistic expression detached from political identity and ideology. In fact, anyone who has seen this film will realize that removing the conflict with the students does not affect the film's storyline or character logic. This makes the film's "proposition essay feel" very apparent.
If you write a poem, it needs wind, meat, hot pot, fog, beautiful women, and donkeys; if you make a movie, it needs a dark society, bullied artists, and a group of "unlucky" students.
The brilliance of "Farewell My Concubine" lies in its presentation of historical nihilism not in a crude and straightforward manner but through a series of subtle hints and narrative strategies that subtly convey this to the audience. This refined historical nihilism is more deceptive, and its deconstruction of history is more thorough.
Those who elevate "Farewell My Concubine" to a pedestal are well aware of the power of popular culture to replace the entire historical landscape with details. Therefore, they feel particularly repulsed when they see "Wolf Warrior 2."
In "Wolf Warrior 2," the confrontation between the yellow-skinned Chinese represented by Leng Feng, Lao He, and Zhuo Yifan and the white mercenaries directly corresponds to the perceived East-West confrontation at the time. The villain boss tells Leng Feng, "You people are weak and cowardly; you should be oppressed for life." This represents the West's longstanding contempt for China and other Eastern nations. After Leng Feng defeats the boss through a bloody battle, he responds, "That was in the past!"
"Wolf Warrior 2" was released in 2017, and we all know what happened in the South China Sea in 2016. In January 2017, after Trump took office, he began implementing a series of trade protection measures against China under the concept of "America First." The story of "Wolf Warrior 2" corresponds to the rise in national strength and the international pressure environment at that time, resonating strongly with Chinese audiences.
However, "Wolf Warrior 2" was met with indifference in the international market. Its box office in the U.S. was only a fraction of "Ip Man 3." American critics described it as "just another Hollywood template B-movie." While Hollywood's commercial film templates are indeed outdated, they rarely criticize their own template films in the same way.
Their denial of "Wolf Warrior 2" essentially stems from its reallocation of the roles that the West has long imposed on the world. In "Wolf Warrior 2," the Chinese are portrayed as strong, just, and protective, while the white mercenaries appear as strong yet evil, like robbers; black refugees are depicted as weak and in need of protection. This is entirely contrary to the role distribution the West wants to see in Eastern films.
So what kind of role distribution does the West desire?
The answer is the portrayal in "Farewell My Concubine":
- An artist like Cheng Dieyi, who is weak, provides aesthetic services, has personal persistence, yet suffers systematic persecution from the cultural environment of their region.
- A Chinese woman like Juxian, who is brave and resilient, has a conscience, but ultimately commits suicide due to disappointment with the men in her society.
- Master Guan, representing traditional cultural inheritance, is strict, pedantic, and commercial, upholding old rules.
- The traditional power figure, Master Zhang, is bizarre and perverse.
- While the Japanese invaders kill Chinese people, they understand the arts: "If he hadn't died, perhaps Chinese culture would have been spread by him." They may kill, but they can recognize the beauty in our culture, subtly implying that "what they kill is unimportant, but they can protect the cultural essence of the invaded nation."
- Domestic elites, like A-Kun, are shrewd and worldly, doing their best to protect themselves and the artists, adaptable to serve any ruling group.
- Or even higher-level elites, like Yuan Shiqing, who understand the arts and protect artists, skillfully navigating through various regime changes, yet end up being sentenced to death in the new China without knowing why.
In the film, the only charge against Yuan is "reactionary theater tyrant," obscuring the details and making it seem that Yuan was sentenced to death for trivial reasons, successfully absurdizing the trial. At the same time, through Duan Xiaolou's shocked expression, the liberation brought by the new era is transformed into fear.
And what about the Chinese people in the film? They are either like the onlookers at the beginning, simply watching the show without discernment; nationalists indiscriminately attack others; or they are like Si'er, opportunistic, vain, and ungrateful; or they are vague symbols of violence at the struggle meetings; even the soldiers who respect artists and liberate the people merely sing military songs after applauding, ignorant of the arts, like "country bumpkins."
The story of "Wolf Warrior" resonated with the feelings of the Chinese people at the time, gaining high market recognition. In contrast, "Farewell My Concubine" satisfied the West's expectations for character roles in Eastern films, earning Western endorsement in awards, and thus occupying a high ecological position in the value marketing of domestic literary works, becoming a "retirement insurance" for the film's creators in the industry.
But why does the ideological core and intention of such works make people feel "sophisticated"?
In fact, the "sophistication" of such works comes from something called "anti-mass intuitive aesthetics," a meticulously planned and well-trained aesthetic marketing strategy.
In film and television works, stunning large scenes and intense action designs can quickly reach the audience's experience and are the primary means to get audiences to pay. Thus, creating sensory shock through technology has always been the pursuit of the film industry.
However, technological progress can plateau, and human sensory experiences naturally reject monotony, craving breakthroughs in stimulation limits. Therefore, content creation in film begins to develop in two directions under existing technological conditions:
One is to continuously refine existing technologies, such as more detailed special effects, tighter script conflict designs, and more eye-catching editing.
The other is to utilize other sensory systems beyond visual and auditory to satisfy stimulation, such as meeting people's emotions or deeper impulses.
There is no hierarchy between these two developmental directions, and they often blend together.
Human aesthetics, as a more complex perceptual system, can be manipulated in many dimensions. One approach allows people to experience moral and psychological stimulation without visual and auditory shock, which is to make them feel a slight breakthrough of social discipline and taboos. This breakthrough gives people a sense of power to control their lives beyond the constraints of laws. People have given this taboo-breaking a nice name: "reflecting humanity."
However, serious discussions about "breaking taboos" are actually profound sociological topics that test the creator's depth of thought and expressive ability. Therefore, creators lacking depth and expressive ability will flatten and formulaically present "taboo breakthroughs" as experiences outside the common social pursuits of the masses, such as pain, obsession, emptiness, madness, and death.
Mainstream commercial films pursue emotional resonance and clear narratives, while these art films do the opposite. They allow characters to avoid the common solutions to difficulties that the masses would think of, such as making a previously strong and vibrant individual suddenly lose the courage to live due to a certain event, "snap" and die, claiming this adds depth to the character.
Deliberately creating a sense of alienation makes the audience question, "Is it my lack of understanding?" which then transforms into awe and admiration for the film. This strategy is akin to the "scarcity marketing" of "main character culture" in contemporary consumer life— the harder to understand, the more valuable it seems.
The path to the deification of "Farewell My Concubine" can be described as a perfect marketing scheme involving multiple parties:
- Western film festivals need a "suffering fable" that fits Orientalist impressions;
- Literary youth need a "cultural archway" that signifies aesthetic superiority;
The creators of this film accurately grasped these two conditions and meticulously designed a symbolic system: wrapping curious narratives in cold-toned filters, using individual self-cognitive dissonance to metaphorize political oppression, and replacing real humanity with ritualized situational designs for characters at different stages.
The "profound interpretations" touted by its admirers are merely mechanical repetitions of these symbols, sharing the same logic as consumers who blindly follow "main character stores": covering their own aesthetic poverty by adhering to the "high standards" defined by authority.
In fact, upon closer observation, you will find that these audiences who idolize art films overlap significantly with fatalistic audiences, those who like to distort history and promote personal biases as profound cognition, and conspiracy theorists who believe in insider information. Essentially, they are all illiterate.