Editor's note: This is a nostalgic theater.
Just after the filming of the urban emotional film "Wake Up Time" directed by Zhang Aijia, 25-year-old Gong Li hurried to Shiyao Village, Long County, Shaanxi Province to experience life. It was only in the bustling and noisy Hong Kong that he and Zhong Zhentao saw the truth in adversity, and staged a modern version of "Heroes Save the Beauty". When he turned around, he was about to wear a green turban and wrapped in a red cotton jacket to play Qiu Ju, a stubborn village woman who is pregnant and has a stubborn personality. , the transformation between the two is not too big. Fortunately, Gong Li steadily took on this role that was very different from her own. 
"Qiu Ju's Lawsuit" title
"The Case of Qiu Ju" later won the Chinese Golden Rooster Award for Best Feature Film, the Best Film and Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, and the Best Foreign Language Film of the French Film Critics Association. Premiere at the Great Hall of the People. Gong Li, who entered the film industry with "Red Sorghum", is a model worker this year. Not only "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit", "Ju Dou", "The Big Red Lantern", "Wake Up Time" and other four films have been released nationwide one after another. , also participated in the filming of "Farewell My Concubine" and "Painting the Soul" and other heavyweight films, and commercial films such as "Tang Bohu Dianqiuxiang" and "Tianshan Child Mother" are also under negotiation. Therefore, in 1992, it was also called "Gong Li". year". 
At the 49th Venice Film Festival, "The Case of Qiu Ju" won the Golden Lion Award for Best Film, and Gong Li won the Best Actress Award
Just as the agile and wild "Jiu'er" effectively responded to Mo Yan's question that "Gong Li is too beautiful to act in "Red Sorghum"", the use of Gong Li in "The Lawsuit of Qiu Ju" is also the result of Zhang Yimou's overpowering the opposition, and the fact is again It proves the director's "spiciness" and the actor's super character-building ability. In the era when there was no computer special effects and everything depended on the skills of the actors, Gong Li made a foolish effort to perform Qiu Ju, wearing a fake pregnant belly and eating, living and working with the local villagers. Stanislavsky's "experience school" the way.
In terms of appearance, the local clothing is second, Gong Li's pregnancy spots on her cheekbones, her shy belly, and her splayed feet. Only people who have worked hard for a long time have the ability to walk with bent knees and arms outstretched. The physical features such as bowls and slips eating noodles made the local villagers think that she was originally a rural daughter-in-law who was pregnant with a baby. The real power of Gong Li's performance lies in the resemblance of form and spirit. As a peasant woman from an honest and honest family in a closed mountain village, Qiu Ju lowered her head slightly and did not dare to look directly at each other when she spoke to the "public family", rubbing her hands together. When he first arrived in a big city, his mouth was slightly open and his eyes were sluggish due to surprise and confusion. What is even more commendable is that Gong Li abruptly made herself Qiu Ju on the screen, so that through the latter's backbone, arrogance, inner contradictions and warmth, we can even enter Qiu Ju's spiritual world. 
Qiu Ju (Gong Li)
When filming "The Lawsuit of Qiu Ju", Zhang and Gong have cultivated an extraordinary professional tacit understanding and sense of trust due to their cooperation in several previous films. For Zhang Yimou, who did not want to repeat himself, they tried to use candid photography and random sampling. The creative approach to land design certainly helps. There are only four professional actors who play Qiu Ju, Qiu Ju's husband, the village chief and "Li Gongan" in the whole film, and the rest are all local people arranged by the crew or filmed secretly. Gong Li often does not know where the camera is hidden. She is either inconspicuous in the crowd, or is mostly covered by others. There are very few scenes with obvious design sense, such as close-ups of the faces of characters that are common in other films. On the contrary, it adds a layer of documentary, simple beauty and vitality with rustic meaning to the film. 
Stills of "The Case of Qiu Ju"
The plot of "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit" is very simple. As the 1.0 version of this year's hit TV series "Happiness to Ten Thousand Families", the whole film revolves around Qiu Ju's "dissatisfaction" and the three-level complaint at the township, county and city levels. The red chili peppers hanging in Qiu Ju's house are in sharp contrast with the yellow corns hanging in the village chief's house. The mountain villages in the mid-panorama shot also have a realism and simple poetry unique to the 1990s. The compositions all have the unique and strong visual style of Zhang Yimou's early days. 
Stills of "The Case of Qiu Ju"
Every time Qiu Ju stumbles and pulls a cart of chili peppers out with her sister, the Shaanxi local opera bowl and bowl tune of "Alas, let's go" has to sing three times. This repeated segment, like an intermission, divides the film into paragraphs according to the development of the plot, so that the audience will not feel dull because of the similar plots of the complaint, and highlights Qiu Ju's "recognize death and reason for one tendon", and it also has a kind of folk opera. The ancient aftertaste of , this time, this place, this person in this situation suddenly has a kind of tender sadness. 
Stills of "The Case of Qiu Ju"
The reason why I spend pen and ink describing the seemingly trivial plot transitions above is because after twenty years, later audiences can more calmly appreciate the enduring charm of this film from subtleties. Similar to news reports, the film theme of "The Case of Qiu Ju" is also "time-sensitive" in keeping with the times. In the early days of the film's release, people were eager to discuss serious social issues such as human relations, the contradiction between etiquette and the legal system, the popularization of justice, and the self-awakening of rural women. "What the hell is the saying", but the answer is clearly no longer the sole focus of watching the film.
Qiu Ju sued several times to promote the development of the plot. The dramatic tension of the film's narrative mainly stems from the conflict between the characters' personalities and the cultural environment in which they live. Qiu Ju’s starting point for asking for an “argument” is “face” and her concern that a man’s being kicked will affect his fertility. The village chief can lose money and never admit his fault is also because of “face” and his anger at being humiliated and not having a son; Qiu Ju hopes that justice The "argument" given by the agency can save "face", and the latter's mediation method can only be limited to economic compensation or legal detention, which is bound to fail to meet the requirements. Therefore, Qiu Ju believes that the village chief threw the medical expenses on the ground, and Li Gongguan took the village chief's advice. The dim sum given in the name is not a "saying". 
Stills of "The Case of Qiu Ju"
Although Qiu Ju and the village chief are contradictory parties, the inherent dilemmas they face are actually completely the same. They are both products of a mixture of various concepts such as local patriarchal ethics, modern concept of the rule of law, acquaintance society, and the bottom-level folk mutual help and morality. , according to British cultural studies scholar Raymond Williams, they share the same "emotional structure", which is why Qiu Ju's "report" at the end of the film is even worse. The "face" she pursues has her cultural stance, and it is also driven by Qiu Ju's strong self-esteem and uncompromising personality, but Qiu Ju also recognizes the gratitude and repayment, and she repeatedly said, "I just want an explanation, and I didn’t tell you to arrest people”, the complexity of his inner confusion is the spiritual portrayal of the film’s cultural aspect of the era.
Today, Qiu Ju's confusion has been transformed into "He Xingfu" played by Zhao Liying, a new rural female self-growth inspirational story with the halo of a big heroine. The latter is naturally sweeter and more refreshing, but we will still be fascinated by this twenty The films from years ago are attractive, and a kind of gentleness of the slow time will be born from the bottom of my heart.
Qiu Ju went out with a trolley, and took a walk-behind tractor, a three-wheeled electric vehicle, a public bus, a human-powered tricycle, and the police chief's car to the distance and back to the village. We followed her gaze and saw the lively youths who passed by in the village police station giving speeches and fights, the colorful New Year pictures in the county fair, the fashionable youth in the city and foreign tourists. Still affectionate to her, seeing the mountains, customs and childhood, that is the past and where we came from. The film did not give Qiu Ju or the village chief any clear-cut support or criticism. The camera quietly and secretly just recorded, and we quietly and silently just watched, but it seemed that we had returned to the past. 
Stills of "The Case of Qiu Ju"
This indescribable and inviting audience into the realm of video art is beyond the reach of Zhang Yimou's own subsequent works. After "The Lawsuit of Qiu Ju", the "documentary style" of "No One Can Be Missed" has gone more thoroughly. There is no professional actor in the whole film, but there are carvings in the repetition; "My Father and Mother" and "Love of Hawthorn Trees" It is also a rural narrative, but it has reached an overly glorified petty bourgeoisie atmosphere. As for the commercial blockbuster that "Hero" opened, it is another way.
Zhang Yimou's early films "Red Trilogy" were all adapted from published literary works, and "The Lawsuit of Qiu Ju" is no exception. There are many places, but the ideological and humanistic feelings of the works run through, and this is the most important thing in literary and artistic creation at that time. When filming "The Lawsuit of Qiu Ju", Zhang Yimou was in high spirits and Gong Li was in full bloom. It was an era worth remembering.