So there was a reason for it How to recognize a Chinese Nobel writer

The Nobel Prize winner in literature, Chinese Mo Yan, is practically unknown in Russia. Agree, this statement is quite paradoxical, even if you consider that he was awarded the prize only yesterday. It is impossible to read Mo Yan in Russian - there are no translations, so Lenta.ru got acquainted with the writer’s work indirectly, but by and large the only accessible way - by watching Zhang Yimou’s film “Red Gaoliang”, based on the works of the nobel laureate.

About the film

The film "Red Kaoliang" was released in 1988 - it is dedicated to the life of Chinese peasants in the first half of the 20th century. The plot centers on the fate of a young girl whose parents marry a 50-year-old distillery owner with leprosy. Having not lived with his wife for even three days, he dies under mysterious circumstances, and the widow has to manage the affairs herself. Soon she has a new lover, the wine (more precisely, moonshine) is getting better and better, things are going well, the owners have a son growing up - almost an idyll. But everything collapses when war with Japan begins.

Essentially, this is where one film ends and another begins. A colorful pastoral with swaying stems of kaoliang and wine spilling over bowls gives way to a military drama. Moreover, the brightness of the colors does not disappear from this drama, and this makes it even more creepy. The Japanese herd the peasants at gunpoint into a kaoliang field and, to intimidate them, force the butcher to skin the captured partisans alive. The peasants respond by making a huge mine out of barrels of moonshine, hiding in the bushes and waiting for a Japanese truck. The ending turns out to be truly Shakespearean.

Cinematographically, “Red Gaoliang” is a rather characteristic film for Zhang Yimou: the richness of colors and bright color symbolism that distinguishes all his works are fully manifested here. From a literary point of view, the film is a real heavyweight. Two themes of Tolstoy scale are touched upon here: the patriarchal structure of society and the horrors of war, shown through the prism of peasant misfortunes. It is obvious that the author of the literary source was not a writer of feuilletons, since he took on such topics. It is also clear from the material that Mo Yiang was not false in his novel.

Unlike the original source (the novel "Red Kaoliang" itself), the film "Red Kaoliang" is very well known in the world. In 1988, it was awarded the main prize at the Berlin Film Festival and became one of the first films thanks to which the West - and above all, of course, Hollywood - paid attention to Chinese cinema. Zhang Yimou, for whom this was his directorial debut, is now considered a classic of Chinese cinema, and actress Gong Li, who played the main role in the film, has become a world star.

On the other hand, in the literary basis of "Red Kaoliang" there is nothing truly shocking, outstanding, amazing - in a word, something that would allow us to talk about the genius of the writer or screenwriter (the script is precisely one of the weakest points of the film). And the visual side (look at the footage) outshines everything else. As a result, Red Kaoliang is simply a very good movie, but there have been many brilliant films about Chinese history, both by filmmakers of Zhang Yimou's generation, including himself, and by younger directors like Wang Xiaoshuai.

About the writer

In China, Mo Yan is a prominent writer. Perhaps not very popular, but definitely authoritative. He holds the post of deputy chairman of the country's writers' union, a position that obliges him to be loyal to the Communist Party. In this regard, many journalists regard the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Mo Yan as a political gesture, transferring the recognition of one person to the recognition of an entire state, primarily in political terms. This idea lies on the surface - previously the Nobel Committee did not indulge China with attention and, even worse, awarded prizes to dissidents, which only aroused the anger of the Chinese authorities without any admixture of pride.

It is unlikely that the lack of information about Mo Yang is explained only by the fact that he was almost never translated into Russian; this is rather a general feature of Chinese literature, which we generally do not know very well. In 2000, the Nobel Prize was awarded to the Chinese emigrant writer Gao Xingjian, but even this did not add to his popularity in Russia - not a single book of his was published in Russian. What to say about other authors. There is hope that everything will be different with Mo Yan - his novel “Wine Country” is due to be published by the Amphora publishing house at the end of October.

You say: what kind of ridiculous nonsense is this - writing a review of a film that was 24 years old? But, surprisingly, not only we, but no one in the world, with the exception of specialists, knows almost nothing about the writer who was given the Nobel Prize. Even the authoritative cultural editorial board of The New York Times published material about Mo Yang that was more like a monograph or an article from Wikipedia. This is how a laureate turns out. Deserved? It is impossible to answer, but all signs point to it.

The rules for working with texts about winners of major awards are approximately the same as those adopted for obituaries - tell the biography, note the merits and add a little personal information. So, it is absolutely impossible to say anything about Mo Yang on my own. It seems that only the Nobel Committee managed to do this, which awarded the writer a prize with the wording “for the hallucinatory realism with which he mixes fairy tales, history and modernity.” Well, that means hallucinatory realism. That's probably true.