The camera slowly moves out of the village, and the barking of dogs grows stronger. The Palais du Cinema in Cannes is equipped with a holographic sound system, and the audience clearly feels that the dog is four or five meters away from the left of the camera, and as long as the camera moves to the left, everyone can see the dog. But at this moment, the camera suddenly stopped.

Camera switch, close-up, Li Xuejian's ravine-horizontal face appeared on the big screen, he looked straight ahead, no sadness or joy, looking a little like the old farmer in Luo Zhongli's oil painting "Father".

Panoramic shot, the altar is arranged in the open space at the head of the village, Li Xuejian is standing in the center of the altar, and there are hundreds of villagers standing under the stage, including men, women and children.

The camera cuts quickly, the incense table is filled with smoke and melon and fruit offerings, two water tanks depicting the dragon king, filled with water, and a black dog firmly tied to a rope barking.

In the close-up shot, Li Xuejian shouted in a desolate voice: "Lord Dragon, manifest your spirits! Lord Dragon Lord, manifest your spirits! Lord Dragon Prince, be merciful and give some rain!"

After reading the sacrificial words, Li Xuejian raised his hands with both hands, palms to the sky, and shouted loudly: "Kneel!" After speaking, he took the lead and knelt on the ground, and the men, women and children behind him were prostrate on the ground.

"Knock your head!" Li Xuejian shouted at the same time, leaning down, holding the ground with both hands, and slamming his head on the ground. The villagers behind him all bowed down and bowed, extremely reverent.

"Two prostrations! Three prostrations......"

After prostrating, the black dog was led to the altar and tied with a rope between two water tanks. Li Xuejian looked at the sun above his head, and then said to the black dog: "If you are thirsty, drink, eat when you are hungry, and bark at the sun when you are not hungry or thirsty, as long as the sun bites back and the rain falls, you will be released!"

The black dog seemed to understand Li Xuejian's words, and the dog raised its head to the sky and barked one after another.

In the violent barking of the black dog, the camera slowly pans to the sky. The sky was blue, there was not a single cloud in sight, and the vicious sun was spewing fierce flames, trying to bake the whole world through. Immediately afterwards, the four blood-red characters of "Scorching Sun" appeared in front of the audience, and then the names of the main creators appeared one after another.

Jia Zhangke exhaled softly, he likes to shoot the real life conditions of people at the bottom of society, and he has also filmed rural themes, but he knows that if he is asked to shoot this story, he will definitely not be able to shoot this extent, he will not be able to shoot this kind of magnanimity of the emperor and queen of heaven at all.

There is a film in the history of Chinese cinema that has made this kind of bearing, that is, the masterpiece "Yellow Earth" jointly completed by Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. To make such a movie, the director must not only have superb skills, but also have enough mind and bearing.

Sofia Coppola remembers Roger Ebert saying in "Great Movies" that the word epic does not refer to big budgets, big productions, but big ideas, big visions, and "Sun Scorching" is an epic film with big ideas and big vision. This kind of movie should have been made by her father when he was young, and she couldn't make it anyway.

After the subtitles, the camera slowly panned down from the sky, a large panorama, Li Xuejian on the village street with his hands behind his back, walking towards the entrance of the village.

Wang Luodan walked towards him with water. When she saw Li Xuejian, she put down the bucket and asked, "Master, what's going on this year? In previous years, as long as the dog barked for three or five days, or at most seven days, the sun would retreat, and it would be windy, rainy, or cloudy." But it's been half a month this year, and there is no sign at all. ”

Li Xuejian looked up at the sun above his head and sighed: "I'm afraid this rain won't fall!"

Li Xuejian walked out of the village, came to the altar, and found that two jars of water were drunk by the sun-dried dog, one tank was dried, and the other was also bottomed, and then looked at the black dog, the hair was scorched together, and it was completely paralyzed on the ground. Seeing that the dog was pitiful, Li Xuejian untied the rope tied to the dog, sighed and said, "You go, it won't rain." ”

The dog struggled to his feet, took a few steps forward, and suddenly slammed into the wall. The audience was taken aback, and there was an exclamation from the scene. The dog turned around and slammed into the tree. The audience exclaimed again. The audience didn't understand what was going on, and they all thought that the dog was crazy. The ancestor on the screen didn't understand either, and used to pull the dog's ears and wanted to see what was going on.

In a close-up, the dog's eyes have been sunburned, leaving only two dry wells under its forehead.

The audience at the scene was shocked, and some female viewers even covered their eyes and couldn't bear to look at it.

Li Xuejian looked at the sun in the sky and muttered: "The sun of this dog day is too poisonous, it has sunburned the dog's eyes!" He looked down at the blind dog lying on the ground, and said, "You said that you will live in the future, why don't you be a companion with me!"

In the close-up, the blind dog whines as if he understands, and tears roll down his blind eyes. It stuck out its tongue to lick the ancestor's hand, as if to express gratitude.

The softest place in the audience's heart was hit, what a smart and sensible dog, so pitiful!

Li Xuejian touched the blind dog's head and asked it to go home with him, but the blind dog took two steps and collapsed on the ground again. Li Xuejian sighed, went back to the village to fetch some water for the blind dog, and brought some food.

Li Xuejian was feeding the blind dog when he suddenly heard someone shouting something. When I listened closely, someone was shouting "the clouds are coming". He looked up at the horizon, and a large dark cloud was drifting in this direction.

Close-up, someone is "dangdang" banging the gong. In the big panorama, a man on the village street banged the gong and shouted loudly: "Plant autumn! God let us plant autumn!" A group of children also shouted: "Plant autumn!"

The villagers are called by the old people, the children, the men, and the women, and the villagers converge on the village street like a river, flowing from east to west, and from west to east, and then flowing from the village head to the mountain beam. The villagers took out the stored seeds, planted them in the soil, and waited for God to rain.

Only three days later, the clouds cleared, and the scorching sun burned as hot as ever on the mountain beams. Realizing that the drought would continue and that the rain would no longer fall, the villagers began to discuss escaping. The ancestor is the oldest man in the village, and everyone wants to hear his opinion. The ancestor said to the east, due east is Xuzhou, walk thirty or fifty days to arrive, there are people there are living well.

The villagers packed up their burdens and prepared to escape from the famine, and the ancestor also packed up his burdens. On the morning of his departure, the villagers gathered in the village, and the ancestor wanted to look in his own soil, knowing that he might not return.

On the screen, Li Xuejian came to the soil and looked at it, the ground was yellow, and there was no trace of green in sight. He took a few steps before suddenly stopping, a look of shock on his face. On the dry ground, a touch of green is particularly eye-catching. It was a corn seedling, just out of the ground, tender, green, like a newborn baby.

Li Xuejian squatted in front of the corn seedlings and said softly: "We are all about to flee the famine, why do you grow out?

Camera switching, big close-up, half of Wang Luodan's face under the strong sunlight. She stared ahead, her forehead covered with fine beads of sweat, and her hair was sticking to her scalp, wet. Beads of sweat slowly gather together and turn into a large drop of sweat, which slowly slides down the forehead and down the cheeks, and finally disappears under the camera.

Outside the camera, there are all kinds of sounds, children's cries, poultry calls, people talking, messy.

Someone asked, "Is the ancestor really not going with us?"

"He's too old to die in a foreign country!"

"But if he doesn't leave, he'll die!"

"He said that he would rather die at home anyway. ”

Behind Wang Luodan are villagers fleeing from the famine, some helping the old and the young, carrying baggage, some pushing wheelbarrows, some children are reluctant to go, and are pulled by their parents......

The camera rises into mid-air and pushes in the direction of the village at a 45-degree angle. A typical diagonal composition enhances the sense of depth in the picture. The camera slowly weaves its way through the crowd of people fleeing the desert, through the empty paths, and through the empty villages......

As the camera progressed, Li Xuejian and the blind dog appeared on the screen. Li Xuejian walked forward slowly with his hands behind his back. There is not a trace of green in the mountains, and the whole world is a dry color. Li Xuejian walked into the land, squatted down, and looked at the delicate and tender corn seedlings.

The camera slowly pushed over, and in the end, only half of Li Xuejian's face was left in the shot. Like Wang Luodan, his forehead was covered with beads of sweat, and his wet hair stuck to his scalp. What is different is that his eyes are extremely determined, shining with hope.

There are a lot of art film directors here today, and many of them like to use long shots, and the standard is very high, such as Ceylon. But after watching Zhang Ran's long shot, the directors present were extremely impressed, and it was the first time they had seen such a long shot with a symmetrical structure. Even Godard exclaimed: "This shot is beyond imagination!"

Jia Zhangke also admired this shot, but what he admired most was not the symmetrical structure, but Zhang Ran's accurate grasp of the audience's psychological rhythm.

This long shot has more than 30 seconds of empty shots from crossing the crowd fleeing the famine to the appearance of the ancestor, empty mountain roads and empty villages. Long shots will slow down the pace of the movie and make people feel procrastinated, and with such an empty shot, it should make people feel bored. However, when Jia Zhangke was watching, he didn't feel the slightest delay.

The reason why this effect can be achieved is that at the beginning of this scene, through the dialogue of several people, the ancestor was told to give up escaping and stay. The audience wants to know where the ancestor is and what he is doing now, so there is suspense. When the audience watches this scene with suspense, they will look for the ancestor in the camera, and naturally they don't feel delayed.

The movie continues, the jump cut, the big panorama, the whole shot is almost filled with mountains, only a small part of the upper part of the screen is exposed to the sky, the ancestor and the blind dog in the hillside are so small, so small that they may disappear at any time. Everyone is gone, this village, this mountain, only an old man and a blind dog are left.

The great sense of loneliness is like a stone smashing on the hearts of the audience, and the silence and desolation gnaw at the hearts of the audience. Almost everyone is thinking, the villagers are gone, there is a big drought, an old man, a dog, how can they live!

The camera switched, the big panorama, with a few dog barks, the blind dog ran out from the place where heaven and earth met, and then, Li Xuejian also walked out slowly, his figure lost a lot of weight, but his eyes were as firm as ever.

In the close-up shot, Li Xuejian seemed to have seen something, and there was a smile on his face. The camera cuts, Li Xuejian's subjective shot, in the center of the ground, the corn seedling has grown to the height of chopsticks, green and green like a squirt of water in the reddish-brown sunlight.

The camera cut back, Li Xuejian turned his head and asked the blind dog: "Do you see? How fragrant, you can smell the fresh and tender seedlings of this water for ten miles and eight miles!" The blind dog raised his head at Li Xuejian, rubbed his legs, and ran towards the corn seedlings without saying a word.

Li Xuejian took off his white cloth shirt, crumpled it into a ball, wiped it on his face, sandwiched it under his armpit, and walked in front of the corn seedlings. He crouched on the ground and looked at the corn seedlings, his eyes shining with love, as if he were looking at his own children and grandchildren.