OPINION> OP Rana
|
OPINION> OP Rana
|
|
Let me explain a few things
By Op Rana (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-14 07:17
It has been 50 years since Joris Ivens made Before Spring with young Chinese filmmakers. The master filmmaker had visited China before and did so later, making documentaries during those sojourns, too. But the 1958 masterpiece, which at first was called Snow, is arguably the most poetic and lyrical of his creations in China. Before Spring belongs to a genre of cinema (documentary and feature both) that seems to be panting for breath in today's mechanized, materialist world. Only a handful of directors today have the power to keep breathing life into it. The moving picture of Chinese life Before Spring portrays in relation to the land and the seasons can still move the stoniest of hearts. Unlike his earlier or later films made in China, this one, dare we say, is apolitical. It begins its lilting journey from the winter in Inner Mongolia, and moves further inland to the awakening of spring and Spring Festival, which thankfully is still the most important occasion in Chinese people's lives. The people depicted in the film (as was the reality then) work on the land and are close to the changes brought about by the seasons. Spring Festival for them is the real coming of spring. It signifies the end of the harsh winter and the suffering it brings. It spells the end of snow and the bone-shivering, teeth-chattering cold. Spring was then the harbinger, in the true sense of the term, of greener times. There is a catch here. The film owes its poetic element, and hence everything else, to the simplicity of the people and their way of life. It tells us, and that was half a century ago, that the more we move away from the soil, the less poetic our life will become. Only a fool would expect man (forgive me my political incorrectness) to be equally close to nature today after the world - and life - has traveled at rocket speed in the past 50 years. We have trampled the earth in triumph, denuded it of its remotest resources, stripped it naked from inside out (and are still doing so), and yet still expect it to satisfy our needs. If the earth, the soil, the oceans, the rivers, the lakes, the trees, the pastures and the forests have life (and they do), they must be wondering what has happened to man. Why is he hell-bent on destroying the very edifice he is standing on, the roof that is his shelter? To save his edifice and the roof over it, US President George W. Bush declared a war on (sic) terror. That call has exercised many governments and individuals across the world. But have we spared a single thought on the war on terra we have been waging for decades? Or, is it centuries? Will we ever declare a ceasefire on that front? Will we cease bombarding our own hearths and homes? And are we at all aware of the damage we are causing our kids? A detour here, with apologies. China is perhaps the only country to have taken up the environment at the government level. But can just one or two countries protect the environment, and thus the world, from doom? Poet and thinker W.H. Auden once said you can judge how civilized a society is by its attitude to trees. If we take Auden's yardstick, how many civilized societies do we have today? Back on the road. When will we realize nature, like our parents, does not belong to us? When will we know that unlike our parents, it does not care for us. We belong to it and we have to care for it - for our own survival - whether we like it or not. If we do not, we will soon be speaking about our homes like Pablo Neruda did more than six decades ago. Alas! We will not have even a fraction of the poets' power and understanding when he spoke from The Heights of Machu Picchu: This was the dwelling, this is the site: here the full kernels of corn rose and fell again like red hailstones Here the golden fiber emerged from the vicuna to clothe love, tombs, mothers the kings, prayers, warriors. What do we do then? Maybe we still have some time before doom finally descends on us. Can we please use it to make our children aware of the handful of Ivenses, Audens and Nerudas still surviving today? Can we teach them to respect and follow them? And with due respect to Lu Xun and his immortal creation, A Madman's Diary, can we please save the kids who have not tasted nature's blood? E-mail: oprana@hotmail.com (China Daily 03/14/2008 page9) |
