Dai Sijie The Lost Meaning

A Lost Meaning: From Book to Movie
Most books that are reincarnated into movies do not typically portray the book as the reader has interpreted it. Whether it be plot twist, random addition of scenes or a whole new ending, a movie generally never completely follows the book it is based on. This stems from the fact that the directors are in fact not the authors of the book being made into a film and therefore, the director can make the changes he or she deems more palatable to the audience. I found it very surprising that Dai Sijie would choose to make the movie contain the differences it did in regards to the book, especially the ending. Dai noted in his interview with Alan Riding that he does indeed keep “in touch with two of his ‘re-education’ colleagues - both studied in the United States and returned to China to teach - when he visits Beijing” ("Artistic Odyssey: Film to Fiction to Film."). From this statement, the new ending in the movie flowered. What I do not understand is why he would desire a changed ending. Dai mentions that he believes a
feeling of nostalgia was brought into the film that was not portrayed in the book through the altered ending. I do not agree that it was a necessity for the film. In regards to adding the “nostalgia” to the film, I think it takes away from the overall purpose of the book – the facts, features and feelings that came with the Cultural Revolution, the time of “re-education”. Purposely trying to add a feeling of nostalgia to a time and place that clearly was not nostalgic seems wrong. There was beauty in the ending of the book, as the Little Seamstress finally found freedom through leaving the village on Phoenix of the Sky Mountain, the place that Ma and Lou reminisce about at the end of the movie. Attempting to add nostalgia to the movie upset me, especially because it was the author himself who decided to add it into the film. I understand for those who have not read the book the ending might have seemed to soften the experiences the boys and the Little Seamstress struggled through in the book, but I do believe that is a substantial purpose because it ruins the initial motivation for writing the book. My feelings after watching the movie were more anchored towards disappointment if anything on the behalf that I was frustrated that Dai would choose himself to change the whole meaning and purpose behind his book in order to please an audience. It almost feels as if he betrayed and misrepresented the people that had to suffer through the Cultural Revolution and the time period of suffering it brought just so that he could have a more successful film. Introducing the final scene with the realization that the Three Gorges Dam will flood the village was an area of the film that I was initially confused by and still might have the wrong idea about. As I mentioned earlier, I do not agree with the ending of the film. It strips a lot of the meaning behind the book and takes away my favorite part about the book, the fact that through all the bad the Little Seamstress had suffered through, that she finally found some purpose and meaning for her life which would only come from leaving the place that had caused the suffering in the first place. Ending the book in such a manner leaves the reader with (what I believe should be the final feeling and impression from the book) a feeling of freedom, ability, a new insight and meaning that only came from an open mind and the courage to change and accept the once unaccepted view. By closing with a scene reminiscing on the town in which brought the boys so much suffering, and a time in which the population was going through a cruel process, I was left with an impression of sadness and remembrance of what the people in China had to go through. To continue on with the purpose of adding the flooding of the village, I could only manage to render the idea that the dam was symbolic for the disaster that came with the Cultural Revolution. While Mao Zedong believed that re-education was going to be a massive and positive revolution that would prevent China’s population from being sucked into a revisionist world and lose purity, it was actually the beginning of a ten year period of suffering, cruelty and slavery under the ruling of the Communist Party of China. Comparing then the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in the movie and Mao’s enforcement of the Cultural Revolution in real life, it can be related in the sense that while the Chinese government believed that the hydroelectric dam was going to provide huge quantities of electricity, save large acres for agricultural land and therefore money, they were blinded by their own ignorance and greed and in result, the dam became a huge environmental and economical disaster. The damn caused landslides, harmed ecosystems and endangered millions of the population living around it. In the same accordance, Mao believed (in reality he was just a crazed power-greedy leader who wanted control over every single person in China’s population by brainwashing them!) that enforcing the Cultural Revolution would not harm China’s population, but instead bring them away from the dangers of revisionist and into purity. In reality though, the Cultural Revolution halted education, the government controlled the media so the population was mislead, the economy collapsed, and much of the population became peasants. The symbolism I believe I found here, between the Three Gorges Dam representing the Cultural Revolution, would allow for the closing scene to become more relevant and give more meaning to the movie than the feeling I was left with. While I did not like the ending of the movie as much as I liked the ending of the book, I am glad that I was exposed to both.
While I was somewhat educated on the Cultural Revolution in China, it was not until I began to try to find reasoning behind Dai putting in the Three Gorges Dam flooding the village at the ending of the movie that I really dug deep and discovered how and why the Cultural Revolution happened, the effects of the Cultural revolution on the environment, economy and the Chinese population. When I began to read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, I knew it was fiction and therefore, my mindset was focused on the faultiness of the book and not on how much of the book was actually derived from real-life experiences and events that occurred from 1966-1977. Maybe I was the only one foolish enough to set my mindset this way, but I am thankful for the change in mindset after writing this
paper. Though the film was an enjoyable watch (until the end), I without a doubt enjoyed reading the book much more. The book was more detailed, the chronology was more appealing and sensible (as some events of the movie happened in different times than the book and did not make much sense to me after reading the book), and the ending of the movie left me feeling dissatisfied. I am glad to have both read the book and watched the movie, but I do not believe I will ever change my views and disappointments with Dai’s directing choices and therefore, the end of the movie.

Work Cited

Riding, Alan. "Artistic Odyssey: Film to Fiction to Film." The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 July 2005. Web. 27 Jan. 2015.