Labyrinth Of Imagination: From The Novel Zhou Yu’s Shouting To The Movie Zhou Yu’s Train

In2007, Bei Cun described his novel Zhou Yu’s Shouting (published in1999) asthe representative work in the period of difficult advance of faith. Sun Zhou adapted itinto a movie Zhou Yu’s Train. The novel and the movie are quite different in bothcharacterization and plot. Taking the novel and the movie as the resources for mutualinterpretations, this paper believes that both Bei Cun and Sun Zhou built the labyrinthof imagination through their works.The multiple narrative perspectives in Zhou Yu’s Shouting make its key plot existin an unreliable way and the story itself has been under the influence of differentviews. Zhou Yu’s Train goes even further. The director makes a complete experimentby dispelling the physical space in the narrative of the movie. There is only theimagination, but no person who imagines. The theme of the movie, which wasretained from the novel, is “the psychological experience encountered in the processof pursuit”.“Ideal love”,“pure poetic realm”,“real world” are keywords to make commentson the themes of Zhou Yu’s Shouting and Zhou Yu’s Love. By examining thekeywords closely, you will find they are far from being so distinct and clear. Whetherit is in Zhou Yu’s Shouting or in Zhou Yu’s Train, the theory of pursuing “ideallove”can not stand careful scrutiny and verification. What the characters seek lacksthe indispensable element for an ideal love—the individual respect among people. InZhou Yu’s Train, Chen Qing is a “poet”, which is the label Zhou Yu attaches to him.However, he is not the person who lives in the world of poetry. Zhou Yu is actually acharacter who exposes the existing form of “poetry” in the world, which is distortedand far away from its essence.“Pure poetic realm” is untraceable in Zhou Yu’s Train. When the true ideal love and pure poetic realm are dissociated from the world offiction and the characters live, act and think in the “real world” with the absence ofthe two things, the “real world” also loses weight and can not bear the characters’survival. The respect and understanding for human being and the strong will andself-esteem in human nature split the illusion of “real world”.Zhou Yu’s Shouting is Bei Cun’s representative work during the period of thetrial of confidence. The trial of confidence he experienced is severe, in which he hasno control over anxiety. What Sun Zhou wants to do in Zhou Yu’s Train is to breakthe established narrative rules of his own and other directors, looking for a newer andfreer way of expression. In this sense, Zhou Yu’s Shouting and Zhou Yu’s Train havesignificant differences in appearance, high degree of unity in inherent traits, andentirely different orientations in deeper layers.