Text: Thorn Birds

The first time I was attracted by a film that didn't win by plot, I watched The Essence of Little Forest. From beginning to end, it seems to be in the pastoral scenery built by the film, surrounded by various natural beauty, and the air seems to be full of mountains and forests.

The Essence of Little Forest is a refined edition of the Summer and Autumn editions and the Winter and Spring editions of Little Forest.

How to define this film? It is neither a drama nor a pure documentary. I regard it as an idyllic film with a central figure between food and people's scenery.

I'm not going to discuss the external style of the film here. The content of the film fusion will never let you down. I came in to see the score. Although the whole film revolves around planting, finding ingredients, cooking and enjoying delicious food, it's not boring at all after watching the film for more than two hours. On the contrary, it feels interesting, feast your eyes and deserve high marks.

Most of the films are strung together by the voice-over of Hashimoto Ai, the heroine of the city, but they are by no means abrupt and redundant, full of meaning:

At this time, the screen presents an imaginary swimming picture, which is simply surreal.

There is a voice-over that is very interesting:

-If the air is not ventilated, the crops will get sick, but be careful of the dew.

-knead the dough with warm water and wheat flour until it is as hard as the earlobe, and then leave it for more than two hours. If it is not left for a long time, it is impossible to make a tough dough.

In the film, there is a saying by Shizi, which is meaningful:-Although such cold weather is a headache, some foods can only be cooked when it is cold, and cold is also one of the important seasonings.

-It takes ten minutes by bike to go to my rented field. This year's flower season is rainy and cold. I am worried that I will go to the field every day to have a look and pull out the grass. The rice will grow up slowly listening to people's footsteps.

is indeed a documentary worthy of quiet taste, which makes people look forward to the day of returning to nature in the film.

"The weeds in the field are getting stronger and stronger. This mugwort was just pulled out yesterday, and the roots sprouted again, which scared me. The green invaders, fields and roads were covered with weeds."

At this time, plants grow on the back of the heroine's hand in the picture, and the whole process from germination to foliage is completed in seconds. The film uses this special effect language to express the inner activities of the heroine, which is very intuitive. Very happy.

Ms. Shimizu's mother suddenly disappeared from home, and she hasn't heard from her for a long time, which often reminds her daughter that the vegetables fried by her mother are better than those cooked by herself, because her mother carefully removed the tendons of the small vegetables, but at that time, Ms. Shimizu often naively disliked her mother's laziness. Seeing this, I feel that the characters in the film are close to the audience. Looking back, didn't we grow up in ignorance and become estranged from our closest family members because of self-righteous selfishness?

In general, the film uses the memories of the city children to string together the rural life all year round. The farm work such as weeding and plowing by the woman owner in the green-surrounded fields gives the audience a particularly beautiful visual impact, which is different from the scene of dry farm work generally depicted in the ordinary impression: rough calluses, a weather-beaten face, hard work and hard work in plowing long mu, sweating and dripping grass, which makes you feel compassion and even fear.

The fair-skinned city children seen in this film are skilled in farming, agile in hands and feet, full of vitality, releasing healthy energy beauty, and chewing self-sufficient natural food after work, which is full of flavor, so they yearn for this lifestyle of sweating and eating their own food.

In fact, this is exactly the effect that the beautification photography of the film wants to achieve. The film deliberately chooses a rich and fertile area suitable for high-yield cultivation, and the shooting is only a fragment of the scene. The film that reflects the poor life in rural areas before will choose a poor and backward rural area with inconvenient transportation, which is not rich in products and even difficult to supply water and electricity. The rural life presented by choosing that angle has different themes and different expression methods.

So, even if you know that you really went down to the fields to collect seeds and harvest for a day, you are also tired and collapsed into a dead dog, but what the film really brings you is that the field farming is poetic and extraordinary, and different artistic techniques give people different artistic feelings.

this is also an immature understanding.

That's how this film brings you super-beautiful visual enjoyment. Almost every picture is beautiful and worth collecting. In addition, this documentary also teaches you to slowly realize the serious and meticulous life in your daily life: after weeding in a sauna, drinking a cup of homemade rice wine is sweet and smooth, and basically won't be left.

Holding a bottle full of jam made by myself, observing the vivid color through the glass, the city child thought, "Is this the color in my heart now? Picking Elaeagnus angustifolia all morning, I only got three small bottles of jam. " I couldn't wait to open a bottle the next morning, which was rich and a little astringent and sour.

Eat the dried bread, wrap it in the new jam, and listen to her real chewing sound. The dried bread has just been baked. When you take a bite, it's particularly crisp and tempting to hear that sound. It's almost immersive. It must be wonderful to see her smiling uncontrollably while tasting delicious food.

I am particularly intoxicated with the natural artistic conception in the film. People enjoy their daily life comfortably, live a simple and leisurely life, and don't indulge in such a slow life. The most important thing is that the audience can't wait to say goodbye to the vanity and impetuousness after watching it.

At the same time, I also realized how retrogressive the fierce fighting in the increasingly cruel real society is, which makes people miss many wonderful interests in nature that deserve your attention and pondering, and ignore many beautiful scenery that makes people linger.

However, there are still many people who stop in the hustle and bustle, scheming and trying their best to get lost.

after a day's work in the wild camp, Shizi and Yutai (played by Takahiro Miura) are eating the salt-baked trout cooked by themselves with relish, which makes people drool, and they really want to eat their fill.

The film also introduces the secret of making trout miso soup: it's not complicated, just cut the fish into large pieces and boil it in water, and add some miso.

There are a lot of scenes in the film that are memorable.

The hostess, Shizi, was sawing wood, and her good friends and the aunt next door shared the boiled chestnuts with her. After everyone tasted them, they dispersed. The hostess carefully cleaned up the dirt in the sawtooth with special tools, wiped it with a rag, cleaned it up, and said to the saw very seriously: Thank you for your hard work today.

such a person who can respect and treat ordinary things in life with heart will definitely not be mistreated by life. In fact, people use things to create a better life. What's the reason why they can't wait for them, thank them insincerely, and treat these ordinary things well?

In fact, they are also another form of partners and friends around people. It is not surprising that you will confide in objects in this way.

I deeply appreciate that Japanese children, like adults, pray for the snow before digging for natto: "I hope you will become delicious". Watching Japanese movies and TV shows, I find that they seem to be closely related to the objects around them, the animal and plant environment and so on. They are used to expressing their feelings to everything, conveying their hearts and exchanging energy.

Look at the scene of making glutinous rice balls with rice cakes. When you hit it, the onlookers will pray in unison: I hope you will become delicious to repay us, hit it again, and then pray in unison: you will become delicious rice cakes. Very rhythmic, very ceremonial.

Actually, many Japanese cultures originated from China, so many scenes look familiar. There is also a very similar scene of making rice cakes in rural areas of China. In the cold winter, some people beat hard, some people knead with their hands, and more people watch in a circle. Excitement and hot air far drove away the cold outside.

In that case, the rice cake was released from the oven, which followed the expectations of everyone. After being hammered by the people who beat the rice cake and kneaded by the people who kneaded the rice cake dough, and with the eager eyes of the children, the steaming rice cake loaded with all this was absolutely different from the ordinary food displayed on the supermarket shelves, and it was cold and stiff, only with the color of coins.

The rice cakes made by the villagers together are filled with the joy of harvest for a year, full of life energy, full of touching and unique spirits, and full of human fragrance. They must have attractive and strange magic power, satisfy your taste buds, soothe your spleen and stomach, leave fragrance in your mouth, and even make your soul comfortable to eat.

The villagers work together to make Ciba, and they will give it to each other for tasting, adding to the flavor of the New Year. If there are relatives in the city, they will be grateful to receive this homemade Ciba and give back more. Especially in today's fast-paced society, it is regarded as a precious and rare product, far better than what can be bought everywhere in the market.

nowadays, are young people in rural areas less enthusiastic about hand-made agricultural and sideline foods, disdainful of learning, and gradually lost those skills, or are they pursuing efficiency and the increasingly rich market meeting people's consumption needs?

After seeing the female host harvest the rice, she put it neatly in rows and stamped it, just like a military parade. The film caught all the beautiful harvest in the fields. After a year's hard work, the harvested crops were like soldiers waiting for the owner's inspection. The owner's pride, joy and wealth were exquisitely displayed at a glance, which produced a shocking power of beauty.

1. There will be many unexpected surprises and gains after watching this film. While enjoying the visual feast, learn about the traditional production process of many cheap farm foods from planting to harvesting until they become delicious on the plate, such as local jam, chocolate hazelnut jam and sugar boiled chestnut. Walnut rice, glutinous rice balls and rice cakes .....

2. Suitable for recommending to students

For the primary and middle school students living in cities, the daily life in the countryside is becoming more and more distant, and Little Forest is a rare vivid teaching material for aesthetic appreciation and social practice, which is full of fun.

How do the fruits and vegetables you see every day come to your kitchen and dining table from far away? Watching this film will dispel doubts to varying degrees, and you will know that it is hard to eat and drink. Cultivate simple feelings of cherishing food, increase knowledge, broaden horizons, get close to nature, cultivate aesthetic feeling, and get spiritual nourishment from simple daily life.

For example, watch a vivid scene:

When the rice grows taller than the ducklings, put the ducks in the field, and the ducks hobble across the ridge of the field in a row, where they can eat weeds and insects on the ears of rice, and swim around the rice field, which can deliver oxygen to the roots of the rice, make the water turbid and block the sun, so that weeds will not grow easily, and feces can be used as fertilizer.

This is the method of raising rice by western ducks. It is easy to understand that Komori duck farmers don't want to kill or eat ducks very much. The first time I killed my own duck, I put it in a bag and walked a long way. I remember it was heavier than I thought.

When you appreciate the interesting pictures, you unconsciously know the knowledge of field farming. Instead of blunt and obscure boring reasoning, you implant the concept of agricultural knowledge into your heart, inadvertently popularize a lot of new knowledge that you are not interested in, and discover a new world of understanding nature.

this is also my unexpected gain from watching movies.

3. Watching this film is a mirror for people crowded in the bustling city to re-examine themselves and manage their lives according to their hearts.

Yutai said that he didn't really learn to respect the people and parents here until he left Komori, and realized that their lifestyle could make what they said meaningful.

city children understand that when Yutai comes back from the city, he has to face his life truly, accept everything sincerely and take it seriously, and live in Komori, as do the older generation in Komori, so as to enjoy life from the bottom of his heart.

Shizi reflected, "And I came back to escape under the pretext of hard work. Looking back at the previous footprints, I found that I often fell in the same place. Although I worked hard all the time, I circled in the same place. In the end, I just returned to the original point, which was very frustrating, but I also accumulated experience, so no matter whether I failed or succeeded, it was no longer the original point, but it should be called a spiral. "

"The circle is getting bigger every time, so the spiral is getting bigger. I think I should go out and make another effort."

Shizi decided to go back to the city, because she felt unable to stand in the city before returning to Komori village. Now she finds that returning to Komori with such a negative attitude is disrespectful to Komori, and she should face it with a positive attitude.

At the end of the film, five years later, she returned to the village with her husband she found in the city.

although we turned around, we reached a new starting point.

There is another noteworthy thing about the film. There is no one using a mobile phone throughout the film, and even the postman who delivers letters often comes in and out. Those rural postal workers and villagers often talk like one of their own.

the hostess makes frozen radishes, cuts the white radishes into two parts from the middle, and cuts the green radishes into pieces vertically, pokes holes in 4 or 5 raw radishes, strings them on ropes, air them outdoors, and freeze them at low temperature, so that the dried frozen radishes can be preserved for one year.

The postman saw it and said that radishes are cooked before they are dried here. That's what his wife's family did. Frozen radishes are indispensable in the stew. When there is no time to stew, it will save trouble and taste good.

this scene of dialogue makes me feel the natural and simple atmosphere of rural people, and my heart is slightly shocked.

"When eating, the frozen radish is cut into triangles, boiled in water, and boiled with pickled squid soaked in rice soup. It is very tasty and delicious. It is better to add seasonal vegetables such as carrot and lotus root pieces, and wild vegetables and bamboo shoots are the most suitable. I am looking forward to spring while eating this dish. "

when I watched the picture, I felt that the heroine was longing, as if waiting for an invitation with spring. In the cold winter, my heart