Red Sorghum, The Soul-ar Eclipse Finale

The final 5-odd minutes of the 1987 film classic. In an way even most art films rarely attempt (the device is operatic), Zhao Jiping's score brings together 2 of the 3 song themes as if heard from within "Granddad"'s memory: there is a sense of remorseful looking back and perhaps a belated regret at the unchecked heroic impulse to revenge that had ended in the deaths not just of the entire distillery workforce (who perhaps realized what was coming) but as if by accident of the Feminine Grace - Jiu'er - who was only doing what a wife ought to in context: fetching a midday meal for "the men".

The price of hubris exacted not upon oneself but upon a truly innocent loved one.

And so Yu Zhan'ao "hears" the voice(s) that had brought him and his son to this point, as they sing, first the taijiao ge (litter-carriers ditty), then (more painfully) his OWN overwrought and presumptuous nose-thumbing work-chanty, "Sister march on....".
Sung, how much pain! from the heart as he looks down at the body of the "sister" who has taken his advice.

Burt there is more: first a recapitulation of the celestial shaman-noise (accompaniment to miracles and transformations) that had earlier seemed to hypnotize the lovers in their tryst-in-the-wild. Drums first then the agglomerated sound of 90 odd reedpipe-organs (sheng).

And second, through what seem real time words-in-song, a folk-Buddhist prayer for the safe passage of a newly-released soul (hun) into the West, the realm of the Buddha Maitreya where metempsychosis begins,

Again, a miracle is implied (Jiu'er in death as in life a kind of sacred being); as the song unfolds the late-day sun is momentarily covered over by a full solar eclipse, in almost all venues a rarity and a cause usually for spirit-alarm. The dimming seems to demostrate that Jiu'er is indeed on her way to the Western Paradise, which is the wish or prayer chanted by her son (the prayer form is called 指路歌 zhilu ge, or prayer to guide the spirit on its travels (West).