watched it twice in a row at the cinema, but I didn't know how to write "what experience". I need to stress that I have always been a fan of Hou Hsiao-Hsien in the past.
This film won the award, if the factors behind their respective operations are not considered, there are several reasons that I can speculate on the surface of the award
. 1. Hou Hsiao-hsien's personal style is maintained.
As a senior master of Hou Dao, his respected status in the world film industry must come from his personal style, so his award must be "Hou Hsiao-hsien-style award"
2. Photography by Li Pingbin. In the combination of personal aesthetics and the tone of the film, Li Pingbin's aesthetic skills and unmarked style are fully reflected in this film.
3. Appreciation and recognition of the theme and values of the original work of "Nie Yinniang" by foreign judges. The original work of "Nie" is very good, as for whether it is well refined - anyway, foreigners must think it is good.
How can this film become more "good-looking" or more "Hou Hsiao-hsien" (the two intersect and oppose)? For the time being, I will put aside the question of how to tell a story, and I will first say a few "suggestions" (I am naturally not qualified to give advice to Hou, but if the following elements appear, I think it will be more in line with my personal preferences)
1. More original Overall presentation——Since the image style is as simple and restrained as possible, with more medium shots, short shots, and long shots, then the character status is naturalistic, such as "Oedipus King", "Ten Days", "Pasolini" "Belly Cut" (Kobayashi Masaki)
or hunting ancient styles such as "Death Sword", magnificent and bizarre as "Strange Talk" (Kobayashi Masaki),
but it can be guaranteed that the first style mentioned above will greatly deviate from the aesthetics of a large number of ordinary audiences , and the producer is also unacceptable. At present, there are no ancient costume movies that require market returns to dare to do this
. The second and third types, I don’t think there are any stars and extras in Chinese movies that can have this kind of performance quality. To perform this effect, yes, impossible.
In short, I don't think the film is "wild" enough nor "old" enough.
2. The mixture of mainland Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin is really unacceptable, plus half-literal lines, this is not a coordinated expression system. If it is really possible to pass N years of archaeology, you can relatively closely examine the Mandarin of the Tang Dynasty at that time. After systematic study, the actors will use those Mandarin/dialects to perform, and the audience will watch the subtitles. This can create just the right sense of distance. The viewing process will not be affected by this discordant factor (Mainland Mandarin + Taiwanese Mandarin + Classical Chinese), but everyone knows that for a commercial movie, this idealized everything is impossible to achieve - foreigners can give This award must have something to do with the fact that they can't understand the difference between Taiwanese Mandarin and mainland Mandarin because they don't understand Chinese...
3. There are many scenes where filming is extremely forbearing and restrained. This is the characteristic and strength of Director Hou. But forbearance is too much, and the expression of the characters is not differentiated, it is difficult to express the lonely mood of Nie Yinniang.
Even in the fight scenes, a large number of medium shots and small panoramas are used too deliberately. The excessive use of such narrative shots has to be considered. My personal tendency is that Director Hou tried several shooting methods, but couldn't find the effect he wanted, so he simply used this relatively simple, but not really brilliant method - even the subtraction method is actually more brilliant and cooler. Absolutely, a more elusive way to shoot.
4. In the big vision, if it is the rough mountain road in "The City of Sadness", or the tired walking of a group of people on the field in "Good Boys and Good Girls", that kind of "slowness" is reasonable and conforms to the rhythm of reality , but in "Nie Yinniang", whose art style is not at all original, in Jingjinger and Nie Yinniang who are "like thorned birds", this style of expression is open to question. If it is Hu Jinquan's way of handling it, I think it will be a lot more coordinated - and under this kind of vision, Nie Yinniang and Jing Jing'er's performances in the field can only have a strange effect similar to walking on the stage.
5. It is also a question of performance style. In ancient times when the classical Chinese was so simple, the information was so poor, and the animal nature of human beings was greater than human nature, the silence and outbursts of the ancients would only show a more extreme state. I am afraid how to make the actors show this style of performance. , is a problem for many directors who want to shoot ancient themes, and this problem has not been well solved in "Nie". In a word, the actors look very "modern", and the art style is too "clean" and "gorgeous", it is even more difficult to show the state of the actors.
Sadly, it is impossible for Hou Dao to be unaware of the above issues. However, given a large amount of capital injection, all kinds of celebrity propaganda must be added, and market repercussions must be considered, many original intentions of creation cannot become project-led.
Another point to mention, Tang Legend, if you want to present film and television works, even if it is not "surreal", at least the camera should suggest "spiritual", because the stories of the characters inside are not only stories, but also a kind of sustenance, but Hou Dao does not seem to be interested in this aspect of the content, there are not many scenes that can show the feeling of "spiritual", maybe he wants to be realistic.
Despite these and other problems, "Nie" is still a film with its own strong style and something to say. Even its regrets can cause a lot of thinking - I still hope that more people can buy it. Tickets to watch this film of special significance to the Chinese film industry.
The most important thing to be a mature audience is to at least think before showing your ill-will and meanness.
————————————The dividing line I just finished watching ————————
A few days after reading it, I scanned the WeChat Moments, and some online movie reviews, and found a phenomenon :
First of all, we will remove those who naturally reject the style of Hou Hsiao-hsien, and those who have little interest in literary films. We will take samples from the audience who are willing to interpret this film seriously. Within the scope of our eyes, those who are engaged in film and television related majors/readers, really Few people liked the film; and those who sincerely felt moved were often from non-film and television practitioners/students in liberal arts majors/readers, such as Chinese, art, advertising, comparative literature, foreign languages, etc.
This prompted me to think about a question, are film and television practitioners/readers bound by their (limited) professional knowledge when interpreting and evaluating "Nie Yinniang"?
In the expression of "Nie", in addition to the photography that conforms to our imagination of a martial arts film, the dispelling of the narrative and the split shots are also different from Hollywood-style narrative and traditional montage techniques, which are all contrary to the traditional film aesthetic education accepted by practitioners of. Of course, dissolving narratives is not new, nor are long shots and scatter structures – after all, we are all people who have seen and appreciated Yasujiro Ozu, Angelopoulos, and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s previous works; In terms of directors, "Nie" is not too difficult to understand compared to directors such as Godard, Alain Resnais, Peter Greenaway, and David Lynch. But this "Nie" is different from all the above films - the abandonment of form is a bit too decisive, and the degree of dispersion of the techniques is so high that it is impossible to distinguish whether it is the blank caused by the purposeful subtraction or the Disorder caused by too much helplessness and regret in the production process.
I am very familiar with the film and television industry / the "occupational disease" of readers - I am obsessed with the completion of a film. On the premise of being able to understand the theme and values of the film, I always feel how to behave here and how to deal with it there. Here are the There are flaws, there is something wrong there, and because of this, I am very good at it, and I can't wait to go into battle and give suggestions to the director in person.
In fact, although the expression of "Nie" is a bit obscure, it is not difficult to understand what Hou Dao wants to express. I try to analyze the reasons why I am not satisfied, and maybe I can extract three:
1. This is the work of the great Hou Hsiao-hsien, I can't accept that he didn't have a breakthrough and made this film relying on inertia (although it may be good enough)
2. Based on my limited experience of watching and making films, I think the "aesthetic effect" of this film comes from the film's production The accidental gain after the process got out of control (mentioned in the link above) is not the original intention of the author. In view of this, maybe some of the praises come from the so-called "over-interpretation"?
3. I'm not satisfied with how well the film is done - I think there are many ways it could have been handled better (although that might be fine)
4. Non-film educated/readers with no film education, is it because Insufficient movie viewing (too few comparison objects) or because of the possibility of not understanding the language of the movie, only focusing on the text, the threshold for judging the completion and possibility of the movie is lowered?
So the question arises again - what is "overreading"? What is "high standard"?
Is this a strict closed loop - the work is only a one-way output to the audience, and the audience must combine the author's original intention and context when interpreting it?
Or is it an open and free process—what the audience sees is what they get, and in the process of viewing the film, each takes what he needs and completes his own sublimation?
Should the appreciation and discussion of certain films be isolated from the film itself, or should it be placed in the history of cinema and compared with other excellent films? (Similar to comparative literature? Literary history research? Looking forward to professional guidance in this regard)
I talked to some friends who are highly positive about this film, and I asked them a question: what attracts you to this film is the text (the core content of the film) Values, themes, etc.), or the sum of content + form (in fact, the subtext of this sentence is the completion of the film)?
It is a pity that I did not get a very complete answer to the above questions. Due to the limited understanding of the other party's production and film language, the discussion did not have a detailed process between you and me, and I could only give me a perceptual and comprehensive answer. This answer, which is not the answer, has caused me new confusion-whether I am in this mountain, obsessed with the "technique" of film language, emphasizing that film language has a cause and effect, but lost the importance of being an ordinary person The subjective feelings of the audience, and the latter, is the real "Tao"?
The so-called "professional prejudice" and "the idiot of the division of labor", these knowledge systems that have formed stereotyped thinking, have they seriously affected the judgment of our practitioners?
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