essay by an old Wenqing
, it used to be okay, such an era has passed." It is a bit ridiculous to pin the hope of a movie on the goodwill of the moviegoers. Some actors, screenwriters, etc. in the circle may have this kind of goodwill, but in fact, it may not be goodwill. Sometimes it is just a kind of face art. However, for the audience, if they go to the movies with good intentions, it means that all the movies made by cats and dogs should be applauded. Where does such a statement put the audience? The audience spends money to watch the movie, it does not mean that the good or bad judgment of the movie itself can be ignored without goodwill.
Weibo was swiped by "Assassin Nie Yinniang", which was praised by people in the circle. A director of electric light industry praised it as an extremely experimental film, which requires more than two viewings in different theaters. A well-known screenwriter even became a madman for this movie and threatened to watch it for the fifth and sixth times. Click to open the comments again, and a group of literary youths seized the opportunity to show their high style, saying that the Chinese people's appreciation level is too low to watch this movie. This is also my most anticipated movie of the year (there is none), but after watching it, as a representative of low-quality movie watching, I really don't want to use the movie to elevate myself, so I can't help but complain. This is not Director Hou's game work. It took eight years to create a 440,000-foot film. This is his 100% sincere work. However, I can only describe the film that finally appeared in front of the audience as disappointment.
The line problem The lines
of this film are definitely flawed.
Let’s start with the lines that are used as text manuscripts. At the beginning of the chapter, she was shocked. Master Nie Yinniang asked her to take the head of the chief officer. It was actually Pei Zhen’s original words. Some things were added and some things were changed, but they were not thorough enough. I don't understand what the director's intention is. Do you want to keep the original lines of the original work, or to create a style of your own after the transformation, or to truly restore the speaking style of the people of the Tang Dynasty? But unfortunately, no matter what the purpose is, the end result is disastrous. Nie Yinniang's original work is a legend of the Tang Dynasty, and the emergence of the legend of the Tang Dynasty is a sign of the development of ancient Chinese classical novels to a mature stage. Classical Chinese is an ancient written language. As we all know, the difference between ancient written language and spoken language is 108,000 miles, and the gap is unimaginable by today's people. Film is an art based on lines. It is not wise to copy the sentences of classical Chinese novels as lines. If you want to modify them without making great efforts, it is even more of a failure. In several places, adding function words bluntly violates even the most basic grammar rules. Not to mention Nie Yinniang's mother's long and boring commentary as if it were a museum narrator, and the arguments of several officials from Wei Bo that were filled with ancient proper nouns.
Let's talk about the lines that are part of the actor's performance. The biggest fatal injury is that the tone is cut off at the wrong place, which makes the people in the film talk like eating ice radishes in winter, choking enough. I don't believe it's intentional. The punctuation of speech is related to the meaning. If it is out of lamentation, hesitation, contemplation, etc., the actor can indeed pause in the middle of a sentence, but the lines in the film are forced in some inexplicable places. There is a sudden pause, giving people a feeling that either the lines involve classical Chinese, the actor's level is limited, and they do not understand the meaning of the whole sentence, so there is a situation in which the sentence is broken, or the actor's understanding of the entire performance is not clear enough, and there is no way during the performance. mastered situation. I just want to say that I hope this is not the director's intentional design, otherwise it will be a waste of time.
Whether it's a line as a script, or a line expressed as an actor, it feels stiff at the beginning. This problem was solved later, to be precise, after Zhang Zhen spoke, it became smoother the further back he went. But this also leads to another problem, that is, the style of the film's lines varies from jerky at the beginning to smooth at the back, resulting in inconsistent styles, which can only be said to be a major mistake in the film.
Here I have to mention Mr. Wang Jiawei, the leader of the Gaoqiang Gang. His movie lines are very artistic, cloudy and foggy, and many audiences can’t understand what they hear. They just think it’s good, but whether you understand it or not, his movie lines are written When the style is unified, it is the same from the beginning to the end, which is the result of careful tempering.
Theme Questions
The theme of the whole film is none other than Nie Yinniang's phrase "one person, no peers".
The story of Qingluan is added on the basis of the original film. The so-called Qingluan does not speak, but screams at the mirror and dances. As a remake of a story that was created in the late Tang Dynasty and has been around for a long time, innovation is necessary, and the addition of Qingluan-related plots to strengthen the theme of the story "one person, no peers" is a good job. At the end of the story, Nie Yinniang left with the mirror-grinder, and in the original book she was married to a mirror-grinder. The arrangement at the end just implies that Nie Yinniang has the same fate as Qingluan, she is alone, she has no peers, why should she follow a person who grinds the mirror, because the grinder grinds the mirror, she can take care of herself in the mirror . In the original work, Nie Yinniang uses a mirror-grinder as her husband. This plot is very abrupt, lacks direction, and has little meaning. The director creatively combines this plot with the legend about Qingluan, which can be said to be seamless and complement each other.
However, in addition to this, the story goes around from beginning to end. Most of the time, the scene is dull and the clues are mixed. There is very little contribution to the theme of "one person, no peers". Master Nie Yinniang said that her swordsmanship has been accomplished, but she cannot cut off human relations. This sentence is more suitable for summarizing the story of most of the film. From the time Nie Yinniang left the mountain to the last time she walked away with the mirror-grinder, she has been entangled in various "human relations".
First of all, she couldn't bear to kill the bureaucrat who played with the child (in the original book, she killed the bureaucrat, but a little later, in order not to kill him in front of the child, "to die, hold the head and return"), because she has compassion Afterwards, she couldn't bear to kill Tian Ji'an, worried that if Tian Ji'an died, Wei Bo would be in chaos, because she had the people of Li and the people in her heart (this already has the style of Guo Jingxia's country and people); to protect Tian Xing and her father, she did not hesitate to Qianli escort, whose behavior is far from that of an assassin who does not recognize six relatives, because the family love in her heart will never die. Justice is immortal.
Judging from these storylines, although the film deliberately portrays Nie Yinniang as a frosty face, she is actually full of warmth in her heart, a Nie Yinniang who is full of flesh and blood and longs to be connected with this world. From this point of view, Nie Yinniang finally embarked on the path of "one person, no peers". Even with the legend of Qingluan and the presence of the mirror grinder, she still lacked sufficient motivation. The theme of "one person, no peers" that the director wants to show is reflected in the film, but the reason for this theme's existence appears to be insufficient.
Nie Yinniang's original work is a simple chivalrous story. It is not an easy task for the director to use this story as the matrix, and to add his own creation to express the theme related to loneliness. The director has his own theme, but it is not enough to express it. People have been immersed in one thing for a long time, and many things will have the illusion of being right or good because of habituation and repeated thinking. But in fact, jumping out and looking at it, it is not necessarily right and good. Hou Hsiao-hsien spent eight years to make this film, but the time is not necessarily good, the time is spent waiting, waiting for the most suitable thing to appear, but if the time is long, you may have missed the best Nie Yinniang. Comments blindly emphasize that Director Hou's love and strength for this story does not necessarily mean that a good movie will be produced. On the contrary, this may also be the ultimate reason for the failure of the movie.
The issue of genre is
natural, this is not a genre film that can be easily classified, this film has a strong Hou brand, but I secretly think that Hou Hsiao-hsien has gone too far on the road to genre films.
In order not to make the film into a simple martial arts film, the fighting scenes in the film were subtracted, which made the film itself lose a lot of color because of choking. You must know that in the original book, Nie Yinniang is famous for her swordsmanship, killing people invisibly. In the film, the fight ends in three or two rounds. It lacks design, is too thin, and fails to highlight the characteristics of Nie Yinniang. In order not to make the movie into a simple romance, the emotional clues of Nie Yinniang and Tian Ji'an are explained lightly in the film, and the character Tian Ji'an was originally added on the basis of the original work, so although Tian Ji'an is in the film He had the most antagonistic scenes with Nie Yinniang, but lacked the point that could really make this line thicker. In order not to make the film into a simple drama, the film added a lot of plots on the basis of the original work, and deliberately downplayed the original work as a chivalrous novel. The form is scattered, and some plot subtractions are done too much, or they are narrated through the film, or only show the tip of the iceberg, which is easy to make people feel confused.
Of course, in the end, this film has successfully become a film that cannot be simply classified, and has become an exclusive film of Hou Hsiao-hsien, but it is difficult to say whether it is good or bad.
The most commendable part of the film is the landscape depiction. It can be seen that the director has drawn a lot of nutrition from ancient Chinese paintings. The scenes in this film are not as flamboyant and noisy as Zhang Yimou's "Heroes" and "House of Flying Daggers", nor are they as simple and calm as Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", but reveal a kind of A state of elegance and tension. It’s a pity that the movie is about telling stories in a simple way, and it’s about feelings in a more elegant way. No matter how beautiful the scenery is, it is the only way to be natural with the story. The scenery in this film is beautiful. , the story is much weaker.
Some details that have not yet been unfolded,
Nie Yinniang is called Yaoniang and Yaoqi in the film, and it was not until the last time that the mirror grinder was waiting for her to return in the house that she really called Yinniang for the first time, and it was also the last time. I deeply think that the name Yinniang fits the protagonist's experience, actions, and ending, and there is no need to change it.
In some parts of the film, the freeze frame time is too long, which is a bit too much.
There are additions and deletions to the original. The plot of Nie Yinniang hiding a knife in the back of her head was deleted, which I think is a good deal. The knife hidden in the back of the head is the embodiment of Tang Chuan's re-searching for strange things and strange words when the Tang Dynasty was declining. There is already a wizard in the film, and it will be bad if there are too many things like eccentricity.
Out of goodwill towards the director and Nie Yinniang, and because I have no intention of using this film to advertise myself as a force, I just want to be an audience faithful to my own feelings, I give this film three stars. It's really not particularly good. The Cannes Film Festival gave Hou the best director to give him a face. Not giving the best film is the right choice, but I still recommend everyone to watch it. The title of this text may lack a bit of goodwill, but what I described is the real feeling of watching the movie, so let me be a headline party.
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