This movie is really embarrassing. The Xuanfa team is very embarrassed. Hou's style is high and low, and if they want to pull the box office, they can only use "winning", "martial arts", "female assassin" and other business entry points. The audience is also very embarrassed. They are misled into the mood to see all kinds of martial arts and enter the arena, only to see a "Man and Nature", or to see what the master's "Advanced Art Film" looks like. I only saw the funny faces of Taiwanese classical Chinese and Shu Qi.
Behind all the incomprehensibility lies Hou Hsiao-hsien's insistence. While his personal style has intensified, he left the homework necessary for watching movies to the audience to do it themselves.
The original
text provides the embryo of the entire story and gives sufficient imagination space for subsequent creations.
"Nie Yinniang" is a fantastic and brilliant article, and the description of Yinniang is few but penetrating. Among the heroines of the legendary novel, she is the most flesh-and-blood and intriguing. No wonder Hou Hsiao-hsien was determined to shoot it.
In the original work, Yinniang was stolen when she was young, and it was five years later when she returned home. Her father asked her what happened, and she said it was just reading the scriptures and chanting mantras. His father didn't believe it and asked again. She said: What if you don't believe the truth? Only later did he tell the truth, that he had learned martial arts and became an assassin.
Why is there a lie to prevaricate first? It's a fun thing to do. As a novel description technique, it avoids the direct and blunt statements of Yin Niang's confession, and at the same time, Yin Niang's character lines are also drawn out.
The following episodes began to be pushed away gradually, and Yin Niang's chivalrous courage gradually became clear: the young man with a mirror passed by her house, and she was about to marry this person, which is a very pioneering feminist behavior. Going to kill, but seeing the cute child, can't bear to start, the character is rich and three-dimensional. Killing Jinger is neat and tidy, with strong martial arts; In the end, hiding is also different.
Usually Tang legend novels are written in seclusion, and the ending sentence is simply and neatly explained - "Never see you again". "No more" is the usual standard of "chivalry", and it is also the ideal attribution of chivalrous people. But "Yinniang" appeared twice after she retired. Once her employer died, she rode a donkey to the coffin to mourn. Once a few years later, she rode a donkey to resolve the difficulties of the employer's son, and then she really disappeared.
Hidden intermittently and looming, Yinniang, as a female assassin, has "love" in addition to the chivalrous, which is a bold extension of the female chivalrous guest.
When it comes to knights, "Kong Kong'er" is also a very wonderful role: only one move is made, and one move is missed, and he immediately walks away. Is a very proud and elegant martial arts image.
The original work already has the core of "Xia" and "Love", but the style is fantastic and Hou Hsiao-hsien is realistic, no one can imagine what the story will be like when it arrives here.
When the script
arrived at the script, Nie Yinniang was rewritten into another story, a large number of new characters and relationships appeared, and the plot took place and turned into a complete short story. But unfortunately, Zhu Tianwen's writing is too limited by Taiwanese female writers: it seems to have a three-point aura of Hu Lancheng, but it turns tacky if he turns a corner carelessly. In this way, Nie Yinniang was completely adapted into a novel for modern women in ancient costumes. In the new version of the novel, Yinniang and Taoist nuns, princesses and Yuanshi all have their own life experience, position, emotion and means. Men seem to have power, but in fact they are useless. Princess Jiacheng is like a Qingluan dancing mirror, and she knows righteousness; Yinniang's mother is ordinary and forbearing, but her heart is like a mirror and she fulfills her mother's responsibility to wake up Yinniang sharply; Yinniang herself is deciding whether to kill or not to kill. Touching and ruthless, swaying and growing between blind execution and self-awakening - they are all busy, but as male characters, there are many scenes in the play.
Zhu's writing has given these women an unusually unified and solid position. From them, we can easily find two points: first, they all have a loneliness that others cannot understand; second, they are extremely responsible and effective. As a novel describing the "female assassin", a special profession that has to emphasize gender, it is not wrong to write heavily on women. But the story eventually condensed in this piece, and the rest didn't melt away beautifully. For example, about Jing Jing'er and Kong Kong'er, these two characters are extremely exciting and interesting, but they were adapted so boringly, which is a pity. (Please, this is a martial arts film, how many martial arts characters are there in the end). And in the original text, Yin Niang was stolen by an uninvited guest, but in the script, she was sent away by Princess Jiacheng because of a naughty accident, and when she came back, she wanted to kill her childhood sweetheart cousin. This kind of eight-point plot is really tacky to die. In addition, the bluntly fabricated classical Chinese is full of loopholes (it is said that the line is Acheng), as a martial arts novel, Nie Yinniang did not become clever when she came to the script.
In the end, the whole film
and the script we saw in the movie theater were very different, and many scenes were deleted by himself. The old man was very stubborn and said that I was not worried that the audience would not understand it.
So the audience went away.
Why not go? The story was told in pieces, the lines and performances were not carefully considered, the set props were also criticized by professionals for being careless, and the fighting was blunt and uninteresting... After leaving, it was polite to say "Maybe it's good, but I don't understand it". .
It is very harsh and even unreasonable to ask the audience to bypass the lower buildings to see the upper artistic conception, because it does not require such advanced things as aesthetic ability, but on the contrary, it requires the basic will of people: for literature and art Both Pian and Hou Hsiao-Hsien himself are patient and trying to get to the bottom of it. But this is also what Hou Hsiao-hsien's strong personal style lies in: he is very unreasonable, you can only approach him, and he will not approach you - but if you understand it, it is very easy to be moved.
In Hou's film, there are many such examples. In "The Best Time", Shu Qi and Zhang Zhen play billiards, a scene is shot to the end, and the lines are also very common chat between men and women. Some people think that this kind of play takes a long time to shoot, so what's the best way to shoot it? But when your line of sight follows the camera, you can see that Shu Qi seems to have brought an ashtray for Zhang Zhen, Zhang Zhen said something, and an unpredictable expression flashed on Shu Qi's face...something he took out to give You see, some things may be outside the screen, but you can clearly feel it without saying anything, and the smell is permeating the air.
Going back to script creation and film presentation, he reserved some things in "Nie Yinniang", such as Yinniang crying while masked. This is very obvious Zhu Tianwen's technique, he used it. Assassins cry, and only by crying can they kill or not kill more satisfactorily. This is the finishing touch. Some of the pictures he cut off. Yinniang master and apprentice duel, the script says Yinniang won, and the Taoist nun's chest "appears a big Yin Hong". Waiting is useless. In the movie, the master and the apprentice fought each other, and they stopped each other, and the white collar of the master's chest was cut.
This is where I think the most martial arts in the film. The audience can't wait to watch the flying stones, you die and I hurt. But Hou used a very clever way of explaining: after a few tricks, the master could not let the apprentice down, so he let her go, leaving only a back of the apprentice.
Because it is a real contest, it is more dashing. Like empty hands? In fact, is it really impossible to fall, or is it merciful? Also intriguing.
Speaking of three points, the strength is especially strong. Hou's understanding and expression of the essence and soul of "Xia" is a very high number of paragraphs.
An unforgettable scene: The Taoist nun stood in front of the mountains, and the scenery was infinite. When Yinniang said goodbye to Daoist aunt, there was a big mist in the blink of an eye, and she couldn't see anything clearly. This scene matches the psychological changes of the characters, which is wonderful. It is said that when the film was filmed, it was waiting for the cloud and the rain. Is it really waiting? Such a scene is really hard to come by, and I believe it is "encountered".
This encounter is a chance. That is why people who like it will maintain this work. In the eyes of people who like to watch movies, it is easy to encounter a good-looking film, but it is difficult to encounter a film with the same concept. Just like Confucianism and Taoism say about joining the WTO, the act of playing and joining the play are just one thought. With such stubbornness to bring a highly personal work to the big screen and wait for others to come into the play, Hou Hsiao-hsien cannot but be said to be loyal and arrogant in his heart.
So how do you deal with the differences in perception about "Nie Yinniang"? First of all, "Nie" is not a touchstone about film aesthetics. People who love movies may not like Hou Hsiao-hsien, and people who like Hou Hsiao-hsien may not love this Nie Yinniang. Secondly, it is as comfortable as a cloud, more like a poem. For a poem, we talk about whether it is good or bad, understanding or not understanding, most of the time it is unnecessary, so the rest depends on whether you like it or not, not to mention it is sincere enough, for those who like it and don't like it, All voluntarily handed over ample, tenable, and obvious reasons. As the first large-scale release of Hou Hsiao-hsien's works in mainland theaters, support is always good, because the next Chinese-language film as important as "Nie Yinniang" will appear in a long, long time.
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