The camera faces the material but examines the spirit - Jia Zhangke
After several setbacks, Jia Zhangke's "Children of Jianghu" finally met everyone smoothly. Regarding this film, many people say that it is the masterpiece of Jia Zhangke. He used 137 minutes to string together his own movie universe.
The section chief, who has been going around in the bottom group portraits, tried to use the story of a man and a woman this time to describe the sense of fate that the small and medium-sized people could not get rid of in the changing times and the disillusionment of the chivalrous spirit of the rivers and lakes.
01
Brother Bin and Qiaoqiao, ending and rebirth
In 2001, Datong, Shanxi Province, was carrying out a campaign to rebuild the ancient city. With a long history, developed industry, and an urgent desire for transformation, Datong is a city that overlaps the shadows of many cities in China, and people's lives are quietly changing with the renovation of the ancient city.
Datong old street scene in 2000
Brother Bin, the eldest brother who is well-known in all corners of the world. He is capable and old-fashioned. He is calm and composed.
Qiaoqiao, the woman of the eldest brother, everyone in the rivers and lakes calls her sister-in-law.
At the beginning of Datong’s transformation, the distant Xinjiang became a place where people planned to relocate. Although Qiaoqiao is the woman of the eldest brother, she also wanted to “retire” with brother Bin to Xinjiang to live a peaceful life for ordinary people. However, Brother Bin believes that "where there are people, there are rivers and lakes", and he wants to take advantage of the renovation of the old city in Datong.
Until one day, Brother Bin was surrounded and beaten by a group of emerging young men. Seeing that Brother Bin was bleeding all over the floor, Qiaoqiao, who was sitting in the car, pulled out a gun, got out of the car and pulled the trigger. The gangsters were shocked, and the fate of Qiaoqiao and Brother Bin was completely changed.
Two shots were fired, and the two were imprisoned, one year for brother Bin and five years for Qiaoqiao. Qiao Qiao thought that the first person she saw after being released from prison would be the man who had worked hard for him.
Since then, the male power and morality of the rivers and lakes in Brother Bin have been eliminated, and he has become a person outside the rivers and lakes; and Qiaoqiao went all the way south to "search for her husband" and was forced to walk in the rivers and lakes. After being released from prison, Qiao Qiao's survival skills are full marks, rubbing, coaxing, and leveraging force. This kind of survival logic in Jianghu is very similar to a generation of heroine Huang Rong.
The two finally meet in Fengjie, and the former lover is silent. In this small county town separated by immigrants, their reunion is full of absurdities. Brother Bin set up a brazier and helped Qiaoqiao to cross it, so as to go to prison. So far, the relationship between the two has ended, and even if they meet in the future, they will have nothing to do with each other.
In the blink of an eye, in 2018, Brother Bin returned to his hometown after being defeated. He was half paralyzed. He could only rebuild his confidence and dignity in his old lover, Qiaoqiao, and a generation of bosses ended in depression. And after Qiaoqiao returned to Datong, she was still called "sister-in-law" by everyone, all because she was imprisoned only for love, but now she took in Brother Bin, only for the four characters of morality and love for the children of the rivers and lakes, and for the rebirth of a chivalrous woman in the rivers and lakes.
Brother Bin and Qiaoqiao, one goes out of the rivers and lakes, the other enters the arena
02
The little people at the bottom meet in time and space in the movie
Many people say that in "Children of Jianghu", they can see the shadows of the characters in Jia Zhangke's "Ren Xiaoyao" and "The Good Man in Three Gorges".
In "Ren Xiaoyao", a young man from Datong, Shanxi, Binbin is brokenhearted. His girlfriend is going to Beijing to go to college. It is a wild model who sings on the market promoted by the Mongolian wine king. His boyfriend Qiao San is a "big brother" who died in a car accident.
"Ren Xiaoyao" Qiaoqiao
In "Three Gorges Good People", the image of Qiaoqiao became Shen Hong, a nurse from Taiyuan, who came to Fengjie, Chongqing, to find her husband, Brother Bin. Brother Bin has not been home for two years. The husband and wife reunited and hugged in front of the Three Gorges Dam. After a dance, they divorced peacefully.
"Three Gorges Good People" Taiyuan Nurse Shen Hong
When it comes to "Children of Jianghu", there is the Qiaoqiao that we see now in prison for the sake of love. She is a woman who still takes care of her old lover even after she was abandoned.
"Children of Jianghu" Qiaoqiao
Moreover, in the two films "Ren Xiaoyao" and "Children of Jianghu", the shape of the image of Qiaoqiao has not changed, the clothes have not changed, and the identity has not changed (both are the women of the eldest brother), it has become just a story.
But if we dig deeper, we will find that in fact, every character in Jia Zhangke's works is similar.
Brother Bin in "Children of Jianghu", he started his own business three times, from the infrastructure in his hometown, to the Three Gorges Project, and then to the cutting-edge Internet world. With him there were many others—
Xiao Wu: Idle people in the society, suspected of having a criminal record. In 2001, I helped people to introduce jobs and defrauded them for handling fees. Later, they started loan sharks, claiming to be "financial."
"Xiao Wu" protagonist
Dahai: The villagers, angry that the coal mines in the village were occupied by the rich, finally took out their own shotguns and embarked on the road of happiness and revenge, shooting and killing those who did not take their rights protection seriously.
"Doomsday" sea
Han Sanming: Fenyang miner, bought a wife in Fengjie, Chongqing with the money earned from coal mining in 1990, and continued mining coal in 2006, trying to earn money to pay off the debts for his ex-wife's brother and remarry his ex-wife.
"The Three Gorges" Han Sanming
From "Xiao Wu" in 1997 to "Children of the Rivers and Lakes", Jia Zhangke has always used the lens to depict the world of the little people, and the little people finally met in Jia Zhangke's movie universe.
They are very similar. They are all disadvantaged groups caught in the changes of the times. They seem to be beautiful, but when the tide of change in the whole society hits, finally one person's strength is irresistible, forcing everyone to take a break.
03
Times change, rivers and lakes disappear, chivalrous disillusionment
The strong Hong Kong flavor is the evaluation of Jia Zhangke's works by audiences who are familiar with Jia Zhangke's films.
Just one piece of Ye Qianwen's "A Light Drunk Life" was repeatedly used by him in the three films "Xiao Wu", "The Tale of Twenty-Four Cities" and "Children of Jianghu". When the melody of the song sounded, we seemed to see the atmosphere of the rivers and lakes in the Hong Kong film "Blood Two Heroes".
The post-70s generation is inevitably affected by Hong Kong films, especially kung fu films, police and bandit films, and martial arts films, and Jia Zhangke is no exception.
Woo Yusen's "Blood Two Heroes"
In the dark video hall filled with cigarettes, sweat and foot odor in Fenyang, the word "Hong Kong" is no longer unfamiliar to Jia Zhangke. It is a city with dense signboards, people passing by, and gangs. Containers come and go on the dock, and there are gun battles between police and gangsters on the streets.
Jia Zhangke, who has watched countless Hong Kong films, including Hu Jinquan's "Dragon Gate Inn" and "Chivalrous Girl" once said: "The energy in the body has no place to release, so when you leave the video room, you will find fault and fight."
Hu Jinquan's "Chivalrous Girl"
The rivers and lakes in the Hong Kong movie ignited Jia Zhangke's childhood memories. In Fenyang County, where he lived when he was a child, there were many big brothers. They were tall and handsome.
Who are Jianghu people? In the words of ordinary people, Jianghu people are mixed society, which is officially called "underworld", but this "underworld" has its own set of operating mechanisms - brotherhood and morality. This is the rule of the rivers and lakes, which cannot be trampled on, and those who violate it will be ruined...
It was this kind of rivers and lakes that touched Jia Zhangke, so he put his understanding of the rivers and lakes in his films.
"The Three Gorges Good Man", Fengjie County in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area is demolished, and people come and go on the wharf with different identities. Zhao Tao is carrying a bag and a bottle of water, walking through it, just like the Zen-like rivers and lakes in Hu Jinquan's martial arts films?
"Tian Destined", the modern version is forced to Liangshan, the four protagonists from north to south, flowing, rushing, and destroying, isn't it also like the world of martial arts?
"God's Destiny"
"Children of Jianghu", Qiaoqiao shot for love and then went to jail, regardless of previous suspicions to take care of the hemiplegic brother Bin, isn't he also pursuing a "righteousness" word in Jianghu?
However, in the film "Children of Jianghu", we also see the disillusionment of Jianghu and the loss of morality. When did this change start?
Perhaps it was from Brother Bin who was released from prison, and none of the previous brothers came to take him home, and the previous Ma Zai showed off his might in front of him;
Or maybe it's Jia Zhangke's own personal experience, from the fact that he saw the big brother Fenyang, who used to be especially good at fighting, suffered a stroke, from the fact that he saw that the city of Fenyang took on a new look, and from the fact that he saw the "underworld" being disciplined and incorporated.
Before the dawn of the new century, all the old and unconventional things were eliminated, and Jianghu was no exception. The rivers and lakes in the movie have become distant and unpredictable, the real rivers and lakes have become nowhere to be found, and the sons and daughters of the rivers and lakes are all scattered.
04
The impact of the commercial tide, Jia Zhangke's literary film dilemma
Maybe it was because he suffered too many losses in business operations in the early years. From "The Old Man of the Mountains and Rivers" to the present "Children of the Rivers and Lakes", Jia Zhangke began to actively cooperate with various commercial promotions, ran road shows, and even forwarded Yang Chaoyue Koi. interacted.
Yang Chaoyue attends the premiere of "Children of Jianghu"
"The film industry is also changing rapidly, and now I need to do these cooperative work, and I myself have been actively cooperating. If I choose to express myself through film, I choose a mass media." Jia Zhangke once said about the promotion of films. .
Among the sixth-generation directors at the same time as him, Ning Hao and others have become box office guarantees, and many newcomer directors in the market also have 1 billion+ masterpieces. Facing the growing domestic film market, Jia Zhangke also seems to want to prove himself at the box office.
But it backfired. Back then, it was considered that Jia Zhangke began to try commercialization of "The Old Man of the Mountains and Rivers". The investment cost was 38 million, but it only won 32.24 million at the domestic box office, which is not ideal.
So this time, in the production of "Children of Jianghu", Jia Zhangke not only invested more cost, but also invited Xu Zheng, Zhang Yi, Dong Zijian and other well-known actors to make cameos, and even the publicity has reached a new level——
In order to create momentum for the film, Jia Zhangke participated in two variety shows "The Reader 2" and "I Am an Actor", and performed in person in "I Am An Actor";
Following the example of "Monster Hunt 2" and other films, he played wall-painting marketing and released a bullet screen poster. The whole propaganda work was very grounded.
But from the current point of view, what hinders the audience from being interested in watching is not the strength of publicity, but the spread of word-of-mouth among ordinary audiences. Although "Children of Jianghu" adopts a commercial operation mode for publicity, the content is not popular enough to break the circle restrictions of literary and artistic youth, so that word of mouth and popularity cannot sink to third- and fourth-tier cities, so it cannot gain more markets.
And this is not the trouble of Jia Zhangke alone. The sixth-generation director Wang Xiaoshuai's "The Intruder", Lou Ye's "Massage", and Zhang Yang's "Soul on the Leather Rope" are also not high at the box office.
"Intruder" by Wang Xiaoshuai
Lou Ye's work "Tuina"
Zhang Yang's "Soul on the Leather Rope"
Twelve years ago, Jia Zhangke's "The Good Man in the Three Gorges" and Zhang Yimou's "Golden Armor in the City" were released on the same day.
Jia Zhangke's "Three Gorges Good People"
Zhang Yimou's work "The whole city is full of golden armor"
At that time, Jia Zhangke said: I am very curious to see who still cares about good people in such an era of worshipping gold. In the end, the box office of "The Three Gorges" stopped at 310,000.
Now, the commercialization of the film market is becoming more and more obvious. In today's anxiety of carnival, where is the future of literary films? Who else will pay for the literary films of Jia Zhangke and other directors?
*The picture in this article comes from the Internet
-END
View more about Ash Is Purest White reviews
