The masterpiece of this Chinese martial arts movie was carefully crafted by Hu Jinquan, the first Chinese "author" director, in three years. The length of the shooting cycle and the huge amount of money spent were unprecedented at the time. Although commercial profits have been bleak due to the times, its milestone significance in the history of Chinese-language movies has been difficult for all martial arts films since then. Since Hu Jinquan began to focus on the audiovisual language of fighting in Hong Kong action films, he gradually absorbed the processing methods of foreign excellent films, and finally gradually established a relatively clear style standard.
Just like John Ford’s Wild West and Kurosawa’s loyal warriors, Hu Jinquan’s films have unique aesthetics, creatively incorporating elements of traditional Chinese opera into genre movies, giving them the world of purely wielding swords, guns and sticks in previous martial arts movies. The leisurely and elegant Chinese charm, precise rhythm, sophisticated editing, dramatic character appearance and instrumental accompaniment, has a unique style of Hu's martial arts-simple and elegant, vigorous and majestic, free and easy. The conflicting locations in his films are mostly in the frontier inn and the Zhulin monastery, which entrusts him to his interpretation of the knight Zhongliang and his thinking about the nation-state. Most of his films are black and white, very conceptual, and feature prominently in the portrayal of heroines.
Compared with the earlier works of the Hu family, the martial arts in "Xia Nv" is more miraculous and deeply expresses the realm of Buddhism and Zen. The characters in the film symbolize the different values of Confucianism, chivalry, and Buddhism. The eunuch eunuchs launched a vicious fight, and the eminent monks cleaned up the mess and extradited them. This kind of martial arts meditation provides a model for sublimation of the martial arts genre with revenge to promote the development of the plot. It also assumes the tradition of Chinese literati with personal creation, and explores the release of the true meaning of life. "Rain" and others have made a good foreshadowing and transition.
In addition, the abandoned bazaars and deserted mountains and ridges in "Xia Nv" all present a rich sense of space, and the characterization of the characters is three-pointed. Fighting in the bamboo forest has become the supreme classic in martial arts movies. It is handsome, free and easy, graceful and graceful, with a slow rhythm, beautiful and elegant composition, and full of the charm of harmony between man and nature, so that today's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Ten Faces" Movies such as "Ambush" all pay tribute to this magical pen. Directors such as Tsui Hark and Wu Yusen are all affected to varying degrees.
"Goddess" is divided into two episodes. Due to the director's excessive pursuit of excellence, the budget overruns and the conception differences with the production company, it was finally completed after ups and downs, but it is definitely the pinnacle of Hu's work. It integrates action, suspense and artistic conception, setting off a wave of new martial arts films in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
This is a very sophisticated film. Before the film started, the Song-like handwriting and rough rice paper brought the audience into a real world. At the beginning of the movie, the whole book is rolling, dense reeds, quiet abandoned fortresses, and mottled stone lions. Every setting is so meticulous. It is said that in the pursuit of absolute authenticity, Hu Jinquan often went to the Palace Museum to search for Ming Dynasty genre paintings for textual research; he Not only the camera and editing, but also the costumes and actions must be designed by himself.
This is a very "Chinese" movie. The lingering night between the scholar and the chivalrous girl, the piano, wine, flowers, and the moon are what the so-called "flowers and moons complete the night". The love between the two is manifested in the changing weather, the swaying lotus, and the reflection of the moon, with the freehand beauty of classical poetry. The destiny of the characters in the ending of good and evil and the reincarnation of karma also retains the traditional concepts in the hearts of the Chinese people.
In traditional martial arts stories, the battle between the good and the evil, the evil can not suppress the right, and the story can be over, and in this "Xia Nv" there is a literary plot-the woman leaves without saying goodbye, and Gu Xingzhai is targeted by the agents of the East Factory. Gu Xingzhai was rescued with the help of the eminent monk; the leader of the Dongchang factory pretended to be converted to Buddhism but raided revenge. The eminent monk's wound shed golden blood, and everyone knelt down in front of the eminent monk. Such an arrangement is not superfluous for Hu Jinquan-in his subsequent works, the description of eminent monks and Buddhism still runs through it. He has lived in Beijing since he was a child and has been exposed to a lot of traditional culture. He still loves his homeland in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The life situation of Gu Shengzhai is a portrayal of Hu Jinquan himself as an intellectual. Shou's sense of alienation. The last part of Yanwen is inseparable from the author's lonely and uneasy psychology and the attempt to find a solution. It represents the powerlessness and loss of a generation of literati. Gu Xingzhai's weakness and weakness may also be the author's reflection and analysis of himself.
Critic Zhang Jiande summed up Hu Jinquan’s achievements in this way: “Later generations will remember that he is a Chinese director who proposed opera-style movies in theory and practice, and successfully integrated film skills with traditional opera art in movies. In this respect, he still remains. No one can match. As an artist, his achievements in the film industry in Hong Kong and Taiwan are indeed full of heroism. Hu Jinquan has pushed the martial arts genre to the nine heavens of the film concept. He is trying to integrate Chinese opera and film from the origin. In the Western art form, Hu Jinquan may be the Zhouzi mentioned in Buddhism, ferrying the audience from the east bank to the west, and then ferry them back.” Yes, this is the most important point of Hu's martial arts aesthetics——make Chinese martial arts films have a traditional, drama-like charm and beauty.
The opening scene is a spider web under the dark night, shaking with the wind, dark and eerie, quite like "Liao Zhai". The barren mountains, the dazzling halo, and the 5-minute slow panning of the camera vividly rendered the environment before the characters appeared on stage. The characters in the play appeared one by one (Ms. Xia Nv Yang only appeared for the first time in the 27th minute), and each of them had a mystery of life experience after they appeared on the stage, which drew the audience's appetites. This is quite similar to the pre-burden accumulation in Chinese opera. The secondary characters are helpless, and the hero protagonist is highly praised.
On the other hand, the actions of the characters are undoubtedly full of drama. When Gu Sheng goes to the temple to spy, he must first look around, combine the accompaniment of percussion and plucked instruments, and make an appearance like Peking Opera (the theater stage is multi-faceted); Certain buffering and expressiveness; sudden changes in facial expressions will have jerky shots, breaking through the limitations of the perspective of the theater stage. Instrumental accompaniment reminds key plots, portrays the psychology of the characters and even combines shots; in character shaping, Gu Shengzhai’s cowardly compromise and Yang Zhiyun's coldness and boldness formed a sharp contrast, each with flesh and blood, and lifelike.
The setting of the movie is as exquisite as the stage and it is convincing. In "Xia Nv", it is obvious that the director's preference for foreground use, reeds, bamboo poles, smoke, and dust are all rising to form a good visual level, especially in the long-distance movement, the group of people and horses in the scattered panorama appear extremely tense ; Gu Sheng took his mother and ran away, the silhouettes of the two were like shadow puppets on the window mullions.
Finally, movies are movies after all, which have more complicated scenes and editing rules than dramas. The scenes showing the abandoned castle do not seem to be a general panorama, but focus more on the backyard, trails, and reeds. Various scene angle changes are unique; the bamboo forests sometimes have peeping angles, which is full of tension. -It is said that the scene is more than 10 minutes in total, but it was shot for 25 days. In the later period, Hu Jinquan personally cut it one by one. It is worthy of being one of the most classic passages in the history of martial arts movies. When two people communicate with each other, they usually use medium and close shots, and they use close-ups or even close-ups to express the character's psychology. The fighting scenes show a panoramic view of the confrontation situation. Two lens editing techniques.
To sum up, "Xia Nv" is the supreme brilliant masterpiece in Chinese martial arts movies. If "The Godfather" in the West puts a curse on all the gangster films in the world, then in the East, "Xia Nv" is later. All the martial arts films are scheduled to be filled with new wine bottles.
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