He failed the college entrance examination and went to college at the age of 23.
At the age of 27, the virgin feature film was a blockbuster,
Known as "the light of hope in Asian cinema".
At the age of 45, he has won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
He is also the first Chinese director to receive this honor.
He is Jia Zhangke, known as "Chief Jia",
His lens is always aimed at the most humble individual,
The reality he photographed shocked and shed tears to countless people.
"Can't just because the whole country is running,
Ignore those who were knocked down. "
This year, his new film "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes" was released,
Is an epic movie,
Known as the Chinese version of "America's Past".
A generation has a generation of rivers and lakes,
The rivers and lakes of our generation,
Have the most craziest desire, and the thinnest affection.
In "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes", Qiaoqiao and Bin are lovers, and Bin is the gang boss. In a street fight, Brother Bin was almost killed, but fortunately he fired a shot to save him. In order to cover Brother Bin, Qiaoqiao lied that the gun was his own, so he went to jail for five years. After being released from prison, the arena has become a reality. Qiaoqiao went to the Three Gorges thousands of miles away to find Brother Bin, but Brother Bin, who wanted to make a fortune, was unwilling to reconcile her old dream.
Qiaoqiao returned to Shanxi alone. Twelve years later, the impoverished Brother Bin also returned. Qiaoqiao has become the eldest sister of the local gang. Out of morality, she has once again become the asylum of Brother Bin.
Readme Jia Zhangke editor stone Ming
I wanted to shoot the story of Jianghu a long time ago. I wanted to shoot when I was in college. Maybe men have that kind of arena complex.
I was born in Fenyang, Shanxi. In the late 1970s, there was still a lot of street life in the county. The rivers and lakes are my romantic imaginary world, but also the world I have actually experienced.
In my mind, the definition of rivers and lakes can be summed up in four phrases: a crisis-ridden environment, intricate interpersonal relationships, a life where the whole world is at home, and an immortal sentiment.
"Children of the Rivers and Lakes", it is a man and a woman on the rivers and lakes. In the past 17 years, they have gone through complicated interpersonal relationships and maintained the affection and kindness that is rarely seen today.
I have been working in film for more than 20 years, and I have been thinking about a question. From the classic novel "Water Margin" to the Hong Kong gangster movies in the 1980s, why are our generations telling the story of this river and lake?
I think it is because of the rivers and lakes. It is a very interesting perspective. From this perspective, we can look at this drastically changing society. What are the problems in the mainstream society?
This kind of angle is something I have never seen in movies in the past, and it is quite new to me. So I decided to make a Jianghu film.
Liao Fan plays the male protagonist Bin brother. His prototype is actually a big brother I saw in my hometown when I was six or seven years old. He was handsome, righteous, strong, and solved problems with his fists. At that time, he was the object of my admiration.
Later, when I went home from college, a middle-aged man squatted at the door and snorted and ate noodles. His figure was fat and his hair was thinning. I recognized that it was the eldest brother back then, very impressed by the power of time.
Therefore, the time span of "Jian Hu Children" is 17 years. In the past 17 years, great changes have taken place in the arena. In the movie, Diao Yinan has a line saying "Now we are all corporate."
Even Jianghu, a place where sentiment is the most important, has become commercialized, and it must follow economic values.
"Humanity" is a topic that I have always been interested in. When I made a film "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers", I wrote a line: "Everyone can only accompany you for a while, and we need to cherish it." I hope for China. Movies retain favor.
In "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes", the rivers and lakes are just a background, mainly about human relations.
From 2001 to 2018, in the past 17 years, how did people's minds change, and how did the jianghu sentiments and principles of jianghu change?
To tell a story, you have to tell it from the past, what it was originally like. I wrote paragraphs in the film with this kind of mood.
Jia's Cinematic Universe
The film began in 2001. This year, coal prices in Shanxi fell to the lowest point in history. It is said that all the workers of the Datong Mining Bureau had to relocate and move to Xinjiang to dig for oil.
It was a shocking news at the time. The whole city is discussing whether or not to go to Xinjiang. Later proved to be just a legend.
The heroes and heroines of the movie, Brother Bin and Qiaoqiao, actually appeared in "Ren Xiaoyao" in 2002. But in "Ren Xiaoyao", Brother Bin is not a gangster, nor are they a couple.
They are two branch characters, and the story does not start to tell. It just feels a bit like a quack, except for a lot of blank space.
After writing the first draft of "Children of the Rivers and Lakes", I started to look at the old material that I had shot before. Look at around 2001, what people looked like and what the streets looked like.
Looking at it, I suddenly felt that Brother Bin and Qiaoqiao could become the protagonists of "Jianghu Children".
I deliberately made their costumes, hairstyles, and styles the same as those in "Ren Xiaoyao". The location of the story coincides with "Ren Xiaoyao" and "The Good Man in Three Gorges".
Every time I make a movie, I draw a map. This map has not left several areas I like: Shanxi and the Three Gorges are places with a strong atmosphere of rivers and lakes.
I think my story should happen in these places.
It's as if I always write lines in Shanxi dialect. I don't know how to write dialogues in Mandarin. The Mandarin dialogues I write are relatively boring, but once my thinking becomes Shanxi dialect, it is particularly vivid. So I let the protagonist of my story always be from Shanxi.
The characters, time, and space are the same as before, but the plot of "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes" is a completely new construction. You can understand it as another story that happened in the parallel time and space of the previous film.
In my imagination, Xiao Wu, the members of the cultural troupe in "Platform", and the elder brother and younger sister from the rivers and lakes all live in the same city. But living in different dimensions, the trajectories of movement sometimes cross, and they do not know each other.
For me, to take photos of Datong in Shanxi and Fengjie in the Three Gorges again is to say that different people on the same land have completely different destinies.
I actually deliberately establish subtle connections between my personal films. If I replay my movie one day, I think the order is "Platform", "Xiao Wu", "Ren Xiaoyao", "World", "The Good Man in Three Gorges", "Heaven Is Destined", I can cut them into a movie again , The film lasts nine hours, and the title is "Les Miserables".
Everyday is history
In the new film, there are two passages that have appropriated the original material of the year.
The first segment is the faces of all beings on the bus at the opening. It was shot in Datong after I got my first DV in 2001.
This time, we put Zhao Tao in the same car again, and re-shot her reaction shots, because when we filmed the documentary 17 years ago, we had not met Zhao Tao.
I deliberately put this documentary DV at the beginning, because I am not shooting a legendary Hong Kong movie. Although the film borrowed the genre structure of Jianghu movies, I still hope that the Jianghu filmed will not be separated from the daily life, and it is a part of daily life.
The other section is the Three Gorges, singing "How much love can come again". The performance on the stage was filmed in 2006, and the part under the stage was filmed last year. We figured out a way to merge two spaces of completely different ages together.
I myself don't like a complete studio setting shot, especially I like to shoot a lot of public places, roads, squares. When you take pictures of these public spaces, you always feel that they don't have that kind of texture.
A city is not just a street, it should be able to imagine a wide urban structure outside the street.
This is also our biggest difficulty in this production. Many previous spaces have changed, or even disappeared.
When I went to Datong to shoot "Ren Xiaoyao" 17 years ago, Datong had no city walls. Later, the mayor of Datong suddenly wanted to build a city wall, and now it’s a brand new city wall when I go to Datong.
Don't talk about Datong, you are like my hometown of Fenyang, I haven't been back for a while, and I made an appointment with someone, and I said we'll see you under the archway. When the result arrived, I was completely lost. Then when the archway was demolished, the frame of reference next to it was changed.
But I really need space in the past. In the end, we decided to change the real scene to shoot, remove the things that did not fit the age, and refill the history. This workload is very huge.
The most difficult thing is actually people. We need a lot of group performances, 300 people in a scene, 300 faces must be confirmed.
Seventeen years ago, the faces of young people were vicissitudes of life. They were all sun-dried and not maintained, and their bones seemed relatively rough. It really changed now. The living conditions are excellent. Young people are white and plump, and the skin texture is particularly delicate.
We have done a lot of work to make these faces feel like they did 17 years ago. I joked that I must not let the hamburger face come in.
Life needs a surreal moment
In "Old People in Mountains and Rivers," a frustrated Liang Zi was walking on the road and suddenly saw a tiger in a cage on the side of the road.
In "Children of the Rivers and Lakes", Zhao Tao arrived at the Three Gorges and landed on the shore. The artists who walked the rivers and lakes sang on the open-air stage. There was also a cage next to it with a lion and a tiger in it.
Lions and tigers are real. We pulled it from Hebei. I may have a passion for beasts and like to shoot beasts.
Zhao Tao ran so far alone to find someone, and went through so many twists and turns along the way. In fact, she is not the only one who is wandering, restless, and home from all over the world, there are also these lions and tigers.
I don't think this kind of plot has any metaphors, it's just a rivers and lakes atmosphere.
These scenes are actually scenes that I can often see and make my heart beat when I travel around all the year round.
You will find that in such a mundane life, there is also this kind of strange landscape, which brings an instant emotional change. For me, it is the extraordinary and beyond reality part of reality.
In the film, after Liao Fan refused Zhao Tao's request for reconciliation, Zhao Tao almost followed Xu Zheng away. She traveled a long distance and ran to Xinjiang.
For the heroine, this may be the only possibility she has to start a new life. But she was still deterred in the end.
The reason is not necessarily because of the love for the male protagonist. I think there are many comprehensive factors in it.
Just like myself, this kind of thing often happens. Sometimes I don't want to make a movie anymore. I want to use several years to write a novel.
But everyone has their own track after they reach adulthood, and it's actually very difficult to get out of this track.
Jia Zhangke, Section Chief Jia, Jia Lailai
In the past eighty to ninety percent of my life revolved around movies. Later, I felt that this would not work, because my personal life was too little.
I moved back to my hometown in Shanxi after filming "The Old Man in Mountains and Rivers". A lot of entertainment has been reduced, and it will be better.
Now I basically start working at nine o'clock in the morning every day, dealing with company business and filming matters. After eating and sleeping for a while at noon, it is time for writing in the afternoon, from 2:30 to 6:30 and 7:00. After dark, I will meet, eat, chat, and play with my friends.
It is time for reading before going to bed. I am a sloppy and I can read all books. Recently, because of the preparation of a new film "In the Qing Dynasty", I have read a lot of books on history, and I am watching "Jinzhongzhi".
Now that the Internet is well developed, life in my hometown is almost the same as in Beijing. It used to be so difficult to buy books. There weren’t many books for sale in the county, but now they are all online. If you have a meeting, use video to resolve it, or call a conference call.
I usually go online only to check emails, then Weibo, WeChat, and browse the news. I don’t know how to use anything else. Playing Hupu and Zhihu is a new attempt.
Living in my hometown, the most important thing is to have many friends. After drinking three or five glasses of wine, they would call me by my nickname (Jarailai) and ask me when I will have a child, worrying about my retirement. Only in front of them did I reveal that I was also a weak person. They don't care about movies, they only care about my life.
In reality, I am far from the movie and closer to my hometown. You can enjoy this kind of affection when you live in your hometown.
A few days later, I was thinking about making a movie again.
I wrote a novel
I have been making movies for 20 years, only the 2000 "Platform" has a relatively large span, which was from 1979 to 1989.
All subsequent films reflect the life of a certain person at one point in time.
When I arrived at "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers", I unconsciously wrote a story that spans a long time. It has spanned from the past to the future for more than 20 years.
After finishing "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers", I suddenly wanted to shoot "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes". Preparations began in 2015, and the first draft was finished soon. With the first draft, I went to see the scene and changed the script while watching the scene.
The final journey was 7,700 kilometers, and it took six months to shoot. In addition to the male and female protagonists, there were 12 actors and thousands of group performers to complete the film.
Therefore, "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes" has three large spans. The first is the time span, from 2001 to 2018, there are 17 years.
The second is the span of space, from Shanxi to the Three Gorges and from the Three Gorges to Xinjiang.
The other is the human span. I used to have a lot of characters in movies, but there have never been so many characters in "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes".
The so-called rushing into the rivers and lakes means encountering different people. So having so many people is very important to me.
I remember when I finished filming the Three Gorges and Zhang Yibai parts, Zhang Yibai joked and said, I understand, Liao Fan and Zhao Tao are acting as children, and all of us will help you act in the arena. I said that you summarized it very well, and it is indeed the case.
I started making my first movie when I was 27.
At that time I was too young, I didn't have the awareness of time and the experience of time, and I didn't know much about the world. So I didn't have time to think about what was happening before me. I quickly reacted first and shot "Xiao Wu", "Ren Xiaoyao" and later "The Good Man in Three Gorges".
But when he was in his forties, he did experience something called destiny. See the ups and downs of people a little more, the ups and downs of people. The point of view that will indeed have a little more time can also be said to be a historical point of view.
I also gradually understand why many writers write and write, and in the end they will write a novel.
This time I filmed "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes", for the first time I have a feeling of writing a novel.
I unconsciously put my thinking about time and history into the movie. If you are true to yourself, this is the strongest kind of reality I feel right now.
From this perspective, films like "Xiao Wu" belong to the former Jia Zhangke, and "Children of the Rivers and Lakes" belong to me today.
Money and love, real and illusion
At the beginning of the movie, Liao Fan said that he was a person in the world, but Zhao Tao said she was not.
At the end, Liao Fan said that I was not a person in the arena, and Zhao Tao thought he was a person in the arena.
This is the basic narrative of this movie. It's just talking about two people's self-identification, why there is such a big reversal.
The men and women experienced street violence, imprisonment, love, and betrayal. They separated and reunited, but they never entered the family.
I wrote "The Children of the Rivers and Lakes" with a kind of memory. The story takes place from 2001 to 2018, which is also the most important 17 years for me.
Reflecting on my past, sometimes I feel that men are very pitiful. Look at the various pursuits of men today, and in the end, they are nothing more than seeking money and feelings. Having been busy for decades, it seems that there is only this content left in life. In fact, people get lost very much in this.
Liao Fan is the one lost in it. Zhao Tao is not.
Women have some principles and standpoints for doing things on their own. They don’t pay attention to worldly success. They have something they insist on and pay attention to, such as the importance of emotion and the importance of family.
The male protagonist played by Liao Fan finally ran away. Liao Fan asked me, why did he leave her? You didn't write either. I said that I actually don't know where he went, anyway, after he regains his mobility, he must leave her immediately.
The English name of the film was originally called "Money And Love"-money and love. I especially like this more straightforward and stupid name, which actually summarizes the theme of the hero and heroine.
The female image is getting stronger and stronger in the film, and the male image gets weaker and weaker. But Liao Fan's final departure was still full of male self-esteem.
Finally, the film ends on a digital image of Zhao Tao on the monitor. This is not in the original script. It turns out that the effect is very good, much better than the nostalgic ending we designed before.
Generally, the camera position of the surveillance camera is relatively high, and the angle of view is all overhead. When we photographed Zhao Tao standing there alone meditating from the monitor, the image was very digital.
In other words, it is vague and unclear. You can't see her emotions, you don't know how she feels, and you don't know how to delete this image one day.
I am very sad. The whole movie lasts more than two hours to record the lives of these flesh and blood, sentimental and righteous people. But there is such a big contrast between a person's specific life and the recorded things.
Our Weibo, WeChat, and all Internet stuff may not be opened one day, and these memories will be gone. A person passed away without any traces in his life.
I am very emotional, saying that we will use this as the end, a face that can be deleted at any time.
Mortals are the purest dust
From the beginning of "The Destiny of Heaven", I left Beijing to write the script of each film.
There is a famous group of volcanoes in Datong, about an hour’s drive from where I live. When I am tired or bored when writing scripts, I will go to the volcano, usually at dusk, and walk there alone.
The scene where the hero and heroine talk about love in the script, I arranged in the volcano, because that is where I often go, my secret base.
The English name of the film is "Ash Is Purest White", which literally means "dust is the purest white", and it comes from the volcano.
I think people always feel that everyone is pure and pure.
Every character in "Jian Hu Children" has shortcomings. Zhao Tao even does things like kidnapping and kidnapping. But in general, I think everyone is worthy of precious.
At that time, I suddenly wrote a line of dialogue. Zhao Tao asked Liao Fan whether the volcanic ash was the cleanest.
Because we usually smoke, we sometimes joke that soot is the cleanest. When I was a child, my naughty hand cuts, so I put soot on my hand to stop the bleeding and disinfect.
Zhao Tao said, "After high temperature and combustion, the soot is not the cleanest."
When I write here, I am also a little touched. Most of our people in real life may take a trip in this world, leaving no trace in the end, being blown away like soot.
But our movies are about these real things we have experienced, and the problems that every specific person will face.
Even if it becomes cannon fodder, the ashes may still be clean.
View more about Ash Is Purest White reviews
