Xia Ying Shan Shui Jian VS Desert Lonely Smoke
[Dragon Inn] is Hu Jinquan's first work after he went to Taiwan, leaving the artificial landscaping of [Yutangchun], [The Children of the Earth], and [Drunk Man] on the Shaw Brothers studio. The mountains and rivers of the island finally made Hu Jinquan's chivalry a carrier in the world.
At the beginning of the movie, Yu Qian's children are escorted by the escort and walk on the deserted beach with difficulty. There is a dilapidated hillside on one side and a vague coast on the other, which is a common junction between mountains and seas in Taiwan. Then, in order to save Yu Qian's children and fight against Fanzi, Zhu Ji was in the sparse and yellow woods, full of desolation. The opening scene of [Dragon Gate Inn] is very different from Hu Jinquan's previous works. Although the scenery is landscaped, it is a scene of wild smoke and grass. It is different from Hu Jinquan's performance in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. are quite compatible with the social background.
Fanzi abandoned their horses to follow the traces of Yu Qian's children. In the tense sound of the music, they saw rushing rivers and steep rocks in the mountains. After a lot of climbing, they reached a loess plain. A pebble beach is the Dragon Inn. Hu Jinquan once mentioned in the book "Hu Jinquan's Martial Arts Film Practice" that [Dragon Gate Inn] was filmed in the area between Hualien and Taichung. Near the Xiluo Bridge, it is a vast land with mountains in the middle. The fans walked here for a while, although it took less than a minute, it was far less than the writing and ink spent by the protagonists of [The Legend of the Mountain] and [Empty Mountain Lingyu] to walk between the mountains and rivers, but they had already explained the dangers of the Longmen Inn. As written in the script: "In the early years when foreign tribes invaded, this place used to be a strategic fortress, and a single husband can stop thousands of troops. Now these are things of the past." And this also foreshadows what will happen in the next two hours. That thrilling.
After that, almost all the plays were staged in the inn and the surrounding plains and river beaches. Until the group of people escaped from the Dragon Gate Inn and re-entered the Chongshan Mountain, the ancient trees on the hillside on the side of the mountain road were towering, and the cliffs on the side were cloudy and misty, and everyone in the film was stunned. Hu Jinquan said that it was a traversing highway, running through the plain mentioned above, with an altitude of more than 2,000 meters, so there was a sea of clouds transpiring. So that life-and-death struggle between good and evil happened in the mountains and mists. Although Hu Jinquan found this scene unintentionally, the scene behind the fight is by no means a meaningless spectacle. It is precisely the beauty of Chinese ink painting that Hu Jinquan likes, just like dipping a drop of ink on film. , which opens up a school of rivers and lakes, which, as Luo Feng said, "forms a relaxed and tight tension contrast with the fierce fighting scenes", just like the blank space in a landscape painting.
Tsui Hark is not so interested in traditional landscapes, nor does he have the patience to wander between heaven and earth like Hu Jinquan. What he seeks is the visual spectacle and the ultimate form. So, he followed the prevailing northwest style of the films such as [Yellow Earth], [Singing while walking], [Shuangqi Town Swordsman], [Wukui] and other films, and moved the Dragon Inn from the mountains of Baodao to the Dunhuang desert. , "Dragon Gate Inn" is also full of a kind of majestic beauty.
In the beginning of the old version, the city wall in the scene where Jin Yiwei executed Yu Qian was just a glimpse in the background, but Tsui Hark's film crew chose the palace wall at the western end of the Ming Great Wall - Jiayuguan. In May 1992, [Xinlongmen Inn] opened a mirror in front of Jiayuguan Pass, the west gate, and Eunuch Cao left the city. Jiayuguan West Gate just spent more than one million yuan to renovate a year before the filming. This is the first time anyone has filmed. With the majesty of the first level in the world, [Xinlongmen Inn] has a powerful and murderous opening.
Same as the old version, the fans from Dongchang also need to go through a cliff and canyon to reach the Dragon Gate Inn. Wu Siyuan had visited several months in advance, and just now he chose the deserted and inaccessible Dunhuang Gobi as the inn. Because it is located in the hinterland of the desert, building materials such as water and wood need to be transported from other places, so it took a month to build it. So we saw the loess sand dunes, the sunset in the desert, the singing of gold inlaid jade resounding in the wind and sand, and the four characters "Dragon Gate Inn" written on the flag banner covered with thick dust.
When filming in Dunhuang, the crew suffered from the desert, windy sand, high temperature, lack of water... They even called Tsui Hark, who was far away in Hong Kong: "We can't live any longer." Just like what we saw in the camera Yes, yellow sand, yellow sand, yellow sand, everywhere you see is the yellow sand that makes people desperate. And this yellow sand filled the sky, which also made the last battle full of suffocation in a desperate situation. Although the setting of the whole scene is much inferior to the sense of culture and classicism, the sensory stimulation brought by the bright vision is far beyond Hu Jinquan's version.
The performance of the camera VS the performance of martial arts There have been too many discussions
on Hu Jinquan's enthusiasm for the inn. [Drunk Man], [Angry], and [The Storm in the Yingchun Pavilion] all focus on the inn, as he said: "The inn is a public place, where people of all colors will cross in and out. It is inevitable that quarrels are easily caused, and the drama of the movie is easier to deal with." As the second part of the inn trilogy, [Dragon Inn] nearly 2/3 The scenes of the show are all unfolded in the inn, continuing the space aesthetics of the Peking Opera "Sanchakou".
Under Hu Jinquan's command, the Dragon Inn is an old and simple house. No matter the counters, tables and chairs in the house, or the firewood stacks and bamboo baskets outside the door, they are all realistic and ancient. In particular, the camera was aimed at the shadow wall outside the gate many times, with a large white circle drawn on it. Hu Jinquan said that because he was in the wilderness, there would be wolves infested, and the white circle was used to prevent wolves. Hu Jinquan would search all kinds of ancient documents and paintings for a hat of Jin Yiwei in the Ming Dynasty, and it is not unusual to be able to pay attention to details such as the white circle on the shadow wall.
The interior layout of the Dragon Inn is relatively simple, with one counter and several dining tables, but there are stairs leading to the second floor, rooms and windows, "in order to create a deep and complex three-dimensional space." Hu Jinquan did the same before shooting He can draw storyboards, but the beauty of his storyboards is that they are drawn on the floor plan. Every scene, different angles, where is the table and where is the window, are all clear. Therefore, after the camera entered the Dragon Gate Inn, after switching several times, we already knew the internal structure of the inn. We can see that the interior hall of the inn is square, the counter is square, the tables and chairs are square, the doors and windows are square, the upstairs corridor is square, one square frame is embedded with another square frame, as the film scholar Wu Hao said, It was a "square trap, a dead end", and in the end, one by one righteous men walked into the square door frame, which means "the thrower who jumps through the net", thus creating an extremely strong sense of tension.
The literary drama of the old version took place in the inn, and all the martial arts were arranged outside the inn, but in the new version, except for the opening and climax, the rest of the scenes without essays and martial arts are all performed in the inn, and there are even more scenes in the inn than the old version, maybe because The manpower and financial costs of the location are too high, or maybe Tsui Hark is making the dramatic conflict even more intense.
Although we can hardly see the detailed layout of the inn because of the blurred space created by Tsui Hark's signature quick editing, a large number of close-up shots, and lighting photography, it is clear that Tsui Hark has made the inn more complicated: the hall is no longer square. The simple layout of the movie, and countless props have been added, such as the large stone mill that can grind food and can also be used as a murder weapon, which increases the spectacle of the movie; and with the help of modern technology, the fighting space is no longer confined to the hall, you can go up the stairs, The corridors, rooms, and even the eaves and walls on the roof, the visual stimulation is upgraded accordingly; in addition, Tsui Hark also added a basement for dismembering the human body to echo the setting of the mother-in-law's wife and grandson, and also borrowed the fashionable [ Chainsaw] horror idea.
Hu Jinquan used various scenes and props, such as columns, stairs, dried peppers and garlic, and large bamboo baskets, to make a small inn space full of fun through the scheduling of the camera. In the new version, these scenes and props are completely designed to express kung fu. It is impossible to say which is better or worse. We can only borrow Jiao Xiongping's words to say, "Hu's inn is a performance of the camera, and Tsui Hark's inn is a martial arts instructor. and the performance of the actors.”
[New Dragon Gate Inn] At the end, Jin Xiangyu set fire to the Dragon Gate Inn and said, "Let's leave this ruthless place." Then he rode away. Tsui Hark directly copied the ending of [The Storm in Yingchun Pavilion], and he did not hesitate to turn the inn into ashes in the midst of happiness and enmity. The inn is still in the middle of the mountains. For the two versions, the inn has completely different meanings. In [Dragon Gate Inn], the inn is the place of chivalrous culture, full of Hu Jinquan's historical worries and political metaphors, of course it cannot be burned, but in [New Dragon Gate Inn] , the inn is just a small boat in the desert of human feelings, loaded with vulgar lusts of men and women, even if it is burned.
Originally published in "Watching the Movie"
View more about Dragon Inn reviews
