The first half is my favorite high-quality movie. I can't take my eyes off it. I don't want to miss a single scene, not even a frame. Jia Zhangke is completely back to the "Platform" and "Xiao Wu" period - the mainland Chinese version of Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Rough picture, realistic and thorough lens language, plain but powerful story.
The river beach, the market, and the young people in the small town in front of them are reproductions of Jia Zhangke's early works. The camera went to ten years later, after Liang Zi took a big group photo, everyone dispersed. He was alone. His clothes fit well, but he looked loose. He didn't stoop, but he looked like a person who had already been overwhelmed. The beam of the house, which was about to collapse, stood slumped on the empty steps. The camera zoomed in and saw his blank, sad face and gray hair on the temples. Ten years later, his life went from bad to worse, and he lost the pride he once had.
This shot from far to near, Liang Zi's expression, clothes, and the unique standing posture are worth a thousand words. This five seconds of time is the master's time. What happens after that doesn't matter anymore. The story has been told. It is not a typical dramatic plot, but a very real life. Two childhood sweethearts, a boy and a girl, because of their friendship with Shengbo, and two people with very different personalities, in the context of ten years of rapid development in China , a completely different life. One goes up and the other goes down. Later, Zhang Jinsheng never appeared again. He divorced Shen Tao and married a Shanghai woman (and this woman did not appear in Melbourne), and he did not work as a coal boss to become a venture capitalist. Their stories, their characters, seem ordinary, but in the context of China's development, they are very typical.
These two extreme classes in China, the coal boss who fled Melbourne with money, the miner who got cancer in the mine, and their mutual first love Shen Tao, no matter who they are, they are becoming more and more unhappy. Because there are no mountains and rivers, the old people can't go back.
A spaceship that suddenly soars into the sky in "The Good Man in the Three Gorges" seems too magical, and in this film, in response to planting trees and planting the crashed plane (a memorial ten years later), a teenager carrying a knife and walking on the road (The youth who became a decade later), and the recurring "Precious". A flash of news footage. Liang Zi threw the key to the roof, the invitation card that had been sealed in dust for ten years, these small details took a lot of thought, and they were embedded more naturally. These details enrich the audience's sensory experience and make realistic movies more realistic, and those who like to think can think more deeply from various angles.
Jia Zhangke said in the talk show that his favorite movie is "The Bicycle Thief" ("The Bicycle Stealer"), and his direct teacher is Hou Hsiao-hsien and Yang Dechang. Neither Desica nor Hou Hsiao-hsien has touched on these small details. This is the creation of Jia Zhangkeqing out of blue, which can be used as a reference for later generations.
More than ten years have passed since I watched "Xiao Wu" in 2000. Jia Zhangke has made some films that I think are relatively poor, such as "Shanghai Legend", but he is generally a director I love very much. He said in the interview program, China's censorship has become very serious. I won't do self-censorship anymore. I will just shoot according to my own ideas. He can say this because most of his films are invested in France and Japan, which cannot be sold in China, but can still be sold in France and Japan. Other directors are not so lucky. However, self-censorship can really change a creator completely, gradually destroying all his creative enthusiasm, in a seemingly voluntary, limp way. We have already seen such an example: Zhang Yimou can no longer make a solid, hard realistic film like "The Lawsuit of Qiu Ju".
I didn't particularly like the part of the movie Melbourne. But at least the essence of Melbourne was captured: 1. There are really few people. 2. No matter how much money you make to escape from Melbourne, you will not be able to enjoy the spring flowers facing the sea.
In addition, I would like to mention Tao Jie's interview with Jia Zhangke. This episode of "Bright Summit" is very exciting. They both speak Mandarin, and Jia said that he can understand 80% of Cantonese. Tao Jie's Mandarin is also not covered. Tao Jie's question and Jia Zhangke's answer are both good. Anyway, I have never seen such a good question and such a good answer among so many articles or voices that have interviewed Jia Zhangke in China. For example, talk about the theme of the film, talk about the form of expression, and talk about the censorship system.
After the opening, Tao Jie immediately asked, "Director Jia, your film is about some low-level people. Now many audiences say that life is already very miserable, and they spend money to go to the theater to want to relax and dream. What do you think?" Jia replied that they misunderstood the role of art. People like to see what they want to see and what they are familiar with, while good art shows you what you don’t know. He also quoted a person who commented on Lu Xun’s works and wrote a lot of dark, but lit every reader.
Jia Zhangke said in Tao Jie's program that Hu Jinquan's films had a great influence on him. He said, I noticed that Hu Jinquan's films started out with long walks. The characters walk for a long time in famous mountains and rivers, and they immediately bring you to the scene. In ancient times, it was an era when people depended on walking and no cars. The other is Desica's "Bicycle Thief". I watched "Xiao Wu" first and then watched "Bike". The end of Xiao Wu is the feeling of a bicycle thief, in fact, the whole play is.
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