The film is director Jan Ole Gerst's debut, and the script is also written by him. I had never heard of him before, and when I met him in Sydney, I was amazed at his youth and wondered if this movie would be his first. Only the director who made a film for the first time would come to Australia from Germany for his film. He is handsome and funny, the German speaks no accent in English, and he answers the questions on the spot fluently.
I believe many people will ask, why did you choose to make a black and white film in the 21st century?
He looked around and said, oh, really, it turns out that the movie is black and white, is there something wrong with the production? Or the problem of the theater projector, how do I feel that the film I make should be in color. Don't laugh, I can talk about this kind of joke tomorrow morning. Seriously, a lot of people ask me this question. I think black and white is the only way I can make a movie in this day and age, and in short, that's why.
I know a lot of people are getting impatient with black and white films these days. When I recommended Zu Yuzhan to my roommate, she stopped watching it for a while. "I can't even tell faces in black and white," she said. You're right, I sometimes get sleepy about black and white films myself. Ozu's Tokyo Story took a week to read, and the earrings of the Countess were repeated several times, because I was distracted and couldn't figure out the relationship between the characters. We all love looking at beautiful movie colors made by filters, actors in gorgeous costumes, and having just the right soundtrack that keeps stimulating people's senses so that movies can entertain us. Movies have been developing for more than a hundred years, and this is the trend. Just like a diary became a blog and now a Weibo.
Others asked, did you originally choose this male lead for the script he wrote, or did you write the script and then find the actor?
The director replied that Tom Schilling, the male lead, has been my good friend for more than ten years. When I just finished writing the script, I sent it to him to ask for his opinion. After he read it, he said the role was just right for me, let me play it. I'm not good at turning down a friend's request. I learned a lesson from this, never send your script to others indiscriminately in the future.
I learned later that the actor, Tom Schilling, was the one who played Hitler's boy. His performance in the film is not exaggerated, just right to show a person's ordinary day. There is a little humor and a little helplessness. Humor in the cup of coffee that can never be drunk, but helpless in his seemingly hopeless life and friends who were once known as geniuses are now running the trick on the set.
Many people were very interested in the last old man who appeared, left a bunch of words, and died immediately. They asked questions about the old man. Someone asked why the male lead cared so much about the old man's name in the end, so he must ask.
The director said that this shows that he is beginning to understand how to take responsibility. When the old man collapsed at the door of the bar, he did not walk away, took him to the hospital in an ambulance, slept in the hospital chair all night, and finally asked the old man if he had any family members and what their names were. Taking responsibility was his first step in becoming an adult. This bodes well for the future of this Berlin youth.
Then someone asked, what will happen to his future?
Don't you know, I'm going to make a sequel oh girl. joke. Like an ordinary person, he would look for work everywhere, support himself, apologize to his girlfriend, and persuade his actor friends to stop taking drugs. He was just confused, he didn't go to despair. But if I run out of time, maybe I will make a sequel to this film.
How long did it take you to write the script?
Not too long. I was in film school at the time, and the professor told me that if I didn't come up with anything else I could get out of the way, so I worked overnight, and the first draft of the script was finished in less than a month.
I would love to get the microphone and ask who is your favorite director. But since I was sitting very back, I didn't have this chance. Berlin, trams, studios, golf courses, and subway stations shot by the director reminded me of Antonioni's night, the city of reinforced concrete, a place where people feel like they can't fit in. And when the lead and friends went to see a very strange show, I thought that many of Fellini's films have circus elements. When the male protagonist screwed up his life again and again but didn't care much, I saw Godard's shadow. In the end, when I was chatting in the pub, talking about my past, but it seemed to be talking about something else, I thought of the prostitute played by Anna Karina in the freewheeling. In a cafe, I met a man and discussed with him. In the end what is love. Layer after layer, there are shadows of European movies, as if inheriting various characteristics of the predecessors.
But here is the place to be most careful. A director or screenwriter can pay tribute to his favorite movie or director in his own movie. Like a blonde woman in a long black dress jumping into a fountain in the Tuscan sun, she tells the heroine that her favorite movie is Night of Cabiria, because Kabylia believes in love no matter what setbacks . There is also a handsome Italian man named Marcello inside. These tell how the original author of the film was moved by Fellini's film. But in OH BOY, there are no scenes that pay tribute to other directors, but there are shadows of other directors everywhere. The skill of the dialogue is not deep enough. It is not as philosophical and literary as the dialogue in Godard's films, it is not as sad and real as Fellini's lens, and Woody Allen does not understand the mental state of contemporary people as well. Of course, this is the director's debut, and I still give it five stars.
At the end of the Q&A, the director said, Woody Allen once said....
I thought at that time, oh, it was Woody Allen. It's actually an American who depends on Europe and doesn't leave.
I don't know Berlin, I don't know German cinema. I have seen Franz Lang's M and tried to understand it step by step. I've seen Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas, but it wasn't a German film at all. I know a lot of cafes that really only sell coffee in the morning because people usually only need it in the morning and start drinking in the afternoon and evening. Germany's economy is indeed developing very well. The male protagonist's father is a successful person, and he hopes that his child will study law and cultivate him into an elite.
Finally, I want to say that after watching this movie, I realized that the toaster can also light cigarettes, so I want to give it a try.
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