Text_Fa Buzhi Ni In November 1965, Kobayashi Masaki's "Strange Story" was released in the United States. At the previous 18th Cannes Film Festival, the film had just won the Special Jury Prize, but American audiences could ignore it, they thought it was "too slow and boring". Compared with the "weird talk" with elegant camera and ancient rhythm, they prefer the "Godzilla" which is also produced in Japan but more "exciting". However, what is even more ironic is that even so, the box office performance of [Strange Talk] abroad is still better than that in Japan. Some Japanese commentary articles at that time directly criticized the floating pupils in "Snow Maiden" - "What is that?" But in fact, this surreal setting that made the Japanese commentary choked up, as early as Hitchcock's [ Dr. Edward], and it's even more fanciful (Salvador Dali was the artist for that film). The surreal setting has also become the signature of [weird talk] that has survived to this day. According to Ogasawara, the assistant director at the time, Kobayashi Masaki studied a large number of paintings by Japanese and Western painters for the filming of "Strange Talk", in order to create a unique and magnificent set. But the difficult process of making this set is probably extremely rare in the history of Japanese films. In Japan at that time, there was no studio that could meet the needs of filming, so Kobayashi Masaki had to take his assistants everywhere to find a suitable shooting location. In the end, they found a warehouse with a length of 1,000 meters and a width of 80 meters in Uji City, Kyoto, as a "shooting base" for [Strange Talk]. People who have watched [Strange Talk] will definitely remember the purple eyes and red lips in "Snow Girl", and the "Battle of Tannoura" in "Wu Er Fang Yi". That's all done by actors on a solid set with no computer effects at all. In order to achieve the desired picture effect, the film crew set up a giant canvas and carried out "surreal creation" on it. In addition, the work of lighting is not easy, because the canvas is too high, and it is necessary to build scaffolding and drive the lights to a very high place. The people in the lighting team are really "lighting with their lives". At that time, Toho was very tight on the budget, and Kobayashi Masaki could only receive 30 million yen for each story he finished shooting. But the dry ice used in rehearsal alone costs 300,000 yuan a day, and at the same time, the actors are paid high remuneration. Therefore, in the embattled situation, Kobayashi once thought that "we will never finish this movie". When the scene of "Wu Er Fang Yi" playing and singing the pipa was filmed, the crew was finally exhausted, "not even a single copper plate was left". In the end, Kobayashi Masaki had to call his mentor Kinoshita Keisuke for help and asked him to borrow 5 0 million emergency, this is barely completed shooting. The original work of [Strange Talk] was written by Yakumo Koizumi, a writer during the Meiji period in Japan. [Strange Talk] was adapted from this "Japanese "Strange Tales from a Liaozhai" by extracting four short stories in one fell swoop. Several main characters: samurai, woodcutter, snow girl, monk... are typical of Japanese folktales. Moreover, these four stories can make an impressive "movie feeling" - the black hair crawling on the tatami; the snow girl who sucks the soul of men; Fangichi who is covered in Chinese characters; the eerie picture in the tea bowl smiley. And these four seemingly unrelated stories actually have one thing in common - commitment. The samurai who broke his marriage contract in "Black Hair"; the woodcutter who failed to keep his secret in "Snow Girl"; the consistent blind monk Fangichi in "Fang Yi"; writer. These protagonists eventually got "corresponding retribution". This idea comes from screenwriter Yoko Mizuki. The screenwriter who has written films such as "Meet Again in the Future" and "Floating Clouds", like Kobayashi Masaki, is a pacifist, but she is not as pessimistic and hopeless as the latter. She believes that the theme of the film is about people's love and hatred of nature, and she believes that nature operates according to a law similar to "good will be rewarded with good and evil will be rewarded". Although it has the signboard of a horror movie, [Strange Talk] is not "scaring", and there are basically no scenes with heavy tastes. It's not that Kobayashi Masaki doesn't know "how to make people uncomfortable". You must know that when [Cut the Belly] was screened in Cannes, some audiences left the venue in panic because of the "bloody black and white pictures". The fear of [weird talk] comes from the desolation of the scene and the resentment of the characters, just like the snow girl who fell in love with the woodcutter but had to leave in the end, or the unwilling war spirit who was addicted to Fang Yi's playing and singing. The movie stares at the back of the characters by pushing the camera. The wife in "Black Hair", standing in front of the gate watching off her husband, can feel her heart as gray even in the faceless close-up. In "Snow Girl", the scrutiny of the snow girl's back focuses on showing her charm and danger. By the way, the character of the snow girl and the film's upside-down lighting are very similar to those in American noir films. The kind of femme fatale. As for "Wu Er Fang Yi" going to the "Palace" to play and sing, the camera followed the characters up the stone steps and followed slowly until they saw the whole picture of the souls, like a pair of eyes casting pity on those helpless beings eyes. In addition, whether it is the cinematic expression of Ukiyo-e and Noh, or the ancient folk music of the whole film, they give the film a unique Japanese flavor. The emergence of [weird talk] has influenced the later generations of Japan's A large number of "strange stories" film and television dramas, such as the familiar "The World's Wonderful Story", and Hideo Nakata's "Midnight Bells". Even Hollywood has stolen a lot from [Strange Talk]. The most famous case is [Barbarian King Conan]. The director said that he got inspiration from the passage of "Wu Er Fang Yi" chanting mantras, so he was in Conan. All kinds of runes were painted on his body to ward off evil spirits. From the early "Heihe" to the "Tokyo Trial", Kobayashi Masaki has been tirelessly expressing his grand themes: the collapse of idealism, social and political allegory, strong anti-war sentiment. People are used to seeing the protagonists under his lens who are ravaged by power and corruption, falling into the abyss that cannot be escaped, just like the end of [Cut the Belly], Nakadai Tatsuya, who is a husband, only falls in the end. All of this makes this bizarre [weird talk] like a casual recreation of Kobayashi Masaki, a naughty cross-talk. It is true that the nine hours of [Conditions in the Human World] have indisputable thoughts and responsibilities, but this expressive [weird talk] may be closer to the essence of the film. (Originally published in "Watching the Movie")
View more about Kwaidan reviews
