Bullet Beethoven, Violent Mozart
- Woo Yusen Series Film Screening
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, our hospital specially launched a Hong Kong film peak moment retrospective screening. This issue is showing John Woo's film. In 1986, with the help of Tsui Hark, Woo completed the filming of "The True Color of Heroes", which established his aesthetic style. This film is not only a personal turning point for John Woo, but also a monument to Hong Kong cinema. The peak moment of Hong Kong movies began here, and under the influence of the "1997 Syndrome", Hong Kong movies went into decline and slumped.
Wu Yusen, native of Guangdong, was born in 1946. When he was in school, he often went to the cinema to watch movies. His favorite movies are American gangster movies, Westerns, and Golden Age musicals. The style of these films has obvious dynamic characteristics, and this can be found in Wu Yusen's future films. Although John Woo studied under Zhang Che, in his own viewing experience, John Woo admires French violent director Pierre Meyerville the most. The violence in his works is filled with a strong human touch, and the direct influence of this is John Woo In the film, the heroic spirit and warmth of the boy Yi Bo Yuntian are mixed with the beautiful artistic conception and picture presented by the shooting bolide. In the image, the greatest influence on John Woo is Sam Packinpa, who has filmed "The Savage Gang". It can be said unabashedly that John Woo's film's preference for slow motion and the way the characters fight in the hymn are the inheritance and deep excavation of Sam Packinpa's film language.
In 1983, John Woo's career fell into a low ebb, and during this time he was sent to Taiwan. In 1985, he joined Tsui Hark's "Film Studio", and the following year, with Tsui Hark's help, he filmed The True Color of a Hero. As the film was sold well and sold well, the film company launched "The True Color of Heroes II" in 1987. In 1989, Tsui Hark completed the "Song of the Sunset of Heroes III", and these three films are called "The True Colors of Heroes Series". However, Tsui Hark's "The True Color of Heroes" obviously lacks Wu's film style, and we do not include it in the series, although the film is supervised by John Woo.
Whether it is "British I" or "England II", John Woo has set up a same or similar prop - a template or machine for printing counterfeit banknotes, and the story always revolves around this prop. In fact, John Woo is alluding to "interests"; while the brotherly relationship between Song Zihao and Xiaoma represents "chivalry". Wu Yusen's films always run through this contradiction, whether it is his later "Blood Two Heroes" or "Across the World", as well as his ambitious "Blood on the Street", all show the relationship between "benefit" and "righteousness". competition and confrontation. Wu Yusen once unceremoniously accused the Chinese people of losing sight of profit and losing sight of money. Money has seriously corrupted the spirit and temperament of the Chinese people. Of course, John Woo's film "Yanzhi" is too strong, which may lead to misunderstanding and resentment due to its heavy preaching. This is also a limitation that Woo has been unable to break through. Especially in "Ying I", the lines and trench coats with obvious personal emotions left a deep impression on us:
"I have waited for three years, just waiting for an opportunity, I want to fight for a breath, not to think about it. Prove that I'm amazing, I just want to tell people that I have to get back what I lost."
Our hearts must be boiling when we listen to the pony say this, and when he "gets back what he lost", we put on that When wearing a windbreaker, no one cares about the number of patches on the windbreaker, and more is infected by its spirit. John Woo and Chow Yun-fat (playing the pony) vented all their frustrations and loneliness in this film. And this can also label "Ying I" as an inspirational film. In addition, John Woo's sharp cuts and skillful use of slow motion in this film established the style and form of Wu's violent aesthetics. The film won the Best Film Award at the 1987 Hong Kong Film Awards, and has occupied the top 100 of Hong Kong Films' 100 Best Films.
Following this, John Woo's career was at the height of his power, and his ability to control movies became more and more skilled and perfect, ideologically getting rid of his earlier "self-centered" "speaking aspirations" attempts. During this period, he contributed to our debut "Blood Two Heroes". The most confusing thing in John Woo's film world is that there is no clear distinction between "good" and "evil", and there is no identity separation between "police" and "bandit", only the contest between "justice" and "evil". Especially in "Blood and Blood", John Woo even said that his idea was pushed to the extreme. In this film, Li Ying, a heroic police officer, and Xiao Zhuang, a professional killer with a chivalrous heart, can finally become friends. On the surface, their identities are very different, but in fact, the two are "like two sides of a coin", and their identification with their own identities is based on the embodiment of the classical chivalrous spirit in their bones. In this film, Wu Yusen's "Yanzhi" attempt has long since gotten rid of personal limitations and expanded to thinking and criticizing the current society. The decline of Chinese chivalrous spirit is vividly shown in this film. Woo Yusen's tragic mood of portraying Xiaozhuang and Li Ying as "Dang Ji Ke De" makes people feel that the current social devaluation, the world is hot, credit is absent, profit is forgotten, and profit is only profit. In this film, John Woo sublimated his violent aesthetics to a philosophical level. He arranged the final battle in the church, candlelight-gunfire, Madonna-corpse, white dove-missile. These images with a great aesthetic gap, and their value judgments rooted in human psychology have laid the true core of their violent aesthetics. When we appreciate his films, we feast our eyes on slow-motion retouching and sharply cut action scenes, and we will be cut off by his violent aesthetic thoughts to a higher level of our own aesthetics. The film was unanimously regarded as the most perfect work in John Woo's life, and in 1999, the American "Time" magazine even listed the film as one of the top ten Asian films of the 20th century.
When looking back at John Woo's films before he went to the United States, there is one film that must not be missed, namely "Blood on the Street" in 1990. The film is Woo's most ambitious work. Not only because the film has a strong semi-autobiographical color, but also Wu Yusen's attempt to break through his own limitations. John Woo has mentioned his love and satisfaction with this film more than once. But after the film was released, it failed miserably at the box office and received mediocre reviews. This made him very sorry. In this work, John Woo has indeed made a breakthrough, and at least his lines are no longer clearly branded with the intention of "saying will". In addition, John Woo goes back to basics with a rough beauty. Because this film has a broad career, it combines personal encounters with historical changes, and it has the flavor of an epic film. But John Woo still couldn't escape the deadly sensual inertial gravity.
In 1992, John Woo went to the United States to develop after filming "The Hot Detective".
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