This is Hou Hsiao-hsien's first film released in mainland China.
What is bound to happen does not have a happy ending. A little earlier, or even a little later, would be more appropriate.
There are two kinds of audiences in movie theaters: one kind regards movies as socializing and entertainment, and pursues direct stimulation, rhythm and shock; the second kind faces it seriously, thinks nervously, and has the disadvantage of plot ecstasy.
"Nie Yinniang" did nothing, but when "Nie Yinniang" was released in theaters, both types of audiences were offended; or in other words, almost all audiences were offended. A lone fighter who did something not uncommon, but on an occasion where he wasn't ready.
As a fan, I was filled with righteous indignation at that moment; What needs to be ordered is to give tolerance to diversity and to call for respect for all forms of existence in the film. Story, plot, characters are important. Most good movies have good stories, good plots, and good characters. But there are good movies with no clear story, no tight plot, no external characters. They exist and deserve respect; they can be given up, they can be avoided, but they cannot be destroyed.
Society has developed to the present, and the narrative mode has been subverted several times. Is there no tolerance for this?
The day before the movie was released, the producers released the full script. Rare, but not too strange, because Hou Hsiao-hsien's fans know that Hou Hsiao-hsien published the script of each of his films; and his followers have the experience of flipping through the script and synchronizing the images; "Nie Yinniang" is still the same. Reflected in the whole film, it is the deletion and blank of the script that is almost obsessive-compulsive. For the pursuit of appropriateness, style, and innate dislike for dramatic scenes, Shu Qi's only psychological scene in the audience, she covered her face and cried and we couldn't see her face.
The reason for the murder carefully designed by the screenwriter team for the Taoist nun, deleted; the entanglement between Taoist nun and Tian Ji'an's mother and twins, has been mentioned in one stroke; the controversy of "killing one person and saving thousands of people", deleted; Yinniang and Tian Ji'an's childhood playing Juju, deleted; The Taoist nun took Yinniang away and deleted it; Jingjinger worshipped Kong Konger as a teacher and deleted it; Jingjinger was Tian Ji’an’s wife, and the words were not detailed; in the end Yinniang killed the Taoist nun with one move, not to mention it; "And the struggle between Wei Bofan Town and the centralization of the imperial court, laid out in the script, is as delicate as a gossamer thread.
To make matters worse, under the delicate but homogeneous Tang makeup, I did not clear the identity of every woman except Nie Yinniang in the first half hour. I think Director Hou must think our audience is really incredible.
Every scene is clean, secure, in place, appropriate, never out of courtesy, inappropriate, never sloppy; happy but not obscene, sad but not hurt - but at the same time, in order to achieve this obsessive-compulsive system Harmony, a large number of plots that are tasteless in Director Hou's opinion have been cut and deleted, even the load-bearing walls and connection points that connect the whole story are frantically dismantled and fragmented.
The obsessive-compulsive disorder of "getting out of love and ending with ritual" in each scene is more Chinese than the ink landscape, the Tang Dynasty clothes, and the carved beams and painted buildings.
Hou Dao may or may not know that this is an era when readers can only read 140 words, this is an era of nationwide epidemics of dyslexia, this is an era of impatience and demand for exchange rates for everything, compared to Yu Banwen is not clear, if you don't understand the lines you can type back to junior high school when you look at the subtitles, what we with dyslexia can't grasp is the basic deduction method that relies on brain supplementation to extract information; even, only one or two lines When the word appears, someone will leave the theater impatiently.
There is another way of saying "offending the audience": respect the audience, but the one who is respected does not appreciate it.
It is not entirely the oriental attribute of the Chinese author's film
"Nie Yinniang", the Chinese attribute lies in the return to the Tang Dynasty in terms of aesthetic pursuit, and in the obsessive-compulsive disorder of "feeling love and ending with ritual" in the dramatic scenes, but in At the core of the soul, "Nie Yinniang" was originally a "author's film" under the lens of a standard European intellectual. What it tells, can be attributed to, is the insignificance of a self, and this insignificance when faced with an uncontrollable world. loneliness.
To say that Hou Dao did not capture the essence of the Tang legend "Nie Yinniang" is a certainty in a sense. This Nie Yinniang could be the foreign scholar who wrote a biography of a Russian composer in "Nostalgia", the Greek filmmaker in "The Gaze of Ulysses" who was looking for a lost film copy, or the one in "The Beautiful City" The arrogant writer who can no longer write articles, she can be anyone, any homeless person with no home, no relatives, and no other strangers of the same kind. This is Hou Dao's own projection, this is Hou Dao's stubborn resistance, and the loneliness that is not understood and resists understanding at the same time.
Borrowing from Nie Yinniang, what Hou Dao murmured was still the most beautiful time in his eyes.
An assassin, just like the useless intellectual protagonist in many movies, despite her unique skills. Qingluan whimpered at the mirror, or because she was lonely and without peers, and more likely, she couldn't see herself.
Who is she? She is Yao Qi, but she hasn't been for so many years. She is an assassin, so who does she serve? The Taoist nun was not her choice, but an imposed destiny. Yin Niang's silence is because she is difficult to confirm the value of her own existence. Therefore, she is taciturn. She wants to be familiar with the world, but she chooses to stare from a distance; in her silent but hazy gaze, all the landscapes are just landscapes in fog.
She is looking for the things about her that care about her, first of all her parents, she protects them, but she has almost no attachment to them; Tian Ji'an's mother, she was more like her mother's princess in her childhood, but the princess left her jade to die; She never told her the whole story, she was just a killing tool in the hands of the master, believing in vain that the blood could pave the way for enlightenment; next was Tian Ji'an, she stubbornly hoped that Tian Ji'an would recognize herself, and then silently observed the man who almost became her husband. man.
Nie Yinniang is isolated from this world, she is alienated from everyone. So many slow and long shots showing the scenery are by no means meaningless, maybe we just don’t experience this layer of cold and empty alienation; in Nie Yinniang’s eyes, everyone is like a puppet, with their souls lingering, lines separated, and walking dead, just like The zombie-like woman in black in the eyes of others.
Hou Hsiao-hsien's expectation is that this alienation will eventually turn into detachment and sublimation. "I don't have relatives in kendo, so I don't have to worry about the saints", but Yinniang realized it. The so-called Tian Ji'an died, Wei Bo will be in chaos, how can the Taoist know that? However, what the Taoist girl did not understand was that this high-sounding political reason was just an excuse for Yin Niang; however, Yin Niang did not cut down on human relations, what Yin Niang did was to end the unnecessary search and completely alienate her.
Perhaps here, we can glimpse a hint of Hou Dao's original intention to drastically delete the plot of the script: these intricate and complicated political struggles, these constant affection and human relations, in fact, in Yin Niang's eyes, they are no longer important. This is probably the emptiness of the emptiness and the desolation of the large-scale Polygonum in the scene of "Nie Yinniang".
Not killing is not kendo, selflessness is true. looking for me? Rather than me.
Respect, patience and tolerance
"Nie Yinniang" is not so good. In essence, "Nie Yinniang" is an author's film with a new theme, but the unique Tang atmosphere and oriental aesthetic characteristics make this work unique among her peers.
However, when Qingluan is in the mirror, "Nie Yinniang" has no counterpart in the current mainland film market. Yin Niang walked silently in the water-vaporous wilderness, just like this movie, she fell into this frantic and irritable cinema.
However, to many people, "Nie Yinniang" has not been seen very much. In the face of things we don't understand and rarely see, why do we break out such cold anger and hostility? It's just a one-minute long shot, a quiet work full of information for ninety minutes, why are we so impatient?
According to my personal statistics, in this afternoon game I watched, there were 21 people in the field and 5 people left early. This may be a good number, compared to other exaggerated scenes we have seen on the Internet - my friend's scene, even five of him, at the end he was the only one who stayed in the theater.
Is it that scary? Is "Nie Yinniang" the only movie in the world that makes movies like this? Obviously not, there are so many author's films that have been enshrined on the altar. The shooting techniques and effects are no different from "Nie Yinniang". Why do I see impatience, anti-intelligence, the habits of rogue proletarians, and nitpicking on all non-utilitarian things , arrogance, arrogance, self-righteousness, and Zhang Guan and Li Dai's anger towards others diffused into this "Nie Yinniang".
But Director Hou said that in the current film industry, he is the only one who makes movies like this, and he can only make movies like this.
"King Jibin bought a luan. He wanted it to sing, but he couldn't get it. He decorated it with gold and precious delicacies. The more he felt about it, he didn't sing for three years. The lady said: "I have heard the sing when I see the class. Why not hang a mirror to look at it. "Wang Congqi's words, Luan saw the shadow and cried out in grief, and rushed to the sky."
When Qingluan looked in the mirror, we actually behaved, even the mirror was not as good.
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