"Children of Jianghu" is a work that is difficult to judge alone. It continues Jia Zhangke's creative motif in recent years, but it also reveals the subtle changes in Jia Zhangke's creative mentality in recent years.
The individual destiny under the changing times has always been Jia Zhangke's creative motif. Jia Zhangke's works prior to "The Old Man of the Mountains and Rivers" focused on the social ecology and individual emotions in the profile of the times. The social structure and character relationships in the story are relatively simple, but the insight is extremely accurate. . The period between "Good Man in Three Gorges" and "Old Man in Mountains and Rivers" was an important turning point in Jia Zhangke's creative career. During this period, the creator Jia Zhangke himself was involved in the tide of the times, participated in a large number of commercial activities, and moved back to himself from Beijing. It is also at this stage that Jia Zhangke's works seem to have undergone some subtle changes. In the two works, "Old Man in Mountains and Rivers" and "Children of Rivers and Lakes", Jia Zhangke pays more and more attention to the sophistication of human beings in a large time span, and the complex influence of the flow of times on individuals is magnified to describe. This feature is more obvious in "Children of the Rivers and Lakes" than the previous work "The Old Man of the Mountains and Rivers". It is accompanied by the reduction of Jia Zhangke's iconic film symbols and metaphors, and the story grammar has become more and more popular. However, Jia Zhangke's creation based on personal real life experience has long been The motivation has not changed.
As a director who relies more on personal life experience, it is actually difficult to discuss the changes in Jia Zhangke's self-life when discussing "Children of Jianghu". It can be seen from a large number of interviews that the great changes in China's social formation in the past three decades have had a huge impact on Jia Zhangke's personal cognition. As a recorder of an era and a participant, he faces the most The drastic change is that under the influence of this self-life experience and the experience of the times, Jia Zhangke has a keen insight into the living conditions of the bottom of the society, and tried to express it in a poetic way, and was able to create a masterpiece of realism such as "The Three Gorges Good Man". . After entering middle age, the move from Beijing to Fenyang affected Jia Zhangke's creative mentality. Perhaps because he was hidden in the city, Jia Zhangke's works became more euphemistic and gentle. The intellectual youth in his early works were angry and eager to try. The expressive emotions that attempt to change society are gradually becoming difficult to capture, and the image of the questioner is gradually fading. Specifically in his works, Jia Zhangke's logo image symbols and symbolic use are gradually decreasing, the reflection of the times is gradually fading, and more attention is paid to the emotional entanglement of individuals in the changes of the times.
Regarding human relations, Jia Zhangke once said in the interview materials that he was relatively repulsive of some secular human relations when he was young, but after returning to Fenyang to settle down in recent years, this previously rejected human relations have become everyday and gentle. Changes in cognition and mentality have had an obvious impact on Jia Zhangke's creations in recent years. Jianghu in the Chinese context is actually a broad concept. In "Children of Jianghu", the young characters' cognition of Jianghu is chivalrous and romantic, like Jianghu in the Hong Kong shootout movie, with a dangerous atmosphere in romance . And after middle age, we will interpret the "Jianghu", this "Jianghu" is actually a worldly way. Both "Old Man of Mountains and Rivers" and "Children of Jianghu" try to tell individual changes in a long time span, but compared to "Old Man of Mountains and Rivers", "Children of Jianghu" is even more emotionally peaceful. In the span of seventeen years, there are individuals who choose to stick to it, and there are those who choose to go with the flow. The transformation of Qiaoqiao and Binge's "Jianghu identities" constitutes the main tension of the story. The love of the rivers and lakes that Qiao adheres to bridges a certain opposition. Regarding Jianghu, the Jianghu in Bin's understanding is nothing more than a stage for chasing money and power, and affection is just some kind of appendage, while the Jianghu in Qiaoqiao's eyes is the loyalty and affection between people, the traditional interpersonal law.
Female images also have a certain quality in Jia Zhangke's films. The women at the bottom in Jia Zhangke's films always appear in an image of persistence and waiting. In the tribulations of life, they are more tenacious and purer than men. However, a contradiction of Jia Zhangke can also be seen from the shaping of female characters: on the one hand, the female characters in Jia Zhangke's films have a sense of resistance and self-awareness, such as Shen Tao in "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers", and Qiaoqiao in "Daughter of Jianghu" , both show the strong self-awareness of women; but on the other hand, the women in Jia Zhangke's films are very traditional. "The prodigal son is a prodigal son because he has a family." In Jia Zhangke's films, female characters often play the role of guardians of morality, emotion, and family. Their lives basically revolve around male characters. In fact, it is the definition of women in typical male thinking.
Jia Zhangke is also the kind of director who has been making the same movie all his life. The characters in Jia Zhangke's early works are also deconstructed and live in "Children of Jianghu". The role of Qiaoqiao in "Children of Jianghu" is Jia Zhangke's early characters Qiaoqiao and Xiaoyu. , Shen Tao; and the image of Brother Bin comes from Qiao San in "Ren Xiaoyao". The construction of Jia Zhangke's film world is extremely dependent on Jia Zhangke's own life experience. Jia Zhangke has a complete and coherent time in his head [1980-2018 ] The history of rivers and lakes in Shanxi county, and all his re-creations are based on this. The creation of self-life experience, which is tightly held to the homeland, and the concern for the fate of the bottom, make Jia Zhangke's works form a kind of realistic expression system with remarkable characteristics, which is rare among Chinese directors, and Chinese creators lack social observation. Patience, or just everyone pretending not to see it, few people are willing to pay attention to the lower-level Chinese society in the image of the questioner, and Jia Zhangke has been doing this since "The Hill Comes Home". Newborn calves are not afraid of tigers. Jia Zhangke's early works are sharp and fierce, expressing personalities, which is a young bonus for creators. With the update of personal life experience and changes in cognitive systems, the focus of Jia Zhangke's works has also quietly shifted. The new Jia Zhangke obviously has a new understanding of human feelings and time, but still expresses it through a more familiar but more popular system.
In the time series of Jia Zhangke's works, the power of emotions between people is gradually becoming heavier. From the individual emotions in the profile of the times to the emotional changes in the passage of time, Jia Zhangke follows the changes in his own life experience and is also making a span. A larger art discussion. Based on his own life experience and the experience of the times, the young Jia Zhangke once inspired the group resonance through outstanding works such as "Xiao Wu", "Platform" and "The Three Gorges Good Man", and proved his acumen. However, depicting individual emotions in a long period of time requires a deeper dimension. Jia Zhangke's transformed works still need the test of time, and more importantly, a convincing "form breakthrough".
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