1. Lens language with experimentation and heavy emotion
2. Type grafting and circular narrative and slow narrative advancement
3. Self-guessing: why it was not tried and what was modified
After watching "Youth of You" today, I summed up 6 advantages and 1 disadvantage. Half of the credit goes to the director of photography Yu Jingping, and the other half to the director Zeng Guoxiang.
The language of the camera lens of this film can be seen to have a heavy feeling. Instead of being shot for the sake of shooting like most domestic films, it has not undergone any research at all.
1. Too many close-ups
A close-up is to shoot the scene of a person's face, so why is it called a close-up? Because the camera is all over the actor's face and can only show part of the facial features, I named this scene "big close-up".
No movie I've ever seen dares to use so many big close-ups throughout. The photographer did this with an obvious experimental nature, just to try to see if it would work and whether it would promote the emotion of the film. Obviously, this kind of shot is to give the audience a sense of depression, because the tension of the picture is too high, and the audience will feel nervous and depressed, which just fits with the theme of this film. The photographer's bold use of a single scene is very admirable, but there are also downsides. I reserve my opinion here and wait for the analysis later in the article.
2. "Yellow Earth" style composition and "Goddess" style overhead shooting angle
At the beginning and the end of the film, the loess composition is used in two places, once after the four characters are typed at the beginning, and once at the end of the conversation between the two police stairs. The so-called loess composition originates from Chen Kaige's "Yellow Earth" movie. Three-quarters of the entire picture is completely filmed with loess, and the main characters have been marginalized, expressing a sense of oppression that the land exerts on people. Similarly, in the two places in "Youth of You", the first place is to show the oppression of the two people encountered by society, and the other place is to show the pressure of the social system on the feelings of the two people. In fact, to put it bluntly, the old policeman is the symbol of the system, the little policeman is the contradiction between the system and the feelings, the four characters and Zhou Dongyu are the symbols of some marginalized teenagers. survive within the system.
Another technique is used when the little girl jumped off the building and Zhou Dongyu was bullied by everyone. This overhead shot is more like a God's perspective, and it also shows the indifference of God or society. The use of this shooting angle to express social oppression and mass indifference was created for the 1934 "Goddess".
3. One usage that gave me goosebumps made me admire the superb level of the photographer. At the end of the film, Zhou Dongyu and Si Zi laughed and cried in prison through the glass. The ingenuity is ingenious here. The director did not deliberately use the post-stacking technique, but through a glass, the close-ups of the faces of the two people were stacked together with a slight deviation. Such a method gives the stack a realistic basis, dissolves the intervention of the post-production on the film, and does not disturb the audience's emotional investment in the film. It is really ingenious, I learned!
4. Secondly, photographers also like to use symmetrical composition, and there are several shots with metaphors, such as the small flowers in the rain during the college entrance examination. These usages are relatively common, so I won’t go into details.
Then, let's talk about what the director has done.
1. Type integration
The first domestic film to reflect campus bullying is "Sadness Against the Current". This film only has youth elements in it, and there are not many emotional lines in it. On this basis, "Youth of You" incorporates heavy adolescent love and the type elements of psychological crime films, depicting the characters more fully, and the multi-line narrative of the film makes the layers much thicker. It can be said that the first third of the movie is exactly the same as "Sadness Against the Current", which is a performance of school bullying, and the degree of consistency is also very amazing. The heroine's victims and perpetrators are all girls' groups. The heroine's family is disgraceful, and there is a boy who makes the heroine endure, and another boy who makes the heroine resist. Most of the middle third of the movie is showing the love between the hero and heroine. The last third of the movie turned into a crime movie, showing less of the criminal process and more of the psychology of the characters during the interrogation. There is also a suspense caused by the play within the play, making the case look confusing and the truth. It takes one step at a time to get to the bottom of it.
2. Circular narrative structure
A few years after the beginning and end of the film, there is a little girl in the English class who is sullen. This little girl is not indifferent. She is the beginning of another episode of school bullying, but in this story, there are already male and female protagonists as representatives. protection of more people. Such a circular narrative makes the film seem unfinished, and it also makes the audience think about whether such a tragedy will reincarnate? The most classic use of circular narrative is Quentin's Pulp Fiction. However, I have something to say about this part, and I will also put it in the third part at the end.
3. The narrative is slow
Now let's talk about the shortcomings of the movie. Although the director uses all means to create a feeling of depression for the audience, depression does not mean procrastination. Yes, the narrative advancement of the film is too protracted. In fact, there is very little information in the close-up pictures. It is often used in fast-paced situations, creating a sense of tension and depression, while "Youth of You" is used in the heavy and slow narrative rhythm. This kind of close-up will inevitably make the audience feel a little bored and impatient. At this time, the narrative rhythm cannot be changed, otherwise it will not have the effect of suppressing the audience. What should we do? I think in this case, many sub-lines will not be shown unless they can be expressed. The basic task is to advance the main line. For example, infighting in some evil groups, infighting in the police, it can be deleted if it can be deleted, which will make up for the rhythm of some big features. Negative feelings of slowness.
Finally, I want to talk about my own guesses. The film was not reviewed before, and it was revised again. What was revised? I guess it is the part of the English class that echoes the beginning and the end and the text with a sound legal system.
First of all, this section is not very integral to the whole movie, that is to say, the absence of this section will not affect the movie at all. Secondly, as Zeng Zhiwei's son, a Hong Konger, Zeng Guoxiang's collective unconsciousness about the reunion in mainland China is definitely not that profound. For example, "School Situation" directed by Lin Lingdong, there is no big reunion, it is completely the darkness of realism. Performance. And this kind of approach is definitely impossible under the mainland film system, so we must give the film a happy ending. At this time, director Zeng Guoxiang did not give up on himself, but looked for a new foothold within the system, which led to the emergence of a circular narrative, which made this part not superfluous, but more like the finishing touch. This is what good directors should do, looking for a level approach within the system, rather than blindly criticizing the system.
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