When the smell of fiction spreads, the story immediately appears to be ubiquitous and deliberate. music. Those soundtracks that sounded soothing and heavy at first overlap with the image of the passing river, and unexpectedly lead the mood and atmosphere to a dignified situation; this kind of situation may be what Jia Zhangke, the creator, is pursuing, but in fact We've had too many ears and eyes. Compared with the unique mountains and waters, people and things that Jia Zhangke discovered and expressed, this seemingly gorgeous music or application is actually very old-fashioned (perhaps I was born in it and in it, the characteristics of this landscape have long been Infiltrated into the bone marrow, the gap between them can be intuitively realized). Photography is also infected with the same crux. Those slow and restrained movements, those who always enter the field from objects to people, all reveal the creator's deliberate pursuit or deliberately embodied taste. In this vague intention, some colorful details in the story, such as the camera passing over several watches hanging on the wire, the people surrounded by the spectacle of the ruins, and three or two surreal scenes... are all because of this exposure. They come out deliberately and weaken their natural expressiveness.
It has to be admitted that even with these obvious failures, it will not prevent "The Good Man of the Three Gorges" from becoming a work of great weight. So where did the crux come from? I think the first is the congenital limitation of the author's subject. Jia Zhangke, who was born in Shanxi, obviously lacks sufficient and in-depth understanding of the land of Fengjie. No matter whether he grasps the pulse of this time-space Dasein, he is always An outsider, this determines his feelings and perspective. No matter how many personal memories or memories of the times that belong to Jia Zhangke are branded in it, the city has always lacked a skin-to-skin feeling to him. Jia Zhangke is undoubtedly smart. He chose a very special moment and entered the city as an outsider. The characters played by Han Sanming and Zhao Tao are outsiders from the world outside the canyon. What they experienced in this city also represents what Jia Zhangke has seen and gained in a sense. I regard him as a kind of superficial. Observation, manifested on the outside, must be the spectacle of dazzling, destruction, and rebirth under the camera.
The visual effects produced by such spectacle-like sights are undoubtedly of great attraction to filmmakers, especially as real spectacles that only exist in a specific time and space. These spectacles are roughly composed of two: first, the landscape spectacle of the Three Gorges, and then the buildings under demolition and reconstruction inside and outside Fengjie City under this space. The former is natural and quite local; the latter is a man-made landscape in a state of contradiction, including conflict and fusion (Hongqiao), destruction and memory (abandoned building). Outside of this real space, what surrounds them is a larger time, a real era we live in, marked by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. This water conservancy project, which can be called a wonder of the world, is a landmark event in China's development, regardless of its praise or criticism, and it will definitely be remembered by history in the future. With the help of this heavy background of the era, the fate of the characters recorded with powerful images has also been elevated to a grand level. No matter what kind of creative view a director holds, this time and space is unavoidable. Jia Zhangke is smart and lucky at the same time.
The real time and space background, the fictional plot and characters, the technique of structuring the story is the reflection of the realistic concept of creation, that is, it does not reflect the reality of life or even the real reality, but the imagination and fiction of the author, a kind of personal imagination. And fiction, this is the author's style embodied by director Jia Zhangke in "The Three Gorges". But what is interesting is that the scene of Shen Hong dancing with her husband in front of the Three Gorges Dam, which I mentioned earlier, is a fiction exposed by the author unconsciously. It is thanks to the details of this failure that the superficial truth created by the story’s previous record-keeping technique is subtly torn open, thereby revealing a deeper idea that the perfect and invulnerable world is nothing but the artist’s The organization and suture of the phenomenal world. However, this deconstruction method of disintegration is in conflict with Jia Zhangke's pursuit of realism, so it has contingency, of course, it should be regarded as the director's out of control.
Similar to this accidental, out-of-control nature, the deliberateness of the aforementioned story: music, photography, background, etc., does not actually damage the overall artistic effect of the work too much. What is the reason? These slightly intentional forms can generally be included in fictional themes, and the realist treatment allows for some degree of fictionalization. Furthermore, these inaccuracies are things that the author fails to effectively grasp or balance in dealing with form/content, but the material handled by this grasp or balance is itself a set of opposing things (true and false, destruction and rebirth, etc.). etc.), there is a conflict between these opposing things, and the tension of the story comes from this, and this conflicting tension can make up for the imbalance in processing. The reason why Jia Zhangke is lucky is because he really chose/found a wonderful material.
From the overall point of view, the narrative of "The Good Man in Three Gorges" has obvious characteristics of double exposure - that is, the dialogue and questioning between the two elements. First of all, in terms of perspective, it is a cut-in, and there is a sense of opposition and examination between outsiders and locals; in the background, there is a clear opposition and integration between nature and humanity, including destruction and memory, destruction and Reconstructed architecture; above the characters, there are two behaviors of seeking and saying goodbye, corresponding to the inner reflection of stability and turbulence; above the relationship of characters, it is the parallel correspondence of division and closing; more trivial , from an emotional point of view, which also includes the difference between men and women, and so on. On a larger scale, it is the encounter of two time and space, which should be the theme or meaning of the story. No matter my hometown or Fengjie City, they all have their own unique running trajectories over time and have a long history that can go back thousands of years. At the same time, due to their unique geographical location, they are relatively closed. In this closed space, they have their own slow development course. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam led to the immigration and relocation of the involved areas, like a sudden huge force rushing into the closed space and time in the canyon, breaking the established trajectory, not only changing the mountains, rivers and rivers, but also changing the city. Also changed people. We regard this kind of power as an alien time and space. At this moment, two time and space meet to form a stagnant moment, and the broken walls are the traces left by the encounter and collision of time and space. Compared with the entry of this huge force, the entry of outsiders (Han Sanming and Shen Hong) will naturally not change the city much. The trace - the present tense of annihilation and rebirth - an eternal moment, unreserved and unreproducible. This encounter and collision of time and space also symbolizes the conflict and fusion of natural time and space and social time and space.
Under the heavy theme of time, we can find some details of Jia Zhangke's talent as a creator. In the story, there are many episodes of popular songs, some from years ago or decades ago, and the most popular of the moment. When these pop songs appear in the same scene, they represent the respective eras of the masters, and on the same occasion means the meeting of two time and space, corresponding to the major theme of time. The details of "Langrun, Langliu..." and Xiao Ma are probably the memories of Jia Zhangke's eyes and ears. This kind of personal memory and memory of the times are subtly integrated into the film, and the film is marked with the director's unique personal imprint. There are small eras in the era, and there are past tenses in the present and the past. The wonderful use of it is not out of the norm, which is very different from those grand and cliché soundtracks. It is also the camera that swept across several watches hanging on the wire in the room, and the time image concentrated in the process is also a powerful expression of the theme. But what must be carefully considered is how likely is this scene to appear in life? Whether to give up the necessary implicit in order to express.
There are also several surreal scenes in "The Three Gorges", which do not contradict the overall reality from the perspective of performance. In realist works, this kind of treatment is not uncommon, and it often brings shocking effects. For example, two characters who happened at the same time but belonged to different scenes appeared in the same space in Shohei Muramura's "I Want Revenge". The power of expression is unforgettable. I personally think that such a scene is not suitable for interpretation. What it pursues is the surreal effect of flying immortals in the sky. Of course, these scenes in "The Three Gorges" have the same purpose, but the overall effect is not outstanding. In this method, the real and the fictional must be clearly distinguished, so that the contrast between them can burst into a strong tension. However, many scenes in "The Good Man in Three Gorges" are too deliberate, creating a transition between reality and fiction, thereby weakening the surreal and dreamlike quality, making the contrast between the two no longer clear, and some are deliberately seeking work. smell. The same principle applies to a dance in front of the Three Gorges Dam, where the marks of the axe are too thick. But another important purpose of this scene is to break the real limitations through the transformation of time and space, and to introduce the background of the era from the demolition of Fengjie City to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, from the part to the whole, from the individual to the era, more or less It's an unconventional conversion.
In general, "The Three Gorges Good Man" is a work that is infinitely close to a masterpiece. The problem is not that it is not done enough, but that it is too much. Usually, the works of the so-called masters require not only depth but also breadth, which often leads to some unexpected situations. For example, in "The Good Man of the Three Gorges", the gangster who imitated Pony Ma's death is really touching, but looking back now, it seems superfluous, more like to reflect what the masters must have. Compassion and care without consciously doing it. In addition, it can be seen in the story that Jia Zhangke is still very concerned about the beginning and ending of the plot, which is obviously an obstacle to becoming a master (especially an art film). (Well, in this way, when "The Good Man of the Three Gorges" was released, the marketing strategy adopted at the same time as "The Big Wave and the Iron Armor" was obviously a bit ostentatious and deliberate.)
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