Seeing clips such as plane crashes, children fighting knives, etc., as well as the large blanks after the large backless music dialogues in his previous films, once made me writhe my butt in the seat in the theater and fidgeted.
There is a feeling of being watched PPT page by page on a large 100-inch screen. A picture of 10 seconds and 20 seconds, and then ask you, have you finished it? I'm going to flip when I'm done.
His movies are quite distinctive, but when sitting in front of the big screen, the shortcomings that are not cared about in front of the computer are easily magnified.
Jia Zhangke's films in recent years have always had a quality of wanting to be profound but superficially narrating.
"The Old Man of the Mountains and Rivers" is a bit like another "Tian Destined", with the splicing of the script, the entanglement between the characters, and some problems in the Chinese society behind it. But he doesn't seem to have made any progress compared to Heaven's Destiny. The superficial narrative seems to make people ponder, but in fact, there is no in-depth discussion. The subject matter can be a gimmick, but it cannot support a flesh-and-blood movie.
And "Tian Destiny" won a Cannes Best Screenplay Award and received a lot of praise abroad. It's not how good the film is. I don't think it's necessarily what many people call Jia's "catering", but it's right. The irony and emotional release of some domestic affairs.
There have been no cinema films for so many years, and it shouldn't be easy for Jia Zhangke to persevere. But if you decide to enter the theater, maybe you should put down the award-winning fan, and come up with something from the theater.
The overall style of the film can only be described as still very Jia Zhangke. The first half is quite dramatic, whether it's the editing of the camera or Zhao Tao's performance.
The camera and editing are also very Jia Zhangke. In Jia's films, when depicting a single image, there are often characters whose eyes are dull and blank for a long time after speaking without background music, and then turn to another shot with a swipe. It sounds a bit like Nie Yinniang from a while ago. Although this is his personal style, we do not go to the cinema to see entertainment blockbusters, but the blanks and breaks caused by this treatment make it difficult for the audience to enter the film.
And Zhao Tao's performance I think is a kind of incompetence of Jia Zhangke's training of actors.
In Jia's filmmakers, rural people are often very dumb, and most of the time they are expressionless during the dialogue. No matter the dialogue between Xiao Wu and Xiao Yong in "Xiao Wu" or Han Sanming in "The Three Gorges".
Jia Zhangke may want to express the bad words of the rural groups in this way. Some people in this body do not speak much, but there are still a large group of people who are the most abundant in facial and body language. Even the most unspeakable people must have emotional ups and downs, or a more distinctive feature of themselves.
But in "Old Man in Mountains and Rivers", most of the time Zhao Tao stared at him with a grinning expression. This is true when two men in a love triangle are arguing, and it is also true when attending a wedding. I couldn't see the appearance of a young girl or an ordinary woman. And this kind of dullness runs through Jia's films for more than ten years.
A good director must be able to train actors, but the rural people in Jia's films have not changed for more than ten years. His description of this group has always been a group of taciturn people, with violent responses at best, but little change in mood and face.
Symbolic sights are also abundant in Jia's films. For example, when I watched "Apocalypse" for the second time, I would pause from time to time to think about why this image was given in the film.
But in "Old Man in Mountains and Rivers", scenes such as the plane crash may be to show emotional conflict or something, but Zhao Tao suddenly fell off a plane while riding a car, and then she continued to stare with a smile that was not funny. Seeing, sorry I just feel inexplicable seeing such a sight. You have 10,000 ways to let three actors show conflict through words and performances, but in the end you have to choose a special effect of 30 cents, what's the point?
It's like the change of the anti-knife boy. To be honest, I don't know what I want to show at all. Maybe it's the passage of time that changes and doesn't change. But after one shot, it just gave me abruptness, which made me not want to sit in the movie theater and think about why you want to show him.
A good movie is willing to make people think back and ask questions. But this movie is 108,000 miles away from "The Grandmaster". I don't want to go over every word at all and wonder why.
The theme of the second half of the film is gradually clear, and it can be regarded as gradually making people feel a little bit. The film has a strong sense of the times, but it is difficult to dispel the uncomfortable viewing experience brought by this non-movie-like film.
I don't think Jia Zhangke is necessarily catering to anything. As a recorder for so many years, it is also his courage to persevere. In Jia Zhangke's article on "Xiao Wu", he also said that he hoped that the film could have a kind of documentary quality, hoping to record the imprint of the times.
But as a movie, and a movie that is going to enter the theater, please tell the story first, and then express or record the sense of the times. If it is emphasized for the sake of emphasis, it is really easy to become a deliberate pandering.
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