Chat for a long time.
With four people in the room, I pessimistically predict that this movie will not do well at the box office because of its length (170 minutes) and because it does not fit into the current entertainment-oriented environment. There are always several directors in China, who compete with the general environment and insist on their own ideas. Wang Xiaoshuai is one of them.
It's not that he never complained, after all, making a movie is not as simple as treating guests to dinner, and lack of money is a real difficulty. Looking at those bad movies, the traffic star can bring hundreds of millions of box office by deducting a picture, he is also jealous, the thing called artistic persistence in his heart may not be able to withstand such a cold mockery of reality.
When his last work "The Intruder" was released, he ran around and shouted for the film, and the major film festivals took turns to run. In the end, the film won...about 10 million at the box office, and it is estimated that the cost has not been recovered. "Fast 7", which was released during the same period, had a box office of 2.4 billion.
Who can stand it.
What's more, I don't think "The Intruder" was done well. The stories are unreasonable, the themes are not clearly expressed, and the ideas are old-fashioned.
I think Wang Xiaoshuai is a bit outdated.
This is embarrassing. The director who has persisted in the art film position for many years, his art can not move me, and I am very sad.
This time, "Long Time" broke out at the Berlin Film Festival. After winning the Best Actor Award, it was very attractive to me. I have always been very demanding of actors' performances. So I walked into the movie theater with high hopes, 170 minutes.
After I came out, I took a while and recommended this movie to my friends. Although I don't think it's good enough, it's far from what I expected. But the film is full of emotion, the actors are really good, and Wang Xiaoshuai uses this time-consuming and laborious work to find ways to let us go back to the past, or at least recall the past efforts, I am sure.
————The following contains spoilers————
Let's talk about the shortcomings of the film first.
A movie that is nearly three hours long, not everyone can control it, and requires the director's first-class control over the story. The editing needs to be great to keep the film from falling apart. Moreover, the amount of information in the story is not large, so the choice of subject matter is very important.
There are certain problems in the choice of subject matter for this film.
After the two leading actors won the best actor in Berlin, it means that their performances are good enough, and it should also be said that the plot of the film is sufficient for the performance of these two characters. But in the whole film, Wang Jingchun really deserves his name, but the heroine Yongmei's scenes are too small and too flat, and she has too little interaction with her husband, children, and adopted sons, and she feels that this role is wasted.
Taking her being forced to have an abortion, she felt that she was just submissive without any emotional disturbance. Originally, this incident should have hurt her more than her husband, but she went to the hospital without any entanglement or resistance.
Later, the two families had a estrangement because of their children, and it was the male protagonist who was mainly responsible for this emotion, and as a mother, the female protagonist's reaction was rarely mentioned.
Later, the adopted son was rebellious and at odds with their husband and wife, including her detection of her husband's derailment, almost nothing. The plot of suicide also fulfilled the distressing run of the male protagonist. In short, in this film with not many clues, not too complicated story, not too many characters, the lack of expressiveness of such an important character is the problem of the director.
Secondly, in the cross-editing of time and space, Wang Xiaoshuai should not be very good at it, and he did not play very well in this film.
Time-space cross-cutting is very popular nowadays, especially for films of this length. Time-space cross-cut will make the film suspenseful, and the lens language will be more lively and not dull. However, since this film does not have a very complicated story line, the life of the two leading actors after leaving Fujian does not have much plot, and the appearance of the actors has not changed much, the confusion in editing makes the story unclear. , Sometimes I just finished watching a plot, and then inexplicably transferred to another time and space, and this transition neither sets suspense nor foreshadows feelings, it is unnecessary.
Finally, it is a common problem of Chinese art film directors, that is, they want to express too much. The director likes to incarnate the characters in the film, express his inner understanding of the characters in the characters' language, and add some rhetoric. The most obvious one is that Haohao finally confessed to the two old people that the language "a tree grows in his heart" is what normal people would say when they chat. There are many such paragraphs in the film, and I feel that the director is afraid that the audience will not be able to hear what the character is trying to say, so he puts his own thoughts in the lines as they are. Jia Zhangke likes to do this kind of thing in recent years, but Wang Xiaoshuai also has this problem.
Those are the flaws worth mentioning about this movie. As for the issue of drama, I won't talk about it until it's necessary to talk about it.
Let's talk about the advantages.
First is the theme.
Family planning, layoffs of workers, and the loss of a single child are all topics that Chinese filmmakers dare not touch easily. We can't blame Wang Xiaoshuai for the compromise he made when it was released in China. It's a matter of life and death for the film, and there is no problem with revisions. The consequences of family planning, including those behaviors that violate human ethics when implementing the policy, in China, who dares to film a director who does not have a certain right to speak? Even if it was filmed, who would dare to shoot so thoroughly? This goes back to the contradictory problem of expressing the environment and expressing desire, so I won't go into details.
Another advantage of the film, which is even more rare, is the emotional restraint.
After the couple lost their son, the director didn't let them cry, but used Jasmine to send them dumplings to show their state. We saw that on New Year's Eve, the couple did not cook. When chatting with Jasmine, they were obviously absent-minded and slow to respond. This is the state after the pain of bereavement became numb. Immediately after this, the camera turned to two other families gathering together. Through the foggy window, I heard laughter and laughter inside. Looking at the window, I suddenly burst into tears and felt the pain in the heart of the couple. This way of shooting is more expressive than directly making them cry. Very advanced, very reserved.
And after the two ran away, it can be seen from their dilapidated residence that the couple's later life was also insensitive, and no one wanted to change anything, just live. These emotions, hidden in the camera and not explicitly stated, are very good. You can compare the last scene of Jia Zhangke's "Old Man in the Mountains and Rivers". Zhao Tao dances in the snow. Jia Zhangke must be proud to say "I'm not touched by you" on the sidelines. The competition is still obvious.
Finally, let's talk about performance. The Haiyan played by Mrs. Arya surprised me the most. She is the only "villain" in the film, but she was also tortured by her original behavior for the rest of her life. Whether it's forcing someone to have an abortion at first, or blaming herself later, Arya's performance is excellent. I think this character is more expressive than the heroine. Moreover, the early family planning cadres are a good subject, and I really hope that there will be a movie in this area. How about an adaptation of Teacher Mo Yan's "Frog"?
Judging from the final effect of this film, Wang Xiaoshuai's level does have a visible ceiling. His storytelling ability is not outstanding among directors of his generation (you can compare it to Lou Ye). However, I appreciate his persistent theme choice, even if the story is not so well told, I still hope to continue to see filmmakers reflecting on these issues, reviewing these histories, and I hope he will never go to the side of family and country feelings ( People who know me know what I'm talking about), just shoot the story of the little people in the big background, and I will support it as always. Because in the current Chinese film environment, conscience, thinking, and reflection are things that are more important than level ability, and are also extremely scarce resources.
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