Everyone is the same, the unity of every day, the division of every day, at the end of the song, only occasionally, remember each other. Other Tatsumi, because they are busy, no one cares about anyone. —— "Farewell to the Overlord" Li Bihua
Adapted from a book into a movie, there must be a discussion question, is the book good, or is the movie good?
Most of the time it is a good book, because literature is more delicate, there is room for abundance, and there is a richness of elegance that the image cannot convey. There are exceptions, movies are better than books, and this is the case with "Farewell to the King".
In 1993, musical art films all over the world continued to explode, such as "Farewell to the King", "Wedding Feast", and "Schindler's List", which was the highlight era of Chinese cinema. In 2018, reed, a screenwriter who has worked with Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, said in an interview, "When filming "Farewell to the Overlord" and "Alive", I was particularly happy and felt that we had finally started. Unexpectedly, that was our end. ”
This film is a real epic, atmospheric and delicate and mournful, borrowing a pair of people's life and death entanglements to show the historical picture of various periods from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, Japanese occupation, liberation, and cultural revolution. There are both grand narratives and the love songs and cries of small people; there are twists and turns that catch people's plots, insights into modern and modern history, and painful torture of human nature.
Relatively speaking, the novel appears more delicate, focusing on the inner activities of the characters, especially Dieyi herself. After the adaptation, the film is more magnificent, and the social background is more prominent. As far as the character is concerned, Cheng Dieyi in the movie is a drama maniac and an obsessive species. "He is a true and pure man, an idealist with a spiritual purity, who has never been changed by the times. The characters are distorted later in the film, but not as thoroughly as in the novel. For example, the scene where Butterfly And Xiaolou expose each other is even more cruel in the novel, and Butterfly has completely lost its soft atmosphere and almost loses her sanity. The ending is even more different, the novel Xiao Lou and Dieyi were separated for many years during the Cultural Revolution, and met in their later years, the situation of the two was very miserable, Dieyi committed suicide while acting, but did not die, and then the two separated again, a bleak end.
In the movie, Butterfly Yi committed suicide, which has some tragic beauty. Therefore, the novel is more delicate and cruel, and it is also more dissected from human nature. But I love the tragedy and atmosphere of the movie even more. In the original work of "Overlord Farewell", the ending is that Cheng Dieyi married his wife and lived a normal life. In the movie, Chen Kaige and screenwriter Reed changed it to Cheng Dieyi and killed themselves on the stage, and the drama ended.
Privately, I think that the ending of the movie is more in line with Cheng Dieyi's insistence. He once cried and sang late at night: The king is exhausted, and the concubines talk about life? In those turbulent times, cowardice and selfishness were infinitely magnified. Yu Ji still maintains Yu Ji's integrity, but the Overlord has long lost the Overlord's wind bone. Mourning is greater than death. Ideals and beliefs died like bubbles, and he could not live for a long time. You are no longer the Chu Bawang who is strong and powerful, but I must be the Yu Ji who has always been the end. Cheng Dieyi's obsession with Peking Opera, his fascination with the stage, and his obsession with the overlord, that is, Duan Xiaolou, ended from beginning to end. He is a person who does not distinguish between personal drama, for him, the stage and life are one thing, there is no difference. Of course, this "infatuation" of his is also doomed to his final tragic fate.
Throughout the film, he is repeatedly betrayed. This kind of betrayal is not only Duan Xiaolou, he married another woman as his wife, this emotional betrayal. It is even more, in the second half of the film, when a tough era comes, Peking Opera is forced to change its flavor little by little, and the once majestic overlord on the stage finally kneels down to this era and admits it. This kind of spiritual betrayal hit Cheng Dieyi, and Cheng Dieyi's drama is not divided, so when Peking Opera loses the stage, his life is doomed to come to an end.
Duan Xiaolou is different from Cheng Dieyi, he is a person who has been profoundly changed by the times. He was originally the overlord on the stage, and he was also a very manly figure offstage, the most profound thing is that when the Japanese soldiers entered the city, the stage was chaotic, and the stage was sprinkled with leaflets, but the butterfly clothes did not stagnate and panic in the slightest, and continued to sing the play without moving, while the fourth master watched the play upstairs without the slightest distraction. I was particularly touched to see this scene, and remembered that someone said before that once the singing began, no matter what happened, whether there was anyone listening to it on the stage, it must be sung. This is not only the rule set by the ancestors, but also the persistence of the play. The fourth master and the butterfly are the people who know the most about drama.
After the Cultural Revolution at the end of the movie, Duan Chen and his wife came to the long-abandoned old drama courtyard to re-take the stage, and Yu Ji drew her sword and killed herself. This is really the most wonderful climactic action, this ending, the theme of the film can be revealed, and the image of Cheng Dieyi finally adds a finishing touch.
Whether Cheng Dieyi is to the drama, to the love, to the people, to life, he is too devoted, too serious, too persistent. Such a person could not live in the world at that time, and he was completely desperate.
At the end of the novel, Cheng Dieyi survived. Later, he also met duan Xiaolou as the artistic director of the Peking Opera Troupe who visited Hong Kong and smuggled into Hong Kong. The two went to the restaurant together to soak in the bathhouse and finally took the stage to sing "Overlord Farewell".
The part that impressed me the most was that Xiao Douzi's mother chopped off his fingers, and he shouted and fled, but this was only a physical pain, and it could still heal. Little Bean was tamed by the spirit of smoking guns, marked with a branding ceremony, remembering that when I first saw this place it was a dusky weekend afternoon, I had to stop, open the window to breathe. Turning back again, I heard Xiao Douzi sing "I was originally a female petite, not a boy", which was a change in his self-perception in his youth, which was a psychological pain, and also hinted at the tragedy of his life.
The word order of "female Jiao'e" and "male body" is differently emphasized, "it should be a female jiao'e, but it is a male body" and "although it is a male body, it is also a female jiao'e" sings a joke to others, and for Cheng Dieyi, who has super empathy ability, sings about herself, and her self-perception is different in her heart.
Cheng wants to play with Duan for a lifetime, only Duan is the overlord he identifies as his own, he refuses to let others play the overlord, and he also refuses to play other people's Yu Ji. Under this kind of cognition, it is all too normal to be possessive of Duan and hostile to Duan's wife.
In the original work, Li Bihua wrote, "Cheng Dieyi said that the play was finished. This time, he sang back to "boy and girl", and the play killed himself. Guessing that his self-inflicted wounds should be very complicated, maybe he wants to end it at this moment, and he really has played with the overlord for a lifetime; perhaps the moment he saw through that the overlord was a fake overlord, he had lost all the reasons for persistence.
Regarding the movie role, screenwriter Reed once said that when casting, he did not know Zhang Guorong at all, and after watching the rouge buckle, he felt that it was too appropriate, and Zhang Guorong had a rare psychological portrayal ability. It had to be him to play the Butterfly Dress. Reed once said, "When I wrote "Farewell to the Overlord", it was actually quite pleasant, because you can play a variety of roles, and in the role, I even flirted with Cheng Dieyi." Later, I told Zhang Guorong this, and I said that when I wrote the script, I had already flirted with you. Later, Zhang Guorong gave me a very exquisite desk calendar, which read: Dedicated to the fourth master in my mind. "This is the master move, they are very good at it, they are also mutually successful." To this day, if you want to choose the top three Chinese movies, "Farewell to the King" is definitely listed.
Recently, watching Zhang Guorong's movies one after another, more than ten years have passed, and many people still miss him, not without reason. When he appeared, I was too young to pay attention or cherish, and now looking back, it turns out that this is the brilliant star that illuminates the sky.