This year, author Hongying is busy — two new books, "Women's Rivers: A Dictionary of Rainbow Shadows" and "Moonlight Samurai," and the film "Lyceum Theatre," based on her novel The Death of Shanghai, is released.
Recently, Hongying has transformed into a director again, and the movie "Moonlight Samurai" based on her novel of the same name is being filmed in Chongqing. Jia Zhangke served as the executive producer, and Feng Jiamei, Zuo Hang, Cai Heng, Bai En, etc. starred. The novel was written during the pandemic last year, when Rainbow Shadow was trapped in the UK, and in the context of being trapped in a foreign land, the memory of the original hometown became more profound.
Recently, Hongying took the time to be interviewed by Red Star News reporters on the set, and she not only talked about her novels and films, but also her unique feelings for her hometown of Chongqing.
Rainbow Shadow Himself
Talk about the new book: Write Chongqing as a person
The novel "Moonlight Samurai" is set in Chongqing, and Dou Xiaoming meets nurse Qin Jiahui in the hospital. Qin Jiahui once told Dou Xiaoming a story: a little red-clad warrior, bathed in the moonlight, rode a jujube red horse, broke through the world, and when he saw something uneven, he stepped forward to help. Once, the red samurai rescued a little girl who had mistakenly entered the magic cave. But the little girl did not want to live, so he took the little girl to see the flowers blooming in the mountains, which made the little girl change her mind. Since then, Dou Xiaoming has made up his mind to become Qin Jiahui's moonlight warrior and protect her from her husband's domestic violence and torture...
Red Star News: What was the origin of the novel "Moonlight Samurai"?
Hongying: I started writing this book when I was in Beijing. I went to London in February (last year) to continue writing, and it took more than a year to complete. It took a long time to conceive this novel, and the story was like a very sharp thorn, stuck in my heart, and I slowly pulled it out little by little, and let it grow into a big tree on its own, and this big tree was the novel "Moonlight Samurai" that I presented to the reader. Chongqing, the place I am most familiar with. It felt like a mountain stood in front of me. I am not giving you a mountain, I am showing you every stone, every flower, and some people who pass by this mountain through words, so that you can discern the good and bad of this world. I write About Chongqing as a Person.
Red Star News: In the novel, Qin Jiahui and her father communicate with a pen. Does this also reflect real life in your relationship with your father?
Hongying: This way of communicating between Qin Jiahui and her father, just like my relationship with my parents, especially with my father, is to sit there in one place, eat and do things, there is no verbal communication, but as long as one look can understand the things in each other's hearts. When I was very young, my father took a copy of the "Chongqing Daily" every morning and read it in the bright light of the hall house facing the patio. Because the old house is very broken, during the Spring Festival, it is necessary to paste newspapers on the old wall, and the family has a new year's flavor. I wrote about this custom in the novel. The neighbors in the yard saw it and came to my father for newspapers, especially those who bullied me and treated my family badly, and also came to ask for newspapers with a thick face, and my father gave them to them. My father and I would sometimes sit by the river, and he used to be a helmsman on the boat, and he would take me to sit down by the river and watch the boat on the river. He especially wanted to go back to Zhejiang, he was from Zhejiang, but he didn't speak, and I communicated with my father in silence.
My father died in 1999 and my mother died in 2006, exactly the same time as when I wrote both of them. After his death, I went to his grave and burned a copy of The Hungry Daughter to him, as if to give my father an explanation: On my eighteenth birthday, I secretly went to see my biological father, and I knew that I was not your own child, but you were more important in my heart. Years later, I talked to my mother about my biological father and a lot of family secrets, I can't tell you, now I can tell you in my words, I love you, I will always miss you.
Talking about transformation: I understand what chongqing people have in their hearts
The movie "Moonlight Samurai" is based on The novel of the same name by Hongying, with Chongqing's "mountain city" as the geographical background and a small family in Chongqing as the epitome of the times to tell the story of the city. In the difficult years, they guarded each other, and each of them became each other's "moonlight" and each other's "samurai", becoming the force to wake each other up. The story shows the ever-changing urban process of Chongqing, the beautiful emotions of warm support between people, recounts the past of China and Chongqing, and reconstructs the Memory of China.
Red Star News: Recently, you directed your first film "Moonlight Samurai" in Chongqing, why did you choose this to put this work on the big screen?
Rainbow Shadow: This is a coincidence, we have been preparing for a long time. Make such a movie, restore an original Chongqing story, Chongqing past. The content of the novel is the content of 30 episodes of drama, the film is based on the life of the people on the street of the center street, mainly in Chongqing's cuisine, to endure the pain of cutting and loving many things, but at present I think it is still the most important part of the original novel to be retained.
Red Star News: Do you think the writing and directing work spans a lot? Because the characters are controlled, there are always accidents on the shooting scene.
Rainbow Shadow: I think writing and directing are not the same work. Writing is to use words to express a story, the director is to use visual expression of a story, that is, to use the lens to express, and it seems that writing is ostensibly a person's work, in fact, writing also condenses a lot of non-writers (creation). The director is a collective creation, without one aspect, it gathers the efforts of many people. The director is a conductor, just like a piece of music, including its overture, the suite, and then the end, almost none of them.
Red Star News: In addition to "Lyceum Theatre", your previous works have also been changed into film and television works, will you make some compromises about your own works being adapted?
Rainbow Shadow: I think the film is a work of the director, I can't talk about my compromise, some directors do it more excessively, some do it better, the original film is a regrettable art, so there is no perfect, just say that the kind of doing is particularly excessive, it will make people feel special regrets, this is also when I make my own movies, try to leave as few regrets as possible.
Red Star News: Taking "Moonlight Samurai" back to your hometown to shoot, it feels very different, right?
Rainbow Shadow: Returning to my hometown to make this movie has received support from all sides, and I have received help from many friends to find us costumes and props from the 1970s, including vehicles and accommodation. I think I may be a little better than other directors in filming Chongqing, I will find the most authentic scenery of Chongqing, know that the real innermost things of Chongqing people at that time are not only restoration, but present their inner spiritual temperament, and the choices they make or make sacrifices and efforts when their lives are tribulations and fates are turning, especially emotional efforts.
Red Star News: Many of your works have been published by many publishing houses at home and abroad, what are your next writing plans?
Hongying: I will write the story of Chongqing next, and now I have written a third of it, called "West District Zoo".
Talking about "Lyceum Theatre":
Directed by Lou Ye, written by Ma Yingli, and starring Gong Li and Zhao Youting, the film "Lyceum Theatre" tells the story of the life-and-death confrontation between nine characters in the six days of rehearsal of the new play "Saturday Novel" in Shanghai on the eve of the outbreak of the Pacific War. Some viewers said that the film presents a very different Shanghai, the use of black and white style is just right, very director Lou Ye's personal style. For this movie, Rainbow Shadow gave a high evaluation.
Red Star News: The film "Lyceum Theatre", based on your work "Death in Shanghai", is currently being screened, as the original author, how do you evaluate this film?
Hongying: I think this is the most exquisite and structured film that Lou Ye has made, and this movie, if you watch it again and again, I think you can really understand the art in the movie. The film is not a restoration of Shanghai in 1941, but an artistic construction that looks back at that period of history; the film is also presented in black and white just right. The actors also very accurately represented the hearts of the characters at that time, and I think it was a very heartfelt, particularly feminist film, which I liked very much.
Red Star News: Director Lou Ye presented it in black and white in the film "Lyceum Theatre", film critic Roger Lee. Ebert once said that "black and white films have a dream texture", while color films are more realistic. What do you think of black and white narratives?
Hongying: In my opinion, using black and white is a test of a director's skill, the first time I heard Lou Ye do "Lyceum Theatre" in black and white, I was actually quite surprised in my heart, because the black and white form is particularly challenging for a director.
When I first saw the film presented in black and white at the Venice Film Festival, I found that it was very artistic, very delicate, it was actually not exactly black and white, gray tone, very high-grade black and white, Lou Ye's films, all with a sense of breathing, just in line with shanghai at that time. In fact, Shanghai at that time was not like the Shanghai we say now. You want a beautiful cheongsam, if presented in a gray and black tone, very different.
Red Star News: The cast of "Lyceum Theatre" is strong, how do you evaluate the performances of actors such as Gong Li and Zhao Youting?
Hongying: I think it can be said that this is the best performance that Zhao Youting has ever performed, and this kind of performance is a performance without performance. I mentioned Zhao Youting when it premiered in Beijing, for example, they (and Gong Li) had a kiss scene, and then I said it wasn't like acting, he said it was true. Gong Li's role is contrary to the fat powder or charm of regular female celebrities, and she has created another female star and female spy. The female characters of that era were particularly touching to me, with forbearance and special control, especially when Yu Yan told her adoptive father that this was my last performance. For me, these two actors are particularly good.
Red Star News: In the original work, the ending Yu Yan (the role played by Gong Li) jumped down and jumped to his death, but the director in the movie set up an open-ended ending, will you feel a little less dramatic?
Hongying: This is different, of course, I respect director Lou Ye's choice, because he uses the play-within-a-play in my novel to let the audience in, or it may be said that Yu Yan is not dead, that is, there is a play inside and outside the play, which begins to reflect with the end of the one, just like the mirror, the mirror inside and outside the mirror, the interlacing of time and space.
Red Star News reporter Zhang Shihao Editor Jiang Qing
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