The Paper's reporter Wang Yi
In December, the movie "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" is undoubtedly the best selling cool film in the New Year file. The cast of Lei Jiayin, Xin Zhilei and Li Xian, coupled with the joining of Ge You, the "king of comedy" in the mainland, has made it particularly concerned. At the premiere ceremony, Uncle Ge said, "The antiques are too deep, and they can't get it right, and the money earned from filming before has to be thrown in." "Still do not change the true color of the cold-faced smile maker, make a small video to spread, it will make the circle of friends very happy."
Antiques Central Bureau poster
The film is adapted from Ma Boyong's novel of the same name - since entering the new century, it also involves the antique world, and the more prominent "Ghost Blowing Lights" and "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" in the popular text can be described as each good at winning. The former is mainly "downward" excavation, showing the contest between man and nature (including humanized nature); the latter is mainly excavated on the "ground", telling the circulation and trading of antiques, showing the cloud and strangeness of social relations and the struggle between people and people in the art of good and evil. Although Ma Boyong also started from online literature, he was quickly appreciated and accepted by the traditional literary circles. In addition to the level of storytelling, his skill in the history of governance has undoubtedly added a lot to the pattern and thickness of his works.
The base material of literature is enough, how to concoct a visual feast? Putting such a work on the screen, this time Hong Kong director Guo Zijian wrote and directed the screenplay, which is undoubtedly the most important. As one of the representatives of the "New Wave of SAR Cinema", in the past ten years, he has proved his talents in commercial blockbusters such as "Journey to the West, Descending Demons" and "The Legend of Wukong". At the same time, many veteran audience members are also obsessed with the "fan culture" temperament of his early works. In particular, in the geospatial era, the old-fashioned government houses and antennas on the roof in "Wild Good Dog" (2007); the Sham Shui Po building group and its complicated internal structure in "Moss" (2008); and the Luo Ji Tea House in "The Fight" (2010), the well-preserved old-style tea house system, is undoubtedly the best place for the commercial society to have not yet eroded and evokes the memories of local residents in the 1970s.
Coincidentally, the scene in the mainland in the early 1990s was also the background of the story of the movie "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau". Recently, in Beijing, Guo Zijian accepted an exclusive interview with the surging news reporter. Although he grew up in Hong Kong, his father's experience of taking him back to Guangzhou Province and the mainland when he was a teenager made him full of confidence in recreating the "sea of people" thirty years ago. The film's promotional song "The Land" was newly sung, and it was the title song of Beyond's first Chinese album released that year. Singer Huang Guanzhong, and now it is middle-aged, the sentence "In front of me is not my familiar eyes, strange feelings a little, but his story I miss ..." sounded, first of all, don't be a taste in my heart.
Director Guo Zijian
【Dialogue】
"In the mainland in the 1990s, what impressed me the most was the crowds"
The Paper: The film is set in the early 1990s, so how do you feel about the mainland in that era?
Guo Zijian: There is no clear date in the original novel, but you can see from some props or some small things in the book that it should be around 1991. It happened that the early 1990s was a very important period for me to grow up, because my father was from Guangzhou, and around 1992, he often took me back to the mainland. Every time I come, I have to stay for a week or two. Although I had never been to Beijing at that time, I had been to the north and south of the river, such as Jiuzhaigou and Huangshan, and I had been there when I was a child. Although the south and the north are still very different, in the core of the times, they are similar. For example, there are Panjiayuan stalls in Beijing, and Yuansheng West Street in Guangzhou is also similar, antiques, jade, Shoushan stone and so on.
The Paper: In your opinion, what was the most impactful thing about the mainland in the 1990s, and how did it appear in movies?
Guo Zijian: For me, what I want to show in the movie this time is the people, many people, the feeling of the crowds. I remember once in Guangzhou, it was just the time of work, there were not many cars at that time, and the roads in the mainland were much wider than in Hong Kong. Standing at the intersection, no matter which direction you look, there are many bicycles, and the crowds and people who can't see their heads at a glance. In addition, it is to take the train, the car is also full of people, sometimes on the train (no seat) a stop for several hours, people from all sides to stuff things into the window, there is a feeling of breathlessness.
The Paper: In your early films set in Hong Kong in the 1970s, such as "The Fight" and "Wild Dogs", there are precise restorations of the style of the times, and the presentation of the tone is also as close as possible to the texture of the film. How to define the video style of Antiques Central Bureau?
Guo Zijian: In the era of the movie, the mainland has not yet completely controlled tobacco, I remember going to restaurants and tea houses with my father for morning tea, and there were people smoking everywhere. At that time, the lights in the restaurant were not lit during the day, so when the sun came in, the light projected dust and smoke from people smoking, and where the sun below could not shine, people were vague outlines, and that picture made me feel very interesting.
This time, I wanted to try to present a feeling of film, and the audience would see that the graininess of the image was heavier. I think the grain is also representative of the age, it seems that the things taken at that time will not be so clear, there is a little particle, but also will make you feel a little sense of age. There are also the colors of the films made at that time, which are not as bright as the current films, and I call it the "age of videotapes". The first half of Antiques Central Is a little darker, like the poster on the wall, the color is originally very bright, but I will turn the brightness down. In my opinion, that era should not have so many colors, not so bright. In short, unlike the world after 2000, I want to present the art style of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Paper: Compared with other industries, the antiques industry is relatively unpopular, and it also has its own thresholds, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, when the mainland antique market was not very formal, there was a lot of chaos, how do you grasp it?
Guo Zijian: After deciding to shoot this subject, I found a lot of antique industry experts, such as the antique consultant of this film, Mr. Zhai Jianmin of Yongbao Zhai in Hong Kong. He is a native of Hong Kong, who came to the mainland in the early 1990s, knows the situation in the mainland very well, and he also speaks Cantonese, so it is more convenient for us to communicate. He told me that there were many insiders in the antique shop at that time, such as the movie Kui Market, which was a distribution center for antiques, true and false (antiques), in order to attract those "sheep" (lambs to be slaughtered, described as laymen), these antique dealers would find someone to be a childcare, what appraisers, or bids to buy people, in fact, many are childcare. Connoisseurs come to visit to "pick up leaks". How? He bought a whole bunch of stuff and ended up picking up a seemingly inconspicuous lamp holder (Dang Tiantou). Buyers can't stare at such a lamp holder as soon as they come up, that way, the seller will think that this may be a treasure, and the price will be raised.
In addition, he also told me that at that time, some villages close to ancient tombs were often a large group of people in the village, many of whom were related by brothers and sisters. These people get together, although not "gangsters", but have their own set of culture, and even the words spoken by laymen cannot be understood. When I encountered something, I rushed up, and for the sake of money, I took the risk of doing this business. In the movie, we designed the plot of wishing them coming to Zhengjia Village, including the scene of eating flowing water mats, which Mr. Zhai provided me with. Of course, I can't make all of these stories into the film, but it provides the general atmosphere and feeling of the industry for the film, which I want to present in the film. This time, Zheng Guoqu, played by Aruna, surprised me very much, and I believe that it will also leave a deep impression on the audience.
Aruna as Zheng Guoqu
The Paper: What do you think of Ma Boyong's novel? I noticed that you are also one of the screenwriters.
Guo Zijian: His novel itself has a sense of cinema, which is different from my previous filming of "The Legend of Wukong". "The Legend of Wukong" is a non-plot film, and the plot direction is based on emotions, like prose. Ma Boyong's novel itself has a cinematic structure. But for the script, the world view in his book is particularly grand, such as the era of Grandpa Wishing's generation, there are Japanese, and Sun Dianying (who once excavated the tomb of the Qing Emperor), involving many characters, from the perspective of the script can not help but make trade-offs.
We ended up looking for the main axis of the Buddha's head, and the rest of the background figures were only used as motivations. In the same novel, there were originally two heroines, Kido Kana and Yellow Smoke, but in the movie, it is impossible to make two heroine lines. In the end, only Yellow Smoke was set as the heroine, so that the audience could be more acceptable.
Xin Zhilei as Yellow Smoke
In addition, the character of the medicine is also particularly small in the first book of the original book, the beginning and the end appear a little, and I don't know why it is missing in the middle. His storyline mainly appears in the second book, but in the movie, I need to arrange a rival for Wish, and I have to improve the role of medicine or not. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen a certain personality on his body, such as the temperament of the "little foreigner" on his body, such as his unreliability, which must be designed. In fact, we put the character of the brother who is not a chinese medicine in the novel, including his feelings about the burden of the family, and make a character who is both good and evil.
Li Xian as Medicine is not
"Uncle Ge is the most familiar mainland actor of our generation in Hong Kong"
The Paper: The image of The Wish in the movie has changed somewhat compared to the novel, and Lei Jiayin has a sense of joy and on her.
Guo Zijian: Yes, the image of the wish in the novel is relatively straight, and it is not tepid to do things. But the movie is only two hours, the arc of the character must have an extreme transition, so I want him to appear in a sloppy state, as he knows the doubts of the Buddha's head, decided to ask for an explanation for grandpa and dad, his suppressed inner haze is going to erupt, and gradually give the board straight, and the original character is more similar.
This movie is all mainland actors, mainly because of the plot, because there is no part involving Guangdong and Hong Kong, and the people in the play will not speak Cantonese, so it is more appropriate for mainland actors to play. Lei Jiayin is characterized by the fact that he speaks with a bit of a northeastern accent, and I noticed this, so the movie set him to grow up in Fushun when he was a child. In addition, there is "Uncle Ge" in this play, and his mouth is Beijing dialect, so most of the actors this time, we also choose northerners.
Lei Jiayin as Wish
The Paper: Wishing and Yellow Smoke are played by Lei Jiayin and Xin Zhilei respectively in the movie, what do you think of the setting between the CP?
Guo Zijian: Basically, in the CP of the adventure genre, it is set like this. It's like "X-Files" has been out for more than a dozen seasons, the male and female protagonists have not yet come together, they are very ambiguous, and the audience feels that they should be born as a pair, but they have not yet come together, which is where the fun is. I think that the character of Yellow Smoke is not a vase in the movie, she is a very powerful assistant to Wish, and she can also help him in terms of force. The other is the so-called CP sense, there is chemistry between them, but you can't define this as love, just feel that something must happen. In the scene on the train, we filmed their two-eyed contact (and then dodged), which was very subtle.
The Paper: Talk about Ge You's performance, since you all know his "honorific title" in the industry.
Guo Zijian: Uncle Ge and Jiang Wen should be the mainland actors that our generation of Hong Kong people are most familiar with. Many viewers in Hong Kong will think that Jet Li is a Hong Konger, but he is actually a Beijinger. Uncle Ge and Jiang Wen we recognize well, their performances are too impressive. The first time I watched Uncle Ge's play was Chen Kaige's "Farewell to the Overlord", and later he acted in Feng Xiaogang's New Year's Eve film, which I have seen. I met him at a dinner party with Boss Yang (Yang Shoucheng). He was very polite and said to me at the time, "If you have any drama, come to me." ”
Ge You as Fu Gui
The Paper: In addition to Ge You, the film also invited Yang Xinming, how did you think of finding him to play?
Guo Zijian: I watched a TV series by Teacher Yang Xinming before, "Tomb Road", about digging a tomb, and he played the head in it. Teacher Yang Xinming played the grandfather medicine who wanted medicine or not. He is an important character in the movie, and the forces behind it can't be clearly stated in the first movie. Every time he appears, the place is hidden, hidden, but as soon as he appears, he must have a sense of oppression.
Yang Xinming as Yao Lai
The Paper: "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" has opened a "bureau", is there any future sequel in the arrangement?
Guo Zijian: If the box office is good, it will shoot the next one (laughs). The audience will notice that in this episode, we have left a lot of small foreshadowings. The main axis of this episode is to find the Buddha's head, make a wish and fight with medicine, and the audience can see who of them wins. As for the ending of the characters, we left some mystery. How to go in the future, I don't think it needs to be said too clearly, too clear, the character will reduce the charm.
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang