Zeng Yuli
Note: This article contains spoilers
Zhang Ailing's novels are well known for being difficult to adapt, although she is one of the most prestigious novelists in the Chinese language world, and her novels are very storytelling, but the directors do not dare to rush to take a shot. Xu Anhua is one of the directors who have adapted zhang Ailing's works the most, directing "Love in the Fallen City" in 1984 and "Half Life" in 1997. None of them are "successful", but this persistence and courage are still praised.
This time Xu Anhua chose to adapt "The First Burning Incense", whether it is Zhang Ailing's fans or Xu Anhua's fans, they are surprised and happy, and the literary and art circle has long been boiling. Its production lineup is also truly top-notch: screenwriter Wang Anyi, photography Du Kefeng, costume and Megumi Wada, music producer Ryuichi Sakamoto...
Poster of "The First Burning Incense"
Unfortunately, the film fell into great embarrassment from casting to pre-release marketing. The author likes both Zhang Ailing and Xu Anhua, so in the group ridicule carnival before the release of the movie, he maintained the greatest restraint, and always felt that he had not seen the movie and did not rush to give a veto vote. Until now, I have to face this cruel reality: the adaptation of the movie "The First Incense" has failed. This is not a bad film, but it is definitely not Zhang Ailing's "First Incense".
The embarrassment of "not looking like"
When the cast was first officially announced, Ma Sichun played Ge Weilong and Peng Yuyan played Qiao Qiqiao, which was criticized by most Zhang Fans for not being in line with it. Sure enough, in the movie, Ma Sichun's "shape is not similar" is further amplified, and Peng Yuyan is wandering between "like" and "not similar".
In the novel, Ge Weilong is described as follows: "Her face is a plain and beautiful little convex face... The eyes are long and flattering, and the deep marks on the double eyelids sweep straight into the sideburns. Slender nose, small fat mouth. Perhaps her facial expression is slightly lacking, but only because of this sluggishness, it shows the gentle and thick ancient Chinese atmosphere. ”
Ge Weilong is slender, with a girlish pure love base, plain and some charming, classical and delicate. Ma Sichun's physique is first of all incompatible with "slender". Here we have to make an explanation, not to discriminate against the appearance of actresses or anything, but if you want to be photogenic on the big screen, it is indeed very demanding on the body management of actors. In the trailer, Ma Sichun has already calculated that when she wears a red dress in the movie, the wide back is quite obvious, and when she is with other actors, it is difficult not to let the audience notice her fleshy arms and the back of her hands.
Ge Weilong (played by Ma Sichun)
Such an image is first of all inconsistent with the novel, and at the same time it is not quite consistent with the positioning of the role: the aunt played by Yu Feihong also has to use such a Ge Weilong to win over men, which is impossible to say. In terms of image alone, Zhang Junning and Zhang Jianning, who play maids in the movie, are more suitable for Ge Weilong.
If the image seems to be insufficient, then it can also be compensated by acting. Unfortunately, on the one hand, the script's portrayal of Ge Weilong deviates from the novel, and on the other hand, Ma Sichun's grasp of the role deviates. Ge Weilong, played by Ma Sichun, is simply the protagonist who cannot be loved and loved in the pain of youth, with an innocent, stubborn and sad face, and the change of emotions is more reflected in the large mobilization of the five facial features, lacking subtlety, layer and heart. The performance of "The First Burning Incense" is more like a mixture of "July and Ansheng" and "About Winter".
The novel describes Georgie Qiao as follows: "He is even bloodless than Zhou Jijie, and even his lips are pale, like plaster casts." Under the black pressed eyebrows and eyelashes, the eyes were like the wind blowing through the waseda field, sometimes revealing the blue light of the water under the rice, flashing and darkening again. Man is tall and well born, but his clothes are so obedient and casual that people forget the existence of his body. Compared with him, Lu Zhaolin looked much more stupid. ”
Qiao Qiqiao (played by Peng Yuyan)
It can be seen that Peng Yuyan has worked the role, lost a lot of weight, and the whole person is thinner. At certain moments the lips are dry and white, the eyes are bright and a little naïve, and there is a little bit of jochijo's sense of vulnerability. Of course, Georgie Qiao can eat well in the women's bush, but also because of his very strong sexual tension, that kind of self-indulgence makes people addicted, which Peng Yuyan also has.
Peng Yuyan's version of Georgie Joe is not so bad
The few moments that make people play are Peng Yuyan showing his strong arms, playing flirting too greasy, and some untimely "childishness".
Yu Feihong's aunt, however, is not successful, except that the beauty is really excessive. The film enriches the "previous history" of this role, making her more convincing about Ge Weilong's "poison".
Yu Feihong plays the aunt
Situ Xie, played by Fan Wei, is the most accurate. Yu Feihong can still cope with the opponent's play, and Ma Sichun's jerkiness and strength are clear at a glance.
Fan Wei played the best
The dislocation of "God is not like"
Zhang Ailing's novel, "shape-like" is difficult to shoot, but more difficult, is "god-like". To be "god-like", it first depends on the screenwriter and director's understanding and grasp of the novel.
The novel "The First Burning Incense" tells the story of a "Madame Bovary" in pre-war Hong Kong. When Ge Weilong faced desire (material desire and lust), she soberly degenerated, she saw herself sinking, but she was difficult to control herself, she could not stop, and at the same time she could not fully enjoy the "happiness" of sinking, her pain was clear. This is the deep sorrow of being dominated by desire and ashamed of desire.
But when the first act of the movie comes out, when Ge Weilong walks up to his aunt's villa on the mountain, the deviation of the movie begins.
In the novel, he tirelessly lays out the landscape of his aunt's house that Ge Weilong sees in his eyes. She saw the garden, she saw the grass in the garden, she saw the sea outside the walls... The visuals are getting stronger and more expansive. "Here is not only the strong contrast of color that gives the viewer a dizzying unreal feeling - everywhere is a contrast; all kinds of irreconcilable local backgrounds, the atmosphere of the times, are all hard to knead together, creating a fantasy realm." 」
The depiction of large sections of landscape in the novel is very important, which is a common "literary moment", that is, the desire to conquer the world that is born when literary and artistic youth see the grand and prosperous world outside for the first time. We've seen moments like these in The Tall Old Man, in The Red and the Black, and in Madame Bovary. The description of the landscape is actually that Ge Weilong has been "captured" by her aunt's family, and her heart is surprised, amazed, and a little envious. After all, she is only an ordinary middle-class family in Shanghai, and she can't survive in Hong Kong before she turns to her aunt, "for the luxurious residential areas on the top of Hong Kong's mountains, it is still quite strange."
Such a very important literary moment, the film is quite sloppy and a few shots have taken Through Ge Weilong's observation. Ma Sichun also acted innocently and sluggishly, and his inner drama was insufficient. The audience has no way of knowing what kind of shocking experience the wealth of her aunt's family brings to Ge Weilong.
In the novel, Ge Weilong was aware of the "danger" hidden in her aunt's house at the beginning, but she could not hide Ge Weilong's subconscious desires, she still decided to stay and give herself a very positive reason: "As long as I walk right and stand upright, I am not afraid that she will not treat her with courtesy." When she saw the cabinet full of colorful, beautiful and high-end clothes prepared for her by her aunt, Ge Weilong was happy to try them on at first, but she quickly realized: "What is the difference between this and buying a pleasing person in the ChangsanTang?" She still has rational reminders and restraints about her desires, and does not want herself to fall. Yet in her trance-like sleep, she tries on clothes to cheerful music and then "falls asleep smiling." In her sleep, she enjoyed such a life.
Ge Weilong began to try on new clothes
Her aunt was not an ordinary person, and she would rather tear her face off with her family, and marry an old rich man as a concubine, rather than marry a serious family, and wash away the inheritance after the death of the old rich man. The aunt got what she wanted, and it didn't matter how the outside world was spreading her affair. In my aunt's white house, all kinds of powerful men shuttled, and my aunt sometimes acted like a prostitute and sometimes like a bustard, satisfying both material and lustful desires. But her aunt will always grow old, and the young Ge Weilong will become her new "bait". Two or three months later, Ge Weilong had already seen through his aunt's tricks, and the novel wrote that Ge Weilong "didn't mind at all."
Until her aunt's old lover and big gold lord Situ Xiexiang fell in love with Ge Weilong, she had to officially "work" for her aunt. The choice is on the table: for the sake of this drunken fan's life, what is Ge Weilong willing to exchange for? Did she temporarily become a decent socialite in her aunt's house, clinging to a ruyi langjun, or did she sell the rest of her life to her aunt for a long time and become a social flower in the affair?
Putting on a bracelet is like putting on a handcuff
When Situ Xie put a bracelet on Ge Weilong, Ge Weilong resisted. She has desires, but she doesn't want to be reduced to a socialite, she craves true love. In the novel, the plot of Georgie Joe only began to increase from this time. In fact, the love between Ge Weilong and Ge Qiqiqiao is not the theme of the novel, it is only the catalyst for Ge Weilong's depravity, and the decisive factor for forcing Ge Weilong to make a final choice.
After a night of cloud and rain, Ge Weilong found that Ge Qiqi qiao immediately flirted with the maid. Ge Weilong decided to leave Hong Kong at the moment. If she leaves Hong Kong, it is Ge Weilong's pain and pain, her renunciation of material desires and lusts, and she breaks free from her falling life. She told her aunt, "I'm going back and I'm willing to be a new person." ”
Ge Weilong couldn't go back
A "timely" illness made Ge Weilong stay after all. The novel reads: "She may have had this illness, perhaps half of it voluntarily; perhaps she subconsciously refused to go back, and had the heart to continue... Say easy, go back and be a new person... New life... She wasn't as simple-minded as she used to be. At this moment, Ge Weilong has been completely captured by desire and has become a prisoner of desire. She loves Georgie Joe, but in fact she also needs Georgie Joe as a reason for her to stay, as an excuse for her indulgence and indulgence in materialism and lust.
The novel is a narrative of desire, love is a link in desire, and the film completely becomes a love narrative. In the movie, Georgie Joe appears early, and Ge Weilong is a girl with a "love brain". After she realized her aunt's use of her, she threw herself into the arms of Georgie Joe, hoping that a man would give her love and salvation; after finding out that Georgie Joe flirted with the maid, she was emotionally hurt and wanted to go back to Shanghai; she couldn't bear the pain and turned back to Hong Kong, knowing that Georgie Joe needed a long-term meal ticket, she "blackened" and decided to start a "social flower" career; married ToGege Joe, Ge Qi Qiao still couldn't control the lower body, Ge Weilong asked sadly, she loved so "humble", why did Ge Qi Qiao still mess around?
Ma Sichun acted too hard
The author really can't believe that Ge Weilong in the movie actually said such a line as "love is humble", that before the netizens laughed at Ma Sichun's reading of "The First Burning Incense", "Love is not the humility of one person, but the bravery of two people", which is completely "wronged" Ma Sichun. Because even Xu Anhua and Wang Anyi could not help but interpret the novel as a story of "humble love".
Look at it again, and don't laugh at the number of youth wound literature that the film's marketing on Douyin takes. "This autumn, there are waves, there is a breeze, only without you" and "Love is painless and painful pain" and other copywriting, which is in line with Ge Weilong's personality in the movie, and it is indeed a line that she may say if she is going to die.
Continuation of the absurd walking board
There is no detailed writing of married life in the novel, but the film uses half an hour to draw snakes and add to the snake, exposing the triviality and unbearableness of Ge Weilong's marriage with Ge Qiqiao, and the living "eight o'clock file" plot.
Ge Weilong woke up and saw Ge Qiqiqiao swimming with a bikini beauty in his arms; found that Ge qiqiqiao can't change eating, his own humility can't change his heart, Ge Weilong cried and slapped Qiaoqiqiao; during the honeymoon period of the new marriage, Ge Weilong accompanied Situ Xie to Shanghai on a business trip, and really lived a life of helping his aunt get people and helping her husband get money, on this side, Ge Qiqiao flirted with his aunt and wanted to be a maid...
Continuation of the bridge segment
Xu Anhua's generous and gentle state of mind, the short tug-of-war in the parents, and the narrative of everything are huge advantages in some movies, such as "Day and Night in Tin Shui Wai", "Sister Tao", and "When is the Bright Moon". But when encountering Zhang Ailing, it has become a kind of "misreading", turning Zhang Ailing's restrained and sad "legend" into a reading material in Hong Kong gossip magazines, even if the style of storytelling is a lot higher, but in the end it is dog blood, it is strange, it is gossip, although there is also a paper full of absurd sadness, but there is nothing new, and it is not deep enough.
At the end of the novel, and at the end of the movie, the New Year's shopping scene is the saddest moment. The sailors treated Ge Weilong as a prostitute, and Georgie Joe said, "Those drunken loaches, what do you think you are?" Ge Weilong said, "Originally, what is the difference between me and them?" Georgie Joe quickly retorted to tell her not to talk nonsense. Ge Weilong admitted that she had said the wrong thing, and then she added a sentence : "They are unavoidable, I am voluntary." Tears hung on her face.
The situation between novels and movies is still very different. In the movie, it is "love but can't be", so at the end of the movie, Ge Weilong shouts "I love you, dead without conscience". I believe that every viewer who has read the novel will be greatly shocked by this scene, how the lines of this big horn's painful youth are messed up!
In the novel, it is the despair of sober depravity. Ge Weilong knew that she was vain, stupid, naïve, and driven by desire, but her muscles were deeply embedded in the fence of desire, and she could not break free. This is a great sadness, watching yourself endure the lingchi of the years - sooner or later you will grow old, sooner or later you will be abandoned, but you have no choice but to laugh at yourself with contempt and self-contempt, and live a day is a day.
A story of being kidnapped by desire is the story that can happen to you and me, desire is instinct, and sober depravity occurs frequently. It is not impossible for the movie to tell the love story of the pain of catching horses, but changing Zhang Ailing to this is a huge waste of Zhang Ailing.
This issue is edited by Zhou Yuhua