Author / No Thoughts
In the documentary about Xu Anhua, "Make a Good Movie", there is such a scene.
In 2017, when "When is the Bright Moon" released in China, the director needed to cooperate with the publicity to accept interviews with different media. Between breaks, Xu Anhua slumped down on the sofa, smoking a cigarette, as if jokingly and as if with a strange tone, said: "The questions they (referring to reporters) ask are too repetitive, annoying me, always asking about women's movies." ”
This seemingly complaining heartfelt sentence brought out the embarrassing situation that Xu Anhua had to face.
Based on her own female identity, her films are basically intentionally or unintentionally created around female figures. Although she has stressed many times in various interviews that she does not deliberately write about women, but only because of her own gender, it is easier for her to touch women's life experiences. She once said that what she most wanted to shoot was a different female experience from the perspective of male directors.
However, no matter how she explains it, it seems that it is difficult to take off the "female" label on her body. What's more, she is over seventy years old and is still alone; her vigorous style and creative attitude have made her break through in the male-dominated Hong Kong film circle. All these experiences are closely related to the current expression of independent female consciousness.
This Friday, Xu Anhua's new work "The First Burning Incense" was released, and he met the audience in anticipation and controversy. So through this work, looking back at Xu Anhua's past creations and the female consciousness revealed in her films, what kind of more systematic understanding will there be about Xu Anhua and his people?
Xu Anhua, who "marched forward in spite of difficulties"
As we all know, Zhang Ailing's works are difficult to shoot, but there are many people who shoot them.
The biggest style of Zhang Ailing's works lies in its gorgeous, but sad artistic conception. This is inseparable from Zhang Ailing's own personal experience. Her characters live a prosperous life of grace and luxury, but their hearts are lonely, sad, and even lonely. Whether it is a brother who has been pushed by the upper class to change cups, or a girl who stumbles and stumbles in love, there is always a sense of loss behind the drunken gold fans.
Because of this, Zhang Ailing's works leave a lot of blank space. That kind of aesthetic rhetoric and artistic conception, although it is quite unique in temperament, also makes readers linger, but it brings no small difficulties to film and television adaptation.
With the fame of Zhang Ailing, the adaptation of her works should have been a huge IP treasure now, but everyone has also seen that from the perspective of the final finished product, there are not many successes. In the 1990s, Guan Jinpeng's "Red Roses and White Roses", Xu Anhua's "Half Life", and Hou Xiaoxian's "Sea Flowers" appeared one after another. Judging from the evaluation of word of mouth, these few can indeed be regarded as the peak works of Zhang Ailing's adaptation. But after that, the adaptation of Zhang's works did not usher in a big hit, and probably many of them "retreated from difficulties".
Since the beginning of the new century, the most successful film adaptation of Zhang Ailing's works is Ang Lee's "Color, Ring". The original novel was not long, and Ang Lee's script added a lot of space, including the treatment of several bed scenes. If in the original novel, Wang Jiazhi's role is a very "cold" existence, then Ang Lee's adaptation undoubtedly makes Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yi have a lot of "warm" ingredients.
In fact, this is actually the most common problem in the adaptation of Zhang Ailing's works. She is known for her short and medium stories, and if a novel of tens of thousands of words wants it to grow into the shape of a movie script, it will undoubtedly inject a lot of plot into it. "Color, Ring" is exactly like this, the original text is at best a short story, and Ang Lee and others have injected a lot of rich details into it. The final presentation effect is also very outstanding, adding more depth of humanity in the original text of the great righteousness, love and entanglement.
As one of the "Zhang fans", Xu Anhua's first two adaptations of Zhang Ailing's films were "Love in the Fallen City" and "Half Life". In the research of many scholars, it has been found that Xu Anhua has a slight "misunderstanding" of Zhang Ailing's adaptation to some extent. She is not as comprehensive as Guan Jinpeng's all-round worship, and even directly hits the original text on the screen; it is not as bold as Hou Xiaoxian, focusing more on the construction of self-style. It can be seen that among them, Xu Anhua's own attitude is also repeatedly moving and pulling between multiple dimensions such as individual expression, commerciality, and criticism.
Zhu Tiantian, one of the screenwriters of "Flowers on the Sea", once said: "Literature and film are two different medium carriers. The more stylistic a novel is, the more difficult it is to adapt. Zhang Ailing's novel is. Who resisted Zhang Ailing's writing? Without her words, there is also her content. If you want to adapt it into a movie, her words are definitely one of the biggest hallucinations and traps. ”
To a certain extent, this statement shows that the adaptation of Zhang's novel is not easy. On this basis, the adaptation of "The First Burning Incense" is also the third adaptation of Zhang Ailing's works, which is undoubtedly another huge challenge for Xu Anhua.
The women in Xu Anhua's films
But no matter how Xu Anhua understands Zhang Ailing's character, some expressions in her works are always common. Looking back at the women in Xu Anhua's films in the past, no matter what kind of background, culture and personality they have, they can show a certain universal characteristic from it, full of life and vicissitudes of life.
Some scholars have divided the female characters in Xu Anhua's films into four main categories from personality and behavior: duckweed women who seek roots, city girls who chase dreams, weak and tenacious women, and brave women who are autonomous. If you are familiar with Xu Anhua's films, I believe that you will soon be able to find the contrast of the characters in these summaries.
From the refugees who have wandered away from home in "Running to the Fury Sea", to the "water bride" who has no place to live in "A Thousand Words"; from the stoic and strong A'e in "Woman, Forty", to the meticulous Ah Gui in "The Day and Night of Tin Shui Wai"; from the aunt who is a small citizen in "Auntie's Postmodern Life", to The Peach Sister who has worked all her life in "Sister Peach"; from Xiao Hong, who is displaced in "Golden Age", to Fang Lan who threw herself into the revolution in "When the Moon Rises"... It can be said that the women in Xu Anhua's films are almost all relatively "marginal" beings, most of them are very low-level, very grassroots, and they all follow Xu Anhua's individual life experience, grow together, and change together.
Most importantly, no matter what the personality of these characters is, what age and environment they are in, they all show a certain unified characteristic, that is, a strong sense of tragedy, which also constitutes a major creative theme of Xu Anhua's film.
What is a tragedy? The irreconcilability between the characters and reality constitutes a tragedy. In other words, conflict is the most important way to show tragedy.
In Xu Anhua's films, these women are intertwined with various conflicts. The noble sister in "The Day and Night of Tin Shui Wai", industrious and kind, but her fate is uncertain, which is a conflict between man and fate; Xiao Hong in "The Golden Age", advocating stability and freedom, but died of the discipline of the patriarchal society, which is the conflict between ideals and reality; the peace of mind in "Jade Guanyin", in the case of fiancé Tie jun, fell in love with Mao Jie at first sight, which is a conflict between sensibility and reason; as for "The Night and Fog of Tin Shui Wai", it directly shows the conflict between men and women through the theme of domestic violence...
All these contradictions and conflicts, concentrated on the women in Xu Anhua's past films, not only constitute a common image of a certain woman, but also through such a treatment, show the collective survival dilemma of women, as well as her inner thinking about gender and compassion for the characters.
Since the beginning of his debut film "Crazy Robbery", Xu Anhua has always focused on placing women in different historical backgrounds and era contexts, exploring women's feelings of home and country, life experience and life perception. At the same time, thanks to her more delicate and sensitive emotional capture and real observation of the female group, the actresses in her films have also frequently contributed wonderful performances that are famous enough to stay in the history of the film, such as Li Lizhen, Xiao Fangfang, Si Qinggaowa, Bao Qijing, Ye Dexian and so on, and so on.
To date, the Hong Kong Film Awards have only two Grand Slam works (one film has won Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenwriter and Best Actor and Actress), both by Hui Anhua, the 15th "Woman Forty" and the 31st "Sister Tao". It can be said that having such an achievement is the glory of Hong Kong cinema.
Stick to your "golden age"
Although Xu Anhua has been filming women, she has always refused to label her films, which may have something to do with Xu Anhua's personality.
All along, in the Hong Kong film industry, such a strong man, Hui Anhua can lead the new wave of Hong Kong, try a variety of types of creation, and still maintain creation to this day, which is destined to her "male thinking" side to some extent.
Some scholars believe that Xu Anhua's uniqueness lies in the fact that she has never considered herself a female director, but has emphasized her own historical feelings and keen political awareness, highlighting her broad vision of the social era and her ability to control grand themes. Perhaps, the premise of becoming a "woman" must first be "person". On this basis, Xu Anhua is not the kind of accuser who blindly criticizes the patriarchal society, on the contrary, her position is very gentle and her attitude tends to be euphemistic.
Of course, perhaps also for commercial reasons, under Hong Kong's traditional commercial market system, the theme of women's films and women's positions in the pure sense is also rare. In such a social situation, Xu Anhua's films also show certain limitations, or her gentleness also contains a hint of helplessness.
In the market, Xu Anhua's films often do not particularly sell well. Although her films have many idol actors with box office appeal to join, it seems difficult to resonate with more audiences due to the strong literary atmosphere of her works. For her own choices, she herself often laughs at herself, and it is even more common to find no investment. If it wasn't for Wang Jing, there wouldn't have been "Day and Night in Tin Shui Wai"; if it wasn't for Andy Lau, there wouldn't have been "Sister Tao".
Despite this, Xu Anhua never seems to have gone with the flow to create. Even if the investment in films such as "Golden Age" and "When the Moon Rises" is not small, she can still balance the relationship between her expression and commercial needs. For a director, this is her perseverance and the best proof of her decades-long creative career.
Before that, women's films did not belong to a particularly popular genre, until the beginning of the year, "Hello, Li Huanying", "My Sister" and other films, let the audience see the commercial potential of this, but also proved that women's topics are also a universal theme that can impress the audience to the greatest extent. From this point of view, will Xu Anhua's works achieve commercial results beyond the past in the future? We look forward to it.
But in any case, commercial achievement is not the only criterion, especially for a director like Xu Anhua, commercial achievement may be the least important criterion.
Six Golden Film Awards for Best Director and three Golden Horse Awards for Best Director, such a record in the Chinese film industry has not yet been broken. In 2020, Xu Anhua won the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement in Venice, becoming the first female director in the world to receive the award. All these awards are enough to prove Xu Anhua's great status and outstanding contributions in the Chinese film industry.
This year, Xu Anhua is 74 years old. We should feel fortunate and grateful, fortunately there is Xu Anhua, always stick to and encourage ourselves to "make a good movie". I believe that there are so many fans and audiences who love her, and for Xu Anhua, this is still her best "golden age".
Resources:
1. Zhang Miqi: "Exploration of Female Consciousness in Xu Anhua's Films"
2. Chen Hongqiao: A Tragic Study of Xu Anhua's Women's Films in the New Century
3. Ma Lingjun: "Female Figures in Xu Anhua's Films"