"Tree Trick" is a unique Hong Kong film, and it is also one of the most emotionally rendered films I have experienced in recent years.
So here, I would like to talk about it from two perspectives: one is the environment of the Hong Kong film market, and the other is the change of the film itself in the development of the times.
<h1>Nostalgia and loss of identity</h1>
"Tree Trick" is filmed by three new directors Xu Xuewen, Huang Weijie and Ou Wenjie, who each shoot the story of a thief king, and then intersperse each other in the play. Three stories, can be edited into a film full of Du Qifeng style, without any sense of violation, very complete. The characters and soundtrack are excellent, and although the plot development of the first half is slightly slow, the second half is very compact.
What's more, the film seems to be a prophecy book that travels from the future to the past, using a fictional story set in the 90s to send a dream for the hong kong people in the future, giving the audience a lot of inspiration and worth pondering.
"Tree Trick" is also composed of rigorous texts under the coordination of Du Qifeng, leaving a great reading space.
Du Qifeng has always believed that the director must understand the screenwriter. Therefore, the three directors wrote the script for three years. Wei Jiahui's view formed over decades is that every movie has its own life, and the characters will move forward with the plot. Therefore, in "Tree Trick", the "Wei-style concept" is fully reflected. As mentioned earlier, in such a harsh environment, there are a group of people who are still striving for excellence, still unable to live with themselves, and insist on passing on what they think is right.
The spirit of the three directors who are willing to be lonely, willing to temper and endure is really admirable.
However, under this rigorous large text, the three fresh wave directors each have room to play, and they can read individual texts under the framework of "Thief King".
Therefore, the film text of "Tree Trick" has two reading levels - three small texts of the Thief King story and three parts combined into a large text.
The film attracts the audience in the meticulous rigor of the large text without hindering the details, the combination of the two levels of text to achieve a rich film, and seeing that film critics and the audience have different angles of interpretation, but also see the openness of the film.
In recent years, Hong Kong films have been eager to find local memories and establish a certain Hong Kong identity, but they are often too ambitious and damage the observability of films, and director Qiu Litao is one of them. Many film critics have something to say, but in the joints of how to say it, it seems that they have not yet found the appropriate language, sometimes too bold and explicit to lose openness and imagination, sometimes too subtle to miss the point, and "Tree Trick" is a successful attempt in this lost trend.
If "Tree Trick" is a movie released more than 20 years ago, I believe it may not be able to cause strong emotions in the audience.
Although the three thieves did nothing wrong, the audience sympathized with them, because we all found each other in the film - Hong Kong people who were unbalanced and confused about their future in the early 90s.
The most interesting thing is that although the film exudes an emotion of nostalgia for the past, it also exudes some anti-colonial flavor.
The English name of the film, "Trivisa", is derived from Sanskrit, meaning triple purgatory, representing the "greed, blindness and delusion" of the three thieves, and also seems to be the negative values of Hong Kong people. Since the Beginning of the British Era in Hong Kong, Hong Kong society has always advocated the supremacy of money and materialism, and the trend of speculating in real estate and stocks has always been prevalent.
It is said that this is the theme that Du Qifeng gave to the three directors, the three of them first wrote the script and did research together, and then played each other, after a long period of brewing and production, they could shoot amazing drama tension. Zhuo Ziqiang, who never stops and pursues challenges, is "greedy", Ip Kwok-hwan, who tries to endure and finally hates sentient beings, is "angry", and Ji Zhengxiong, who is confused by cause and effect and ignores old feelings, is "crazy", unlike other films that seek the identity of Hong Kong people, the Hong Kong personality salvaged from the history before the return of "Tree Trick" is the three unkind roots of Buddha Jiayun, not the so-called "Lion Rock Spirit" whose memories are always good.
The role of Zhuo Ziqiang is typical of Aberdeen, who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals. Once the social environment changes, Hong Kong people with empty hearts will face various crises.
When Du Qifeng's big framework fell into the hands of new directors such as Xu Xuewen, Huang Weijie, and Ou Wenjie, the overall feeling was not so negative.
Zhuo Ziqiang, who is "greedy", is an insatiable thief, but his personality is free and lovely, and the serious pursuit of challenges is also very moving;
Ye Guohuan, who is "angry", was once a robber of the strong pole, but his gentleness and patience when working on the mainland were quite flattering;
The "stupid" Ji Zhengxiong kills people without blinking an eye, and his heart is fierce, but his calmness coincides with the professionalism respected by Hong Kong people, and his feelings for his old friends are also moving. The big thieves are also human beings, there is flesh and blood, the big framework is handed over from the previous generation to the new generation, and the fierceness of the major thieves is still there, but there is more humanity.
In the end, the three new directors do not belong to 1997, and they do not belong to the same era as Du Qifeng, so their perspective on the legendary thief is more modern and commercial, and It may be different from Du Qifeng. At this level, "The Great Stroke of the Tree" is an era dialogue of large and small texts, so it weaves a unified text with rich layers. To put it another way, this combination of alternating elements of near and far is the three-dimensional image of Hong Kong people.
<h1>The True Colors of the Thief King Hero</h1>
Zhuo Ziqiang can be described as rich and powerful, and his boldness has also impressed the gang leaders in the mainland.
In Zhuo Ziqiang's story, he is a kidnapper who is not afraid of heaven, and the target is more challenging than one, and even the monopoly (alluding to Li Ka-shing) has to be toyed with by him.
"Greed" in the context of this era, the film presents a kind of victory that does not surrender and does not accept defeat, and Zhuo Ziqiang is ambitious but not irrational, from kidnapping the son of a rich man to finding Ye Guohuan and Ji Zhengxiong, whose plans are meticulous and meticulous, in contrast to corruption.
The three thieves are both right and evil, and the strong and upright side of Zhuo Zi just happens to be the strength that Hong Kong has always been proud of.
As for the evil, in addition to "greed", Zhuo Ziqiang also has a lot of local tycoon personalities that we hate now, whether it is clothing, talking and disrespecting people.
However, the most vivid and conceptual of the three stories seems to be Ye Guohuan's paragraph.
The bandits who went north to seek a living learned that guns and weapons could not make money, so they decided to smuggle into business, but they did not expect that after entering a legal and reasonable society, the thief king who originally robbed people became the one who was robbed in the official and business structure. That lost dignity was embodied on the screen and became Ye Guohuan's gun.
In Ye Guohuan's play, the gun is a clear symbol of power, and if you can't hold the gun, you can't compromise.
There's a detail in the movie that has the same shot in both of his negotiation scenes: should he take the gun or compromise? The first time this choice appeared, at the beginning of Ye Guohuan's sale of gold nuggets, he refused the other party's request to bargain, at this time, Huang Guangliang, who sold stolen goods by the intermediary, had a choice, he could pick up a gun and confront Ye Guohuan head-on, or obediently take the key to open the gold cabinet. Seeing that Ye Guohuan was strong, he chose the latter.
Ye Guohuan was talking about "anger", but his resentment of sentient beings was not unfounded.
From the domineering robber to the gentle businessman Ye Guohuan is a resilient businessman who will not be discouraged by humiliation, and will be afraid to have different plans according to the timing. Compared with Zhuo Ziqiang's disrespect for the people around him, Ip Kwok Huan appeared to be respectful and humble to everyone and everything after entering the mainland, which coincided with the submissive character of Aberdeen.
From the perspective of Ip Kwok-huan, even "greedy" Hong Kong people have a humble side, "anger" is helpless feedback, Hong Kong people's culture is three-dimensional and diverse, and it is also good and evil, which is why the issue of Hong Kong people's identity is so complicated.
Talking about the complexity of identity, Ip Kwok Huan was originally a smuggled immigrant from the mainland, then evolved into a Hong Kong thief, and finally became angry because of a "mainland roar", which is also a clever pen to explore the identity of Hong Kong people in a small framework.
The plot develops downwards, Ye Guohuan goes north to make money, is robbed, and the director of the Public Security Bureau intervenes to mediate, asking Ye Guohuan not to pursue the responsibility of the robbers. Ye Guo was so angry that he was about to have a seizure when the bureau chief swept away the vase used to pay bribes on the table and placed a gun on it.
In the same situation, the choice is in the hands of Ye Guohuan, who can pick up the gun and regain his prestige as a gangster who is not willing to be bullied, or pick up the teacup, obey the rules of politics and commerce, and continue to nod his head. The rules in the system could not be overturned, and Ye Guohuan chose the latter.
The contrast between these two scenes is a change in mentality, just like Ye Guohuan's small action from accepting his little brother's help to light a cigarette to helping others light a cigarette.
Unable to hold the gun, it became a figurative manifestation of Ye Guohuan's loss of dignity.
In the climactic scene at the end of the movie, Ye Guohuan takes a gun to strafe the police, the snack stall becomes a firefight scene, and the film finally leaves him with a close-up of his face: after he is shot, he struggles to pick up the gun on the ground. Seeking dignity and not being able to find a gun in his hand has become a clear and fascinating main axis in Ye Guohuan's story.
Ye Guohuan wants to develop in the north of the mainland, the film does not depict his mentality of coveting stability, but he sees that the opportunity for smuggling is greater than robbery, and Ye Guohuan's loss is not only due to the humiliation of the big thief, but also he put aside his proud strengths at the moment of opportunity, and bowed to the unreasonable system.
He demonstrates how to carry out AK47 in his office, and he sees his former self in the mirror, showing the contradiction between the scenery of the past and the condescension of today. The price of resilience is the loss of self, even dignity, and even the most resilient person is a human being, and when the pressure reaches the tipping point, it will explode.
The evil of Ye Guohuan's ending is probably forced to be helpless, so it can win the sympathy of most of the audience.
Ji Zhengxiong's parts are written in the most detail.
The story begins with the shooting of police officers and the burning of identity cards, and the context follows the trend of Undercover films that symbolize the loss of identity and the loss of identity in Hong Kong films, but it does not stop there.
The identity of the undercover agent is not easy to discover, but although Ji Zhengxiong tries to hide his identity, the mainlanders in the movie vaguely know his identity, such as the company commander who found the provincial Hong Kong flag soldier for him and the flag soldier who finally found him, but the Hong Kong people are unclear about his identity.
On the other hand, the film text writes the identity loss more carefully than the undercover trend movie, and Lin Jiadong plays a very low-key, both a robber and an ordinary citizen, hidden in the tenement house where Dahui lives, targeting the traditional gold bank, and the location of the deployment is in the Jockey Club. Compared with the undercover with a special identity, Ji Zhengxiong in the movie is an ordinary person who lives with the citizens, and in the eyes of the mainlanders, he is not an ordinary social person at all.
On the other hand, the film inherits the trend of "incompetent men" in Hong Kong films, from the Yang Qianwei series of "Dry Firewood" to the Cecilia Cheung series of "I Have a He Dong Lion", and the Hong Kong films of that era were full of male protagonists who had lost their masculinity. Dahui used to be Ji Zhengxiong's subordinate, and after receiving the mountain, he married a Thai wife who engaged in massage, and his health was not good, so he was idle at home to take care of his daughter. In the end, he bravely betrayed for his wife and daughter, the unusual "ordinary people" abandoned their principles because of unforgettable old feelings, and Ji Zhengxiong's story is always like a summary or turn of the two major trends of Hong Kong films.
The key to both is love.
<h1>Overly optimistic and practical dilemmas</h1>
Zhuo Ziqiang, Ji Zhengxiong, and Ye Guohuan are not the first thief kings on the screen to "close the curtain" before the change of the times.
Also marked at the end with the return ceremony as the background of the era is "Infernal Affairs II".
In the three "Infernal Affairs" films, director Liu Weiqiang once said that he was personally most satisfied with "Infernal Affairs II". At that time, after the success of the first episode, he originally wanted to shoot "Infernal Affairs III: The Ultimate Infinity", but Liu Weiqiang actually liked the prequel story more, so he first took the low cost to shoot "Infernal Affairs II".
At the end of the movie, he also enters the return ceremony, and the picture follows Han Chen, who is widowed, crying in front of the fireworks in Victoria Harbour, and has to smile again when he turns around.
The whole story of "Infernal Affairs" is about a group of people, people are not like people and ghosts, and they want to locate themselves as soldiers or thieves, and they find it very difficult. The same is true of "Infernal Affairs II", the Ni family rises and falls, and if you want to be a person with a head and a face, you must look at the face of the times and destiny. There are still many characters with style in the movie, Lu Qichang, Mary, and Ni Yongxiao, all of whom disappeared before the change of the times, and huang Sir and Han Chen who remained were originally just using the rest of the time to miss them.
Sadness or identity, the same elements can be seen in "Tree Trick".
At the beginning of the film, the first shot is the Hong Kong street scene, after Ji Zhengxiong kills the police, the word cards of the three directors appear in front of the screen, and then the picture is Ji Zhengxiong's identity card burning in the ashtray, and Xu Xuewen emphasizes this space with two progressive close-ups. The identity is lost, and behind Ji Zhengxiong, the news broadcast on the TV is the return news.
I see that many film critics have mentioned that "Tree Trick" is a metaphor for the times.
The three thief kings whose scenery is no longer beautiful are like Hong Kong, where the film and television industry is becoming increasingly depressed after 97 years. This kind of tasting of Hong Kong movies has a long history, from the gangster Mark brother who "I see the gangster Mark who wants to be a fan myself" to the undercover Liu Jianming who "I want to be a good person", which can be regarded as a metaphor for the times and resonates with Hong Kong audiences.
However, I think that the most prominent thing in "Tree Trick" is the character, and the others are just auxiliary materials used to symbolize the times. Du Qifeng and You Naihai, who created as executive producers, once again showed the "fate" sign of Du's early works in "Tree Trick". What is fate? The combined effect of circumstances, character and choices constitutes the fate of the three thieves. The epochal factor is important, but it is only part of it.
Of course, the film feels that the bad guys are not depicted black, and the image of the major thief kings is also good and evil, which may be du Qifeng deliberately conceived, so it produces a wonderful chemical effect.
Although the era is the background, the three thieves are actually not all typical of Aberdeen: Ip Kwok Huan is simply a provincial Hong Kong flag soldier, Ji Zhengxiong is a cross-border thief born as a pickpocket in Guangzhou, and only Zhuo Ziqiang is the most Hong Kong character.
If Ye Guohuan did not shoot behind the two departing policemen, he could hold his breath; if Zhuo Ziqiang did not grab the batch of explosives, he retreated with his whole body; if Ji Zhengxiong left the Dahui family happily and did not kill, the ending would be rewritten, even if it was not developed, it would not fall into a desperate situation.
The background of "Tree Trick" is set before the return, the three thieves each struggle between their own dilemmas, Zhuo Ziqiang looks for Ji Zhengxiong and Ye Guohuan for challenges, hoping to cooperate to do a big cause, and finally each is frustrated, and the legend of the big thief ends. The whole movie is interspersed between the real and the unreal, and the audience who is not familiar with the record of the great thief is difficult to distinguish between true and false, but even if the young audience is, I believe that most of them have heard the names of the archetypal characters Zhang Ziqiang, Ji Bingxiong and Ye Jihuan.
If you are familiar with the works of Galaxy Image, you will remember that 10 years ago they also filmed a "Iron Triangle", directed by Du Qifeng, Xu Ke and Lin Lingdong, when the three directors shot 30 minutes with their respective teams, one person started, one person laid out, one person ended, and then cut into a complete film work.
Objectively speaking, "Iron Triangle" has a strong personal color, so that the audience can enjoy watching, but the story is mediocre, but "Tree Trick" gives people a great surprise, and even more successful than "Threesome" directed by Du Qifeng in the same year. Although it is impossible to see the distinct style of the three new directors, if you look at it separately, the shooting method of "Tree Trick" is only slightly higher than the level of TV series.
However, the story is a rare wonderful galaxy image in recent years, and the combination of the three stories has a certain chemical effect, and the era of economic prosperity to decline also reflects a generation with an old heart and no longer has a scenery.
From the background point of view, the framework of "Tree Trick" obviously has something to say.
In recent years, many films have rushed to find memories and identities belonging to Hong Kong people, but the images have tended to be positive. This time, "The Great Trick of the Tree" found three heinous thieves as the protagonists, and surprisingly easily resonated with the Hong Kong people, and we realized that the Hong Kong people before the return to the motherland were also good and evil, and they may not be as beautiful as imagined.
Cheuk's ending may symbolize the Hong Kong people's lost mentality towards the road ahead. He suddenly obtained tons of explosives, and his heart was to sabotage the return ceremony, but he only had greed in his heart, just going to the money, so he did not know how to advance or retreat. Although Zhuo Ziqiang was suddenly very "not as strong", it is not difficult for the audience to understand his mentality.
Ip's ending may symbolize Hong Kongers' confusion about integration.
Ye Guohuan single-mindedly put down the dignity of a big thief and integrated into the interior, and as a result, he was humiliated everywhere because of institutional problems and cultural differences, and he would have the idea of making a comeback. These issues have plagued Hong Kong people the most in recent years, and The situation of Ip Kwok-huan is the best profile of this kind of trouble. The difficulty of integration is not the only problem, the bigger problem is that in the past, going to the interior to do business can be described as a reduction of dignity and nobility, and civilization has gone into barbarism, but the end is that the inland people who are arrogant and arrogant everywhere are trampled to ashes.
In the movie, Ye Guohuan shows his hegemonic nature at the beginning, but in the middle it becomes dim and dull, and even the secretary of the official is more domineering than him, and the gap from a big thief to a loser becomes an indescribable knot.
In the end, a "mainland roar" from the police officer positively touched The knot of Ip Kwok-huan, maintaining a Hong Kong identity with abnormal violence.
Ye Guohuan was furious and killed the police, but I believe that the audience will not be angry with him, but understand his depression very much, because Ye Guohuan's troubles are also the troubles of Hong Kong people.
<h1>Let it all go with the wind</h1>
Three equal characters, three parallel plot lines, assuming that there is no accurate point-to-end narrative technique, the length of the screening must be more than 96 minutes...
It's not a simple job, because when trying to tell a story with blank space, the risk must be that the audience may not understand.
"Tree Trick" has a very high narrative efficiency, and in this regard, it makes an excellent example.
In other words, the charm of "Tree Trick" is that it is too lazy to follow you to a set of inspirational self-improvement, getting rid of the past decade or so, but everything that takes the context of the Hong Kong era as the tone contains a kind of dangerous organic and desperate discourse.
Hong Kong people are often obsessed with a collective memory, but collective memory has always been a trap of big discourse, it is too beautiful sugar coating, simplifying the memory of history. What is the Spirit of Hong Kong? Nostalgia for the old, feeling good, is also the midlife crisis of Hong Kong people.
"Tree Trick" reminds everyone with the story of the Thief King that the 90s in Hong Kong, at least not only the return is worth remembering.
The film borrows the classic old song "Let Everything Go with the Wind", the lyrics "You are like the north wind blowing away my dreams" are repeatedly interspersed in the movie, and the meeting of the three thieves lies in the wind full of buildings, making "wind" an important theme of "Tree Trick Wind". Regarding "wind", several corresponding conflicts can be found in the movie: "wind" and "wind", the change of wind direction...
It can also be faintly seen in the narrative process, and the audience can smell the tragic atmosphere implied in the air, which is not the dereliction of duty of the film, but the core proposition: a meal that cannot be completed, that is, the loneliness caused by the loss of the contract, is the emotional center of "The Great Trick of the Tree".
Finally, the ups and downs of these conflicts are used to send a message that the beautiful days that will never return are Hong Kong's and the golden age of life. The lyrics of the song, "You are like the north wind blowing away my dreams", is the most sad. What is the North Wind? Life is already so difficult, some things, don't debunk.
Ji Zhengxiong's ending may symbolize the dilemma of whether he should be broken.
He doubted Dahui's knowledge of his identity, but even the cold-blooded and ruthless he hesitated because of his old feelings, and in the end he did not betray Dahui, it was Dahui who betrayed him. The two people were once like brothers, but at some critical moment, they both had confusion about whether they should betray their old feelings.
Ji Zhengxiong is a lover without identity, and how his feelings can be understood is also many yuan.
For the audience, it is not easy for anyone to betray, but Ji's hesitation allows the audience to see the good humanity of the big thief, and Dahui's betrayal is only forced to be helpless. To some extent, although this dilemma cannot have a happy ending, the ending in the movie is already the closest possibility to perfection.
"Tree Trick" is about human nature, and the plot can be so rich. In recent years, many works on human nature have emerged in Hong Kong, but they have no emotional aspect, so they have not become good works.
In the end, "Tree Trick" is still using a very special story to express a very universal feeling.
"Tree Trick" is a masterpiece of this lost trend, because of its delicate depiction of human nature.
Looking at the Hong Kong film market, more people who are "big moves" are needed, with their spirit of not dying, with the help of the good things and resources left by the old era and the film industry, to break out of a way out to change the existing film environment in the region.
Although the world is difficult, perhaps "Too Young Too Simple" can be understood in reverse, using it to explain the innocence of Hong Kong people and the immortal spirit of Hong Kong films, and perhaps more possible ways out are hidden in it.
I also hope that everyone will not dwell too much on the background of the times, the movie, just watch it.