Balloon poster.
Directed by Wan Ma Tse-dan and starring Solang Wangmu, Kimba and Yang Xiucuo, the film "Balloon" was released nationwide on November 20, and the film was shortlisted for the Horizon section of the Venice Film Festival last year. The film is still the Tibetan story that director Wan Ma Tse-dan has always insisted on, set in the 90s of the last century, two Tibetan children will play with their parents' condoms as balloons, the mother Zhuoga accidentally became pregnant, the grandfather died suddenly, the child in Zhuoga's belly is considered to be the reincarnation of the grandfather who died suddenly, under the family planning policy at that time, the child was "born or not born", and the family fell into an embarrassing and difficult to decide situation.
Compared with the director's previous directing work, "Crashing into a Sheep", the story and theme of "Balloon" are more universal, and the theme of the cycle of life and death is easier for the audience to understand. In order to cater to the restless state of the characters in the film, the director adopts a handheld photography method, with a large number of moving shots, and the narrative rhythm is more bright. Moreover, the director tried to create two important female characters in the film, breaking his own creative convention of often narrating from a male perspective, and was his first film that focused on the female perspective. The Beijing News reporter exclusively interviewed director Wan Ma Tse-dan to listen to him talk about the filming behind the scenes and the differences with the original novel.
【Script】
Inspired by a red balloon on the streets of Beijing
Audiences familiar with Wan Ma Tse-dan know that in addition to the identity of director, writers are also an important label on Wan Ma Tse-dan.'s body. He has published many literary works, and the previous films "Tharlo" and "Crashed into a Sheep" are also adapted from his own novels. The script creation process of "Balloon" is more interesting, it is the first script, and then a novel was written according to the script, and finally on the basis of the original script and the novel, the current film script was finally completed.
The story of "Balloon" was inspired by eight years ago, when Wan Ma Tse-dan was walking on the streets of Zhongguancun in Beijing, saw a red balloon floating in the air, felt that this was a good film intention, and associated this intention with the Tibet he was familiar with. In 2012, Wan Ma Tse-dan took the script of "Balloon" to the Hong Kong Asian Film Investment Association and won the Venture Capital Association Award. However, due to various reasons such as investment, the shooting plan has been stranded. Wan Ma Tse-dan felt some pity, so he changed the original script to a novel of more than 10,000 words and published it. In 2019, the novel "Balloon" also won the Short Story Award at the 7th Flower City Literature Awards.
Stills from "Balloons".
In 2018, Wan Ma Tse-dan found an investment, "Balloon" was successfully established, and the director enriched the script on the basis of the novel and the original script. During the Venice Film Festival last year, because "Crashed into a Sheep" was nominated for the Best Picture in the Horizon Unit, director Wan Ma Tse-dan went to the film festival to participate, which stopped the "Balloon" crew that was filming for more than ten days, and only went back to shoot "Balloon" after the end of the festival.
【Creator】
Wan Ma Tse-dan Royal Team
Several of the main actors in "Balloon" have worked with director Wan Ma Tse-dan, Kimba played the ranch owner in "Tharlo", the driver Kimba in "Crashed into a Sheep", Solang Wangmu played the teahouse hostess in "Crashed a Sheep", and Yang Xiucuo played the barbershop owner lady in "Tharlo", these actors were all determined by the director at the beginning of the filming of "Balloons".
Solange and Kimba played husband and wife Drogga and Dajie in "Balloons".
Jimba's personality is relatively close to the character of Dajie in the film, Solang Wangmu is similar in age to Zhuoga in the film, and in reality she has two children, who can experience the feeling of being a mother, and director Wan Ma Tse-dan let the two play husband and wife in the film.
Yang Xiucuo (left) plays the nun Dolma in "The Balloon".
Yang Xiucuo, who plays the nun Dolma, has relatives working in the monastery at home, knows the monastery better, and in order to study the role, she went to the nunnery, lived with the nuns, experienced for a month, and brought a set of monk clothes with herself when she arrived at the crew. For Tibetan girls, it is more taboo to shave their heads, and Yang Xiucuo agreed without hesitation. Wan Ma Tse-dan felt that it would be better to have a little hair, so he cut her short hair.
In addition, the Tibetan actor Sidney Ma, who played Tharlo in "Tharlo", also made a cameo role , the father of a child, which was deliberately added to the film. In the novel, Dajie's two sons take condoms and change whistles with children in the village, and this plot is developed in the movie, and after the child's father learns about this, he and Dajie clash, and the two fight in the sink where the sheep are washed.
In addition, the behind-the-scenes team is basically wan ma Tse-dan director has cooperated many times, with director of photography Lu Songye, editing director Liao Qingsong and Jin Di, recording director Du Duzhi and many other industry veterans also participating, as well as the late Iranian film master Abbas's royal composer Peiman Yatsdanian as the soundtrack of the film. Soundtrack artist Yatsdanian has collaborated with Chinese films many times, including Lou Ye's "Spring Breeze Drunken Night", "Floating City Mystery", Li Yu's "Apple" and "Guanyin Mountain". Wan Ma Tse-dan listened to his music systematically, felt that the musical temperament was very close to the story of "Balloon", sent him the script, cut the film, and then sent him the rough cut version, and then communicated the style of music. Wan Ma Tse-dan feels that the music this time is a big feature, almost every paragraph of the surreal part of the film corresponds to the music, and the music has played a very good role in strengthening the prominence of the surreal part.
【Comparison】
Richer and more surreal than fiction
Wan Ma Tse-dan said that compared with the novel, the overall structure, character relationship, and main plot of the film have not changed, but some modifications have been made at the beginning, adding some surreal and hallucinatory content, and some characters have made some developments, which have highlighted the female perspective and become richer than before.
1. It all begins with a condom
At the end of the novel, Father Dajie buys two colored balloons for his two sons from the county seat, one of which explodes in the children's fight, and the other floats away and disappears into the sky. The film also continues this open-ended ending. However, the opening of the movie is a little different from the novel. Whether it is the beginning of the novel or the beginning of the movie, Wan Ma Tse-dan hopes to find a most suitable way to tell it. At the beginning of the novel, Wan Ma Tse-dan also thought about it for a long time, and finally began the story with Dajie looking for a condom: "Dajie went through the drawers, under the pillow, and went through all the places that could be turned over, and finally did not turn to the thing." ”
Wan Ma Tse-dan felt that the way of telling the opening of the novel was not very suitable for the movie, and he wanted to change the way of presentation, "which characters appear first, what is the meaning, all need to be designed", the shooting scene also thought of a lot of plans, but they were not ideal, and finally thought of using a child's perspective to pass through the balloon blown by a condom, to see the surrounding world, relatively direct, and the characters slowly appeared.
2. More emphasis on the female perspective
Director Wan Ma Tse-dan's previous creations are more from a male perspective to cut into the story, there are relatively few female characters, and "Balloon" is his first film that focuses on female perspectives. The reason for this change in gender perspective, Wan Ma Tse-dan said, on the one hand, is related to the subject matter, the film is the story with Zhuo Ga as the protagonist, she accidentally became pregnant, entangled in the end whether to give birth to a child, the starting point of the story itself determines to present such a female perspective. On the other hand, the director himself also hopes to make some films with women as the main characters to make his film characters richer. Prior to this, directors often met some female audiences, who also hoped to see more female characters in Wan Ma Tse-dan's films, and "Balloon" just fulfilled the wishes of this part of the audience and the director.
In the novel, in addition to the protagonist Zhuo Ga, there is also a female character - Zhuo Ga's sister Dolma, she is a monk nun, in the novel is not a lot of space, mainly about her coming to her sister's village to make a relationship. In the movie, Wan Ma Tse-dan enriched this female role a lot, adding some emotional entanglements between her and her first love boyfriend, and the red dust was difficult, making this role more three-dimensional, the overall structure was also fuller, and it was also helpful for the development of her sister's narrative line.
3. Added dreams and surreal elements
In Wan Ma Tse-dan's last directing work, "Crashing into a Sheep", the driver Jimba and the killer Kimba complete their respective redemptions in the ambiguous narrative of reality and dreams. "Balloons" also adds something similar to dreams or surrealism on the basis of realistic style.
A dream shot from Balloons.
In the novel, when Dajie returns the Xinjiang sheep to his friends, he receives a phone call: his father fell from the mountain and died while herding sheep. The description of Grandpa in the novel has reached the point of not much ink. But in the movie, Wan Ma Tse-dan highlights the "death" reinforcement, because in the Tibetan family culture, the way the family treats death, and the meaning of death is not the same as other ethnic groups, so the "death" scene tries to be presented in a dream-like way, and some rituals are relatively detailed, which coincides with the emotions and situation of the characters at that time, and also paves the way for the "birth" (Zhuoga pregnancy) mentioned in the later story.
Beijing News reporter Teng Chao
Edited by Huang Jialing Proofreader Lucy