Wen 丨 Kaiyin
It is an undeniable fact that after entering the mid-2010s, Hong Kong's local commercial films have basically died out in name only. After a large number of Hong Kong filmmakers have gone north, even if the content of the films they produce may still have some relevance to the Hong Kong behind them, the main target audience is no longer a local audience. The entertainment atmosphere that filled the screens of hong Kong Island and Kowloon theaters in the 1980s and 1990s suddenly fell silent, as if leaving a vacuum waiting to be filled by latecomers.
On the other hand, newcomers to the film industry also have very different backgrounds from their predecessors: almost all of the Early Hong Kong film practitioners started on the set, and the best of them went to creative positions step by step; the new generation mostly graduated from the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Baptists and CityU's film-related departments, and some returned from studying in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is these young and up-and-coming forces that have supported the foundation of Hong Kong's local film creation after a large number of professionals have moved north.
In 2015's "Blood and Plums", we have seen a huge difference between this generation of newcomers and the previous generation of Hong Kong filmmakers we are familiar with: in terms of audiovisual language, the former no longer relies on exaggerated formalistic means of excessive entertainment, but begins to move closer to the narrative film language with strong ideographic colors; in terms of content, they break through the boundaries of commercial films, constantly touching social reality issues and expressing serious personal ideas.
"Blood In Search of Plums" (2015) "Blood in Search of Plums" (2015)
In these emerging Hong Kong films, "entertainment" has gradually relegated to the secondary role, and the realistic attitude of examining the lives and emotions of ordinary citizens with a sense of social responsibility has become the main theme. This is exactly the expression trend that we can clearly identify in a series of works such as "Luck is Me", "A Thought of Ignorance", "Golden Flower", "Fallen Man", "Jindu", "Uncle Uncle" and "Mai Luren". It may be said that it is precisely because of the "death" of Hong Kong commercial films that these styles and expressions that were originally impossible to gain a foothold in the Hong Kong film circle have gradually surfaced and formed a new trend.
Lucky Me (2016) Lucky Me (2016)
Director Li Junshuo is the representative of such a new generation of filmmakers. A journalism major at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, he studied gender issues at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, returned to Hong Kong after graduating with a master's degree to become a news columnist, and in 2018, he was shortlisted for several film awards in Hong Kong and Taiwan with the film "Trish", which is about the emotional entanglement of transgender people.
Trish (2018)
His latest work, "Drifting in Turbid Waters" (released in Hong Kong on June 3, 2021), is based on a real news event in Hong Kong in 2012: government workers confiscated homeless people's belongings during street cleaning, which subsequently triggered a lawsuit between the two parties.
Turbid Water Rafting (2021)
However, unlike the popular social and political issue films in the West (the most representative of such films is "The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago"), Li Junshuo did not take the litigation incident as the main line of the film, but used it to string together several characters with distinct personalities: Ah Hui, a middle-aged man who was poor and destitute shortly after his release from prison, "Lao Ye", an old overseas Chinese who fled from Vietnam to Hong Kong more than forty years ago, a carpenter who fled the streets because of drug addiction, Chen Mei, a middle-aged dishwashing woman, and a street youth wooden boy who ran away from home for eight years without saying a word. and He Girl, a social worker who helps the homeless tide over the difficulties.
Some viewers will criticize the film's loose plot and slow rhythm, but the director actually abandons the idea of commercial films with plot as the backbone, relying on the performance of the actors, and taking the character portrayal as the main means of expression of the film. This gives us a glimpse of the powerful character-shaping abilities of several famous Hong Kong actors Ng Chun-woo, Lee Lai-jin and Tse Jun-ho who have crossed the era of purely commercial cinema in a non-plot-led environment. Without dramatic plot push, they can no longer derive performance motivation from the progression of the storyline to promote the transformation of the character's personality, but this in turn refines their ability to blend emotional details into seemingly monotonous emotions.
Wu Zhenyu changed his habitual exaggerated performance routine and returned to the method he used in "Infernal Affairs 2": he brought himself a "mask" specially drawn for the character, and constantly refined the appeal of this "mask" through Mu Ne's expression, micro-movements with neurotic convulsions and layers of staggering gait, like a "painted skin", a stroke of pen to paint it with a thick ink, when this last stroke is finished, it is also the end of the character's life.
Li Lizhen's role is more difficult, and the film's plays leave her little space to show the character's inner heart through the evolution of the plot, but she gives the already numb character a gentle and tender hope through a certain self-set silent emotion and a constant flash of talent and girlishness (which is an incredible state for her at the age of 55).
We hardly recognize that it is Xie Junhao who plays the "old man", who is neither the Cantonese opera talent in "Nanhai Thirteen Langs", nor the cold and ruthless terrorist in "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", but the old man with white hair who is struggling to walk between hope and despair, and this complex mentality is reflected in his unique body language, which can be completed almost without relying on the development and evolution of the plot.
Also eye-catching is Hu Zhuoxi's role as a runaway teenager Mu Zai, the director simply "canceled" his ability to speak, the harmonica rhythm, the agile eyes and the hoarse throat tone match present his complex mentality: this is a young man who has lost his voice under the pressure, and the only character in the film who is still full of rebellious vitality and hope in his heart.
Behind the scarce main plot and excellent character creation, we gradually glimpse director Li Junshuo's admirable intentions: these characters who have bottomed out in the harsh social environment and have no way out can show the meaning of survival on the screen without the need for a dramatic life of ups and downs; on the contrary, any small thing that seems insignificant to ordinary people may become the last straw that crushes the hope of life, and may also become a reason for them to continue to numbly survive.
Therefore, after reuniting with his lost son in the video link, the "old man" suddenly found that the last unfinished business of his life had been achieved, and the significance of continuing to survive in the wooden house under the highway bridge had become a question mark; Chen Mei took the opportunity to squeeze into public housing and temporarily got rid of the crisis and could continue to live numbly; but for Ah Hui, the two thousand yuan of government compensation was insignificant, and the impossible apology destroyed his last remaining hope for maintaining the dignity of the individual. He finally understood that it was only in the midst of a raging fire that life had its last glimmer of brilliance.
It is also at this point that "Turbid Water Rafting" and the 2017 critically acclaimed film "A Thought of Ignorance" have a strong resonance inside: Ah Dong, played by Yu Wenle, is suspected, isolated, rejected and even hated by everyone around him because of his "bipolar disorder", and only under the psychological support of his once estranged father can he summon up the courage to live; while Ah Hui in "Turbid Water Rafting" is forever left out of mainstream society because of imprisonment and drug use, under the premise that he is already desperate in the external world (" Outside the prison is just a bigger prison"), the expectation of personal dignity (an apology from mainstream society) becomes the only reason to sustain him, and when this hope is shattered with the dissipation of the crowd (even the meticulous care from the social worker He Girl does not help), he can only prove his worth with a dazzling death.
We can note that the theme of "identity confusion" (represented by the "Infernal Affairs" series) that began to pervade Hong Kong films twenty years ago has disappeared in the "New Hong Kong Films" and has been replaced by a bitter struggle for identity, dignity and spiritual and emotional value of minorities in the face of the pressure and prejudice of mainstream society. In these films, the non-mainstream groups represented by the girl who helped the girl ("Blood in Search of Plum"), the mentally ill ("A Thought of Ignorance"), the disabled ("The Fallen"), the transgender ("Trish") and the homeless ("Mai LuRen") have paid a tenacious struggle to gain social recognition and their own dignity, and their tragic fate has become the main body portrayed by the filmmakers.
In "Turbid Water Drifting", when Ah Hui and Mu Zai ascend to the top of a towering crane and look down on the brightly lit high-rise buildings, both realize that as impoverished people on the margins of society, their chances of materially and spiritually reintegrating into the world in front of them have been zero. Seeing that the Sham Shui Po, where the poor originally lived, was gradually occupied by the high-end residences of the rich, all they could do was unzip their pants and urinate on the illusion of wealth.
Such a perspective, sad atmosphere and heavy mentality have never even appeared in previous Films on Social Issues in Hong Kong (such as "Provincial Hong Kong Flag Soldier", "Biography of the Crazy Guy", "Caged People", "A Thousand Words", "Ten Days of Sex Workers", "Night and Fog in Tin Shui Wai" and other films). The bitter stubborn meaning of helplessness, hopelessness, helplessness and unwillingness to bow down permeated from this runs through "Turbid Water Drifting", and eventually becomes a social critical theme that exists independently beyond the storyline. If there really is a trend of "new cinema" in Hong Kong after 2015, this is one of its most distinctive aesthetic features.
On July 2, a month after its release, "Turbid Water Drifting" has already achieved a commercial box office of HK$6 million, which is already a rather unexpected achievement for an independently produced art film. However, we cannot confirm that a new generation of young Hong Kong filmmakers and their works have gained a foothold. On the contrary, because most of the films are produced with funding from the government's arts fund and the main actors appearing under the premise of low or even unpaid performances, their basis for existence is extremely fragile, and they are essentially dependent on near-gratuitous blood transfusions from the outside world to survive (which is very different from the Hong Kong commercial films of the previous era).
Of course, even under such difficult conditions, "Turbid Water Rafting" still shows an unprecedented height of thought and precious spiritual vitality. Regardless of whether the creation and production mode of "New Hong Kong Film" can continue, this is a wonderful flash of inspiration worthy of admiration.