The Paper's reporter Wang Yi
Choosing to be released on the upcoming occasion of the Year of the Tiger, the box office performance of the movie "Northeast Tiger" in the first weekend can only be said to be unsatisfactory. Before the release, the publicity was placed in the setting of the main "Ma Li catches the little three", which undoubtedly made the audience with the expectation of the "happy twist" style cool film sadly return, and then felt the resentment of "the goods are not on the right board", which directly led to the low Douban score after the film began.
Stills from "Siberian Tiger"
Although director Geng Jun's name is not unfamiliar to the industry and the film fan community, "Siberian Tiger" is his first film to be officially released on the domestic big screen. Since it is necessary to go to the theater line, it is related to the box office of the return of investors, and it is impossible not to consider it.
In addition to the old faces Zhang Zhiyong, Xu Gang, Xue Baohe, Gu Benbin, etc. in Geng Jun's work "Hegang Universe" in the past, the newly joined professional actors Zhang Yu ("I Am Not a Medicine God", "Wind and Waves") and Guo Yue ("Roadside Picnic") show the intention of the main creative team to let more fans of the same type of film come to the scene.
At the level of the general public, Ma Li, who has long become a symbol of northeast pop culture, played a couple with Zhang Yu this time. At the Beijing premiere, Ma Li's speech showed her hope to prove her sincerity for her personal acting skills and even the drama through this film, "This is the first time in 7 years that I have sent a text message to invite my friends to watch the premiere, and the last time I did this was "Charlotte Troubles". At a time when "circle culture" and "commercial mutual support" are prevalent, Ma Li's words are worth savoring. In the same period, the comedy she starred in, "Li Mao Dressed as a Prince", was being released, and unsurprisingly grabbed hundreds of millions of box office.
In June last year, "Siberian Tiger", which won the highest award for best feature film "Golden Jue Award" at the Shanghai International Film Festival, is exactly what the color is, there is no need to say more. But the dream shines into reality, after all, it is not as colorful and bright as the outer wall of the "Khrushchev Building" in the sunshine of the movie, which is reflected by the snow-capped black land. Sha Dan, the film curator of the China Film Archive, said in a circle of friends, "To understand Geng Jun, you may need to understand his 'Hegang Universe', he has a mind full of inspiration and outstanding audiovisual thinking ability." But this time also once again let us see the challenges and embarrassments encountered by an originally niche excellent art film director after intending to 'break the circle'. The red carpet and spotlight of domestic film festivals are still following and illuminating them, but there is still a long way to go for the promotion and guidance of the entire life cycle of films by outstanding authors. ”
Recently, Liu Bing, co-screenwriter of "Siberian Tiger", accepted an exclusive interview with the surging news reporter. He is also a northeasterner, and he has previously cooperated with Geng Jun in the script creation of the feature film "Easy + Happy". The process routine before the premiere and the crowd of media made the creators present a little unaccustomed. Compared with the big grin that others inadvertently revealed in addition to the number of etiquette, Liu Bing appeared more restrained and silent. A person sat quietly on the couch outside the theater, except for the greetings of his peers who came to congratulate him, most of the time it seemed to be in a daze.
Screenwriter Liu Bing
In addition to writing the script with Geng Jun, Liu Bing's film "Like Happy Love" won the "Developing Film Project • Wings Project Award" at the Fifth Pingyao International Film Festival last year, and the film has completed all the shooting work and is in post-production. His other identity is that he is a teacher in the Department of Drama, Film and Television of the College of Literature of Langfang Normal University.
The psychiatric poet in "Siberian Tiger" coldly watches Xu Dong (Zhang Yu) mediate the scolding dispute between primary school students, and coldly comes up with a sentence, "If you can't say it, write it in this book." You will use it as a screenwriter and a novel in the future, and it must be very vivid. Verbs and nouns are best used. Adjectives, use with caution. In the first film class That Liu Bing gave to the students, the theme was "Learning to Learn."
"It's also a verb + a noun." Liu Bing said.
【Dialogue】
"In Geng Jun's works, there is always a warm existence"
The Paper: I heard that you and the director are old partners, can you first introduce how you got together and what work habits you have?
Liu Bing: "Easy + Pleasant" and "Siberian Tigers" these two feature films, I joined as a screenwriter. We did some scripts before, but we didn't make them. As far as this "Siberian Tiger" is concerned, I don't know if our cooperation model is universal, in fact, not only in the script creation stage, I was also there during the shooting, and I followed when editing. Aside from the director and the editor, I'm probably the third person who knows the most about film footage.
Specific to the shooting details, each scene may be adjusted when filming. For example, the scene where Xu Dong appeared for nurse Xiaowei, who was harassed by a male colleague in the community hospital, WeChat, and the original script arranged that he smashed the harasser's mobile phone. When filming on the set, we felt that from the perspective of character identity, Xu Dong was not a bully, although the truth was on his side at this time, but the means chosen could be less violent and could be slowed down, so he arranged for him to smash the satchel he carried with him (with hard objects inside) on the wall, "Bang-" a sound, knocked off a piece of wall skin, and then returned the mobile phone to the harasser.
The Paper: This design is very good, not only beyond the audience's "assumption", but also echoes the mystery of Xu Dong's reaching for the satchel (trying to take out hard objects similar to knives or bricks) when he was looking for Ma Qianli for revenge. In fact, Zhang Yu is a very explosive actor, before Wen Muye, Li Xiaofeng director when using him, will give him a point of explosion, but in "Northeast Tiger", his performance seems to have been "received", showing a state of induction and not hair.
Liu Bing: We feel that the outbreak needs a situation and a reason, and of course, the object of the outbreak. In the movie, the scene and reason for the outbreak of his character have been met, but the object of the explosion cannot be found. When he came out for people, he saw that the other party was also a short middle-aged man with a top; his dog was killed by Ma Qianli, who ate meat and skinned it, but Ma Qianli was not a very arrogant person, and he was also a lawsuit in his head, and he was miserable. These "objects" are also the losers in life, or the image of a weak person, so that Xu Dong, when facing them, although he is resentful, he cannot find a flashpoint to vent his anger. I think the audience can see that Xu Dong is a "cruel person", but at the same time he is also a kind person. The same is true of us in real life, often unable to really face the "villain".
Zhang Yu as Xu Dong
The Paper: In the past, film and television works set in the northeast used to resort to a violent solution to contradictions. In "Siberian Tiger", this is a story of "seeking revenge + catching adultery", but not only Xu Dong, played by Zhang Yu, the characters in it all show considerable restraint, reminiscent of the Siberian tiger trapped in the zoo pit rockery.
Liu Bing: First of all, dramatic contradictions are not the same as violent conflicts, and the tension of dramatic contradictions has nothing to do with whether they want to be splashed on the spot. I am also a northeasterner, and I often meet some people in my life to judge the northeasterners out of some conceptual impressions of the northeasterners. But such a judgment in real life, can not generalize the northeast people, life is often much richer than stereotypes. Some people have also said to me, "You are not a typical Northeasterner", which is like saying " You are not a typical Shanghainese", which seems to have become a compliment in the specific context of the current society. This is very funny and often makes people cry and laugh.
In addition, from a creative point of view, we certainly do not, or do not want to fall into that conceptual understanding. Film creation is actually to find those things that have been misinterpreted or obscured by people, so that people can see some aspects that are not common to the so-called "northeast people". Our pursuit of drama must be the opposite, and we cannot follow the inertia of everyone's thinking, otherwise even the film itself lacks novelty.
I think that a work should have its own attributes, and every specific creation should have its natural appearance, and the natural appearance of "Siberian Tiger" should be like this. The next work or another work, in its natural form, may be an intense outburst. I don't think it's necessary to grieve it, or elevate it to a height to say, the simplest and most simple idea is to do the movie well, first of all, not to distort it, to change it strongly, to let it grow naturally.
Ma Li as Mei Ling
The Paper: What do you think of director Geng Jun's past films?
Liu Bing: There is always a kind of warmth in his works, and there is a certain level of reconciliation. After a long time of contact with him, you can also see this "warmth" and also the background of his personality. As director Li Cangdong said, he shows people struggling in difficult situations, the struggle itself is an effort for hope, and struggling and finding hope is the point that Li Cangdong cherishes. If we are just "lying flat", of course, it also has its own philosophical support, including "nothingness" itself is also a kind of resistance, but "Siberian Tiger" this work, we hope, in a sense, can present a state that is not surrendered to real life. The people in the movie, their efforts may be humble, but they are not a kind of "kitsch".
The Paper: As the poet in the movie said, "Verbs and nouns are best used." Adjectives, use with caution". How do you define the style and tone of this film?
Liu Bing: I think all people who are engaged in writing work, or who have some understanding and interest in literature, will smile when they hear this line. The adjective big bang is often the "common disease" of youth beauty. I like to show the actors after the script is written, and they often say after reading the script that the script is very realistic. When writing a script, we hope that whether it is from a realistic point of view or from an emotional point of view, there must be something more real, and adjectives sometimes have a lot of pretentious and exaggerated elements, especially when there are too many adjectives.
This must be related to the director's aesthetic taste and aesthetic judgment, at least until the current stage of "Siberian Tiger", his taste and aesthetic tendency is like this. From my point of view, my style will not be so restless. The director and I are both post-70s, and we are both the same year. From our understanding of the characters, some of these characters, whether from real life or to these characters in our works, sometimes if they are relatively simple and rude, or to present in a "flattering" way, the genre film may deal with the relationship between the characters in this way.
"'Siberian Tiger' is talking about tigers, and the final point must be people"
The Paper: Can you recall how you and Geng Jun met, the first time you met?
Liu Bing: Geng Jun and I have mutual friends, and we knew each other before we met. It must have been more than a decade ago, when I was a literary youth who liked to write poetry. The first time we met was at an independent film show where his Grill was being played. After the movie was screened, we met, and after that, there were more occasions together, and slowly became familiar, Geng Jun would also show me the scripts he wrote, such as the script of "Youth", and I would also mention some of my own views. Since "Hammer and Sickle Rest", I have officially joined his screenwriting team.
"Barbecue" has a unique temperament, just like everyone knows about the director's growth process, there are some very wild, very vivid perspectives. I myself grew up in the so-called college education, and have been teaching in colleges and universities ever since, and now I teach script writing. So I will have a recognition and judgment, he has not been disciplined by classic films and academies, but has a fascinating uniqueness in film operation.
The Paper: How do you understand black humor and absurdity? Many people also see a kind of allegory in "Siberian Tiger".
Liu Bing: I think that humor is sometimes a kind of perspective and vision of things, and sometimes it is a kind of temperament, and we don't have to make it amusing. Specific to "Siberian Tiger", its humor, more from the director's own temperament, it is natural.
The Siberian tiger in the concept of ordinary people is not wild in many cases, and we can only see tigers in zoos. When human civilization entered this stage, humans no longer needed to coexist with wild animals in the natural environment. But similar to tigers trapped in a zoo, we sometimes get into a state of being trapped. In the classical literary period, similar to the state of long-distance conquest in Homer's Epic, we are all in our own cities and towns. "Siberian Tiger" is about a tiger, and the final direction must be people. Such a story that takes place in the north, the difficulties faced by everyone in the story, the mental state presented, and the trapped Siberian tiger in the film, there is a certain relationship in this image.
The Paper: Viewers may not have been to Hegang, but this small northeastern city has often appeared in social news in recent years. The Hegang in "Siberian Tiger" seems to be a "reconstruction" that is extracted from the real environment, what do you think?
Liu Bing: Even a small city has its downtown, and it certainly has its normal life. We didn't build a scene this time, it was all real scenes. In fact, many small cities in the northeast will have the characteristics of past Japanese and Russian architecture, with the characteristics of industrial cities, of course, from the perspective of image texture, there will certainly be more sense of image, sense of film, the other is to be representative.
The Paper: In the previous conversation, you mentioned a word, "discipline," and we all know that it comes from Foucault's writings. Geng Jun has not received a systematic education in academic films, but as an academic teacher, is your cooperation out of complementarity?
Liu Bing: Director Geng Jun knows a lot of friends who write scripts, and I sometimes wonder why he is willing to cooperate with me, maybe our personalities are more complementary, and I think I am always trying to find an effective point, both to keep his original living things, but also to look at this work with a relatively classic, or film history, and to combine the two. Because I know very well that theoretical and academic things can have a destructive effect on his creation, and he will feel uncomfortable, and he will follow his own logic. Director Geng Jun does not reject the classics, he is very easy to learn, in the creative process, but also willing to understand and broaden his horizons from the information, on the other hand, when he really makes his own films, he still follows his inner things at work.
The Paper: I saw that Geng Jun mentioned Tarkovsky's "Carving Time" in the interview. If you talk about Tarkovsky's films, how would you tell him?
Liu Bing: At one event, I talked about "Mirror" (1975). We both talked about this movie, "Mirror" is a work with a distinct autobiographical color, many people will feel that the amount of information is too large when they first see this movie, and they are completely confused. But we can start from the director's creative logic and find a point to interpret the film. In Tarkovsky's films, fire is a recurring image, and Indrey Rublev, Nostalgia, Sacrifice, and Mirror, fire is a brilliant passage in these works.
"Mirror" opens with a fire. There is also an empty mirror, which appears twice before and after, which is the picture of a hand baking in front of the fire, and the palm of the hand that is illuminated almost transparently, exposing bright red flesh and blood, which seems to indicate the mysterious structure of the flesh. This appears twice in total throughout the film, the first one fleeting, the last one lasting a little longer than the previous one. From the context, we can't see that this lens is too necessary, what is the reason for its existence? In fact, when we were children, we all played a game - covering the flashlight with the palm of our hand, then turning on the switch, so that the palm of the hand was illuminated by the flashlight almost transparent, and then repeatedly looking at it, opening and covering it again, and so on... This is the charm of Tarkovsky, who can lead the audience to the deepest part of life through a lens, and in the distant childhood, the fascination with fire also constitutes the most secret and exciting experience in our growth process.
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu
Proofreader: Yan Zhang