Editor's Note: If you "don't want to sleep" or "can't sleep," read on. There may be a literary film here, and there may be a thriller here. I don't know if you'll fall asleep or if you'll be scared even more out of bed.
Note: This article contains spoilers
At the "Japan New Film Exhibition" held in Shanghai and Hangzhou recently, "Silent Film Narrator" (カツベン!) is undoubtedly an eye-catching work. The reason is that there is no other reason, the director of this film is Zhou Fang Zhengxing, who has a high reputation in Japan.
Silent Film Narrator poster
The director's agreement
Some people watch the movie and will imitate the shape and costumes of the characters in the movie; some people will watch the movie and will relish the excitement of the plot; and some people will think about making their own movies when they watch the movie - such as Zhou Fang Zhengxing. As he himself put it, "I personally never had a professional film education, and I learned by watching my favorite movies over and over again." Later, I found a job in the film industry and worked as an assistant director for a long time, until I finally seized the opportunity to become a director."
Suo Masayuki
Zhou Fang Zhengxing is definitely not a "prolific" director. From his first work, "The Perverted Family," in 1984, he has directed only ten films in his more than 30-year career as a director. But among these few film works, entertainment films such as "Five Bald Teenagers" (1989) and "Talk About Love, Dance" (1996) can be described as elegant and popular, while "Even This Is Not What I Do" (2006) and "The Trust on the Verge of Death" (2012) highlight Zhou Fangzheng's sense of social responsibility. As a result, Zhou Fang Zhengxing has always been deeply supported and loved by fans.
Since 2014's "Maiko Maiko", Zhou Fang zhengxing has not released a new work for many years. According to his own words, "To implement the shooting of a movie, there must be emotions that you want to express... There are also some subjects that I wanted to put on the screen, but I didn't execute them in the end, because I found that they were not really worth the effort to make." Fortunately, in 2017, Zhou Fangzheng revealed in an interview at a lecture held at the Beijing Film Academy that he was "doing script design and creation, and if it is smooth, it should enter the shooting next year, so the fastest thing to say, the release will also be the year after."
A gentleman promises a thousand gold. He really didn't break his word. In 2017's "year after", that is, this year, Zhou Fang Zhengxing really fulfilled his agreement and came up with a new work, which is the "Silent Film Narrator" that unveiled the mystery at the Busan Film Festival in October 2019. Speaking of which, the film's release time in Japan is only December 13, but a week later, Chinese audiences can see the film at the "Japan New Film Exhibition", which is also a blessing.
Zhou Isheng is regarded by some as one of the most intellectual contemporary Japanese directors. In the selection of film materials, he has always had his own unique features, and does not exclude those corners that traditional Japanese films do not want to pay attention to. "Five Bald Boys" is a combination of the traditional Japanese national art "sumo wrestling" sport and the life of the youth community, while "Talk about Love, Dance" is the confusion and crisis of british traditional ballroom dance and Japanese middle-aged people. It seems that the greater the gap between which corner and the general life of the people, the more Zhou FangZhengxing must describe that world in detail, in his words: "The feelings and character characteristics of the characters on the edges of that world, with the film language they have established, with the film skills they have with the staff, carefully describe it, so that the audience understands." ”
"Talk about love, dance"
The same is true of Silent Film Narrator. The film is set in Japan, a century ago in the Taisho era (1912-1926). At that time, film was still stuck in the era of silent films (silent films). But unlike the rest of the world, "the film used to be silent, but there was hardly this stage in Japan because there was commentary from the active Benshi. The so-called "activity benefactor" is a profession that is unfamiliar to contemporary audiences. They resemble later narrations, and are apparently mixed with some of the styles of Edo-era storytellers. Specifically, their job is to be responsible for the lines and plot commentary of all the characters when the "Event Photo (Film)" is screened in the cinema. Sometimes they even intervene directly in the narrative of the film, turning the film into another work through secondary creation and improvisation. The protagonist of the story of "Silent Film Narrator" is a teenager who aspires to become an "active ben", Shuntaro Someya.
The "Active Ben" in the film
Movies of little people
The plot of "Silent Film Narrator" is not complicated, Andaro Someya has worshipped "activity benefactor" Yamaoka Akio since he was a child, but when he grew up, he joined a fraud gang in order to realize his childhood dream. While Shuntaro (Narita Ling) pretends to be the famous Akira Yamaoka to explain the movie in the theater, his accomplices loot the audience's family wealth. Such behavior finally attracted the attention of the police, and Shuntaro luckily escaped and changed his name to enter a movie theater called "Aokikan", and later became a "popular benshi". Here, he and the girl he met as a child, Kurihara Umeko (Kuroshima Yui), who aspires to become an actress, is involved in a series of hilarious thrills because of a windfall.
Shuntaro Someya Yorihara Umeko
Among the many characters in Silent Film Narrator, whether it is Shuntaro Someya or Umeko Kurihara, or tofuo Aoki (Naoto Takeaka), the boss of "AokiKan", and tadao Kimura (Toyo Takeno Uchiha), a police officer who persistently pursues fraud gangs, and other characters, they are undoubtedly fictional characters. In fact, compared with the grand narrative and power discourse, it is not difficult for the audience to find that Zhou Fangzhengxing's film is infiltrated with the director's attention to the small people at the bottom. In this regard, Zhou Fang Zhengxing can be said to continue an excellent tradition of Japanese cinema - rich in excellent life films that reflect the real life situation of small people. Of course, some people criticize this because "the Japanese world is only within five meters", but Zhou Fangzheng is calm about this place, "The Ability of Japanese people to look at the world and look at history is not very strong, and they are very discoverive of small lives and small things within a radius of five meters."
The main actor in the film is walking with director Zhou Fangzheng
In the relationship between many small characters, the emotional entanglement between the protagonist Shuntaro Someya and Umeko Kurihara is undoubtedly one of the narrative threads of "Silent Film Narrator". It is also for this reason that director Zhou Fang Zhengxing is very cautious about casting, and has interviewed 100 male and female actors for this purpose. The reason for the final determination of Narita Ling and Kuroshima's cooking was that the former had a righteous face, while the latter had a pitiful appearance at a glance.
The shape of Kuroshima knots in the film
Judging from the performance in "Silent Film Narrator", the role of Kurihara Plum has not left too deep an impact on the plot. In contrast, the performance of the role of Shuntaro Someya can be called the soul of the entire film. Zhou Fang Zhengxing himself said that there is a fixed thing in his films, that is, the protagonist always stands on the same side as the audience, which is a very close existence to the audience, even if the world he creates is far away from the audience. Indeed, through the role of Shuntaro Someya in Silent Film Narrator, the audience quickly understood the role of the profession of "active benefactor" in the films of the time. Especially as a Chinese audience sitting in the cinema watching "Silent Film Narrator" with Chinese and English subtitles, when Shuntaro Someya is explaining the plot of the black-and-white silent film to the audience in the cinema, there will be an immersive illusion, as if it is this Juntaro Someya who is explaining the movie in front of him. Such a wonderful effect may also be unexpected by director Zhou Fang Zhengxing!
Elegy of the times
There is no doubt that "Silent Film Narrator" has a strong comedic color. At the beginning of the film, the teenagers Shuntaro Someya and Kurihara Plum broke into the shooting scene of a silent film, but finally the two of them appeared in the film shot, and were accompanied by a completely unrelated but self-justifying commentary by the "active Benshi", which made the audience laugh. Interestingly, as early as the era of silent films, there were many films with comedy elements in Japanese films, and the "stick comedy" at that time often appeared in a fixed mode, and the actors caused the audience to laugh with funny actions. "Silent Film Narrator" is also full of comical and exaggerated almost unreasonable actions, creating a full comedic effect - in a way, as if it is a tribute to the silent film of that year.
The comedy scenes in the film
However, defining "Silent Film Narrator" as a "comedy film" is also somewhat reluctant - it does not have a happy ending similar to "everyone is happy", and it can even be said that the ending of the protagonist is somewhat unfortunate.
In addition to the equally regrettable ending, "Silent Film Narrator" also buries an imperceptible volt line in the midst of laughter, making the audience feel sentimental in addition to reminiscing. This is the character of Akio Yamaoka (Masatoshi Nagase) in the film. In his heyday, Akio Yamaoka was the idol of Toshitaro Someya, and with his own voice, he could turn a rotten film into a magical audience. However, after Shuntaro Someya entered the "Aoki Hall", Yamaoka Akito's reputation was long gone, and the commentary for the film became more and more perfunctory, and even drunk every day.
Frustrated Yamaoka Akira
However, this person who is drunk every day is actually the most sober one in the whole movie. While the owners of the two theaters were still competing with all the other "activity benefactors", Yamaoka Akio saw the end of the "campaign benefactors" era early. At that time, rather than saying that Japanese audiences were watching movies, they were listening to Benshi tell stories. When the film itself is perfected, the "active Benshi" naturally has no need to exist, just as another line of Yamaoka Akio bluntly expressed, "The film is still a movie without a Benshi." But without movies, Benshi is nothing."
From this point of view, the fates of Shuntaro Someya and Umeko Kurihara are quite interesting. Shuntaro Sometani, who aspired to become an "active master", ended up in prison, but Kurihara Umeko, who targeted herself as an actress, eventually became a movie star in Kyoto. This may be interpreted as saying that "cinema" has a bright future, but "activists" do not. Zhou Fangzhengxing's "Silent Film Narrator" has thus become a sad elegy for the era of "active benefactors" that have faded under the wheel of history.