"The wildest movie I've ever made. The bright fuchsia poster for Prisoner of the Ghost Nation reads this line directly below, which is what Nicolas Cage said about his latest film.
Prisoner of the Phantom Nation poster
As we all know, in recent years, the "lower limit" of the former Oscar-winning film emperor to appear in films has become lower and lower, even to the point of becoming a veritable "king of bad films"; at the same time, many films in which he has participated in the performance have also begun to change their propaganda ideas: they no longer promote the film itself, or Cage's performance "good", "excellent" and "wonderful", but turn a corner to praise the film and performance "wild" and "crazy"...
From 2018's "Mandy"
To 2019's "Color of the Stars"
Then to this year's "Prisoner of the Ghost Country", each one is said to be "Cage's turnaround" - but whether Cage really borrowed these films to successfully turn over, the basis for the establishment of these films and the gimmicks of publicity are the keywords of cult, cult, wild, crazy and so on.
Nicholas Cage
As if by appointment, the posters of all three works use dazzling red and purple tones, and from the beginning of the posters, they show a psychedelic journey that abandons reason and common sense, suggesting that the audience adjust their expectations for the film.
However, unlike the other two pure-blooded American films, Prisoner of the Ghost Country is not only an American Cult film, one of the B-movies starring Nicholas Cage in recent years, but also the first English-language film by Japanese geek director Yuan Ziwen.
The three posters are juxtaposed and really purple
The film's original origins date back several years, but due to the epidemic and Yuan Ziwen's own health problems, it was not until this year's Sundance Film Festival that it officially met the audience.
Speaking of Garden Ziwen, these labels hover in our minds: perverted, crazy, extreme, controversial... Yes, like his own film idol, the famous Danish director Russ von Trier, each of Yuan Ziwen's works is conceived and executed, trying to provoke deeper thinking about the nature of human and human nature by breaking ethical and moral boundaries, and for this reason, their works often offend the audience.
Thus, "wild" may indeed be the most appropriate adjective for von Trier or Yuan Ziwen's films.
Garden warmth
However, from this casual publicity on the movie poster, it reflects the bias of a serious creative strategy of "Prisoner of the Ghost Country": "Wild" and "Sword Away" can really be used as an independent criterion for measuring the quality of a movie?
Or to put it another way: does a "wildest" movie have to be a good movie?
Unlike the intellectual director von Thiel, who insisted on taking the route of film festival art films and sharpened his sword for several years, Yuan Ziwen is a Herzo format, a madman of image practice with male hormones, a film madman; his wildness is truly grounded and embodied in the output and energy of the work. Therefore, although he insists on his own author's expression, he does not reject the commercial and entertaining nature of the film.
Screenshot of Prisoner of the Land of Ghosts, from the Douban movie
From the crazy B-grade comedy with extremely simple brain circuits to the complex and thought-provoking realistic theme works, Yuan Ziwen can shoot almost anything, and everything is very "wild".
Looking at the sequence of Yuan Ziwen's works, there are absolutely serious and rigorous works: from the melodrama "Kiko's Table" to "Yongcai", which focuses on post-311 trauma, to "Cold Tropical Fish" and "Crime of Love", which are based on real events and have a uniform tone of video narrative.
Stills from "Noriko's Table"
Black humor, bad taste, entertainment and grotesque elements pervade his other works: such as the absurd comedy "Why Hell Is Bad" that celebrates fan culture in a funny way, or the B-grade torture film "Real Devil Game", or Yuan Ziwen's most famous masterpiece, the absurd love epic "Exposure of Love", which is more than two hundred minutes long...
In these works that are either serious or entertaining, Yuan Ziwen also presents violence, sex, crime, human ugliness, etc. according to the needs of the occasion, or seriously or entertainingly, which are wild and extreme in the eyes of the audience.
Stills from "The Exposure of Love"
This "wildness" doesn't always have a unifying effect, they sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. When it comes to my personal perception of Yuan Ziwen's works, I often linger in the contradictions between likes and dislikes.
If "Cold Tropical Fish" and "Crimes of Love" embody Yuan Ziwen's absolute talent as a director, then "Why Hell is Bad" wastes this talent on a kitsch, boring cold joke;
If "Exposure of Love" and "Kiko's Table" are the two peaks erected by Yuan Ziwen in the direction of entertainment and seriousness, then "Mediocre Talent" is an unstable balance between the two.
Stills from The Sin of Love
What about Prisoner of the Ghost Nation? The "wildness" claimed by this film undoubtedly belongs to the latter, that is, the "wildness of entertainment".
Just by looking at its cast and synopsis, we don't have to expect That Gentle Cage and Climax actress Sophia Podola to work together on a movie.
In fact, from the shaping of the worldview, "Prisoner of the Ghost Country" strives for a "stitching strange aesthetic": the wrestling relationship between the prisoners, the mayor, the police chief and the townspeople who bear the task of saving people for their sins, and the closed environment of the town, which is undoubtedly a great tradition taken from american Westerns; while the geisha in the town, the traditional Japanese interior and exterior decoration, and the samurai with long swords remind us of Japanese sword films, and when Cage, who plays the "hero", embarks on a journey through the long yellow sand, The whole movie seems to have turned into a straight male road action blockbuster, such as "Mad Max 4: Fury Road".
Stills from Prisoner of the Ghost Nation
The "wild" effect of mixing and sewing various types of films into pieces and stitching them apart must be a kind of bad taste of Yuan Ziwen.
In an era of deconstructivism, nihilism, and the decline of traditional commercial films, it is not surprising that such an "anti-entertainment movie" has emerged, which is what Hollywood often does today – as evidenced by the emergence of Gunn's Suicide Squad 2.
But, even with the best idea, if the audience goes to see such a movie, it is not the fun of watching the "meta-movie" like "The Cabin in the Woods", but the length, boredom and torture, then such deconstruction and irony are obviously not successful.
Poster of Cabin in the Woods
Prisoner of the Phantom Nation is also not as simple-minded as True Devil's Game.
The script's mind is very tricky, not only stitching genre films, but also stitching up various mainstream propositions such as patriarchy, race, class, cultural differences, nuclear pollution, etc., stewing into a pot of poisonous chicken soup, and not forgetting to insert inexplicable flashbacks, reversals, and sensationalism.
Even the audience, who co-produced with Yuan Ziwen's radio waves and shared the same taste, could not bear the awkward switch between the film's private taste and the subordinate mainstream. "Prisoner of the Ghost Country" has now fallen below the Douban score of 4 points, which shows how poor its audience is.
"Prisoner of the Land of Ghosts" Douban score
In addition to the extremes of the content, another similarity between Yuan Zi and von Trier is that their creations are always humorous, no matter what the situation or subject matter.
Remember the chilling, hair-raising black humor at the end of Icy Tropical Fish? Remember the eerie parody of the saleswoman in "The Crime of Love" when she seduces supermarket customers?
Serious drama is still like this, then as an entertainment work of Yuan Ziwen, "Prisoner of the Ghost Country" of course also tries to add humorous characters and plots to the movie more frequently as usual: crazy geisha, various strange people in the "Ghost Country"... As well as the male protagonist who was forced to wear a black leather coat, a bomb was installed on the left and right testicles, and as long as he had a bad thought in his heart, he would explode.
However, the clichéd laugh points and bad arrangements simply fail to convey the fun contained in the original concept, but instead turn the whole movie into a joke that is not funny at all - if you have to say it, its own stupidity is the biggest laugh point of the movie.
Even more deadly, in Yuan Ziwen's more serious works, humor is just a seasoning, while in Prisoner of the Ghost Country, humor becomes a main dish that has to be eaten but is very difficult to eat.
Screenshot of Prisoner of the Ghost Country, from the Douban movie page
Back to that question: What is a "wild" movie?
Obviously, "wild" is not blind shooting, random shooting. Von Trier's The Antichrist is wild enough, right? But it's design-designed, ingenious "wild."
Take "Yongcai", which is also a work of Yuan Ziwen, which is also a bizarre, mixed and matched work of various types, and the video style is extremely flamboyant, but its image and text are extremely powerful and emotional, and it conveys the wild texture very well.
To put it bluntly, "wild" is a result, an artistic effect done under powerful creation and exquisite polishing; not a process of crazy ideas and sloppy production. That's stupidity, it's shoddy, it's not "wild" as a positive word.
Stills from "Mediocre Talent"
In fact, Yuan Ziwen's unfinished "Bad Movie", which was later re-edited and released, can be called one of the top of the "wildest movies".
Ironically, this veritable "wild" movie does not claim to be "wild" in publicity, but begins to mock itself as a "bad film" from the title, which seems much more humble.
Bad Movie poster
In fact, compared to "Bad Movies", which was shot in Hi-8, with a rudimentary production, seemingly crude but actually conceived wild and wonderful, how can a Hollywood movie full of false special effects, boring jokes and deliberate stews be considered "wild"?