Beginning in the 1990s, Japan's bubble economy collapsed and the long Great Depression era began.
In the Japanese film industry during this period, neither veteran directors nor rookies had enough money to shoot their own films. Akira Kurosawa, known as Japan's "movie emperor", really didn't have the money to make a shadow samurai, but his little fans Coppola and Lucas came forward to find the funds.
At the same time, a newcomer with the film work "The Legend of Mina" that has just been filmed runs into a wall everywhere, and the people who are about to collapse the Japanese big studio system refuse to admit their own predicament, and still harshly rebuke the newcomer according to the standards of the Japanese big production era. Under the blow, in 1987, the newcomer simply plunged into the television industry after graduation.
This trick curve saved the country and made the arrival of a new genre of Japanese cinema eight years late.
The newcomer's name was Shunji Iwai.
In his youth, Shunji Iwai resembled Kashiwara Takashi
Although he invested in the television industry after graduation, it is clear that Shunji Iwai did not give up his film dream since elementary school, and he can see the unique and accurate application of film and television skills in his MV and advertising works. If in 1992, the horror short film "Ghost Soup" was his little test, then in 1993 his TV series "Fireworks" could not make the film and television industry ignore his talent, and he won the Newcomer Award of the Japan Film Directors Association for "Fireworks", which was the first time this award was awarded to a non-film director.
In 1994, Shunji Iwai won the NETPAC Award at the Berlin Film Festival for his tv short film The Bundle of Love. Some fans said that this short film was mysterious and was the worst film of Shunji Iwai, obviously did not understand. The beauty and cruel darkness in the short film are each other, full of metaphorical plot and camera language, which can also be said to be a sign of the formation of Shunji Iwai's style.
Shunji Iwai shoots the TV short film "The Bondage of Love"
At the same time, the Japanese film industry is in a slump waiting for revival, and since the birth of cinema, there has never been a shortage of people who love it and fight for it.
In 1991, Toshio Suzuki joined Ghibli, Ghibli's animated film works have been sold one after another, and a new generation of filmmakers with super sharp market insight ability like Toshio Suzuki have introduced more and more economic elements outside the production company into the industry, injecting vitality into the industry.
In 1995, at the age of 32, Shunji Iwai finally ushered in his film debut, the film "Love Letters", which opened up a new "Iwai" model for Japanese cinema.
Official poster of "Love Letters" Chinese mainland version
This "Iwai-style" whirlwind of pure love swept across East Asia in an instant, which is enough to prove that Japanese cinema still retains its pioneering ability and influence in artistic style.
In "Love Letter", the female Fujii tree looked back and did not see Watanabe Fuzi become a classic, under the sudden surge of people, the audience's heart and Fuzi sank to the bottom, she found an unwanted answer for her love.
In "Love Letters", the classic female Fujii tree looks back
After "Love Letters", a large number of youth romance films modeled on "Love Letters" were produced.
The Iwai style also formed a routine in repeated imitations.
The first is the style of light and shadow, the pure world outlined by Shunji Iwai in "Love Letters" with backlighting and overexposure. Before this, the academic school that studied film professionally regarded overexposure, halos, etc. as shooting accidents, which was wrong. And Iwai Shunji's talent itself has a certain subversiveness, he instead uses these shooting techniques to create the atmosphere he wants to create, so he can control any type of film, here first saw his ambition.
Next, we can find that the depiction of adolescent sex in Western movies is almost absent in Japanese pure love movies, and Japanese pure love movie love stories always focus on ambiguous moments before love occurs, mainly showing the inner entanglement or temptation of the two people before love comes, and showing the subtle changes in the psychological world of the characters when they encounter love. This is inseparable from the subtle beauty of japanese films that are deeply influenced by Chinese culture and the oriental culture represented by Chinese culture.
Finally, and more specifically, Japanese pure love films of this period often use flashbacks, which are expressed as unfolding stories through the memories of the adult protagonists.
Iwai-style works mainly include the following.
In 2004, the "Call for Love at the Center of the World" was a fire, and it is clear that the film is similar in structure to "Love Letters"
2004 Call for Love at the Center of the World
2005 "Spring Snow" is adapted from the work of Yukio Mishima
Satoshi's most amazing work "Spring Snow"
2007 Dusty Notebook
2006 Rainbow Goddess
In 2006, "Rainbow Goddess" was introduced in Hong Kong
2007 Love Sky
All Dog Blood Drama Episode 100 "Love Void"
2009 Angel Love
How many girls burned because of this scene
2017 "100 Times in Love with Jun"
The film has been introduced before, but the audience has become tired of the traditional pure love aesthetic fatigue
These works trace their roots to the repetition of the "Iwai" model, and even Shunji Iwai copied himself, shooting April Story three years after "Love Letters".
Three years after the love letter, April Story responded to market expectations, but Shunji Iwai still broke through the love letter in many places
In the second half of 1998, when "April Story" was released in Japan, many people were not optimistic. This movie is not long, short is not short (59 minutes), the plot is so simple that it can be summed up in one sentence. In the many commercial hard disks of that year, it also had a pretty good response. The brilliant and harmonious music production not only saw Shunji Iwai's musical cultivation, but also once again exposed his superb film and television technology control ability.
But in addition to Shunji Iwai, other pure love movies more or less lack some "Iwai-style" talent, and lack the poetic and humanistic temperament in "Love Letters". Various contests whose dog blood splashed higher, and even pulled down the style of the whole pure love film.
Of course, later the emergence of Makoto Shinkai changed the embarrassing situation of pure love movies, and Makoto Shinkai needs to start a separate chapter to talk about, so I will not say it here.
A conversation between Shunji Iwai and Makoto Shinkai
Pure love youth films focus on the daily life of teenagers, through the way of small to larger way to talk about the more grand propositions about life, political elements, social background, etc. are usually not set as the key factors to promote the plot.
Shunji Iwai himself said in an interview that he could not be reset.
Shunji Iwai is still very handsome
His ambition and his self-transcendence always surprise his fans. Brushing aside his superficial pure love is what he really wants to express inside, just like watanabe Fuzi in the first act of the love letter, lying in the snow to experience the feeling of her boyfriend's death, under the beauty is the cruelty brought about by the death that human beings cannot resist.
As for the relationship between "Love Letters" and "April Story", Shunji Iwai filmed the famous "Swallowtail Butterfly", we will wait until the next one. Because "Swallowtail Butterfly" is too important for understanding Shunji Iwai.
Next articleWe continue.