The full text is 3285 words long and takes about 7 minutes to read
Editor's note: Is the taste of time soft, long, sweet or mellow? As the sixth generation of well-known directors in China, Lu Chuan has already harvested the precipitation of time - "Coco Xili", "Nanjing Nanjing", "The King's Feast", "We were born in China"... One excellent film after another marks the footnote of the filmmaker Lu Chuan's life. In the year of knowing the destiny of heaven, Lu Chuan, as an ordinary person, performed brilliantly in the first half of the game, pressing the pause button in the life midfield, Lu Chuan once again thought about his attitude towards life and the world. This time, he said, "I want to be particularly thick, wandering aimlessly on different paths." ”
Lu Chuan positioned his profile on Weibo as a "young filmmaker". He usually felt that he was still young and could still run, but in the eyes of others, he seemed to have changed. I don't know when, in short, he suddenly found that everyone already regarded themselves as "old comrades" or had to be crowned with the word "senior" in front.
Sandwiched between self-labels and the gaze of others, it is possible to agree that "time really flies by very quickly." Xu is because he has been making movies without hearing anything out of the window, so he has the illusion that he suddenly went haywire between a low head and a look, and twenty years have passed.
1 In the ocean of movies, free diving
In the impression, Lu Chuan was hit twice by the movie.
In 1988, Lu Chuan, who had just been in high school, watched the movie "Red Sorghum" in the theater downstairs, and when he was gone, he suddenly felt, "Sitting on a chair and not being able to stand up, it's like a huge hand on the screen pressing you to your seat." ”
Influenced by his father, his ideal as a child was to be a writer, a poet. But in this moment, he realized that there are more powerful art forms than poetry and novels, the expression of film is a sense of power synthesized by sound, light, picture, music, words are very weak in front of the image, and film can completely crush a person. After coming out of the darkness of that auditorium-like single-hall cinema, he was a little dazed, but suddenly he had a clear goal—to make a movie, to be a director.
After graduating from film school, he had a period of depressed unemployment and wanted to make a movie but couldn't. He watched the movie "Del Suuzara", because the film was too long and dull, it took three days to watch, did not dedicate a large period of free time, but just opened it casually after busy with other things every day. The first two days did not feel anything, but at the moment of watching the third day, all the power of the movie, the touch on his heart, was flooded like a beast, and he could not say it, nor could he resist this feeling.
When he was a director, Lu Chuan was very real. He did not shoot many scenes, but it was expensive to "slow work out of small work", the industry got the name "Lu slow (long road)", working overtime.
Actors need to use their own bodies, control their muscles, manage their emotions, and give accurate performance results at precise nodes — he understands the fragility of the live state of the actor's performance, so he never gets angry with the actor on the set.
Whether it is the lead actor or the extras, he tries his best to let them give him the "most desired play" while maintaining a relaxed and comfortable state, and there is no room for negotiation with the high requirements of the actors - if the actor's performance is not in place, he can accompany them over and over again. Sometimes, a film is shot forty-two times before it passes; sometimes, after a rough cut, it doesn't work well and starts all over again.
Every time you do a scene, it feels like a deep dive. "Plunge into it all at once, and then swim on the bottom of the sea, you may experience all kinds of underwater turbulence, trenches, and finally take this journey (swim) and then dive into the sea, and it may take three or five years to pass." It has been twenty years since his debut film "Looking for a Gun", in fact, Lu Chuan has only released six movies.
Fortunately, Lu Chuan feels that he is still like the mentality of the first entry into the industry, and has always been an experimental school, opening up a road in the thorny bush of movies. He has always maintained a seamless relationship with the industry, so no matter how the industry is floating, he has not been greatly impacted. He didn't limit himself to a certain style, the director of the commercial film, the general director of the opening ceremony of the 19th Asian Games in 2022, etc., every time he was fully engaged, the pressure did not come from the gain or loss of honor, but from the creativity - he was more concerned about whether he could deliver a unique and different work.
His films have been alternately shuttled between the parallel threads of "poetry, resistance, pursuit, and sociality". In the past, like Spielberg and Coppola' predecessors, he launched a fierce attack on great subjects. As he grew older, his pride and sharpness gradually converged. His lens elements, once male and bloody, now have more warmth, humanity, and even find warmth in violent fragments, flowing with hot vitality. The new identity of the director of the opening ceremony of the Asian Games allowed his tentacles to explore the culture of the Two Rivers Valley, focusing on the Chinese spirit and intelligent technology.
2 If luck doesn't come as planned, embrace change with open arms
On May 20, 2021, Lu Chuan posted a Weibo post, "Every movie is his own son, and no child will be left in the dark." The comment area has left messages in anticipation of the "749 Bureau".
For Lu Chuan, the birth of the "child" of "749 Bureau" is indeed a long way, like pregnant with a Nezha.
It is the fourth year since it started in 2018 and was released in July 2019, and the film has encountered various situations. The break in the capital chain of the capital has led to the delay of many later work.
The four words of film and television winter can not summarize the tragic situation experienced by the entire film and television industry in the past two years, "it can be said that it is full of mourning," Lu Chuan said. When the rupture of funds was a foregone conclusion, Lu Chuan digested the matter in silence, and he chose to use his own strength to push the film forward - his company continued to advance funds until it ran out of food.
Lu Chuan has never been a very commercial director, and the company does not have much savings. In a hurry, the brain is hot and the money on the company's account is thrown in, but compared with the hole in the large-scale production of "749 Bureau", the deposit on the company's account is only a drop in the bucket. He began to slowly transform into "commercialization", taking advertising, filming dramas, not picking jobs, doing everything, all the work is for the survival of the "749 Bureau" project and services, and when he earns money, he continues to inject "749 Bureau".
Since July 2019, Lu Chuan has relied on his savings and newly earned money to keep the "749 Bureau" project team running until July 2020, when he is stretched thin and the post-production team is completely shut down.
Then came a period of gray and torment. Until April this year, Lu Chuan's advertisement allowed the commercial value of the team to be seen, and some investment was found. But before that, Lu Chuan had been in a state of anxiety, and then he found that "the best way to combat anxiety is to continue anxiety, and it is appropriate to develop the habit of anxiety." ”
Since May, "749 Bureau" has resumed work and begun to sprint at full speed. The meaning of the above Weibo is also self-evident.
Even in the most difficult days, Lu Chuan's determination never wavered, "No matter what you do, you must finish it ("749 Bureau"). ”
When Lu Chuan returned here again after "749 Bureau" was shelved, his heart was quieter and more enjoyable, and he jumped out of his obsession, blind preference for his own children, and was able to examine it more soberly, more objectively, like a stranger. "I was probably more picky than the average audience, and I used the scissors viciously again, not at all like I was with my own child, and I corrected it harshly."
After four years of grinding a sword, experience and accumulation, the potential of the follow-up of "749 Bureau" gradually appeared. Lu Chuan feels that not only has the film achieved a qualitative leap, but his own cognition has also been greatly improved.
3 With yourself, slow down and enjoy the precipitation
Perfect narrative, beautiful story, visual spectacle special effects, and moving emotions are not Lu Chuan's original pursuit of filmmaking. He hopes that his works are expressive and can stand the test of the market and the precipitation of time.
Shooting other works has also experienced difficulties, but everything that happened around "749 Bureau" has undoubtedly set it high in the list of difficulties that Lu Chuan has conquered in his past life. Today it is still growing, and it has not been eliminated by the times and the market, but it stems from its value and expression - this is its inherent heavy meaning.
At the age of 50, the director's exact age, Lu Chuan chose a slow pace.
During the epidemic, he and his family have been reunited for a long time, and they have eaten with their parents for more time than in the past decade combined. The days of being a director have been too long, and he has lost a whole piece of time that can be used to write and output content. And in these days, he fully enjoys his time with himself, begins to "squeeze" himself again, and a complete narrative structure is being woven from scratch.
The atmosphere of the external environment is depressed, solemn, and tense, while Lu Chuan stays in the room and finds a way to live in peace with the world. He was given a large amount of time to think. After reflection, meditation, and even whimsy, he began to read himself.
Time has given an answer to many things. In the film field with filming as the underlying logic, Lu Chuan has focused on and accumulated for twenty years. The editing room is his haven, where the film is pure, the shooting is pure, this is Lu Chuan's comfortable state, it is a luxury of happiness.
In the matter of making movies, Lu Chuan is a hard worker. He used to think that movies enriched him. Through the movie, he traveled north and south, traveled in many places, and experienced different lives.
Looking back now, in the past twenty years, it seems that he has been to many places and understands a lot of things, but when the logic of everything is classified as a movie - he began to wonder, is his life very simple? In order to understand the background of the story, he read all the relevant history books. But travel is not for sightseeing, but for the sake of shooting, to climb mountains, adventure is not to satisfy their hobbies, but to experience life, collect materials.
It's as if you've never been purely an experientialist, or living for yourself. It's good to be a volunteer teacher and be a rescue team member for two years. He began to reflect and confessed that he was not yet a person who lived a particularly clear and thick life. And as for what is the ideal thick state?
He developed a different understanding than before, "You should travel aimlessly on different paths, I think that may be a rich life." 」 ”
But it is still undeniable that the meticulously polished works are his footnotes after the double precipitation of artistic exploration and writing reality, and his film life has long been given thickness by years of diligence.