calm.
At the end of March, on a spring night, the city, which had just calmed down from its trepidation, was actively regaining its former stable rhythm.
In the second ring, there are not many people, and the creative park is as quiet as a foreign place, but it is mixed with traces of the old industrial system.
The mood of the city and the environment of the scene make this place like a dream.
The protagonists of the dream, two people.
A director, an actor.
Jia Zhangke and Qi Xi.
◉ Jia Zhangke Prada dark blue suit black base and black pants
Qi Xi Prada gray knit shirt, gray suit jeans and brown boots
They recently collaborated on a new film, "Calm" directed by female director Song Fang. Jia Zhangke is the executive producer, Qi Xi is the heroine, and they took the film to the Berlin International Film Festival.
The story is simple, the semi-autobiographical body of the female director: after breaking up with her boyfriend, she walks alone and eventually returns to her parents' home in Nanjing. The theme is reconciliation.
People who have seen the screening joked that the film is very "calm", with subtle composition, hand-held life performances, and a large number of breathing long shots, which require concentration and breath to enter the play.
Calm, here is not an established fact, a phased state. It is a verb, an act of a woman - both to get rid of the emotional barriers, but also to absorb the divine revelation of nature, and finally like going up the hillside, to the vastness, to the open-mindedness of the wind and the forest.
◉ Prada gray knit shirt, gray suit and gray pleated skirt
Jia Zhangke laughed and said that this only belongs to Song Fang's film, and he will not shoot it because it is difficult for him to "calm down".
Actress Qi Xi said it came at the right time. She has just finished a science fiction movie, and she is physically and mentally miserable. She also needs this verb.
These two people constitute restlessness and calm. This time, we invite them to talk in the same time and space.
◉ Prada gray suit, gray pleated skirt and brown boots
Jia Zhangke: I have no taboos, only measure
High yield is jia Zhangke's expression in this spring, the activeness of a literary and artistic worker.
In addition to the executive producer Of Calm, his company will complete six Chinese-language films, as well as a Thai film and a Cambodian film in the first half of this year.
In fact, in addition to Song Fang's "Calm", there is also Jia Zhangke's own documentary "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue". The camera focuses on the Fenyang Literature Season in May last year, where Chinese writers of different eras, such as Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua and Liang Hong, tell about individuals and families under social change.
The film has a psychic history pattern.
This also continues the temperament of Jia Zhangke's works in recent years, it seems that a person's life stage changes, but in fact, the walking trajectory of the times. The title of the film can also be glimpsed: "Mountains and Rivers of the Past", mountains and rivers to the deceased, a sigh, the light boat has passed through the Ten Thousand Heavy Mountains; "Children of the Rivers and Lakes", the word "love and righteousness" has long been rewritten by the context.
So Jia Zhangke's film is not calm, it is galloping. What about himself? Born in 1970, exactly more than half a hundred years old, he did not have the slightest twilight of "pretending to open". The speed and richness of his speech in the interview are full of "noise", not hypocritical, not stagnant, and people love to listen and want to hear.
Qi Xi said on the side that he loved to listen to the director and felt like he had taken a movie class.
◉ Jia Zhangke Prada dark blue suit, black trousers
Qi Xi Prada gray knitwear, gray suit, jeans and brown boots
On social media, someone mixed all the dancing clips in Jia Zhangke's work, and the soundtrack was "Do You Want to Dance" by the band New Pants. The lead singer of the band, Peng Lei, praised "good handsome", and Jia Zhangke immediately replied: Musical handsome! An electric current runs through me and you.
He is also the "Xiao Jia" who made "Xiao Wu" more than twenty years ago, a restless creator. Dance is Jia Zhangke's interest, a continuous symbol of "Jia Zhangke's works", and it is also his expression in addition to language and images.
"There are actually many personal reasons for enjoying dancing, the first one being that I grew up backstage as a kid. My father was the head of a propaganda team at that time, and every night there was a performance, and then no one took me, and my father took it, and I crawled around in the background, and then watched others perform a lot of plays, that is, I had a special affection for the stage. ”
Jia Zhangke recalled. Growing up, he was introverted and shy. When he was in middle school, the small city of Fenyang in Shanxi ushered in the wave of break dancing, and his heart was restless.
◉ Prada dark blue suit, black base and black trousers
"I started to like that dance, and dared to dance in front of people, dances like breakdancing, disco, is the other side of implicit Chinese, every time I shoot a dance with the camera, you can feel a situation of the character's abnormality, his mania, excitement, carefreeness, these things are suppressed under normal circumstances." 」
In Jia Zhangke's films, from "Xiao Wu" to "Platform", from "Three Gorges Good Man" to "Destined for Heaven", and then to the feature film "Children of Jianghu", almost all of them have "dances" and golden songs of the times. If you borrow God's perspective, the people who dance, the places where they dance, the environment behind the places, what is it? Probably only Chinese heart understands the jianghu. Jia Zhangke said, what is the jianghu? It is a kind of conventional rule between people and people, the so-called promise of gold, the so-called love and righteousness, all of which mean this. What keeps the jianghu running is not interests, but emotions.
The jianghu is Jia Zhangke's daily life. He believed in the emotional logic between people. In fact, although he has said several times that Song Fang is Song Fang, and her works have a strong personal imprint, "I will not shoot at all", but from Jia Zhangke's interpretation of "Calm", he smells the breath of "jianghu": the female director is an independent person who does not attach himself to men, or even to any trend. She refuses to be objectified and has her own rhythm and pace. She lives in her own jianghu.
◉ Jia Zhangke Prada dark blue suit, black base
Qi Xi Prada gray knit shirt, gray suit and gray pleated skirt
"There is a scene," Jia Zhangke said, "from another point of view, there is the poetry of the dialogue between heaven and man." Qi Xi was photographed in Hong Kong, and suddenly a gust of wind came in the woods, blowing those leaves, and Qi Xi would stop, listen, and feel. It's not designable, it takes time to shoot and wait over and over again, so that the actors just happen to be involved in these subtle changes in nature. "This kind of heart is the other side of the jianghu and the children of the jianghu."
For a director's expression, the most easily interfered with and the problem that needs to be compromised, Jia Zhangke has been open-minded: making movies has never been taboo, only measured. Proportion is its most natural and true state.
Jia Zhangke, who is still restless, calm is his "sword". When he expressed it, his heart was a sea of blue water.
◉ Prada brown coat, white shirt
Miu Miu beige knit coat
Qi Xi: Cover your heart with a piece of ice on your own
Qi Xi's impressive characters are restless, women who are tormented by desire but redeem themselves.
For example, the "MingMing" of Meng Jinghui's drama "Rhinoceros in Love", the "Sanqi" who played with Hao Lei in Lou Ye's movie "The Mystery of the Floating City", the "Jasmine" who made the male protagonist almost cheat in Wang Xiaoshuai's film "Long Day", including the "Lina" in the film "Going to the Sea" with Belgian director Olivier Meys to tell the story of Paris street sex workers, so that in the eyes of film critics and literary film lovers, Qi Xi as an actress has a distinct label - she is good at interpreting the lonely woman torn by desire and morality.
Qi Xi was very surprised, Jia Zhangke picked me up at the dinner table at a party, and there was Zhang Aijia in the middle of the banquet. At one point, she also believed in her own label, "How can I be like Song Fang?" How could a movie like Calm find me? ”
Lookers-on see most of the game. Only Jia Zhangke said lightly, it is not so simple. First of all, from the professional judgment, if you really find a vegetarian to act, it will really be "calm" - the inner turbulence of the characters, handed over to a person who has deviated from the basis of performance, will only be very empty. Qi Xi, who has studied directing, can also quickly understand that the seemingly "no information" treatment in the film actually emphasizes the relationship, with friends, with parents, and most importantly, with nature and self. The film allows Jia Zhangke to see the power of Qi Xi: explosiveness and layering create a woman with self-control and will not go crazy, she will definitely be able to find her own rhythm and firmly execute.
That's the actor that Calm needs. Because the creators have reached a consensus, "calm" is the verb.
◉ Prada brown coat, white shirt, jeans and brown boots
Qi Xi accepted the invitation and studied the script according to the custom and did his homework. Unlike Jia Zhangke, Song Fang is good at expression. She would just give time, to shoot over and over again, to find the feeling she wanted. For example, a scene of climbing a mountain in Hong Kong has been filmed, "I have walked many times, and my fingernails have fallen off." "Song Fang's only request is to go slower and walk slower. It sounds easy, but people who have seen the movie will find that when Qi Xi walks, his eyes are not empty - he cannot be tired, he needs a state similar to "capture", to have a tacit understanding with the environment - "so it is difficult to be tired, the pace is slow, but the brain and heart are mobilized." ”
Finally, once, Qi Xi couldn't help but pull Song Fang to talk about the emotional logic of the characters, and Song Fang was a little embarrassed to tell her that the reason why I didn't say it was because I was afraid it was too written, "too abstract, you will find it more difficult to understand." Qi Xi urged again and again, and Song Fangcai said, just like the mouth of the heart covered with a piece of ice, slowly covered.
Qi Xi suddenly became excited: "You said it earlier, I know how to act." Song Fang may not have thought that this metaphor of "a piece of ice" brings the most vivid synaesthesia. Qi Xi acted more and more smoothly, a sleepless scene, the camera did not move, up to 40 minutes, looking directly at the actors, capturing subtle expressions and movements. Qi Xi lay on the bed and couldn't help but cry. Tears could not be contained.
Qi Xi knew that she was performing the action of "recalling". She remembers her college days, "especially missing the sugar gourds and sugar-fried chestnuts in the middle of the play." "Things are not human," I felt that I was forever separated from the sugar gourd, the sugar fried chestnuts and the time it represented. ”
◉ Prada gray knitwear, jeans
Miu Miu beige knit coat
So, the actress understands. She knows what it means to use her business ability to express "warm a piece of ice": "That is to say, people will experience a lot of parting in their lives, but most of them will not be sudden sharp pain, it is acting on you little by little, and you can only rely on your own strength to metabolize it." ”
Originally, Qi Xi's rhythm was fast and intense, so Meng Jinghui and Lou Ye grasped her violent reaction when the metabolic pain was painful—when the speed of the person exceeded the speed at which the pain took effect, a certain "charm" also occurred, like a fire struggling to burn. However, it is not only this state that is "good", especially for actors.
After Lou Ye finished filming "The Mystery of the Floating City", he also reminded Qi Xi that you can try more types of characters. "Calm" is an opportunity, and it is the opposite of the actor's habits — whether it's body language or emotional expression.
Or, like the arrangement in the dark, Qi Xi was very grateful for the arrival of "Calm". She was rehearsing and rehearsing the promotion of a woman's state of mind.
"When I got the script, I was relieved, and finally there were no tears raining down, or my voice was exhausted." Qi Xi does not deny that former characters, such as "Mingming" or "Sanqi", have actually become part of their own physical and life experiences, and they even occasionally show signs of "regurgitation". In real life, when faced with some entanglement, the state of that moment is almost moved from the drama: "There must be a moment when you jump out and look at it, and you will feel like it." ”
But people always have to grow, and as professional actors, they must be able to control more roles. At this time, Qi Xi believed in the power of "calm".
Calm is the road of Qi Xi now. When she portrays the character, even if her heart is wavering, this woman still looks silent.
Photo: Kiichi
Author: Chandler
Styling & Editing: Zhaohai
Hairstyle: Charlie
Makeup: Sherwin.L
Cover costume: Prada
Producer: Zhou Yiyan
Styling Assistants: Shuai Yang, Clara
Photography Assistant: Kobayashi
Lighting equipment: Shangde elephant