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Zhang Yimou is eager for "Sniper" to become the "dark horse" of the 2022 Spring Festival, but the second day of the Chinese New Year has passed, although the film's reputation is in the forefront, but the box office performance ranks sixth, and the schedule has not improved, and the counterattack looks hopeless.
This is the first time he has participated in the most competitive and highest gold-containing slot, but it does not seem to be favored by all parties. Before the release, the first day of "Sniper" was less than 10% of the schedule, and the time period was "mostly in the middle of the night", so that before the Spring Festival officially opened, he also opened an online live broadcast with great anxiety, calling for "the cinema to give some better time" and "quite worried about the box office, afraid of the bottom of the results".
He even filmed the popular "Drifting Snow Disguise" short video for the release of this movie. Many years ago, he was thought by photographer Li Zhichao to have a face with the temperament of Yukio Mishima, and his depression was almost impressive. Now that he's older, the gully in his face is getting deeper and deeper, and it's so much in line with his cinematic aesthetic — from eye bags to wrinkles, it's absolutely symmetrical. When such Zhang Yimou appeared in the snowflake special effects of the short video, wearing a black Zhongshan suit, surrounded by more than a dozen young male actors and slightly bent over, many people exclaimed, "The most handsome is Zhang Yimou."
But none of these unprecedented moves translate into an increase in the scheduling rate.
This is probably a situation that Zhang Yimou has never been in - the "opponent" of the same competition is menacing: "The Water gate Bridge of Chosin Lake" aims to impact the record of film history; "Four Seas" uses Han Han's appeal to exceed 200 million yuan at the box office in 8 hours; and the comedy film "This Killer Is Not Calm" that best matches the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival, "Miracle Stupid Child" starring the high-profile Yi Yanqianxi. As a director who opened the era of domestic commercial blockbusters, for many years, Zhang Yimou's name was a pass, although there were also box office or word-of-mouth failures, but he he had received this treatment that was collectively abandoned from the beginning.
On August 30, 2003, at the 9th China Film Huabiao Awards Ceremony, Chen Kaige presented the Special Contribution Award to Zhang Yimou, director of "Hero". "Hero" won the 2002 Chinese film box office champion, nominated for the Academy Award, the American Film Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and won a number of domestic and foreign awards
Nor can you blame the theater for being cold. Zhang Yimou has not won a smooth commercial victory for a long time - "One Second" released in 2020 has a box office of 131 million, which is dismal. "On the Cliff", released in 2021, the main theme of commercial blockbusters, is the best box office theme in the market in recent years, gaining 1.19 billion, which is not enough to make people have confidence in Zhang Yimou. And this Spring Festival file, the sequel to "Changjin Lake" that set a box office record in 2021, "Watergate Bridge", has naturally become a bet project for theater managers, and almost half of the scheduled film resources have been smashed. Also a war film with the background of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, "Sniper" does not need to go through entanglement and trade-offs, and it has become cannon fodder that has been abandoned.
A theater manager from an industry group put it more bluntly: Today's young people have no interest in Zhang Yimou.
The story of "One Second" is inspired by Zhang Yimou's early experience, and 295,000 Douban netizens scored a score of 7.7 for the film. Someone commented, "Where is the film, the people who were buried in that era."
It's hard to say what the movie means to Zhang Yimou today.
At the premiere of "Sniper" on January 21, he wore a sweatshirt uniform issued by the crew, wore a baseball cap as always, and was as straight as ever. In the past two years, he has not become loose and tired because of his age, but has become more and more tense, reaching the most prolific stage of his profession. He habitually always advances several projects at the same time. When he was preparing to shoot "One Second", he was working on 9 projects at the same time, including films, stage performances, large-scale performances, etc., working 20 hours a day.
In the eyes of too many people, Zhang Yimou has long since stopped working so movies. With a given historical position and a written reputation, why add a few more strokes to this downward curve?
But Zhang Yimou obviously didn't think so. This film was made by him in preparation for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, and he "asked the organizing committee for two months of leave". Including this time to participate in the conference is also a time - almost a week later, it is the third rehearsal of the opening ceremony.
This arrangement may be so as not to repeat the mistakes of "Three Guns Shooting Surprise". Zhang Yimou's longest career as a director occurred around the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics — he stopped filming for two years in preparation for the opening ceremony, which was obviously "too long" for this workaholic. Writer Fang Xi revealed in the book "Zhang Yimou's Homework" that at that time, the script of "Jinling Thirteen Chao" was still changing, and it would not be able to enter the filming state for a while and a half, and Zhang Yimou was "anxious to rub his hands straight, want to grab something to clap, don't be born." The idea of filming "The Surprise of the Three Guns Shooting" came into being, and he began to save up his team to prepare for this "director's comeback". Later, this became Zhang Yimou's worst-known work.
Adapted from the Coen brothers' film Blood Labyrinth, "Three Guns Shooting Surprise" is Zhang Yimou's first New Year comedy after the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games
Maintaining film production is still where Zhang Yimou's high consciousness lies.
"Sniper" is one of the very few films in the Spring Festival of 2022 that organizes large-scale viewing in advance. In the eyes of the industry, this is usually a sign of confidence in the quality of the film. However, after the film watching activity, the original intention of the theater manager has not changed. The pre-sale results of "Sniper" are at the bottom of all 5 live-action movies in the Spring Festival file.
Not many people are even discussing his failure — in the past two years, Zhang Yimou's three words have gradually become a kind of existence for movies: it is not a "good film" or a "bad film", and people prefer to ambiguously call it "stable above the passing line". He can still find praiseworthy strengths in each of his films, but in the end, it is not an important work that must be seen.
Every film of Zhang Yimou has been hotly discussed. He was first criticized for "selling China's ignorance and backwardness to overseas", and after a few years, he became "whitewashing reality" and "praising totalitarianism". Later, every movie released can find a suitable review title in the sentences "Zhang Yimou Returns" and "Zhang Yimou is dead". Gradually, people didn't talk much about him. In the past ten years, the news of his extra-life punishment has often been mentioned as a window into the "celebrity life", which is used to support different views at different times and in different contexts.
Adapted from Su Tong's novel "A Flock of Wives and Concubines", "Hanging High with a Red Lantern" was released in North America in 1992, setting a record for the highest box office of a Chinese film in North America at that time, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Academy Awards
But his films are no longer so important. And this trend began in 2016 – and it was once his most brilliant moment. The moment was called The Great Wall, a Hollywood blockbuster.
At the time of preparing to shoot "The Great Wall", Zhang Yimou was in the midst of a booming reputation, holding a billion yuan of sky-high investment, and no domestic director could stand out. He picked actors like a general, Jing Tian, Lu Han, Peng Yuyan, Lin Xinxin, Zheng Kai, Huang Xuan, Chen Xuedong, Wang Junkai... The most popular and popular names are all included in his hands. There are also Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, William Dafoe, Andy Lau, Zhang Hanyu and other domestic and foreign superstars to join, and Zhang Yimou, who holds the title of "National Teacher", has satisfied the appetite of the audience.
"The Great Wall" Chinese the position arrangement of the stars on the poster, which was once talked about by netizens
Another detail that corroborates the status of "The Great Wall" at that time is that his daughter Zhang Mo's directorial debut "28-year-old minor" was scheduled to be released a week before "The Great Wall". Previously, Zhang Mo had been "interning" in Zhang Yimou's crew, one moment as an editor and the other as an assistant director. Zhang Yimou painstakingly chose this opportunity to officially introduce the director's daughter to the public - and the film starred in the former "Girl" Ni Ni.
"The Great Wall" and "28-year-old minor" were released before and after, and were also interpreted by the outside world as Zhang Yimou's "debut with his daughter". In November of that year, Liu Zhenyun's "One Sentence Top 10,000 Sentences" written by Liu Zhenyun and directed by his daughter Liu Yulin was released in China, and "father-daughter file" became a topic of street talk. Zhang Yimou and Zhang Mo's "father-daughter fight together" have added a new firewood to this topic. But soon, people found that whether it was Zhang Yimou's "The Great Wall" or Zhang Mo's "28-year-old minor", it was a failure to meet expectations.
On December 3, 2016, Zhang Yimou appeared at the Beijing press conference of "28-year-old minor" to stand for his daughter Zhang Mo
That year, Zhang Yimou was 66 years old, and the voice of "Jiang Lang's talent" was endless. Years later, Matt Damon said cryptically in an interview: "That's how disasters are brewed." When the original idea is removed, it becomes inconsistent, not like a movie. Even, every time Matt Damon mentioned the film, his daughter would joke that the title should be "The Wall" rather than "The Great Wall" — because it wasn't Great at all.
In the three years after "The Great Wall", Zhang Yimou released only one movie - "Shadow" starring Deng Chao and Sun Li. This film obviously carries the director's sustenance of turning over, and the high concentration of Zhang Yimou's aesthetic is everywhere. But unfortunately, its box office that year was 628 million, ranking 27th - even if it is not a box office success or failure, that year, the public's memory of domestic films is "Red Sea Action", "I am not a medicine god", and even "The richest man in Xihong" and "Predecessor 3". Shadow belongs to the forgotten end.
Shadow
In 2022, the name Zhang Mo appeared again, and in the list of directors of "Sniper", the father and daughter "co-directed". Zhang Yimou explained that because there are several snowy days of the year, there are only two months to shoot, in order to avoid the embarrassing situation of "the scene is not finished, the snow will melt", decided to invite his daughter to join him.
This may be the real reason – but there is certainly more than one solution to this problem. Or it can be said that family affection is probably one of the reasons why Zhang Yimou is still working in the film field.
Compared with the battle and retreat in the film field, in the past decade or so, Zhang Yimou's other identity has become more and more irreplaceable - since the Beijing Olympic Games, he has been called "Guoshi". After that, he was also the director of a series of national image projects: the general director of the 60th Anniversary of the National Day Gala, the director of the APEC Welcome Dinner and theatrical performance, the director of the "G20 Summit" theatrical performance in Hangzhou, the general director of the 70th Anniversary of the National Day Gala...
At these times, no one is as ready to come and fight as he is. His experience, aesthetics, resources, and temperament determine that he is the best person, or the only one, who can safely entrust such tasks.
Documentary "Zhang Yimou's 2008"
Many years ago, Zhang Yimou said to the writer Fang Xi, "I had this consciousness at the beginning and made myself quickly instrumentalized. Instrumentalization is useful, people have use, some things will not find you, you will have a gap to survive. This is his few "self-interpretation" moments, compared with his early experience can be chewed out of the deep meaning: playing small is not good - his father graduated from the Whampoa Military Academy, his mother is a dermatologist, under fear, he tried to practice painting huge propaganda posters, writing oversized fine art words, teaching himself photography, before entering the factory as a worker. Before being admitted to the Beijing Film Academy, he considered going to the Northwest Agricultural College to study animal husbandry and planned to become a veterinarian after graduation. Later, when he went to film school, the classmates around him were not only ten years younger than him, but also many came from an artistic family, no way, he had to "fight with the most stupid efforts to catch up."
Probably that's why he can't stop. So far, he has been a man who determines his value by being "useful" – he always positions himself as, "I am a worker."
Zhang Yimou on the set of "Sniper"
Of course, there are other explanations. For example, he said to film critic Shi Hang, "I am such a bunch of old partners, do not make movies, what reason to bring everyone together." ”
In addition, Zhang Yimou is still insisting on making movies, and there is probably another reason - in "Sniper", his eldest son Zhang Yinan is also involved. In 2019, Zhang Yimou took his son on the cover of the magazine, just as he brought his daughter on the cover in 2016. Although Zhang Yinan's participation was not included in the film's publicity points, his mother Chen Ting praised her son on Weibo as early as February 2021: "I could have been comfortable at home for the New Year, but I plunged into the crew", "We never have unrealistic expectations of children, only ask to do everything down-to-earth and wholeheartedly".
Zhang Yimou is 72 years old this year, and he has always been the "parent" of this big family. Sense of responsibility, instrumentality, affection, friendship... In his world, there are so many things in the front place, and it is so far from the imagination of human society for the word "artist". And it is all of this that together constitute Zhang Yimou's appearance today.
(Source: Tencent News)
* Some images are from the internet