Speaking of Zhang Yimou. From the art characters and propaganda poster masters in the middle school insertion period, to the backbone of the blackboard newspaper and photography talents of the Xianyang Guomian Eighth Factory.
At the age of 27, he was admitted to the Photography Department of the Beijing Film Academy, won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival at the age of 40, and became a world-famous director and a national -- "big scene expert" today.
His aesthetics really have too many places that people want to know more about, and look forward to tracing the origins.
In general, Zhang Yimou's aesthetic has three particularly prominent points, namely:
For the application of color, for the performance of the body, as well as a strong sense of history and home and country.
And after understanding this, we may have such a feeling, that is, the helmsman of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, in this era, can probably only be Zhang Yimou.
color
This is the part that we cannot avoid when we talk about Zhang Yimou's aesthetic style.
Directed by Zhang Yimou, there are 26 films that have been filmed and released so far. There are four most existential colors, namely red, yellow, blue-green and black and white.
They sometimes appear in a single color tendency, and sometimes they are displayed in a mixed manner. Together, they constitute our basic impression of Zhang Yimou's visual aesthetics.
For example, in his debut film "Red Sorghum" in 1988, red is the undoubted king tone.
A series of red shapes in the film, including but not limited to, red head rope, red flower, red line, red cap
Safflower palanquin, red embroidered shoes, red candles, red bedding
Red window flowers, red sorghum wine
Red flames, red flags, and red sunsets
Even the skin of Jiu'er, the caravan and the winery guys was much redder than normal
And so on. The main color of "Ten Faces Ambush" is green, and "Full of Golden Armor" is golden yellow.
"Hawthorn Tree Love" is blue-green, and "Shadow" is the black and white of determination.
Zhang Yimou's choice of these main tones seems to be wide open and closed, without trace. In reality, however, each story is rigorously matched to color according to its emotional tone.
For example, red corresponds to the feelings of home and country and the passion of life that are soaked in "Red Sorghum".
The green color of "Ten Faces Ambush" should coincide with the attractiveness and danger of the situation encountered by the protagonists.
The stories in Heroes vary greatly in tone, so use variegated colors
In addition to directly using color to summarize the development of the story and the fate of the characters, Zhang Yimou will also use color to subtly advance the narrative.
For example, the movie "Ju Dou" released in 1990, red dye and red cloth, are quite key images. A metaphor for taboos and passions
However, as the story develops, Yang Jinshan, who has committed many evils, eventually drowned in the crimson dyeing pool
The humble and affectionate Azure was killed by his son in a bright red dyeing pool
Life is also red, and death is also red. One crimson and one bright red, the former gloomy and strange, the latter intense and direct, just like their lives.
Such methods of contrasting colors with fate also appeared in the movies "Shake, Shake, Shake to Grandma's Bridge" and "The Big Red Lantern Hangs High".
For example, the sad fate of the little Golden Treasure canary made the brilliant red around her look extremely dazzling
A variety of large and small red lanterns, red gauze tents, curtains, clothes and pepper skewers. It also makes the earth-blue deep mansion compound look extremely depressing and lonely, and even reveals a little weirdness
In the heavy "Jinling Thirteen Chao", Zhang Yimou set the theme color as a sad, depressed purple and red tone blue
Visible color is actually a tool for Zhang Yimou to tell stories and express feelings.
He is extremely good at using color to stimulate the sensory instincts of the audience and mobilize the latter's emotional response. Without words, it can make people cry, make people laugh, make people melancholy, make people happy.
Morandi-style gray tones are not his dish at all. His aesthetic of color emphasizes the directness of the senses rather than the elegance of the intellect. So he said
"I want to be completely bright, and all the colors must be frightening, even if it is a little vulgar."
For the performance of the body
In addition to color, the body is also a very important part of Zhang Yimou's aesthetics.
Counting the past of successive "girl girls", it is not difficult to find that most of them are dancers, and everyone has a good body language.
Beautiful dance passages aside.
They walk or lie down, or stand or chase, in fact, they are "moisturizing and silent" to enrich the audience's aesthetic experience, thus adding a lot of charm to the film itself.
In addition, Zhang Yimou also likes to express the sense of strength and desire of the body, such as the large number of male carcasses in "Red Sorghum"
In movies such as "Ju Dou", "Ten Faces Ambush", "The Golden Armor in the City", "Jinling Thirteen Chao" and other movies, various parts of the female body
In addition to these bold and direct physical performances, Zhang Yimou also tried to deform, distort and exaggerate the body in the movie "Have Something to Say"
This creates a sensual rather than ideological atmosphere for the film, which is very urban, emotional and lively. Let this short and pithy comedy become a relaxed and special existence in Zhang Yimou's works.
In "Qiu Ju Fights a Lawsuit" and "No One Can Be Less", Zhang Yimou has designed the body that seems natural and everyday, but full of meaning.
For example, Qiu Ju's typical action is to walk slowly and clumsily with a pregnant belly, metaphorically referring to the innocence, integrity and stubbornness of the whole movie "Qiu Ju just wants to ask for an explanation"
Wei Minzhi in "No One Can Be Less" does not have many lines, but it is not difficult for us to extract Wei Minzhi's frank and stubborn personality from Zhang Yimou's performance of her dancing, writing, moving bricks and other actions
The subsequent plot, therefore, has gained logical rationality in our consciousness.
A person's body is a reflection of his inner spirit and the stimulation of the surrounding environment, and Zhang Yimou keenly captures this.
Together with the "color" in front, his aesthetic can easily transcend the barriers of language and have a universal attraction to the public.
Sense of history and home and country
This is the third key point of Zhang Yimou's aesthetics.
Unlike Lou Ye and Jia Zhangke, who like to focus the lens on small people and marginal characters.
As a fifth-generation director, Zhang Yimou actually carries a heavy sense of history and family feelings in the development of his personal creative spirit.
This makes him always want to respond to history, and always have a sense of responsibility to do something for the collective.
So we can see that his creation is always highly consistent with the needs of the times.
The eighties and nineties needed to reflect on history, and he made "Alive".
In the post-2000 era, a commercial blockbuster that needed to bombard the senses, he made Heroes, Ten Faces Ambush, and The Golden Armor in the City.
Later, he acted as a planner and presenter of various large scenes. For example, the real-life performance of "Impression Liu Sanjie"
As well as celebrations such as the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
Such values make Zhang Yimou's aesthetic always have a need to have a dialogue with as many people as possible.
The assessment that "the masses like it" is by no means pejorative to him.
Speaking of which, we may try to summarize Zhang Yimou's aesthetics, that is:
With the feelings of home and country as the background, the needs of the times as the most important creative driving force, and such an aesthetic style that pays great attention to sensory intuition.
Grand, direct, thick and romantic, full of a kind of innocence of "asking who is the lord of the vast land" and an unstoppable vitality.
This is actually very close to the new Chinese temperament of "daring to call the sun and the moon for a new day".
Therefore, Chen Yanhui, the art director of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, said that Zhang Yimou is the most representative Chinese symbol in the literary and art circles.
The person at the helm of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games can no doubt only be him.
Speaking of this, Zhang Yimou's aesthetics actually have an important source, that is, his own exuberant vitality and firm will to life.
Whether it is the strong colors mentioned earlier, the blood veins or the light and powerful body, or the feelings of home and country created for the times.
None of these aesthetic qualities require a strong heart as a support.
Whether it was as a worker in a cotton mill, he carefully copied photography textbooks and took notes in flat body.
Or borrow a friend's toilet as a darkroom, and work all night to make a portfolio.
For decades, he worked seventeen or eight hours a day (in addition to self-motivation, of course, because he was naturally energetic, and everyone was cautious to imitate.)
), treat business trips as if they were traveling.
Zhang Yimou's many pasts are proving to us that he is indeed such a person. Buried in hard work, desperately hard work, the heart is very large, the shoulders are very wide, as if it can digest all the sorrows.
Zhang Yimou, who wants to do a good job in the opening ceremonies of the two Olympic Games, holds the big scene in front of billions of people, and wins the full hall from top to bottom, is always called "old strategist".
There are probably always some points that are ridiculing his survival wisdom of being left and right and deeply familiar with the world.
However, in his aesthetics, it is not difficult for us to perceive something square and powerful, similar to the aura that the tracks have been chiseled out of the road over the years.
Sincere and direct. You can dislike it, but that doesn't prevent it from becoming an unquestionable existence.
Pulling aside the floating clouds of fame and fortune, in Zhang Yimou, what we finally see is actually a "selfless" walker.
He makes mistakes, he corrects, he fails but never justifies.
Straight to life, moving forward. It is his aesthetic, but also his life.