In reality, the public knows that the intersection of Zhou Xingchi and Zhang Yimou is very small, according to my personal impression, that is, during the creation of "Tang Bohu Dian Qiu Xiang", when Zhang Yimou answered Gong Li's doubts about the "nonsense performance method", between words, he expressed his appreciation for Zhou Xingchi's performance method. That said, the two top filmmakers also have a common feature, that is, they both try to change their fate with movies, and even to a certain extent, they try to answer their own lives with movies.
And not only Chow Sing Chi and Zhang Yimou, but even people such as Wong Kar-wai and Liang Chaowei are also the same. And another notable thing about these top filmmakers is that they are involved in both art and commercial film. This is a particularly interesting phenomenon, a pure literary filmmaker, in theory, should be away from the influence of commercial elements, and a pure commercial director should escape the shackles of art films. But directors like Stephen Chow and Zhang Yimou, who can double harvest in word of mouth and box office, they must have certain achievements in both the field of art and business. If film needs dramatic conflict, then this contradiction between art and business is the dramatic conflict of top filmmakers such as Zhang Yimou and Zhou Xingchi.
At the beginning of the film, Zhou Xingchi did not think too much, he just couldn't become a generation of masters like the idol Bruce Lee in kung fu. Reluctantly, he chose to pay tribute to his idol through the movie. But after entering the entertainment industry, I found that the ideal is very full, and the reality is very bone. The career of running the dragon set alone is nearly 10 years, fortunately, the difficulties of reality have not stopped Stephen Chow's film dreams, but after years of exploration, Stephen Chow has not become a generation of grandmasters on the screen, but has become the "king of comedy". The bitterness and pain in this are only understood by Zhou Xingchi himself, but the biggest problem is actually not the hardships experienced by the flesh and the suffering experienced by the spirit, but after the success of his career, Zhou Xingchi suddenly found himself a lonely person.
Similar to the situation of Zhou Xingchi, Zhang Yimou at the beginning of the film, he just wanted to change his fate through photography work. When he went to take the college entrance examination, Zhang Yimou was already 29 years old and would soon reach the age of establishment. Just did not catch up with the good times, in a specific historical period, Zhang Yimou suffered setbacks in his studies and career, and his artistic cells could not be displayed. In order to chase his dream, Zhang Yimou applied for the Beijing Film Academy that year, and after several setbacks, Zhang Yimou finally became a college student in the photography department. Since then, Zhang Yimou's life has been like opening and hanging, hurrying up and catching up, and finally at the age of 37, with the director's debut "Red Sorghum", he became famous in one fell swoop.
Later Zhang Yimou and Zhou Xingchi we generally understand, they began to gain fame, wealth, beauty. Why is it beautiful and not love? Because from all indications, filmmakers like them are lonely in their hearts after all. In the materialistic world, they carried artistic ideals and went on a rampage in the film circle and achieved impressive achievements. But what? In the end, they are just the tools of those businessmen to make money, and business does not need to understand art, they only need to understand why the audience buys tickets.
So Zhou Xingchi had to worry about how to let the audience buy tickets, and for a period of time, the audience's reaction was the key criterion for Zhou Xingchi to create a film. Until one day, Zhou Xingchi and the old drama bone Wu Mengda were at the back of the screen, and they saw a room full of audiences laughing and laughing, and they also laughed. The audience is laughing at their performance, and they are laughing at the audience's reaction. This success affirms their achievements to some extent, but also brings them to the other side of the ideal.
In 1995, Stephen Chow's self-directed and self-starred film "Journey to the West" was released, which was highly anticipated by Stephen Chow, but the response was mediocre after its release. I think Zhou Xingchi's loneliness began at this time, before this film, Zhou Xingchi was roughly what the audience liked, and he wanted to find a way to act. Until the movie "Journey to the West", Zhou Xingchi realized that his works must have a higher spiritual pursuit, but this time he was disappointed, this work that he devoted his heart to was not as popular with the audience as those bad films. When Stephen Chow tried to be sincere, the audience felt that he was making a mistake.
It wasn't until a few years later that "Journey to the West" began to become popular on the Internet, and the film began to be sought after by a group of mainland college students. However, Zhou Xingchi himself did not understand the title of "Postmodernist Masterpiece" that "Journey to the West" was titled, and he did not even know why "Journey to the West" was sought after. Since then, Zhou Xingchi's personality has begun to become withdrawn, although later he directed and acted in the movie "The King of Comedy", "Shaolin Football", "Kung Fu" and other masterpieces, but Zhou Xingchi understood that there was a so-called "movie ticket" between him and the audience.
The box office is the audience's best affirmation of the filmmaker, and the box office is also the biggest distance between the filmmaker and the audience. If a film is created with the goal of box office from the beginning, then the film can hardly be fully considered to be the spiritual connotation that the filmmaker wants to express. And if a movie doesn't have a box office, filmmakers even lose the opportunity to make a movie. The top filmmakers such as Stephen Chow and Zhang Yimou are still like this, not to mention those small filmmakers who are still struggling for their lives?
While the film records life, it is also the filmmakers who express their lives. Between the light and shadow on the screen, it is the filmmaker's exploration and expression of his own life. However, when creating films, they are also wrapped up in the various demands of investors, audiences, and even male and female protagonists. Behind such a not-so-pure film, filmmakers have become more and more lonely and lost. They spend their whole lives appealing for a power, but after exhausting all their efforts, they find that the process of creating a film is like life.
We strive to live in this world, carrying the original ideals, bravely facing the unknown far away. But after the rampage and twists and turns, we finally recognize the ordinary life and the reality of the world. Even if we want to talk to ourselves, even if we want to use the most sincere way of film, but every audience just wants to see their own story in it, this is the loneliness and selfishness of being born as a human being, what really connects us is only our desire to express ourselves, and our souls who are born lonely.