As soon as the spring is over, in fact, there is no sign of spring in the city, but the wind is really different, it seems to become warm and humid overnight, and as soon as such a wind blows, I want to cry.
- "Li Chun"
The Peacock
In April 2003, Gu Changwei's film debut "Peacock" was launched in Anyang, Henan Province, which invested 15 million yuan and scored 8.1 points on Douban (more than 110,000 people scored), and won the Silver Bear Award at the 55th Berlin Film Festival. The director's cut is said to be 244 minutes long, while the final version is 141 minutes. "Peacock" marks the formation of Gu Changwei's self-style, he wrote a grand and tragic small town story with his superb directing skills, and it is also a melancholy and frustrated epic of the Central Plains civilians, and with a neat and atmospheric photography style and extremely professional exquisite composition, he created a picture of the "Qingming River Map" in the north in the 1970s and 1980s.
After "Peacock", Gu Changwei began to prepare for his second feature film "Li Chun", Gu Changwei attached great importance to the script, so the screenwriter of "Li Chun" still chose Li Fan, who had previously cooperated with "Peacock". In 2006, Li Fan once revealed: "Li Chun" and "Peacock", is still a huge production depicting vicissitudes of the world, the drama structure is a group drama, there are seven or eight main characters alone, the clues are complicated, the branches are numerous, Wang Cailing played by Jiang Wenli is only one of the characters, others such as Huang Sibao played by Li Guangjie, Zhou Yu played by Wu Guohua, and Xiao Zhang teacher played by Dong Xuan are important characters who can be equal to Jiang Wenli. And these characters also have their own plot threads and story endings: for example, Huang Sibao finally became a pyramid schemer, Zhou Yu was blinded in order to save a girl, and Teacher Xiao Zhang became a nun. And all these scenes Gu Changwei was completed in the early stage of filming.
《Li Chun》
In addition, in order to link up with "Peacock", Gu Changwei also specially invited Zhang Jingchu, Lü Yulai, and Feng Grain, the "three sisters and brothers of the peacock", to make a cameo appearance at the end of the film for a long time, and all the characters continued the identity and name in "Peacock". It is rumored that it was a scene of buying lottery tickets, first let The "silly brother" Gao Weiguo, played by Feng Grain, meet Wang Cailing, and then arrange for Gao Weihong, played by Zhang Jingchu, to have a dialogue with Wang Cailing, when the two women were old and were walking their dogs in the square, Gao Weihong suddenly recognized Wang Cailing and asked her: "Aren't you my classmate?" When I was sitting behind you, didn't I hear that you were transferred to Beijing? The two then had a conversation. For this scene, Gu Changwei once said: "This passage of screenwriter Li Fan is very wonderfully written, life encounters, fate mockery, are all in it." Gu Changwei also bluntly said that this scene is "Frankly speaking, it is a big scene, and frankly speaking, it is very important." But Gu Changwei also said: "We did eight or nine months of editing in the later stage, Zhang Jing did a good job at the beginning, but there was no way, because the tone of her part did not match the whole film, and I felt that this arrangement was too similar to a Hollywood literary film." I still like simple emotions, so before going to Rome to participate in the exhibition, I changed the ending and removed the part of Zhang Jingchu. That is to say, Gu Changwei believes that "Li Chun" is an independent individual, the story and characters should be distinct and plump, and this dark line is a continuous thing, deleted in order not to make the film look too messy.
For Gu Changwei's "official" remarks, many people do not think so.
Jiang Wenli
In 2008, some media broke out that in fact, when they were at the Berlin Film Festival, many people were optimistic about Zhang Jingchu, but a film critic said that although Zhang Jingchu acted well in "Peacock", he only accounted for one-half of the scene and would not win the award. When "Li Chun" was released, Gu Changwei not only deleted the scene of Zhang Jingchu at the end, but also deleted all the ending scenes of Li Guangjie, Wu Guohua, Dong Xuan and other people who had been filmed, only retaining jiang Wenli's ending, which made Jiang Wenli the absolute protagonist of the film, not only throughout, but also all the plots and conflicts were almost all around Jiang Wenli, and the film also deviated from the original intention of screenwriter Li Fan, from "group drama" to "one-man show".
Regarding the relationship between Gu Changwei and Zhang Jingchu, there are also many opinions.
Gu Changwei and Zhang Jingchu
Gu Changwei and Zhang Jingchu have known each other very early, Zhang Jingchu as early as the Central Academy of Drama when the directing department, Gu Changwei often went to the dormitory to visit her, in 1999 Gu Changwei also specially for Zhang Jingchu's graduation drama "Xihe" "palm mirror", Zhang Jingchu later signed Li Shaohong's Rong Xinda is also recommended by Gu Changwei, in "Peacock", the names of other actors are arranged in a concentrated manner, only Zhang Jingchu's name is listed separately, and in "Lichun", although Zhang Jingchu's role was deleted, But Gu Changwei still typed the words "Special Performance: Gao Weihong (Zhang Jingchu)" on the end credits. Interestingly, at the end of "Peacock", Gu Changwei also specially typed four words "Thank you Wenli".
Gu Changwei and Jiang Wenli
On April 10, 2008, the grand premiere ceremony of the movie "Li Chun" was held in Beijing, and not only Gu Changwei and Jiang Wenli were present, but also Wu Yusen, Jiang Wen, Xu Jinglei and others attended the ceremony. Some media described Gu Changwei and Jiang Wenli as "as excited as they were married, they even took the initiative to maintain the order of the scene, and then when they met with the audience in the theater, Gu Changwei and Jiang Wenli were even more husbands and wives, showing love and winning applause, it can be said that April 10 is the highest-profile and most beautiful day for Gu Changwei and Jiang Wenli, a star couple."
According to a person from the producer of "Li Chun", the original premiere was intended to invite Zhang Jingchu, and later it was said that Zhang Jingchu said that he wanted to go to Hong Kong to participate in the film festival, and there was no invitation. But according to the reporter's discovery, on April 10, Zhang Jingchu did not go to Hong Kong, but in Beijing Near the Shuangjing Bridge near the R&F City Club fitness run, when the media wrote with emotional strokes, "Zhang Jingchu practiced very hard, the range of movements is relatively large, the rhythm is also very fast, the mouth is still gently shouting slogans, it seems that the heart is fierce to go with themselves, after a while the sweat will flow down, soaked clothes, Zhang Jingchu while wiping his face with a towel while continuing to run hard, without the slightest intention of stopping, After practicing on the treadmill for 50 minutes, Zhang Jingchu practiced with two dumbbells, and had a hard time hitting and smashing everything. ”
After that, the news that Zhang Jingchu was banned by the so-called "Director's Wife Group" came out, and Zhang Jingchu later responded that when she heard the news, she said that "I feel that I will vomit blood", she once said, "I feel that I have problems in this regard, many times I will avoid, I will not look, and then do not respond." ”
Zhang Jingchu
In fact, although Zhang Jingchu has focused his work on Hong Kong since "Li Chun", participating in "Witness", "Eavesdropping", "Whole City Alert", "Peerless", etc., he did not give up the mainland market, but still participated in "Red River", "Tangshan Earthquake", "Gravity", "Tianji Fuchun Mountain Jutu", "Three-Body", "Twenty Years of Northeast China" and other movies.
And everything that happened around "Li Chun" is slowly being forgotten, just like the movie said, "Every spring comes, it actually doesn't mean anything, but I always feel as if something big is going to happen, my heart is always ready to move, but when the whole spring has passed, nothing has happened at all, I am very disappointed, as if I missed something." ”
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