Segmented movies are the most familiar film methods for countless chinese film youth in the era of VCD and DVD prevalence. That is to say, in the last decade of the last century, segmented films once became the top priority of the world trend.
Many movie upstarts, their tough works, have chosen this block or circular narrative posture. For example, Mirko Manchevsky's "The Rainstorm Is Coming", Inayado Gonzalez Iriedo's "Love is a Dog Lady", Tom Tikwe's "Lola Run".
"The Rainstorm Is Coming"
Prior to this, Robert Altman's "Short Film Collection", based on a series of novels by Raymond Carver, should be said to have established the highest achievement of segmented film from form to content. And Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction's Palme d'Or pushed this wave to the forefront. Quentin himself was extremely fascinated by the two flowers from the East, that is, Wong Kar-wai's most brilliant masterpiece "Chongqing Forest". Its sister story, Fallen Angels, follows the same path.
Chongqing Forest
After that, Wong Kar-wai's most loyal believer Li Xin also concocted "Talk about Love" and "Flower Eye", and Zhang Yang's "Love Spicy hot" was a collection of stars from all walks of life, and the box office of this year seemed to be good. But it is certainly not as beautiful as Feng Xiaogang's first New Year's eve film "Party A and Party B", he told seven ridiculous dreams in one breath.
In the new century, Hou Xiaoxian ("The Best Time"), Jiang Wen ("The Sun Also Rises"), Du Qifeng ("Death Gold") and others also joined in.
The Best of Times
The most famous segmented film in the world is undoubtedly film pioneer David Griffith's "The Party Fights Differently". The history of thousands of years up and down is vast, making people confused about what is the downstream and what is the countercurrent, but they still show the great atmosphere of the merging current.
In recent years, the most intensive cultivator of segmented films is naturally the more comfortable it is to shoot, and the more you shoot, the more you can return the tangible to the invisible, and the most important author director in South Korea, Hong Changxiu. In 2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who has become a new upstart in the international film industry, also has his sentences.
"The Party Fights Against differences"
When it comes to Chinese segmented films, the earliest impression is "Pressing The Year money" directed by Zhang Ishichuan, the most important forerunner of Chinese cinema, and written by Xia Yan. It's just that this piece is more like a bead chain movie from a structural point of view. The bustling sentient beings strung together by a silver dollar are all the sentient beings that Brother Kong Fang has fallen for.
After 1949, the most important segmented film was "Unfinished Comedy" directed by the actor-turned-director Lu Ban, because the last story of this film was directed at the electronic review department at that time. The film was banned for many years, and Lu Ban's own fate was extremely miserable. Lu Ban is a rare comedy director in China and a master of making short films. But the one who is really known as the king of the world's short film is Li Hanxiang from Hong Kong.
"Unfinished Comedy" "Unfinished Comedy"
Since "The Great Warlord" created a box office myth, he concocted a series of short film highlights with the wind and moon as the selling point, which is also a kind of segmented film. It feels that Li Hanxiang was deeply influenced by Pierre Paul Pasolini, especially Pasolini's trilogy of life, the "Trilogy of Life", namely "Decameron", "The Story of Canterbury" and "One Thousand and One Nights". Not only has it absorbed the disconnect between things, but it is also a pleasure to receive the great desires of people in the world that do not have to be scrupulous.
The Canterbury Story
Speaking of Chinese segmented films, Chinese classical novels are actually particularly in line with the appearance of segmented films, just as Chinese paintings are characterized by scattered perspective, and Chinese classical novels are scattered narratives. The same is true of the Water Margin, the History of Ru Lin, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The same is true of Han Qingbang's "Biography of Flowers on the Sea", as well as Jin Yong's "Tianlong Babu", the most prestigious novel "Blossoms" until the last decade, taking such a seemingly modern, but actually retro path.
"Blossoms"
This kind of novel does not have a strong plot throughout, let alone a big conflict that triggers the driving force of the narrative, especially the appearance of the characters, the first character has not yet completed the task, the second character is on the scene, a full-tailed, mobilizing the audience's emotions and emotions of the story is not the first priority, and the change of perspective and the interspersing of sight can weave a web of meaning that is difficult to say. The audience is like a tourist, full of mountains and rivers, and can encounter willows and dark flowers at any time.
This kind of sloppy narrative attitude cannot be completely said to be the rebellion of fragments against the whole, nor is it easy to say that this is the accumulation of individual events to form a tower of sand. I prefer to believe that this is the cause of pleasure, just like we sometimes meet a lot of people in a day, and we encounter a lot of things, but these people and things from a utilitarian point of view, it seems that they can't be on our minds. But that's how we are, day in and day out, year after year. Most of life consists of only skirmishes and no big dramas.
I think the best scattered novels or segmented films are all obsessed with traces that we don't care about, but after all, there are traces. They do not want to run to the end of meaning, nor do they believe that the chain of cause and effect will trigger the flow rate of life. It is decentralized in narrative, and in expression, everyone has a marginal area, and this shameful, more often disdainful part of humanity, is really your own. In 1987, Zheng Dongtian's "Mandarin Duck Tower" was such a movie.
Mandarin Duck Tower
Chen Kaige has said in various ways that his three favorite movies are "Lin Jia Puzi", "The Price of Madness" and "Mandarin Duck Building". He also proved this with practical actions, he cooperated with the screenwriter of "The Price of Madness" Reed in "Farewell to the Overlord", and with wang Peigong, the screenwriter of "Mandarin Duck Tower", "Jing Ke Thorn Qin King". To put it a little bit, the screenwriter of "Lin JiaPuzi" is called Xia Gong by later generations, the great Chinese playwright Xia Yan. When Chen Kaige became famous, the old man was already unable to write.
I can't remember Chen Kaige's praise for "Mandarin Duck Tower", to the effect that this is an extremely scarce life flow movie in China, and Chinese movies can talk about people in this way, without any ideological tools.
For work reasons, I have seen Zheng Dongtian many times, and when I talked to him about "Mandarin Duck Tower", he said that when he studied at the Beijing Film Academy, he was very fascinated by Italian neorealism, especially admiring Rossellini's films. At the same time, as a scholar, Zheng Dongtian can naturally assert that Rossellini is the initiator of the true meaning of modern cinema. He also particularly liked Rossellini's partisan guerrillas, a masterpiece of segmented cinema in the history of world cinema. But what is the specific reference between "Mandarin Duck Tower" and "Guerrilla", I did not get an answer from Zheng Dongtian.
"Fire of War"
The original intention of the filming of "Mandarin Duck Tower" was to make a visual graduation tour for the 1985 acting department actor training class of the Beijing Film Academy. That class, known as the Star Class, was a job title designation for the actors in the studios of the time. Therefore, the subtitles at the beginning of the film are the names of actors, such as Ji Ling, Tian Shaojun, Fang Hui, He Wei, Liu Jian, Zhao Yue, Xiao Xiong, Liu Xinyi, Guo Kaimin, Song Chunli, Guo Xuxin, Song Xiaoying, and Zhao Fuyu.
There are famous and notable. There are also teachers in the acting department, and I recognize Xie Yuan and Cui Xinqin. No matter how you look at it, it is a bit of a scene-appropriate posture, but it has no intention of inserting a unique scenery.
The background of the film shooting is that in order to solve the dilemma of the elderly youth having no house after marriage, the Beijing Municipal Government built a "Mandarin Duck Building" next to the Shuang'an Shopping Mall in Shuangyushu ("Detective Hunter Zhang" was also filmed here), about 40 square meters, one room and one living room, one kitchen and one bathroom, and the couple could only live in the couple whose age was more than 55 years old.
All six stories were told, each of which averaged 20 minutes, adding up to exactly two hours. The time of the film is also consistent, from afternoon to evening. The first couple, supposedly workers, were not very good-tempered, they were arguing, and just as the hurt was about to escalate, the doorbell rang. It turns out that their main task today is to act as an introducer.
The young man and woman were shy and looked extremely uninhibited. After sending away their respective friends, the two small couples, the mood actually improved, and went to the market to buy the fish tank that had just been broken and broken, which was a bit of a broken mirror and a new circle. But on the way home, they couldn't control their temper and were about to let go of their voices. The wife found the seemingly unrelated young man and woman standing in the light rain, as if waiting for fei to stand in the bus stop. The couple seemed to feel something, and when they got home, the reasons for the quarrel came again, but they didn't know whether to keep arguing.
The second couple, the male is the factory director, and the female occupation is unknown. The man and his female driver dated, and in the restaurant, the director's mind was inexplicably faded. The woman returned to her mother's house, and the family could not see what was on her daughter's mind. Two absent-minded dinners, but let the couple have a relatively warm hug.
The third couple, the husband is a painter, the woman's similar occupation is unknown. This time it was the woman's turn to cheat, and an uncontrolled old man went to a quiet place, and when it came, she still braked the car. When I got home, I found that my husband had painted a portrait of himself.
The fourth couple is more funny, but it can be understood in that era. The man wanted to find a girl with pure love, but this girl was too pure and too emotional, and she was completely unenlightened about the matter of husband and wife. He had to get home videos and the like to enlighten his little wife. It is estimated that the wife really can't accept the way the goblin looks when fighting, and the situation is even more embarrassing. Fortunately, the matchmaker came to the door and taught the couple a lesson, so that they had the appearance that a new marriage should have.
The fifth couple, who had nothing to do with each other, mainly entertained a large table of people to eat. The wife has been busy since the afternoon, buying vegetables, cooking, and taking time to wash clothes and tidy up the housework. When she was busy, her face was expressionless. When you see a guest, you will be blowing the wind all over your face. When the guests were fully fed and satisfied, they were not busy, but her husband, who was equally tired, collapsed on the sofa. At this time, she received a call, and she promised the next meal. I don't know what the scale is.
The sixth couple, both ready to go to graduate school, they don't even have the kung fu to cook, the man is really overwhelmed by instant noodles, and the woman agrees to go to the restaurant to change their appetite. Zhen sat down, and his wife still saw the needle in the warm book. The man was really bored, so he teased a child at the table. So he proposed to his wife that the plan of creating people should be put on the agenda. The wife did not object, but this female pedant was really a particular person. Washing needless to say, but also laying another layer of sheets on the sheets, playing the right music, wearing suitable pajamas, and the husband also has to wear pajamas that meet the edge of her eyes. When she finished taking her most fertile body temperature, her husband, who was originally excited, could not lift his spirits, but he still touched his wife's hand affectionately.
First of all, some regrets about "Mandarin Duck Tower", the sound composition of the film is not very good, the problem is that it also relies on live radio, which causes the actor's dialogue to often be inaudible. At that time, there were not many films recorded during the same period, and later it once became the standard for a large number of thoughtful films in China.
It can be said that this is a technical problem and cannot fully involve the aesthetic category. There are also advantages, the sound elements of the whole film are not many, and the layers are also very single, but it brings a kind of tranquility. In addition, in this film that pursues objectivity and pays attention to the sense of flow, individual stories, or the moments when the creator can't help but talk, and even some stories, can not be completely self-consistent.
As a performance report, the biggest strength of "Mandarin Duck Tower" is still performance, there is the self-consciousness of the actors themselves, but more importantly, the style itself has determined the direction of the performance. To show the ambiguity of the people in the smallest possible performance range. You have a big action, a full emotion, and the message you convey is often single, and there is no other path to go but directivity. Therefore, you can only deal with the disturbance of this red dust with ambiguity, clean up the confetti of the land, or the sweetness of a tree.
Among so many actors, the most outstanding is Song Chunli and Song Xiaoying, song Chunli, when facing her husband and her female students, she grasps the measure with her style, and tells the innocent schoolgirl with a gun and a stick that she is the owner of this house. But he couldn't bear to beat his husband, and his sullen breath was coiled in his heart, but he could squeeze out a little bit of generosity that even he hated. She said, "He's bad, he's painted my nude." Song Chunli's expression could not tell whether it was a demonstration or indulging in the past, which was really good.
Song Xiaoying's lines are very small, relying entirely on body language to write characters, but it is by no means a pantomime performance. She plays a sense of immersion, trapped in endless toil without knowing it. Her performance is like this housewife's handling of complicated household chores, precise and calm, and bringing out the mechanical sense that talents have.
Many people have asked me the story of "Mandarin Duck Tower" that I like the most. I said first and fifth. Every crack in one's own emotions is mended by the union of others. We can only breathe a sigh of relief in other people's stories, and what is more interesting is that we are not only listening to the ups and downs of others, we have long been narrators. Fifth, fortunately nothing happens, and you don't expect anything to come. Just keep the door open and close, waiting for people to gather and disperse.
But this is not the most important thing, I want to remind that watching segmented movies after seeing, or have to look at the whole. It seems to be independent and chapter-like, but it is also connected and integrated. Just as we love a person, loving a person's beauty is the cause, but what sustains you to continue to love is the "person" who loves the beautiful, not the beauty of the person.
"Mandarin Duck Tower" is such a beautiful movie, it has a rhyme, this rhyme does not want to alarm anyone, let alone interfere with anyone. Every couple can hide in a small building and complete the life exercises they must do, sometimes learning the new from the past, sometimes just a new bottle of old wine. Six stories, six couples have their own problems, some solve, some press the gourd to scoop up, some do not want to solve, some solve it is better not to solve. It has to do with sex, the husband is enthusiastic, the wife is accommodating. But it is also related to eating, eating feelings, eating desire, and eating nowhere to say desolation. What eats in is determination, but what comes out is hesitation, or vice versa. It is really a man and a woman who eats, and the great desire of man is preserved.
Those red men and green women who are inside and outside the "siege" will definitely find a lot of resonance from this film, but they don't know how to feel empathy. This is the most attractive thing about "Mandarin Duck Tower", it is so kind, and you hope that this kind of kindness is best irrelevant to you.
The six couples in the film are in love with each other overall, and will continue to fall in love. Director Zheng Dongtian once said that it is very difficult to make a normal couple fall in love, and about this film, I think of Ryobu Hashiguchi's masterpiece "Things Around" and Naoto Takenaka's "Tokyo Hiwa".
The same is clearly true of Mandarin Duck Tower, which is most trying to tell us that love and our hearts are in harmony and do not constitute a causal relationship. The openness of "Mandarin Duck Tower" lies in this, life is not a mathematical problem, it is a line between two points. It's not a title, it's there, waiting for the doorbell to ring, waiting for us to turn a limited number of strangers into mature people in our limited energy. In the last scene, six couples gather at the entrance of the corridor in the community, they do not know each other, do not know that they are living a similar life. The means of transportation for couples are basically bicycles, and the most common rhetoric between them is who goes to buy vegetables in the afternoon.