On July 1, 2021, the movie "1921" launched the first shot of the 100 years of the founding of the party, directed by Huang Jianxin.
More than thirty years ago, a young director was still worried about his first work because of its sensitive subject matter and bold expression.
Later, with the help of Wu Tianming, then director of xi'an Film Studio, and with the many sides of the censorship organs, under the premise of sixty-seven changes to the whole film, it was finally reviewed and released, shocking the domestic film industry.
This film with a unique temperament, "The Black Cannon Incident", later became the label of Director Huang Jianxin.
Until 2009, Huang Jianxin, who had not directed the tube for four years, directed the National Day tribute film "The Great Cause of The Founding of the People's Republic", and has since become one of the hand-picked directors of the main theme blockbuster.
From 2009's "The Great Cause of Founding the People's Republic of China", to 2011's "The Great Cause of Party Building", and then to this year's "Decisive Moment", Huang Jianxin seems to have completed another round of trilogy of his film career, the "Main Theme Trilogy".
From the blockbuster "Pioneer Trilogy", to the humorous and satirical "Urban Trilogy" (or "Urban Trilogy"), to the deep and depressed "Psychological Trilogy", and finally to the "Main Melody Trilogy" of Song Gong and Virtue...
The film author who debuted with "The Black Cannon Incident" at that time, in the torrent of film creation of the "fifth generation director" who was gaining momentum at that time, used his unique authorial temperament to occupy a unique place in the hundred flowers, and at this time, he became one of the main theme epic blockbusters in the sky, full of magnificent "revolutionary romanticism".
Huang Jianxin has never strayed from the mainstream of Chinese cinema.
However, most viewers should be very curious about this: what did Huang Jianxin, who suddenly turned to grand themes and revolutionary narratives, experience in his creative career? Does he still have the authorial temperament of that year?
01.
Huang Jianxin was born on June 14, 1954, a native of Xi'an, whose ancestral home is Hebei, and whose family lives in The Fourth Lane of Lujinshi, The South Courtyard of Xi'an City, a small alley with "three religions and nine streams, fish and dragons mixed".
"There are high-ranking Communist cadres, there are also governors of the kuomintang before liberation, there are warlord descendants, famous doctors, and famous dramatists; and more are ordinary people, even unemployed vagrants", Huang Jianxin was born in Si changyusi, and there seemed to be some tolerance in his personality.
Huang's father and mother are all cadres in the city, although the position is not high, but it is also a decent family that does not worry about food and clothing, and his father Huang Tongjin later became the manager of Xi'an Film Company.
There is also a younger brother in the family who is one year younger than him, whose personality is very different from Huang Jianxin, who has been sensible since childhood, and is a naughty master.
Huang Jianxin said that his brother is humorous and funny, good at expression, very good at adjusting the atmosphere at home, if he is engaged in artistic creation, he may be better than him.
It can be seen that Huang Jianxin grew up in a harmonious and united family, and must have had a good childhood.
Unlike Zhang Yimou, who also grew up in Xi'an, Huang Jianxin's family composition was no problem, and in that era, he did not have to be "inferior" to grow freely.
Even the later "Cultural Revolution" was at best a "difficult period" for Huang Jianxin, and he never felt a sense of collapse.
Before the age of twelve, in a relatively peaceful era, in the family affection of a harmonious family, Huang Jianxin, who was sensible and reasonable, studied diligently and read well, and perhaps adults thought that this gentle teenager would become an excellent scientist or engineer in the future.
Just like Zhao Shuxin in his debut film "The Black Cannon Incident" that he directed many years later, he has outstanding business, meek and honest, and only promises, becoming an excellent screw in the process of the motherland's modernization cause.
But in 1966, the summer when Huang Jianxin was twelve, the "Cultural Revolution" roared in.
As mentioned earlier, the fire of the "Cultural Revolution" did not burn Huang Jianxin's family out of control, and he was only a small bystander in the fifth grade of primary school.
In the face of this turbulent catastrophe, he should be very confused, a little frightened, and possibly a little excited.
At his age, of course, he could not be associated with the "young and good men" who "rebelled justifiably", and in the chaos of social order and state security, he could only "help the revolutionary organizations to spread leaflets", and "the content did not care at all".
With his family origin and family composition, Huang Jianxin's parents did not have to be put on top hats, trapped in the center of the storm, and became the target of everyone.
Therefore, the young Huang Jianxin did not have to experience the trauma of social discrimination and even insults like Zhang Yimou as the child of the "black five categories", or the panic of being destroyed by the scourge of being raided and deported.
In the end, his parents went to the cadre school for labor reform, leaving Huang Jianxin and his brother and grandmother to rely on each other for their lives.
According to the political division at that time, Grandma should have belonged to the "exploiting class", and Huang Jianxin received some "revolutionary education" in that crazy era, believing that Grandma was an opposing class and should draw a clear line.
Fortunately, the meticulous care of his grandmother made up for the family warmth when his parents left, so that Huang Jianxin saw the preciousness of human feelings and finally doubted the "revolutionary education".
In the absence of his parents and the family's most important source of income, Huang Jianxin experienced the embarrassment of material scarcity for the first time, and as the eldest son, he had to find a way to bear some family burdens.
So he took his young brother to the north highway of Xi'an city to help the rickshaw pull the "side sleeve" to earn a five-centimeter tip to subsidize the family.
These have become important experiences on Huang Jianxin's growth path, but they do not appear in his films.
More importantly, "During the Cultural Revolution, when I was growing up, I saw the evil side of human nature. In my memory, countless stories have happened in the hutongs, such as sorrow and joy, grace and resentment, and hatred... In the midst of all these things happening, I started to have love and hate."
Huang Jianxin's description of the "Cultural Revolution" has always been understated, which may also be the key to his difference from the temperament of the "fifth generation director" community, and there is no strong historical reflection in his films.
Even, the "Cultural Revolution" has another appearance in his memory: "When I stood on the top of the building and looked at the flying pieces of paper (revolutionary leaflets) and the scene of thousands of heads downstairs, I suddenly had a great feeling, which was a bit like reading Jin Yong's martial arts novels later and feeling that I could go to the room as soon as I stomped my feet." ”
Naturally, these experiences do not appear in Huang Jianxin's films.
But later, in Jiang Wen's "Sunny Days", we saw this freedom in Ma Xiaojun, who climbed the chimney in the compound of the military region.
Probably this is not a beautiful nostalgia for the "Cultural Revolution", but the historical imprint left by Huang Jianxin's free growth and "animal ferocity" during this period is the real feeling of individuals, rather than the collective forgetting or avoidance of politics.
Huang Jianxin himself concluded:
Actually, there are only two words I want to say.
Reform and opening up has provided me with a new space for creation.
History (or the "Cultural Revolution") gave me a good time to get out of control and grow freely.
With that, there's my movie.
During the Cultural Revolution, Huang Jianxin did not have any more twists and turns.
In 1970, his parents resumed work, and Huang Jianxin joined the army under his parents' arrangement, working as a ground clerk at the Wuwei Air Force Airport in Gansu Province, at the age of 16.
Wuwei is located in the Hexi Corridor, with a dry climate and a desert Gobi, and at that time, it was an isolated city in the desert.
Ground work, relatively relaxed and boring, free time, very few leisure activities, watching movies has become the only way of entertainment, Huang Jianxin may have been at this time to develop an interest in movies.
At that time, film resources were scarce, and the state had strict control over movies, except for "Mine Warfare" and "Southern Expedition and Northern War", which were the main theme films such as "The Second Spring" and "The Age of Red Fire".
As a result, Huang Jianxin watched and watched these films, and even hid behind the screen to peek at the "internal reference films" that only leading cadres are qualified to watch.
In that era when spiritual products were rigid and single, the extreme imbalance in the distribution of artistic resources led to the hunger of young people with a slight spiritual pursuit.
Behind the repression there must be a more exuberant desire to rebound, prohibition is stimulation, and this phenomenon may have existed in some other form until now.
Huang Jianxin also found a copy of Pudovkin's "On the Writers, Directors and Actors of Cinema" in the army library, a former Soviet film master and montage theorist who not only enlightened the film language that was not yet mature at that time, but also enlightened a Chinese director many years later.
I don't know if Huang Jianxin at that time thought that he would one day become a film practitioner like Pudovkin, but he must have felt the charm of the film that Pudovkin felt.
Just like later, after filming "The Black Cannon Incident", he wrote an article in which he talked about "some immature thoughts" and titled it, "What is the Charm of Cinema".
At this time, most of the "fifth-generation directors" were still in the countryside to join the team, dedicating their lives to the revolutionary cause in the remote mountain farmland.
After working in the countryside of Qianxian County, Shaanxi Province, Zhang Yimou worked as a worker in the Eighth Cotton Spinning Factory in Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, while he was still trying to save money for his "seagull" camera;
Chen Kaige, who was in the southwest frontier, looked at the wild primeval forest and wept for his life that was also impossible to see, and after two years of joining the team, he finally got the opportunity to join the army;
Tian Zhuangzhuang, who went north, joined the army after a year in a small village covered with ice and snow in The town of Nenjiang in the northeast, and stayed in the army for seven years...
02.
In 1976, Huang Jianxin was demobilized and returned to Xi'an.
Six years of military life, coupled with Huang Jianxin's optimistic personality that is good at adapting to the environment, will have some nostalgia.
Later, he was also said to have been invited to direct a TV series called "Red Wing" for the Air Force in 1989, but it is difficult to find information about the show.
Fortunately, Huang Jianxin, who returned to Xi'an, coincided with the recruitment of photography posts at the Xi'an Health Education Publicity Museum, "Although he had not taken a photo before, but with excellent understanding, he sharpened his gun and won the exam."
In the publicity hall, Huang Jianxin can carry the 16 mm camera equipped in the museum and run around to shoot health-related feature films.
It was also here that Huang Jianxin completed his first video work, Dietary Hygiene.
Even more fortunately, in 1977, Huang Jianxin, as the last batch of workers, peasants, and soldiers, was qualified to enter the Chinese Department of Northwest University to study journalism.
The class teacher of Huang Jianxin's journalism class is called Wang Zhongquan, who also entered Xida University as a worker and peasant soldier, and then stayed in the school to teach, only a few years older than Huang Jianxin, and most importantly, Wang Zhongquan also loves movies.
Presumably, in the exchange between the two, Wang Zhongquan saw the potential of Huang Jianxin to make a movie.
At the end of the following year, Huang Jianxin was about to finish his journalism class, wang Zhongquan rode a worn-out bicycle, rushed to the Xi'an Film Studio, he did not hesitate to speak, strongly sponsored, lobbied, and finally won a chance for his disciples to enter the factory.
Huang Jianxin is also very competitive, and when interviewing, the answer is like a stream.
After the interview, Zhao Yunpeng, then director of the studio's editorial office, handed over a stack of film scripts to Huang Jianxin and asked him to write a review opinion within three days.
Huang Jianxin did not dare to be sloppy, and that night he picked up the lights and fought at night, and did not sleep all night, and wrote a long manuscript with more than eight thousand words.
Director Zhao was very satisfied, and Huang Jianxin finally entered the Xi'an Film Studio in 1979 and was assigned to work in the editorial office's foreign manuscript team.
In 1978, a year before Huang Jianxin entered the Western Film Studio, the Beijing Film Academy welcomed the first batch of students to resume enrollment after the Cultural Revolution.
This group of young people may have been suppressed for too long, with their enthusiasm and extraordinary talent to come to the film school, wrote a legend of Chinese film history, "78 class" has become a mythical existence, they are too dazzling, so that Chinese film history has begun to have a theoretical intergenerational division.
At this time, Huang Jianxin, like Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige or Tian Zhuangzhuang, who was still attending film school, did not expect to jointly create a peak of Chinese cinema in the future.
The students of the "Class of 78" graduated in 1982, and the work assigned after graduation did not go according to people's wishes, and everyone wanted to stay in Beijing.
Students who cannot stay in Beijing, in order to avoid the remote Sichuan Studio and Guangxi Studio, try to give priority to filling in the slightly better Hunan Xiaoxiang Film Studio or Huang Jianxin's Xi'an Film Studio.
However, as a result, in order to introduce creative forces, the Guangxi Film Studio, which had recently established the factory, asked Zhang Yimou, Zhang Junzhao, He Qun, Xiao Feng and others to go together, and Zhang Yimou did not go to the Western Film Studio in his hometown.
For Huang Jianxin, this may be a pity, he did not contact the backbone of the "fifth generation of directors" in time, bringing him another film enlightenment.
However, fortunately, Zhang Yimou and others went to the Guangxi factory in a group, and only then did they have the "fifth generation director" of the "fifth generation of directors", filmed in 1984,"One and Eight".
Huang Jianxin was soon sent to the film academy by the Western Film Studio to study in a refresher course, and in another form, he became associated with the "fifth generation of directors".
Also coming to study was Han Sanping, who had just graduated from the Chinese Department of Sichuan University, a man who could make a splash in the Chinese film industry in the future.
At that time, Huang Jianxin was the class leader, Han Sanping was the branch secretary, and the later "The Great Cause of The Founding of the People's Republic" was co-directed by the two.
Before going to film school, Huang Jianxin had long been bored with the mechanical work of sitting in the editorial office reading foreign manuscripts, and the idea of leaving the office was even stronger.
Another lucky, the director Ai Shui, who was preparing to shoot "The Tenth Bullet Hole", found Huang Jianxin, and the two hit it off, and Huang Jianxin was invited to the crew to make a note.
Subsequently, Huang Jianxin successively made a note in many films such as "Special High School in Action" directed by Jin Yin, "Outpost in the Birch Forest" directed by Li Yucai, "Gua Ripe TiLuo" directed by Yao Shougang, and "River Without Navigation" directed by Wu Tianming, director of the Western Film Factory.
By the time Guo Yangting directed "Six Jin County Governor" in 1983, Huang Jianxin had been promoted to assistant director.
Huang Jianxin, who only went to film school after that, actually has a very solid experience in film practice.
When he arrived at Nortel, Huang Jianxin filmed his first feature film, a 35mm student assignment, entitled "Memories in the Rain", which lasted more than 30 minutes.
In his own words, this work is interlaced in time and space, complex in structure, psychology, reality, memory, dream back and forth, hallucination set illusion, very "stream of consciousness".
From this point of view, Huang Jianxin's "Black Cannon Incident", and later "Misplaced" and "Reincarnation", are loud and sound, and the shot is the vanguard, it seems that it was not born out of thin air, but there are traces to follow.
More than a year later, in early 1985, Huang Jianxin returned to Xi'an and returned to Xiying.
At this time, "One and Eight" and "Yellow Land" have long been published, and the "fifth generation of directors" has caused domestic repercussions, and this group of enthusiastic young people have begun to take over the banner from the hands of the older generation of filmmakers and turn the page for China's film history.
It was also in the face of this new creative boom that Huang Jianxin made his debut film, "The Black Cannon Incident".
And just came back to get the opportunity to make independent films, Huang Jianxin wants to thank a person, this person is also a noble person of the fifth generation of directors, Wu Tianming.
Director Wu Tianming entered Western Film in 1960, co-directed the film "The Vibrato of Life" with Teng Wenji in 1979, and independently directed "The River Without Navigation" in 1983 (Huang Jianxin participated in the field record work in this film) attracted attention.
However, Guangxi Film Studio was one step ahead, and the new shoots of the fifth generation of directors broke ground from this new factory at the beginning of the business.
As the new director of Xiying, Wu Tianming, "at that time, I did not think of supporting the fifth generation or anything, that is, I wanted to get xiying studio up, I don't talk about seniority, who can do it."
So the young people who had just emerged came with their ideas.
Under the auspices of Wu Tianming, the Western Film Studio vigorously promoted new talents and used new creative forces, and At this time, Huang Jianxin, who returned to the factory from Nortel, caught up again.
Facts have proved that Wu Tianming's decision-making is very prescient, and in a very short period of time, the Western Film Studio has produced Zhang Yimou's "Red Sorghum", Chen Kaige's "Child King", Tian Zhuangzhuang's "Horse Thief", and of course, Huang Jianxin's "Black Cannon Incident", and the artistic achievements have attracted national attention.
03.
When referring to the "fifth generation of directors", Huang Jianxin always emphasizes that he is not the fifth generation in the orthodox sense.
He believes that the fifth generation of special guidance and acting is 78 classes, in addition to several refresher classes, and he belongs to the list of refresher classes.
In nortel Professor Ni Zhen's "Beijing Film Academy Story - The History of the Fifth Generation of Cinema" (2002 first edition), the whole book is only on page 196, and when summarizing the phenomenon of the "fifth generation", huang Jianxin's name is mentioned once, and it is brought with the sentence "Even Huang Jianxin and many other directors", which shows the narrowness of the film school's written definition of the fifth generation.
But when Huang Jianxin talked about the fifth generation, he repeatedly mentioned the inclusiveness of this group, saying that they faced a hundred wasted Chinese films, the opportunities were good, each had experience, was ready to go, and finally a hundred flowers bloomed.
While the fifth generation of directors focused on China's backward and remote fringes and searched for the spiritual roots of the Chinese nation among the working people at the bottom, Huang Jianxin turned his attention to the contemporary cities in the process of industrialization.
"The Black Cannon Incident" has a very different style and unique temperament, and profoundly ridicules and criticizes the rigid system that constrains urban industrialization and modernization and the submissive character of intellectuals who compromise with the system, which is a personal understanding of Huang Jianxin's "cultural roots".
The film tells the absurd story of Zhao Shuxin, an engineer of a mining company, who sent a telegram to a chess player "looking for a black cannon" in order to find the black cannon chess pieces left in the hotel, but was suspended from his post for investigation by the company's leaders.
In order to construct the modern industrial sense of the film's narrative space, Huang Jianxin led his young film crew to Dalian to shoot the scene, with the intention of peeling off the defects of the traditional national culture psychology in the modern context of large-scale industry and constructing a distinct horizontal contrast.
In order to strengthen the visual impact of the film, Huang Jianxin led the whole crew to read modern film theory, so that the personnel of various departments of the film broadened their horizons, stimulated their imagination, and then let it go.
In the end, the success of the film is also due to the enlightenedness of the director Wu Tianming and his own understanding as a creator.
Halfway through the filming, Wu Tianming personally inspected the scene when the crew was preparing to shoot the "meeting" scene, and the highly expressionist venue set in the play made Wu Tianming confused.
Fortunately, after patiently inquiring about Huang Jianxin's artistic conception, he let him let go and shoot.
After the filming was completed, it was screened in Western Film, and the audience was refreshed and deeply shocked: the film can still be made like this!
On the train sent for trial, Huang Jianxin told the production director that this play can rub a government award at most, and the Golden Rooster Award should not be thought of (the status of the Golden Rooster Award at that time was very high).
As a result, the Government Award, the Golden Rooster Best Actor Award, the Hong Kong Film Festival Top Ten Chinese Film Award, the Shanghai New Era Ten Year Director Award, and the Shaanxi Bronze Chema Outstanding Feature Film Award, The Excellent Director Award and the Best Actor Award followed, and "The Black Cannon Incident" was a hit, and Huang Jianxin has since dominated the era of the crazy growth of the fifth generation of directors.
Some people say that this film is not at all like a young man in his thirties, but it seems to be made by a fifty-year-old director, nor is it as fierce and intense as the debut of the fifth generation of directors, but more calm and old-fashioned.
Later, Huang Jianxin, who was nearly fifty years old, finished filming "Who Said I Don't Care", everyone watched it, and felt like it was made by a young director, he said, in fact, "young people dragged the old comrades' hind legs."
With the success of "Black Cannon Incident", Huang Jianxin was more free of himself and bravely moved forward on the pioneer path, so there was "Misplaced" and "Reincarnation" later.
The three films constitute Huang Jianxin's first creative cycle, the "Pioneer Trilogy", which completes his first round of thinking about the language of film.
"Misplaced" (1986) was obtained by accident, unlike most other works are literary adaptations: "The Black Cannon Incident" was adapted from Zhang Xianliang's "Romantic Black Cannon", "Reincarnation" was adapted from Wang Shuo's "Floating out of the Sea", "Stand Straight, Don't Lie Down" was adapted from Deng Gang's "Left Neighbor right house", "Five Kui" was adapted from Jia Pingwa's novel of the same name, "Back to Back, Face to Face" was adapted from Liu Xinglong's "Autumn Wind Drunk", "Red Light Stop, Green Light Line" was adapted from Ye Guangling's "Anecdotes about Learning to Drive", "Ambush" Adapted from Fang Fang's novel of the same name, "Who Says I Don't Care" is adapted from Ye Guangling's "You Find Him with No Trace of the Vast Land", "Please, Praise Me" is adapted from Beibei's "Please Praise".
As for the later tribute films, they were all "looking for drama in the history of the chronicle, and on this basis choosing the necessary time nodes".
And "Dislocation" is made up by Huang Jianxin with a small story he heard, and the film is a continuation of "Black Cannon Incident" in terms of narrative, but it is actually a bolder attempt.
The film is very avant-garde about artificial intelligence, through the alienation of people through the tools of expression, providing a mirror reflection, no science fiction spectacle, no cyberpunk, just a humorous dialogue between humans and the self, the whole film temperament cult, much younger than the previous work.
After the release of "Misplaced", there was another uproar, and domestic audiences were mixed for a while, perhaps this kind of theme is a bit too advanced for Chinese audiences.
In the first two films, Huang Jianxin found Liu Zifeng as the protagonist, especially "Misplaced", which is "a script written according to Liu Zifeng's appearance".
When he first watched "The Red Age" in the army, Huang Jianxin felt that Liu Zifeng, who played a steelmaking squad leader in the film, was very interesting, in line with his feelings, and later made his own movie, he went to find him, "Found, about in Xi'an, there was no audition, a chat, it was determined that it was him."
Later, this also became a feature of Huang Jianxin's films: there is a familiar face in each stage of the work.
Like the later Niu Zhenhua, and then the later Feng Gong and Wang Zhiwen.
However, in "Reincarnation" after "Misplaced", there is no role suitable for Liu Zifeng, and Huang Jianxin found Lei Han, who "inadvertently became an actor".
Lei Han is very suitable for the temperament of the protagonist of Wang Shuo's novel, and he himself later said that the proudest film in his acting career was Huang Jianxin's 1988 director's "Reincarnation".
As early as 1986, after Huang Jianxin read Wang Shuo's novel, he seemed to see that this young man with a flat head had grasped a certain spiritual essence of people in the contemporary transitional society, so he called him to Xi'an, where Wang Shuo wrote the script of "Reincarnation" in the guest house of the Western Film Studio.
That year, Wang Shuo was still just an obscure little writer, and the fierce energy in his novels was first seen by Huang Jianxin, and later, many people saw it.
In 1988, the year "Reincarnation" began filming, four films based on Wang Shuo's novels (in addition to "Reincarnation", there were also Mijiashan's "Stubborn Lord", Xia Gang's "Half Seawater, Half Flame", and Ye Daying's "Big Breath") were launched in the same year, which also became "Wang Shuo Nian".
"Reincarnation" is the only film in Huang Jianxin's film that takes love as the main narrative.
Love, as a narrative structure, is part of Wang Shuo's novel; in the second half, love is gradually submerged, and the film moves towards a deep excavation of the individual's psychological state, which is the part of Huang Jianxin as a director.
Wang Shuo's work, with a strong style, changed to a movie, needs to have a more awkward force to choke it, and Huang Jianxin has done it to some extent.
But a few years later, when Jiang Wen made Wang Shuo's "Animal Fierce" into "Sunny Days" (1993), people really saw what it was, what it was, surprise.
Also in 1988, Zhang Yimou, who was holding his stomach to talk, finally launched his debut work - "Red Sorghum" at the Western Film Studio, and won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival in one fell swoop, and Chinese films attracted worldwide attention.
Shortly after Huang Jianxin finished filming "Reincarnation", he was invited to visit Australia.
04.
After returning to China, in the face of the ever-changing appearance of China's cities, Huang Jianxin could not help but be confused, "everything is changing, I am very strange myself, I don't know what to do."
During his study abroad, Huang Jianxin understood that people's limitations, including regional, cultural background, and even personality, are limited.
So he took a leave of absence from the factory and wandered around to observe, trying to spy on the essential characteristics of this new era, and to re-find the entrance to contemporary urban life as the starting point for a new stage of film creation.
During this period, Huang Jianxin changed his film style, transforming the momentum of the previous "pioneer trilogy" into a delicate perception of real life, creating the "urban trilogy", and successively directed "Stand Up, Don't Lie Down" (1991), "Back to Back, Face to Face" (1994) and "Red Light Stop, Green Light Line" (1995).
In addition to "The Black Cannon Incident", the works of this period have become Huang Jianxin's masterpieces, especially the well-known "Back to Back, Face to Face".
These works focus on the hot themes of today's urban life and construct the overall impression of Chinese society in the 1990s.
In particular, Niu Zhenhua, the "acquaintance" in Huang Jianxin's films during this period, is a microcosm of all levels of society, from upstarts to small cadres to small reporters.
These works have changed from the deep thinking of the individual who emphasized authorship in the films of the 1980s to the pungent satire of the embarrassing situation in which people's increasingly strong material desires coexist with the old system that has not yet been thoroughly reformed.
Huang Jianxin said he saw the pathology of the current Chinese, a collective pathology.
Then he pulls this collectivity away, herding his characters into a closed narrative space, leaving them to attack each other, infecting each other in an environment where interpersonal relationships are closely intertwined, and finally bending the knee in front of the antiquated system, bowing to the power of money, ridiculous and pitiful.
Huang Jianxin will eventually do comedy, and comedy makes us stand further and look down on the absurdity of modern life.
And Feng Gong became the most familiar face in Huang Jianxin's film at this stage, using sketch actors, with his own sense of comedy, and the effect was remarkable.
"From an abstract and symbolic level, the combination of the new upstart of capital and the elderly of power in "Stand Up Straight, Don't Lie Down" drives the cultural elite from the center to the edge; the speculation of the employment law of the superior leader in "Back to Back, Face to Face" exhausts the protagonist's career ambitions, and the final winner is the traditional ideal and absurd will of the illiterate father; the deformed combination of automobile culture and barracks culture in "Red Light Stop, Green Light Line" makes people laugh." (Excerpt from Chen Mo: "Film Author Huang Jianxin")
During this period, Huang Jianxin also made a costume film called "Five Kui" (1993).
"Wu Kui" is an example in Huang Jianxin's film, an attempt at western Chinese genre films, which borrows from Zhang Yimou's oriental aesthetic style, but in the end it only shows a "spectacle of the house" that does not hurt or itch.
This year, Chen Kaige launched his "Farewell to the King", which won the Cannes Palme d'Or, and Chinese films once again became the focus of the world.
In the late 1990s, Huang Jianxin made "Ambush" (1996) and "Can't Sleep" (2000).
The film still focuses on the struggles of small characters distorted by the solidified system or drifting modern life in the general environment, but there are obvious signs of turning to the psychological portrayal of the characters and beginning to transition to the next stage of creation.
At the turn of the new century, Huang Jianxin's focus gradually shifted from the public space in the city to the inner or more secretive individual heart, shooting "Tell Your Secret" (1999), "Who Says I Don't Care" (2001) and "Please, Praise Me" (2005) three years later, completing a new stage of trilogy creation, "Psychological Trilogy".
Huang Jianxin feels that the conflict between China's economic changes and traditional values has slowly eased, and the temporary small groups formed Chinese in an unstable environment have gradually dissolved, and the collective state should give way to individual psychology.
When people gradually adapt to the rapid development of material life in contradictions, psychological conflicts are greater than external conflicts, "secrets", "marriage certificates", "praise" are all personal psychological problems, is "the nostalgia of the era of material abundance".
Huang Jianxin tried his best to dig into the depths of the character's heart and began to become serious, so Feng Gong also became Wang Zhiwen.
But Huang Jianxin still stressed many times that he believes that China has never had an individual person, "in China, man is basically a social person, the individual person has not really appeared, there is no independent personality", and finally all the psychological problems are still due to the repression of people by social structure and another form of alienation of the traditional national psychological complex.
Huang Jianxin said that he was a director who had something to say, and after the "psychological trilogy", he stayed in the station without saying anything, enjoyed life, and kept repeating, which could only be lackluster.
After entering the new century, domestic films began to talk about box office, market, and industry, and the main forces of the fifth generation of directors were not willing to be left behind, and successively invested in grand productions, all of which can be counted from Zhang Yimou's "Hero" (2002).
Huang Jianxin also gradually gave up his identity as a director, retired to supervising production, and became a guardian between creation and the market, embracing the market and promoting the industry in another way.
In fact, when he was first in Western Film, Huang Jianxin worked as a producer for a Taiwanese film called "Feitian" (1996), starring Rene Liu.
I don't know if he thought that he would become a professional producer later, in just over a decade, he successively supervised Feng Xiaogang's "Big Names" (2001), Chen Kaige's "With You" (2002), Sun Zhou's "Zhou Yu's Train" (2002), Chen Kexin's "Submission of Fame" (2006), Er Dongsheng's "Shinjuku Incident" (2009), Xu Ke's "Wise Tiger Mountain" (2014), as well as "Ink Attack" (2006), "The Kite Chaser" (2006), The Mummy 3 (2007), October Siege (2009) and many other business cards, and also served as a production consultant for Quentin's "Kill Bill" in 2002.
Huang Jianxin believes that director and producer, a creative concept, a management concept, they are more suitable for supervising producers, is their favorite way.
Film is a way for him to "solve what he can't think of", just like painting, you can put your feelings in, sort it out, take it out, and complete rational understanding.
After the film enters the market economy, when it comes to creation, it is necessary to talk about the type and audience acceptance, and when it comes to production, it is necessary to talk about commercialization and industrialization, Huang Jianxin sees it very thoroughly, understands the trend of the times, and gladly accepts it.
05.
Until 2009, Han Sanping, an old classmate of the film school refresher class and the chairman of the China Film Group at the time, found Huang Jianxin, and the two co-directed "The Great Cause of the Founding of the People's Republic" to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the motherland.
Facts have once again proved that Huang Jianxin, who has always paid attention to small people and excavated small themes, is also capable of dealing with the propositional creation of grand historical themes.
Before the film began, Han Sanping told Huang Jianxin, and the leader asked him if he (Huang Jianxin) would shoot this scene ("The Great Cause of Building the Country") off the way?
Han Sanping said, it's okay, there is me.
As a result, the leaders were more worried, and Huang Jianxin not only completed the proposition creation excellently, but also set an unprecedented record at the box office of the main theme movie.
This gave him the opportunity to direct "The Great Cause of Party Building" later, and now "Decisive Moment", and Huang Jianxin also seems to be very adapted to the propositional work.
From social reflection to the main theme, Huang Jianxin said that he would not give priority to the latter, but just "bumped into", just like he returned to the West Film Studio from the film school and just bumped into the "Black Cannon Incident", it seems that everything is accidental.
Whether it is life or career, Huang Jianxin has been smooth all the way, deeply favored by fate, no legendary experience of the fifth generation of directors, has always been peaceful, has not rebelled against the censorship system, has not bumped into the audience, does not shout, does not hysterical, only silently observes, and then measures output.
In other words, from "The Black Cannon Incident", to "Back-to-Back, Face-to-Face", and then to "The Great Cause of Nation-Building", rather than saying that Huang Jianxin chose the theme for his films, it is better to say that these topics he pays attention to have actively entered his vision, most of them exist in the form of literature first in the film, and there is already a certain ideological background.
What Huang Jianxin has to do is to use the language of film to audiovisualize it, and create a richer and deeper artistic connotation in a montage way.
So back to the question that opened the topic: Does Huang Jianxin, who has turned to a grand theme and a revolutionary narrative, still have the authorial temperament of that year?
Yes, but more of a craftsmanship.
As a film director, he has never deviated from the mainstream, and in the era of urgent need for authors, he has become a family of his own in the wave of fifth-generation directors, becoming the most special one.
So don't you want an author now?
Absolutely.
As art, cinema needs authors; as industry, it is not very much needed; as ideology, it does not need to.
To put it bluntly, the mainstream does not need it, the author has something to say, either follow the rules or grow underground.
Therefore, Huang Jianxin is not without authorship, but the mainstream of this era, and he does not need his authorship at present, only his technicality.
"Political themes are a kind of genre film", "political films are the largest commercial films", in the final analysis, the main theme of the film is still part of the industry, ideology is the biggest market appeal of this type.
Therefore, from "The Black Cannon Incident" to "1921", Huang Jianxin has never left the mainstream of the times to make movies, and he will produce whatever the mainstream needs.
As for the contrast between the before and after of his works in different periods, it also reflects the contrast between the country and society to a certain extent, and the trend of the times is actually beyond reproach.
Therefore, Huang Jianxin or Huang Jianxin, if the five generations of directors can still make you look forward to it, Huang Jianxin is not impossible.
Key References:
Chai Xiaofeng: "Young Eyes", Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, 1996 edition;
Chen Mo: Adult Games: Huang Jianxin's Movie World, 2006 edition;
Xu Anhua, Chen Kexin, et al.: One Man's Film, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2010;
Ni Zhen: The Story of the Beijing Film Academy: The Prehistory of the Fifth Generation of Cinema, Writers Publishing House, 2002.