Text | Ling Hu Boguang
The 2023 Spring Festival file is known as the "strongest Spring Festival file", and Bo Guangjun has also written a manuscript analysis before. The strongest Spring Festival file is not, because according to the popular works in the domestic film market in recent years, if you can come to a happy twist comedy, and then come to a "Medicine God" realistic theme, it can be said to be the strongest Spring Festival file.
However, the 2023 Spring Festival file is indeed the ideal state of domestic films pursued by domestic audiences and fans, two top investments, filmed for several years, from the theme, aesthetic and industrial levels are comprehensive breakthroughs "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Deep Sea"; Two author-type big directors pursue genre films with extreme style, and finally a romantic comedy and a sports theme.
Other movies have a lot of analysis, here is still to write "Nameless", seriously watched the movie twice, can be described as full of details, in this era of fast food watching dramas 2-3 times faster can rarely watch a movie quietly, this movie directed by Cheng Er makes me want to savor it.
There are many light and shadow aesthetics in the movie "Nameless" that are worth learning from Chinese directors, including the film itself, which is also a film that has become chaotic due to too much controversy outside the scene.
While being a master of film aesthetics, while having a bad reputation? How to evaluate "Nameless" director Cheng Er
The film industry usually favors literary and genre film directors who have contributed to the development of films, and commercial blockbusters are rare but rare, and awards are usually awarded on technical aspects such as service, special effects and sound (not absolutely, but most do)
At its peak, Hong Kong films were genre films, and commercial blockbusters were the strongest. The mainland and Taiwan are the strongest literary and art films, and when it comes to entertainment, commercial genre films and commercial films cannot be compared with Hong Kong films, but the public's favorite is genre films and commercial blockbusters.
For example, the great director of Hong Kong literary films is Wong Kar-wai, and then Hui Anhua. Other people like Chen Kexin, Chen Guo, Guan Jinpeng and Er Dongsheng are also good, but they have no place in world film history.
There are many grandmaster-level directors of Hong Kong genre films and commercial blockbusters, and their films are very popular with the audience, and even this achievement is not low in the history of world cinema, which has influenced the world, which is much stronger than Korean directors.
For example, Tsui Hark's martial arts films and fantasy films, Jackie Chan and Chengjia class's action comedy.
For example, John Woo's gunfight films, To Qifeng's gangster films, Wang Jing's gambling films, and then Stephen Chow's comedy films, and then Lin Zhengying's zombie films and so on.
However, if you really talk about your contribution to genre films, Tsui Hark's contributions to the philosophy of martial arts films, the aesthetics of martial arts films and other aspects cannot be compared with his master Hu Jinquan. Hu Jinquan ranks at the forefront of the world film history film director's ranking, and this Tsui Hark can't be on the list at all.
Where is Hu Jinquan's influence on martial arts films? His contribution to the oriental tradition of aesthetics was founded.
For example, in the art and costume of the film, Hu Jinquan is a very sophisticated director, and his research on Ming history is a must. But even if the study of Ming history films is still fictional after all, Hu Jinquan established the design of the service road of martial arts films, as well as the shooting method.
Now many viewers have not seen Hu Jinquan, and they don't know that Tsui Hark's "New Dragon Gate Inn" is a remake of Hu Jinquan's "Dragon Gate Inn", and at the same time, serving the road and so on is copying Hu Jinquan.
Then Hu Jinquan for the narrative structure of martial arts films, the lens language shooting method is also at the level of a grandmaster.
For example, the audience is also obsessed with Tsui Hark's "Qiannu Ghost" Xiaoqian bathing and hiding from her grandmother, and then in the small room of "New Dragon Gate Inn", the space drama of multiple characters is not forgotten, these things Hu Jinquan has long been played in "The Drunken Man", "Dragon Gate Inn" and "The Storm of Yingchun Pavilion".
At the same time, the bamboo forest drama processed by the technical processing of martial arts films is a classic scene of martial arts films, in addition to Tsui Hark, Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", Zhang Yimou's "Ambush on Ten Sides", Lu Yang's "Embroidered Spring Dao 2" and other works are all paying tribute.
Hu Jinquan is at the level of the world's great masters in the construction of oriental traditional aesthetics, especially light and shadow, composition, art, etc., which is not only comparable to Tsui Hark, but even Zhang Yimou, who is a photographer who is good at playing color and lens scheduling, is inferior.
The best spy war film after "The Wind" and "Color Ring"? "Nameless" director Cheng Erneng is not a film master
Hu Jinquan is still a big director of genre films, not a big director of literary films. Although his films are highly accomplished in artistic pursuits, aesthetic pursuits. This Cheng Er is this kind of big director who pursues in the aesthetics of genre films and the style and art of genre films, so what level is he?
Cheng Er's first film was 2006's "The Third Man", which is like the sixth generation. But his first film was "Border Vice" in 2013, then "The History of the Demise of Romance" released in 2016, and finally "Nameless" in the 2023 Spring Festival.
The output is very low, in terms of time, he is half a generation later than the sixth generation of directors, similar to the contemporaries Ning Hao, Diao Yinan, Cao Baoping, Xu Haofeng and other genre film directors in terms of positioning, Wu Ershan is a commercial blockbuster director.
By the way, these directors of the same era have developed quite embarrassed until now. After Ning Hao's "No Man's Land" was hit from above, he had no artistic pursuits, and he was at ease to support newcomers to make cakes behind the scenes. Wu Ershan, Xu Haofeng, and Cao Baoping's new film have been suppressed.
Diao Yinan and Cheng Er are the most similar, there are few works, for the aesthetics of Chinese genre films, the ultimate stylization of genre films is the ceiling level. In recent years, there are fewer and fewer directors pursuing art, and they are sought after inside and outside the circle. But the point is that Diao Yinan's results are still better.
"Daylight Fireworks" won best film in Berlin, Liao Fan took the actor, and "The Party at Southern Station" was shortlisted for Cannes.
Cheng Er is a very peculiar director, we can see at a glance that his films are very powerful in film aesthetics and lens language, master-level lens language. But the story plot and character shaping are not clear, and the box office of the movie can't go up, it seems to be quite forced, but where there is forced is not said.
Cheng Er lacks criticism for the comprehensive absorption of Western culture and philosophy of thought, over-rationalizes the role, and eventually moves towards the universal indiscriminateness of the Western-style Virgin complex and the absurdity and dissolution of meaning that ignores rationality. The advantage is the ultimate pursuit of formal aesthetics, which makes his personal style present a gorgeous and empty spiritual characteristic, and it is also the convergence of the core of Cheng Er's works, which is difficult to progress and expand in content
Let's not go to the program to go online what values and how, artistic expression should be diverse, can also be discussed.
First of all, the universality here is used to describe Cheng Er's attitude towards the character, not to describe the character of the character created by Cheng Er. Second, the universality here does not refer to universal values, but only uses its superficial meaning to refer to the creative characteristics of Cheng Er's indiscriminate feelings that rationalize and even beautify the behavior of all people.
Cheng Er's attitude towards Ge You's character is appreciated for his moral adherence here in the execution of his nephew, and while there is a lot of such appreciation, the film's criticism of Ge You's role is insufficient. Looking at the other characters, it is obvious that the director praises the rationalization of the character more than criticism, which is called flood sympathy.
Ge You's image is only an object of analysis for Cheng Er, and does not have or rarely has Cheng Er's personal character characteristics.
This aspect is quite similar to the American director Coen Brothers, but the works of the Coen Brothers often have a theme, which emphasizes the absurdity of fate, which is consistent with the ideological theme of Cheng Er's films. However, Cheng Er's works lack obvious criticism, and most of them express positive descriptions of the characters, and sometimes even look like they are whitewashing, which is not comparable to the Coen brothers.
The Coen brothers' work also has some criticisms to make the theme of the work more explicit, which is the missing part of Cheng's work.
In a word: the biggest advantage of Cheng Er's film is the ultimate film aesthetics and lens language, the biggest disadvantage is character shaping, the plot narrative and expression are difficult to be grounded, lack of emotional tension, a little pursuit of the absurdity under the glitz, anyway, it doesn't touch your feelings.
Those who study film, as well as fans, can analyze it from a professional perspective, but it is not attractive to ordinary audiences. The key is that the last "History of the Demise of Romance" did not win the affirmation of professional awards at home and abroad, and in the end, it was forced but poor, not to mention being close to the audience.
With a box office of less than 500 million in 5 days of release, the panda "Nameless" of the Chinese-language film should not be buried
This "Nameless" is still similar to "The History of the Demise of Romance", and there will be no spoilers here. When I watched it for the first time, I swallowed the dates, and I didn't understand much while watching and analyzing, but I probably remembered that the pressure was very high and the picture was exquisite. Later, I watched it carefully again and found that it was indeed a rare domestic movie.
This is a movie made up of pictures with empty mirrors and small parts that you don't expect, before my experience of watching dramas was always that the director and screenwriter used the lines to break the plot and crumple it and feed it to the mouth, and it was really uncomfortable to watch the movie directed by Cheng Er for the first time. But the second time I saw it, I found the joy in it.
It's like playing a detective game with the director through the film, what he wants to tell me in this shot, what details are hidden in that picture, is a kind of fun for the audience to participate in.
In fact, most of the world's movies really can't withstand careful scrutiny, not to mention the details, many can't even do the general logical self-consistency, so I think the audience is not not the ability to study the film in detail from the beginning, but in such a viewing environment forced us to lose this ability.
So I very much hope that directors like Cheng Er can have more, and there will be fast food movies that relax and relax, so that there will be movies that can be explored and watched with a deep heart.
Of course, there are two controversial points in the movie now, one is the controversy inside and outside the play brought by Wang Yibo, and the other is that many netizens complain that the movie itself disrupts the narrative, and the story plot is not clear enough, like the previous work is not grounded similar problems.
How to say, from all kinds of details, it shows that Cheng Er knows how to respect the audience and insight into human nature, respect lies in the fact that he often tells the story from an eye-level perspective, and insight into human nature lies in showing that there is no absolute determination that people are evil. Movies can be lighthearted popcorn or thought-provoking gifts, and privately I hope that this kind of good movie that respects the audience and understands human nature can be a little more, and I sincerely hope that the market will not live up to such a good movie.
For example, this "Nameless" is also about Shanghai, and Cheng Er's last movie "The History of the Demise of Romance" is also Shanghai.
The last movie always felt that Cheng Er had an unrealistic romantic fascination with Shanghai, obviously he is not from Shanghai, just like the spring dream in midnight Paris, the golden age flowing feast, both gorgeous and real, beautiful and false.
In Cheng Er's lens, old Shanghai is elegant, decent, and oppressive. In fact, I can understand why he chose Wang Yibo, I think it is only the most insignificant reason (I probably didn't expect Wang's traffic to be so large at that time), but he has the kind of character traits that Cheng Er wants, the elegance and decency on the surface, the depression in the bones, and the fragility that seems to have no tomorrow.
The more beautiful the drunken gold fans in front of the camera, the more elegant and decent people are, and then nakedly facing the pain under the surface, will make the viewer try to understand and lament the old Shanghai, but also have more understanding of our life today.
Movies like "Nameless" should not be buried, just as director Cheng Er should not be vilified. China needs such films, and even more so such master-level directors.