7 days, the box office of 6.758 billion yuan, the second largest Spring Festival file in the total box office of Chinese film history.
The long-lost hustle and bustle of the film market is back.
During the Spring Festival, the two head movies "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2" led the way, and achieved double success in word of mouth and box office. In contrast, the results of "Nameless", which includes well-known creators such as Tony Leung and Wang Yibo, are slightly bleak.
Resolutely entering the fierce Spring Festival file, "Nameless" certainly shows the courage of literary and artistic films to break through, but the box office of 500 million yuan in 7 days also confirms the objective fact that literary and artistic films still have a long way to enter the hearts of the public and go to the high place of the box office.
"Flat three light four" has become a golden period
Literary films used to prefer to spend spring collectively
Unlike general commercial films, traditional literary films are often released in spring, especially in March and April.
On the one hand, these two months are between the Spring Festival and the May 1st file, often belonging to the market off-season, suitable for the slow playback of literary and art films, the audience's aftertaste, and the word-of-mouth continues to ferment.
Classic literary films such as "Daylight Fireworks", "Police Diary", "The Thief of Years" and "Sister Peach" were released during this period.
On the 62nd day of release, the box office officially exceeded 100 million yuan, and "Hidden in the Dust", known as the "miracle of the box office counterattack of literary and artistic films", was originally scheduled to be released on February 25, 2022.
On the other hand, literary films are not scheduled early like commercial films, but are usually arranged to appear at major film festivals such as the Berlin Film Festival and the Rotterdam Film Festival. In the early years, director Lu Chuan said in an interview that "film festivals are the only way out for literary films."
In the increasingly box-office only film and television creation environment, the living space of literary and artistic films is limited, and for independent filmmakers who create literary and artistic films, several well-known film festivals in the world are often important platforms for them to emerge. The film will be released after returning from overseas accolades, and it can also attract some admiring audiences with awards.
"Daylight Fireworks", "The Thief of Years" and "Hidden in the Dust" were all arranged to be released in China non-stop after winning the heavyweight awards of the Berlin Film Festival in January and February.
In contrast, as a film with a strong literary and artistic atmosphere and a certain threshold for viewing movies, "Nameless" appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival file with unprecedented attention and fierce box office battles, which is a success in itself.
In addition to the more comedy family movies, "Nameless" tells the confrontation between light and darkness with beautiful visual processing and non-linear narrative, satisfies the aesthetics of diversified audiences with pure violent aesthetics, and also allows more audiences to contact the genre of literary films, making bold attempts and efforts to further open the public orientation, public communication and public acceptance of literary and artistic films.
"There is light at the end of the tunnel", the two-way rush of creators and audiences also confirms the improvement of the current level of public film and television appreciation and aesthetic tolerance.
A balance between commerciality and artistry
The eternal problem of literary films
Judging from the results, the box office of "Nameless" is already gratifying compared to ordinary literary films.
In particular, the luxurious cast has received a lot of attention and topicality, making "Nameless" ranked in the top three at the pre-sale box office as early as before its release.
However, compared with the movies in the same schedule, the final result of "Nameless" obviously lags behind the top echelon, and the reputation is also polarized.
"Nameless" uses a large number of flashbacks, interludes, and flashback shots to "entangle" the audience in the whirlpool of the Shanghai Revolution in the interlacing of time and space, and the favorite audience still has endless memories of the Cheng Er aesthetic style established since "The History of the Demise of Romance" after walking out of the theater.
And the Douban hot comment of "high-grade picture and first-class texture, that is, the narrative makes people a little confused" represents the feeling of more audiences who are eager to relax their brains during the Spring Festival.
A day after the start of the Spring Festival, the Douban scores of other films have been released, only the rating of "Nameless" has been belated, and the top of the short review page still hangs "The current audience has a large difference of opinion, and then some short comments are shown, please refer carefully", like a sword of Damocles that refuses to fall.
"Nameless" director Cheng Er once said in an interview: "Really good movies must be more commercial than commercial and more artistic than art." However, the characteristics of literary films determine that they must sacrifice commerciality for artistic purposes when necessary.
The overly high feelings, the difficult status quo, the limited core audience group, and the gap between ideal and reality have become important reasons that hinder the acceptance of literary and artistic films by a wider audience group.
Even classic literary films with a good reputation are the norm in the market.
A frequent visitor of the three major European film festivals, director Xu Anhua, who swept the 4 awards of the Venice Film Festival with "Sister Peach", and then directed the literary film "Golden Age" again, which lasted four years, star-studded and cost more than 70 million yuan in production "Golden Age", and the final box office was only 50 million yuan.
In terms of box office volume, the market gap between literary and commercial films is still huge.
"Kailash "Kailash ", which created a box office of 100 million yuan, and "Twenty-two", which won 170 million box office, can be called the highlight of literary films, and "July and Ansheng", which won many heavyweight awards at the Golden Horse Award, only has a box office of 167 million.
In a sense, "great heat" and "literature and art" were originally incompatible words.
Throughout the history of the development of literary and artistic films, only films that connect universal emotions and hit the public psychology and national emotions can barely achieve a breakthrough of more than 100 million at the box office. This is true of "Twenty-two", which pays attention to the theme of comfort women and arouses the attention and forwarding of many stars, as well as "Hidden in the Dust", which opens low and goes high at the box office.
In "Hidden in the Dust", director Li Ruijun tells the story of two "marginal" characters in 133 minutes. When two people who have been "abandoned" by society meet, they do not feel self-pity, nor do they give up on themselves, but through hard work day after day, they get feedback from the land.
Some netizens said, "The northwest land can't grow roses, and wheat printing is the most turbulent love." ”
Two small characters on the ordinary land, with the simplicity of not chasing the prosperity aroused the audience's emotion and resonance, and finally achieved the counterattack of the box office, which once again confirmed that what supports the sustainable development path of literary and art films is ultimately the reputation of the work.
There is no law of propaganda, and the Renaissance is accidental
"One life, one life" is the norm
In addition to the quality of works, the lack of mature and replicable publicity paths is also an important factor affecting the box office of literary films.
Unlike commercial films, commercial films tend to have a clear type and a clear target audience. The "Bear Haunted" series of animated movies, which have been low-key in the Spring Festival for many years, mainly sell for family fun and parent-child, with clear publicity positioning, simple and direct and effective publicity methods.
However, most of the publicity of literary and art films lacks accurate audience portraits, nor can they find a way to communicate with the audience. Therefore, the pan-entertainment audience and even ordinary fans are also lacking interest, go to the cinema to watch a movie with an unclear audience.
Therefore, the propaganda "playing method" of literary and art films that cannot feel the pulse of the audience is particularly bizarre.
Generally speaking, the core creator is the main magic weapon of literary and artistic film marketing.
"Nameless" can reach the top of the pre-sale box office before the broadcast, and the actor Tony Leung bound to it has an inseparable relationship with young actor Wang Yibo, and the "fan economy" provides the greatest help.
If there are no well-known actors, the director is the focus of marketing. The 51st Golden Horse Awards Best Actor and Best New Director, Chen Jianbin, who played and directed You, raised fans' expectations for "A Spoon". As a result, "A Spoon" focused its marketing on Chen Jianbin, and eventually earned more than 20 million box office.
There are also literary films that are suitable for social issues, such as "Send Me to Qingyun", which is deeply bound to the starring Yao Chen during the publicity process, and at the same time uses "looking for the same kind" as the Slogan of the film to stimulate the audience's discussion of women's issues, and realize the "passing of the geese" of literary and art films.
For literary and artistic films whose main creators lack popularity, publicity is more difficult.
Stretched budget costs, a small proportion of films, and cold rejection and hitting a wall are the norm encountered by literary and art films in publicity.
Event marketing, weakening the label of literary films, and learning the publicity path of commercial films have all become ways for literary and art films to explore self-help.
"A Hundred Birds to the Phoenix" caught up with "Captain America 3" in the early days of its release, and there were almost no films every day, and producer Fang Li knelt down to arrange the films, attracting enough eyeballs to win a far more anticipated arrangement for "A Hundred Birds and Phoenixes", and the final box office reached 86.752 million yuan.
In the literary film "The Party at the Southern Station" starring Hu Ge, Gui Lunmg, Liao Fan and Wan Qian, in order to attract more audiences into the cinema, the film party decided to shift the publicity rhythm of the film to the direction of suspense crime and big coffee gathering.
"The Last Night on Earth" is packaged in commercial ways, and the "kiss New Year's Eve" ritual marketing is carried out on short video platforms such as Douyin, constantly raising the audience's expectations. On the day of the premiere, the box office of the movie exceeded 250 million yuan, but the first round of word-of-mouth revolt of "can't understand" immediately arrived, and the box office showed a cliff-like decline.
In stark contrast to "The Last Night on Earth", it is the spontaneous second creation of "Hidden in the Dust" by users of the short video platform, which eventually led to the film's full stamina. On September 2, the 57th day after its release, "Hidden in the Dust" topped the single-day box office list with a box office of more than 8 million, followed by "Walking on the Moon Alone" and "New God List: Yang Jian".
The propaganda path that cannot be imitated and copied has led to the personalized situation of "one piece and one life" in literary and artistic films.
From this dimension, "Nameless" broke into the Spring Festival file, taking advantage of the trend of "traffic" and "schedule" to arouse the attention of a wider audience group to literary and art films, which is not a flag for the future of literary films.
Chinese films need big-budget head films, commercial films that meet the entertainment needs of the audience, and literary and artistic films with humanistic temperature, the breadth of the times and the sharpness of society.
And the truly classic literary and artistic films are never solitary or obscure, but can express the universal emotions that everyone has in their hearts. Being able to do this, literary films can be transformed from "niche films" to relatively "mass films", and I hope that more literary and art film directors can sculpt the script, tell a good story, and let the characters return to the story itself to emotion people.