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Monday ecstasy.
On March 12, local time, the 95th Academy Awards ceremony, "Instantaneous Universe" and Michelle Yeoh became the biggest winners.
The film received a total of 11 nominations at this year's Oscars, and finally won 7 awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress as an Asian face.
Best Actress doesn't stop at the Oscar. Before the Oscars, Michelle Yeoh has won the Golden Globe Award, the American Critics Association Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award and many other awards for Best Actress with "Instantaneous Universe", and at the age of 60, she is once again standing at the peak of her career.
It's none other than "she"
When the light of all achievements falls on specific people, it is always just right.
At the age of 60, Michelle Yeoh won the Oscar for her role as a 55-year-old middle-aged mother in "Instantaneous Universe", and everything seemed just right.
It is difficult to say whether South Korea's idols have the same "feelings" as the film industry's Hollywood ventures, but over the years, there are not many stories of Asia's top female stars breaking into Hollywood alone, and Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi have taken their own "international steps". But only Michelle Yeoh came to the step of the Oscar actress.
And this step, she spent 25 years.
Malaysian Chinese, Asian faces, kung fu stars, actresses, these labels are attached to a person at the same time, and it has also become a burden that Michelle Yeoh needs to bear on the road to Hollywood. But today, she holds the little golden man in her hand, and these labels have naturally become her supreme praise on the star path.
In 1984, Michelle Yeoh's first film "Owl and Dumbo" was released. At that time, the actress's drama path was very narrow and extreme, either quiet as a virgin to make a vase, or moving like a rabbit to be a pure star, due to the origin of Miss Malaysia, Michelle Yeoh's first film could not escape the fate of the vase.
But she was not willing to make a vase, and resolutely chose another path - "fighting".
The second film, "Summer Lucky Star". Michelle Yeoh turned into a judo instructor and began to learn kung fu with Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan. By 1986, Michelle Yeoh successfully won the Best Newcomer Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. But soon, young Michelle Yeoh quickly entered the marriage stage and briefly disappeared.
After the divorce, Michelle Yeoh, who wanted to come back, just in time for Jackie Chan to plan 1991's "Police Story 3: Super Police". Unlike the previous works in the same series, Jackie Chan hopes that the heroine of his movie this time is no longer a "vase", but a "star" who can play and run, which once again gives Michelle Yeoh the stage.
In 1997, "007: Tomorrow's Empire", became a Bond girl. Although it hit the iceberg of "Titanic" head-on, the story of Michelle Yeoh's brave Hollywood still begins.
In 2000, Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" not only pushed Chinese films to a new height again, as the heroine, Michelle Yeoh's Hollywood seemed to be close at hand.
But then it got cold again.
People always say that female artists have passed the golden period after reaching middle age, and even Michelle Yeoh has also faced such "cold". Even if there is "The Mummy 3", there is "Sword Rain", and even challenged the small screen, showing his face in "Crazy Rich Asians" and even Marvel's "Shang Qi", but in the context of the loneliness of martial arts films, at that time, Michelle Yeoh, as a star, seemed to be flat.
A "her"
But fortunately, all these opportunities make her a perfect match for the role of "Instantaneous Universe".
In the story of "Instantaneous Universe", Evelyn Wang, played by Michelle Yeoh, runs a dismal laundry with her husband Waymond (Kwan Jiwei), and her relationship with her depressed daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) carries a strange tension because of homophobia. At the same time, she faces a divorced husband and a father with dementia who needs to adjust to life in the United States.
This is a spectacle story about a middle-aged mother whose life is a mess.
As Evelyn's consciousness travels between parallel universes and becomes the world's savior, the avatar of the universe destroyer she will fight against is her daughter.
This is a film involving the role of Chinese immigrants, ethnic identity, mother-daughter relationship, cultural tearing... And so on with various questions with movies. On this basis, the heroine also needs to be a kung fu actress, in other words, it is simply written with Michelle Yeoh's name. And in the Oscar 11 to 7, and Michelle Yeoh's gold medal, all the previous dormancy seems to be particularly worth it - it seems that everything is waiting for this role and this movie.
She herself said this, in a conversation with actress Cate Blanchett, Michelle Yeoh said that she had been preparing for the role for 60 years.
Winning the award is just a moment, in addition to reviewing Michelle Yeoh's strong color in film history, it is difficult for us to imagine the significance of Evelyn, which was brewed with 60 years of life, to Michelle Yeoh.
In the movie, Evelyn is 55 years old, and Michelle Yeoh is in her early 50s as a martial arts star it is difficult to receive roles. Like all middle-aged actresses with mature acting skills and mature ideas in Chinese mainland, she began to become the mother-in-law of the protagonist and daughter-in-law of the protagonist in the film, although this is also a type of female identity, but in almost 99% of the drama narrative, such identity often points to transparency, flatness and uninteresting.
The highlights of the drama are not sprinkled here, and the arcs of the characters are rarely shown here. Although we can also see that in "Crazy Rich Asians", the male protagonist's mother Yang Aili played by Michelle Yeoh is elegant and calm, domineering and decisive, and presides over trivial matters at home, but in fact, this is still not the center of the story.
In the interview, Michelle Yeoh mentioned that "in fact, we often can't choose how we want to survive. "Asian actors have long been given stereotypical or irrelevant roles and rarely get core roles. The first time she went to a meeting, she was asked, "Oh my God, do you speak English?" ”
"We are shaped like Ming dynasty vases, fragile and fragile, placed in the background as decorations. ...... Otherwise, it is a woman who plays a red face, such as a prostitute in Chinatown, such as Su Sihuang. But those images have changed. We have to show what girls and ladies are like today. They are smart, capable, independent, and tough, but not the kind of shrews who are arrogant. I think it's important to let people know that women can be tough and sexy at the same time. "It shouldn't be related to the color of my skin, but this fight has always existed, at least let me try." ”
In the minds of most audiences, Hollywood, which has always existed as a utopia of Chinese films, and even the Oscars, the first mainstream award, have a great sense of "mainstream identity" significance. For audiences who grew up nourished by Hong Kong films, Michelle Yeoh is not an Asian or middle-aged actress with a complex identity, but a familiar and cordial, heroic golden age of speech films.
Michelle Yeoh held up the Oscar, which is a rare carnival of co-prosperity for the Chinese Internet.
In the movie, an ordinary middle-aged mother becomes a superhero; Outside the movie, Michelle Yeoh calmly and confidently raised her arms with the trophy and declared to the world: "I hope that all women, don't listen to anyone say that you have long passed your golden period, and never give up." ”
What if we're reveling about it? Perhaps to celebrate the strong Michelle Yeoh and finally dream of the Oscar; Perhaps it is the joy that women of different skin colors have appeared in the Oscars; Or maybe we're glad there are no rules, about movies.
In short, there is still something to celebrate.
Source: Weibo, Douban, invasion and deletion.