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In 1998, Zhang Yimou, who had just passed his 48th birthday, fell into the double bottleneck of life and film creation.
At that time, although he had broken up with Gong Li for 3 years, he also made an "unconventional" urban comedy masterpiece "Have Something to Say" during that time.
But the pain of losing such an actress who knows herself best, especially the thought of the partner who has been in love for 8 years, will marry a wife in the blink of an eye, this pain still lingers for a long time.
Watching Gong Li and other directors cooperate more and more tacitly, Zhang Yimou is also actively seeking change.
He decided to pick himself up and go back to his homeland.
After reading Shi Xiangsheng's novel "There is a Sun in the Sky", Zhang Yimou was immediately moved, and he decided to use this as a basis to shoot a story about rural education.
The name of the movie is "No One Can Be Less".
01
Such a subject matter looks simple, but it is not easy to shoot.
Zhang Yimou had seen the original rural people, seen their waddling figures in the yellow sand sky, and knew the depression of their accents when they spoke.
Therefore, even if it is the two reds that appear on his face when smiling, Zhang Yimou, who is demanding, must try his best to polish out the truth.
But this is too much trouble, but also too time-consuming, after all, not all actors have Gong Li's talent.
Thinking about it, Zhang Yimou made a bold attempt to go directly to the countryside to select people and create a team of all informal actors.
This is easy to say, but it is difficult to do, and it takes a lot of effort to choose the heroine alone.
First of all, it must be a native rural girl, who must reveal just the right nature in every move, and must not be afraid of the stage, and can adapt to large and small machine shooting. The most important thing is to have a certain degree of expressiveness, to show the purest side in front of the camera.
But most of the rural girls are very timid, and when they see a living person, they are like frightened deer who can't stop dodging. Some girls are bold, but when they sit in front of the camera, their tongues are not their own, let alone words.
Therefore, the choice came and went, and the female lead actor still could not be determined.
At this moment, assistant director Li Hong found a pair of twin sisters who met their requirements.
When I first met these two sisters, my sister Wei Minzhi was feeding the pigs, and the two faces were red, like the afterglow of the sunset accidentally falling on the girl's face.
Li Hong went up to talk to them and asked them what their names were and if they could sing and dance.
Sister Wei Congzhi is more shy, hiding behind her sister and not speaking, Minzhi is bold, not only took the stubble, but also sang a song "Our Motherland is a Garden".
The little girl speaks a lame Mandarin, sings every song out of tune, and with her self-written "Indian dance", the whole scene is somewhat funny.
But it was this directness and boldness that touched Li Hong, who looked into the eyes of the little girl and seriously asked her if she dared to act in the movie.
Wei Minzhi dared to say without even thinking about it, she may not even know the specific meaning of acting in the movie, but as long as it is something fresh and interesting, she dares to do it.
Wei Minzhi thus joined the audition of the heroine, and zhang Yimou was very satisfied with her after seeing her, but he still had some hesitation.
Because after the heavy selection, including Wei Minzhi left a total of two girls, the other score is higher than Wei Minzhi, but Wei Minzhi's temperament is very suitable for the script, and for a time the main creator of the crew fell into a dilemma.
Zhang Yimou thought of an idea, and he gave them the last question, so that they both stood on the street and shouted, and whoever shouted well would choose whoever shouted well.
The high-scoring girls mustered up enough courage, but in the end they were still thin-skinned and could not shout in the street.
Wei Minzhi didn't think it was such an embarrassing thing, she stood at the intersection of the street, and every sound was clear and loud.
Zhang Yimou was very happy, and wei Minzhi was set as the heroine at the moment, and the movie "No One Can Be Less" was officially launched.
02
Just like Wei Minzhi played "Wei Minzhi", every role in the movie has only one performance purpose, that is, to play himself.
The old village chief is the old village chief, and the students Zhang Huike and Ming Xingguang also use their own names.
Zhang Yimou never asked them what they had to do or say before filming, he just provided them with a plot line, and the specifics all depended on everyone's own understanding and play according to language habits.
Because of this, the film is particularly real from beginning to end, as if it is an ordinary little thing that happens in an ordinary village.
At the beginning of the movie, the first thing that appears in front of the camera is the loess yellow sand that covers the countryside.
Not far away, a few loess walls crumbled, and inside the walls was the dilapidated Shuiquan Elementary School.
But the children didn't feel how bad their situation was, and they were like all ordinary children in the world, shaking their heads and reading a text that they didn't quite understand.
Just as a school has only a small broken classroom, there is only one teacher in the school who can be entrusted.
Teacher Gao has been here for decades, his hair gray and his heart full of enthusiasm.
But enthusiasm can not be used as money to spend, nor can he have the technique of splitting, half go back to serve the old woman who is sick in bed, and half leave to take care of the students who cannot be relieved.
The village chief was considerate of Teacher Gao's difficulties and helped him find a substitute female teacher, a thirteen-year-old doll.
Although it sounds unreliable, this baby girl has read books for a few days, and with her, she will not let the children be abandoned this month.
But before leaving, Teacher Gao still gave thousands of instructions, the most important of which was to let Wei Minzhi keep the children well, "no one can be less."
The salary given by the village chief was 50 yuan, and Wei Minzhi was obsessed with this money, chasing the tricycle to confirm that the village chief would not regret it. Teacher Gao also understood the girl's thoughts and promised that if the children had a lot, he would paste ten more pieces himself.
With this 60-piece guarantee, Wei Minzhi put his mind at ease and became a teacher of Xiao Wei in a down-to-earth manner.
03
She has a limited level of education, zero teaching experience, and even interacts with children with an arrogant attitude.
Of course, the children did not obey her, and there were many troublemakers in class, the most mischievous of them was the child Wang Zhang Huike.
Zhang Huike ran around in class, disobeyed discipline, and even stepped on Teacher Gao's cherished chalk during the dispute.
The most crucial thing is that when Wei Minzhi hid the female student Ming Xingguang from being taken away by the physical education teacher from the city, Zhang Huike sold Ming Xingguang's hiding place to the old village chief for the price of two ballpoint pens.
Ming Xingguang was taken to town by car. Teacher Xiao Wei chased after her on the hillside, ran red-faced, and broke her leg, but failed to snatch her back.
The village chief said that it was a good thing for Ming Xingguang to go to the city. Wei Minzhi was suspicious and more careful when looking at the child.
However, the teacher's status gave her more than that. After all, her biggest task is to teach her children.
But her ability is limited, and the only thing she can do is to copy the textbooks left by Teacher Gao before leaving on the blackboard.
The children clamored that they couldn't understand it, and she had no choice but to force them to copy it with a blunt attitude.
But as I copied it, there was one more empty space in the school.
Wei Minzhi broke into the village chief's house and asked him where Zhang Huike had gone.
That mischievous child Wang, whose father died early and whose mother was bedridden, became the only pillar of the family at the age of seven or eight. The mother struggled to get up, and could only let him follow the older children to the city to earn money and pay off debts.
Wei Minzhi refused to die and led his classmates to do arithmetic problems. The ticket to the city is three pieces, she looks for Zhang Huike back and forth, how many pieces do she need?
The children raised their little hands one after another, nine pieces, and they would all count.
Wei Minzhi had no money, not a piece.
The students thought of a way to go to the factory to help people move bricks to make money. Having made up his mind, Teacher Xiao Wei led the big children and children in his hands to launch an action, and a group of people were gray-headed and dirty, and the wind and fire were fierce.
The owner of the brick factory was a good man, and even if they came uninvited to destroy his bricks, he did not complain much about the children, but gave them fifteen pieces.
Wei Minzhi was very happy and used the extra money to buy two cans of Coke for everyone, one for one person to taste. The coke can was passed from one pair of small hands to another pair of small hands, and finally to Wei Minzhi's hand.
What a strange taste, numb, something they had never tasted before.
But they were happy too early, the actual ticket money was much higher than the group of children guessed, one way to get 20, Wei Minzhi wanted to take Zhang Huike home, a total of sixty yuan.
Sixty pieces, what a huge number.
The students listed strings of equations on the blackboard, and the result was that they buried the bricks in the brick factory that they could not move all day.
Wei Minzhi could only go to the mixed car.
It was easy to get on the bus, it was easier to get off the bus—she was chased off by the conductor.
Before the mind could think, his legs were already on the way to town.
She decided to go all the way.
04
Persistent people may not have good luck, Wei Minzhi walked all night, but only got the news that Zhang Huike was lost.
The boy had disappeared into the train station on the first day he had come to town, and the eldest boy who had brought him had no energy to care about his life and death, and after a while he left on his own.
Teacher Xiao Wei refused to give up, she first asked the radio operator at the train station to help her broadcast the report, and then took all the money in her body for ink paper, knelt on the bench and wrote a large stack of search notices.
But her search notice has neither contact information nor a photo of Huike, and Teacher Xiao Wei has no choice but to hold this pile of waste paper to find another way out.
The well-meaning person told her that there was a TV station in the city, and the director of the TV station was the most powerful, and he was looking for someone to find a quasi-one.
Wei Minzhi walked to the TV station, and the receptionist at the door coldly told her that if she wanted to find someone, she had no documents and money, and she had nothing, and she couldn't even meet the qualifications to enter.
Teacher Xiao Wei could only put all his hopes on the director who had never met before.
For the next two days, Wei Minzhi stayed at the door of the TV station, sleeping by the wall when she was sleepy, and drinking tap water at the door when she was hungry and thirsty. Every time I saw a person, I rushed over and asked, "Are you the director?"
In this world, there are always people who have a soft heart.
Wei Minzhi's almost stupid persistence in the receptionist's eyes finally touched some people. They told the director of Wei Minzhi's existence, and in order to help her, someone proposed that Wei Minzhi be on the most popular program on the TV station.
Not only can help Teacher Xiao Wei find someone, but also through this incident to arouse public opinion and create momentum for the program, the director quickly agreed to this proposal, and arranged Wei Minzhi to be on TV as quickly as possible.
In the program, the host threw her head at Wei Minzhi several times, but she never said a word.
It was not until the end, when the host guided her to speak to Zhang Huike, that Teacher Xiao Wei finally cried out in grievance and asked Zhang Huike where he was over and over again.
With the help of the masses, after several days of begging for food, Zhang Huike, who was dirty, was finally found.
05
The only thing the public is willing to believe is always the happiness and beauty in front of them, so some people say that Zhang Yimou's film is exposing the scars that we are not willing to face.
They hide in corners we can't see, in places that the web can't reach, in mountains where even houses are crumbling.
Zhang Yimou showed them in a direct way, and his behavior can be called a conscientious filmmaker, but from a practical point of view, it still has little effect.
In particular, this seemingly romantic and happy ending masks some pain that cannot be hidden in reality.
So from beginning to end, this movie only changes wei Minzhi's fate.
Because of this movie, at the age of 14, she broke away from her status as a farmer who fed pigs, was sponsored by kind people, and enrolled in better schools.
However, when Zhang Yimou was interviewed, he also admitted that Wei Minzhi's appearance and figure were not outstanding, and her education and professional background were not strong enough, and she was advised not to show the entertainment circle.
But after acting in the film, Wei Minzhi was obviously not willing to stop here, after completing her basic studies, she tried to enter the Beijing Film Academy, but failed, and finally stubbornly, she was admitted to the film and television media college of a certain college in Xi'an, and later studied abroad.
In 2008, Wei Minzhi and Liu Jinhui, who had known her for two years, joined hands in the United States to enter the palace of marriage, and now that the children are more than ten years old, some of the obsessions they once had should have been put down.
Although because of this film, she received widespread social and media attention, and was also jokingly called "the ugliest girl".
But in any case, this special identity still laid a solid foundation for her future life path.
While others are still living "destined" lives in the dilapidated loess villages, no one knows if their barren and deficient lives will have a chance to change.
Wei Minzhi was only the lucky one after all.
For most people, the only thing that can change their destiny is knowledge.
"No One Can Be Less", after being released in 1999, won the Best Film, Golden Rooster Award, Hundred Flowers Award, and other awards at the Venice Film Festival in one fell swoop, with this film, Zhang Yimou also found the feeling of filming again, the king returned, and returned to the peak.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: It's eating fish
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