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Among many domestic film directors, Zhang Jiarui is one of the excellent new-generation directors. After failing to apply for the Chinese drama entrance examination in the college entrance examination, he was sent to the Department of Philosophy of Sichuan University because of his outstanding political achievements, and after graduation, he fulfilled his dream of directing training class at Beijing Film Academy, and later worked in Qingying Studio and began the "aromatic journey" of his directorial career.
Expression of minority cultures
Throughout the films directed by Zhang Jiarui, the expression of ethnic minority cultural diversity and the presentation of folk scenes are evident in the film.
The Hani girl Moma yearning for modern society, the love story of Yi bride Fengmei, and the finger-biting behavior of Yao girl Atao have all become important forms of discourse on the theme of the film.
In Zhang Jiarui's film, the presentation of ethnic minority culture is divided into two forms, one is to directly present the ecological charm of ethnic minorities.
For example, the film "Guma's Seventeen", which undertakes the important mission of the Red River government to declare the United Nations cultural heritage.
Its length of natural landscapes and ethnic minority folklore in the film far exceeds the artistic charm carried by the storyline, and the lack of plot weakening can only be made up for by a large number of folk environment lenses.
This is tantamount to a very different paradigm from commercial films, thus laying the foundation for the style of the director's subsequent literary films: in order to express the theme of ethnic minority cultural diversity.
The director embeds the cultural factors of ethnic minorities in the storyline, and the folklore situation is not displayed in isolation, but is closely related to the identity background of the characters and the national customs induced in the plot development.
Moreover, the display of these national cultures transcends its meaning as an image ontology, and is endowed with a rhetorical meaning in cultural co-construction.
These cultural factors include marriage customs, animal totems, living habits, myths and legends, special behaviors, etc., which serve as the exhibition of the spiritual beliefs of ethnic minorities, reflecting the unique national character of ethnic minorities in the film, and also rising to the problem of cultural mutual treatment in plot development, mutual exclusion and integration of traditional culture and modern culture.
Culture is the spiritual metaphor of a national individual or group, the continuation of the belief in the human spirit, and the contradictions and conflicts caused by the multi-dimensional characters in the film are actually fierce collisions between folk cultures.
Therefore, some of the plot rhetoric used in the film, such as illness, dreams, chases, etc., are metaphors for the connotations of civilizational exchanges and cultural interactions.
The culture shown in ethnic minority films is an organic part of the aesthetic construction of ethnic regions, so the ethnic minority culture constructed in film and television works has an authentic appeal.
Regarding the authenticity of images, ethnic minority films are different from films of other themes, and ethnic minority films should show the continuity of civilization in the past historical process and current civilization as much as possible, rather than paying too much attention to whether the image itself is highly restored to the real scene.
Moreover, ethnic minority films mostly show the survival and development of a certain ethnic group in a certain natural environment, so the use of the term "original ecology" is more targeted and convincing for identifying the degree of culture shown in ethnic minority films.
"Original ecology" means that it is highly restored to the natural state of organisms in a certain environment, with their own characteristics, primordial and real. "The original ecology has the existence of the people, and the main body is ordinary people; It mainly reflects the history, production and life of a specific region and a specific ethnic group, and is simple and less processed."
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the mighty wave of globalization forced literary and artistic workers to think and explore local culture, and there was a cultural root-seeking fever, and the original ecology has become a visible propaganda slogan at that time.
The original cultural expression is reflected in literature, dance, film and television and other art forms, and when it is put into film and television creation, the original ethnic minority films show more uncivilized folk customs and lifestyles that are far from modern civilization.
Several ethnic minority films in the early years of the new century, such as "Anayi" (2006, ugly director), "Boiling water to be hot, girls to be strong" (2007, directed by Hu Shu), "The Gun of Rolling Lala" (2008, directed by Ning Jingwu) and so on.
From ethnic minority directors to amateur actors, from the daily life of the narrative to the normal display of the folk environment, the original characteristics of ethnic minority films are interpreted in the film.
Women's pathos and introspection
Among the many literary film directors, director Zhang Jiarui came out with the Yunnan trilogy. The films directed by Zhang Jiarui have obvious imprints of the times, and from his films, you can touch the fate of small people under the pulse of history.
The female images under her film and television works are unique, and the tragic archetypal setting, opposing gender relations, and up-and-coming female consciousness are all interpreted in her films.
There are many types of tragic women in her films, including numb sacrificial women, alienated marginal women, and awakened struggling women.
And the reasons for the formation of this tragedy are also diverse, the defects of the character's congenital body construction, the lack of acquired public education and the consumed body are the reasons for the formation of pathos.
However, it is not difficult to find in his films that female consciousness is striving to shine, breaking tradition, opposing "second sex", pursuing emotional freedom, and portraying the awakened female image of chasing the light in adversity.
The female image in the film is tragic, on the one hand, from the biological weakness of women, and this tragedy is more from the oppression of men, that is, the oppression of the "other".
Beauvoir believed that the transformation of "women" into "femininization" was the fundamental reason for the transformation of women's second sex, and when the subjective consciousness of the second sex gradually weakened, it became "the self-deception of the other".
Under the oppression of others, women have the characteristics of dependence, multifaceted and absolute. In terms of the characteristics of female images, the film directed by Zhang Jiarui has the characteristics of paradigm, that is, the women in the film can be divided into three categories: numb sacrificial women, alienated marginal women, and awakened struggling women.
"Sacrificial" refers to the sacrifice of the ability to choose feelings, unable to achieve the pursuit of an ideal life under a restricted social system, can only obey and submit to the arrangements of the patriarchal society, and force one's life to become a victim under the male gaze.
Such women lack the awakening of independent consciousness, and gradually numb themselves and lose themselves in the society shaped by men, numbness refers to the insensitivity to women's autonomous consciousness and become a vassal of male aesthetics.
The sacrificial female image can be seen in the heroine Chunfen in "Aromatic Journey", who chooses to spend her life with people she does not like and are sexually impotent under the system of arranged marriage, and Chunfen's life is actually a victim of the system, culture, and system, and her whole life is spent in the burden of humiliation.
At the end of the film, Chunfen also wants to get rid of this sacrifice and wants to meet the person he really likes, but in the end he fails to resist under the bullying of Master Cui.
Jiang Yue'e in "Lost City" is also a sacrificial female image, pregnant and she chooses to marry someone she does not love for the sake of the child in her belly, which is actually a double manifestation of women's self-deception and inferiority.
The numb sacrificial female characters all end up living their lives in compromise, and ultimately do not receive the love and respect they deserve.
Under the patriarchal social system, the status of women in opposing gender relations is always in a state of oppression, and women cannot find equal social identity with men in the status of others, which has a long history.
Beauvoir argues that this alienation and inequality have always existed, and that as long as human attributes are distinguished by labels such as "male" and "female", then one will always be in a state of being stared at.
The sacrificial women in the film are difficult to escape the fate of being stared at and objectified after all, and Chunfen in "Aromatic Journey" meets a heart-warming suitor in her later years, unable to convince her heart to accept new feelings, and chooses to remain a widow for half her life.
Chunfen has been bound by a self-proclaimed ideal code of conduct from birth, which has been constantly reaffirmed and emphasized throughout her life journey.
Whether it was Lao Tian who showed favor to Chunfen many times, or the new apprentice Xiaohong directly mentally stimulated her, Chunfen was unmoved, insisting that loyalty was something he needed to stick to with his whole life.
Chunfen constantly refuses and answers to force herself into an identity that must be consistent with it, and constantly exacerbates the constraints that marriage brings to her.
A narrative that changes steadily
American scholar Berg pointed out that "narrative is story, and story tells what has happened or is happening to people, animals, alien life in space, insects, etc."
That is, a story includes a series of events that occur chronologically, that is, events that occur over a period of time, or rather, over a period of time. "Narrative is often mentioned in the creation of literary scripts, and narrative is equally important in the creation of film scripts.
Genet defines "narrative" as three different meanings in Narrative Discourse, and Matz introduces the concept of "narratology" into film studies.
This chapter uses the theory of film narratology to summarize and sort out the narrative style of Zhang Jiarui's films, mainly from the three aspects of his film's narrative perspective, narrative structure, and narrative timing, and summarizes that Zhang Jiarui's films have stable and changing narrative characteristics.
That is, in the narrative perspective, a more restrained and stable outward-focused perspective has been adopted, and the changeable narrative structure and inverted timing have enriched the dramatic effect of his films.
When the narrator in the film learns less than the characters in the film, it is called an out-of-focus narrative. Externally focused narratives, like unfocused narratives, are presented in the third person. However, in the perspective of external focus, the narrator does not add any embellishment and criticism to the plot.
This also makes the film develop a more calm and objective style. If the narrator in the unfocused perspective can lead the audience in and out freely and freely extend to any space and scene to achieve a certain purpose of the protagonist in the film, then the out-focus perspective deliberately allows the audience to see scenes that are not related to the truth, leaving the audience helpless.
"Because their perspective is smaller than that of the characters, they, like the audience, can only wait for things to change and develop, forming a so-called objective style."
Just as in De Sica's film "The Bicycle Thief", the narrator deliberately arranged for the characters in the play to avoid the way of solving problems, putting the characters in the play in trouble, and there was more separation between the characters and the audience, so that the audience could only watch coldly and be afraid of the unknown fate of the characters.
Although the involvement of bionic devices such as cameras and tape recorders is inevitable in the process of film production, the invisible narrator can hide himself behind the film through these bionic devices, which actually provide a good shelter for the invisible narrator.
You don't need too much narration, music, montage and other editing methods, you only need to let the audience feel the fate of the characters in the play through a single perspective.
It can be seen that there are very few films that use the out-focus perspective in the films directed by Zhang Jiarui, and only the two suspense films "Killing Ring" and "The Lost City" use the out-focus perspective.
The external focus perspective is undoubtedly a powerful weapon to create a terrifying and suspenseful atmosphere, and by hiding the identity of the narrator and the display of the perspective, the audience can feel the helplessness of the protagonist's fate.