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Guan Hu's films have sharp, rebellious stylized characteristics, and many researchers classify their films as postmodernist films.
It is not denied that there are narrative methods that are very different from traditional modernism and diversified image styles in Guan Hu's films, but these seemingly subversive "deconstruction" representations.
In fact, it is only a means for Guan Hu films to express core themes such as reflection and criticism of aesthetic modernity, and its fundamental "construction" is the real landing point of his film works.
Therefore, analyzing the artistic representation of Guan Hu's film is actually analyzing how director Guan Hu achieves natural expression in the sense through a stylized pursuit.
Personalized storytelling
As the sixth generation of Chinese film directors, Guan Hu's film works have both the narrative style of the same generation and artistic personality.
The unconformist instincts have prompted the "academic" Guan Hu's film creation to present a narrative style that is both anti-bone rebellious and follows standardized rules. The construction of narrative space and the setting of narrative perspective are different from others and have their own style.
First, the closed nature and fluidity of narrative time and space
As a narrative art, story is always an indispensable part of it, and how to tell a good story is one of the important tasks of film directors to express cultural pursuits, and the choice of narrative method can obviously reflect the director's artistic creation tendency.
For the setting of narrative space, Guan Hu, like other sixth-generation directors, tends to "multi-dimensional ideographic space", that is, "presenting a symbolic and metaphorical stylized ideographic audiovisual space through symbolized visual symbols such as sound, color, picture, composition, and light in the film (Zhu Lin, 2015)".
Compared with directors who are willing to set up large scenes, director Guan Hu deliberately sets up a hypothetical situation, and this relatively closed narrative space provides director Guan Hu with a more free and controllable space to play, avoiding the drawbacks of large and empty narratives.
Because of this, three women of different ages in "Xi Shi Eye" interpret their own life stories in that Jiangnan town, and in "Bullfighting", Niu Er runs to the fortress village to tell the audience the story of commitment and humanity.
In "Killing", the cow living in a small village in southwest China asks what is the truth with full vitality, and "The Cook Plays the Riffraff" plays an alternative patriotic story of anti-Japanese resistance in a "Japanese restaurant".
It can be said that the closed narrative space provides a free stage for the story of Guan Hu's film, and all the playful anger, sorrow and joy are staged in the scope of the director's circle.
In addition, the closed nature of the narrative space of Guan Hu's film is also reflected in the separation of the individual from the surrounding environment.
Of course, the completely closed narrative space has its own drawbacks, which will inevitably bring deliberate and contrived feelings to the audience. In order to avoid this phenomenon, Guan Hu chose a non-linear narrative method that was jumpy or even bizarre, which greatly expanded the narrative space.
The non-linear narrative of Guan Hu's film is concentrated in the setting of narrative time, and the use of heterozygous intersection and inverted narrative time not only makes the whole story more exciting, but also enhances the watchability of the film.
The closure and fluidity of narrative time and space, one static and one movement, constitute the distinctive narrative style of Guan Hu's films, and also provide possibilities and conditions for Guan Hu to pay attention to the living state of people themselves and reflect on aesthetic modernity.
Second, the multidimensionality of the narrative perspective
The choice of narrative perspective often means the true appeal of the film creator, such as the selection of an objectified narrative perspective can be seen as the creator to play the role of God, telling everything known to the "ignorant" audience.
The narrative perspective of Guan Hu's film refuses to be monotonous and presents the characteristics of multi-dimensionality, which makes the narrative closer to the truth of the story and provides different angles for the audience to "read the story".
For example, in "Who Moved My Happiness", a story about love and original heart is told through the perspective of the amnesiac actor Niu Fei and his unborn son Dudu.
Guan Hu uses two very different perspectives of Niu Fei and Dudu to tell the same story in this film.
In Niu Fei's perspective, he fell into a dream after a car accident, in which he was no longer a successful agent, and his daily life made him face a lot of bad things every day, digging for cheap goods, buying dead shrimp at special prices, and he went crazy and wanted to return to the world he lived in.
Of course, the multi-dimensionality of the narrative perspective is not only to enrich the plot, but also to enhance the authenticity of the narrative, so that the audience can interpret the story from different angles.
Director Guan Hu is doing his best to objectively tell the audience the same story from different perspectives, without unilaterally telling the audience the truth he understands.
There are a thousand Hamlets for a thousand readers, and the subjective initiative of the viewer is respected and liberated to the greatest extent in Guan Hu's film world.
Hybrid Image Style: Objective Documentary and Abstract Representation
Guan Hu movies have always been concerned by audiences and researchers because of their distinctive image style, and the image style in Guan Hu's film world follows the story, and different stories need different styles, so there is no phenomenon that one style eats the world.
Different from the image style of the fifth generation of Chinese film directors who tend to be aesthetics, the sixth generation of directors are more willing to present the state of ordinary life and the mental journey of ordinary people in a documentary style.
What distinguishes Guan Hu from other sixth-generation directors is that his film works are not consistent with a single style, but have the characteristics of hybridization.
First, the civilian documentary style
From the perspective of audiovisual language, Get in the car, let's go! The film tones, character shapes, music, etc. in "Hair is Messy", "Who Stole My Happiness" and "Old Cannon" are all very close to the original appearance of ordinary daily life.
In terms of content, Guan Hu often uses a more realistic way to express the people and things he is familiar with, and deliberately avoids the use of symbols commonly used in the films of the fifth generation of directors in the film.
In Get in the car, let's go! The storylines of Beijing hutongs told in "Hair is Messy" and "Old Cannon" are so similar to Guan Hu's personal experience, these three films are almost flat and straightforward, showing naturalistic style characteristics.
"Get in the car, let's go!" tells the story of two Shandong boys who came to Beijing to break through and be frustrated, the two are not good-looking, and they do not have outstanding talents.
It is precisely because of their ordinary ability to arouse the emotional resonance of more audiences and find their own shadow in the movie characters.
In terms of the expression of the individual's living state, Guan Hu's film has greatly weakened the traces of expressionism, adopted an alienated posture towards the grand historical narrative and allegorical writing beloved by the fifth generation of directors, and tried to truly record the individual's survival experience, presenting a "civilian" documentary style.
Second, the abstract expression of the screenization of consciousness
Guan Hu's portrayal of the psychology of characters is deeply influenced by the French New Wave "consciousness screening", no longer raising "things" to a higher status than people, but focusing on portraying the psychological state and emotions of modern people, replacing "picture abstraction" with "consciousness screening".
Guan Hu film is rich in life philosophy, willing to explore the subjective psychology of characters, and transform abstract psychological activities into an emotional "figuration" through audiovisual language such as music, color, and lens movement, and the audience can infinitely approach the spiritual world of the film characters in the creation of this emotion.
For example, in "Killing", the villagers collude with each other to murder the "code" of the cow sturdy - the bell tied with a red rope, this symbolic prop transforms the abstract group psychology into a visible and audible object.
Jiu'er, played by Yan Ni in "Bullfighting", is dressed in red, which is different from many villagers wearing dark and dull clothes, and the bold and spicy language also makes Jiu'er's desire for personality liberation vividly appear on the screen.
At the same time, Guan Hu's films have always promoted the director's main creative spirit, and it can be seen that Guan Hu wants to reinterpret the real life of society in the art form of film, and use this to analyze human nature.
Guan Hu rarely accepts ready-made plays, and does not allow scripts to be filmed like that, and Guan Hu's strong creative spirit can also be seen in most film works as a director and screenwriter.
The simple style of Guan Hu's "civilian" objective documentary reflects a sad and sympathetic humanitarian feeling, while the abstract expression style of "consciousness screenization" is Guan Hu's artistic pursuit of film immortality.
Objective documentary and abstract expression styles blend and symbiote, forming a hybrid image style.
Playfully image language and serious issues
Guan Hu movies often appear with comedic playful image language, such as exaggerated character shapes, implied character dialogue, ironic details and so on.
Such a game-like video language serves to discuss serious issues such as human nature, war, good and evil.
Guan Hu films use carnival, ridicule, ridicule and other methods to criticize the power that suppresses human freedom and the solidified order, so that ignorance, hypocrisy and ugliness are everywhere, making people laugh and also arouse people's reflection.
First, the burlesque form of black humor
Black humor is an artistic technique of expressing tragic content in the form of comedy, in which "black" symbolizes death and comical social reality, and "humor" represents a mocking stance of reality.
Black humor is a major feature of Guan Hu's movies, works such as "Bullfighting", "Killing", "Cook Play Riffraff" and other works are witty and humorous on the surface, but in their bones they are full of serious reflections on reality.
In the character settings and details of the "anti-hero" film, the film reflects a sense of humor with tears in laughter. The dramatic contrast caused by thinking about serious issues through comical forms clarifies the truth that Guan Hu's movies are by no means superficial farces.
In "Bullfighting", Niuji discovers a wounded Japanese soldier and wants to kill him to avenge the whole village, but Niuji, who has never touched a gun, accidentally wounds his leg.
After the gunshot, the wounded Japanese soldier curled up on the ground in fear, and after a moment of hesitation, Ushiji found that the bullet had injured his leg. This scene is undoubtedly comical for serious revenge scenes, even comedic effects that make people laugh, but the social reality of "people killing each other" makes this laughter bitter.
As an aesthetic category, funny contains an element of ugliness.
In "The Cook Plays the Riffraff Drama", the funny form of "ugly" is more prominent, and the four patriots disguise themselves as funny and absurd joyful characters on the stage of Japanese restaurants in order to achieve the heavy task of saving the country and the people, staging scenes of alternative patriotic stories that seem ridiculous but are actually just, changing the serious attitude of previous patriotic movies.
For example, the cook played by Liu Ye is sissy when he appears, full of traitors, but in fact he is a linguist and medical expert who can decipher the antidote formula;
The proprietress has exaggerated makeup and low behavior, like a stupid weirdo, but she is actually good at deciphering codes and is an intelligence expert with a strong memory;
Second, the sad situation behind the banter
In Guan Hu films, the playful image language is never meant to simply make people laugh, or to attract the audience's attention in order to earn box office.
The playful elements in Guan Hu's films carry heavy cultural responsibilities, thus representing a sense of sadness with tears in laughter.
In the film "Killing", when the story is rewritten in the process of the doctor's search for the truth of the death of the cow, the truth makes the image of the cow strong, which was rejected by the whole village, beautiful.
His actions are more like challenging the constraints of established norms in a different way. What is even more absurd and ironic in the film is that under the plaque hanging "Hou Virtue Carrier", the villagers of Changshou Town are plotting with Doctor Niu to kill the cow.
Such a strong contrast expresses Guan Hu's criticism of the phenomenon that people's hearts are not ancient and excellent quality is unsustainable. The nature of comedy is painful.
When Niu Jiang's arrogance and difference caused the suppression of the gangsters, the villagers began to plan to make Niu Ji Shi disappear completely, and under great mental pressure, Niu Ji Shi was finally forced to accept the fact that "he was dead".
It is this rejection attitude of the gangsters that makes Niu Zhi give up the right to live (the body is dead) and give up the adherence to the spirit of resistance (the soul is dead).
In the grand historical background of the Anti-Japanese War, "Cook Plays Riffraff" shows three "anti-hero" characters with exaggerated appearances and behaviors, but in order to get the tiger virus vaccine and save the people.
As far as the superficial stories of Japanese soldiers are concerned, cooks, dramas, riffraff and proprietresses are all mercenary villains, but what they actually do is a great patriotic deed, which is a huge contrast to their superficial crazy image.
It is this image characteristic of "anti-heroes" that makes the characters in Guan Hu's movies have a deviant Dionysian spirit to a certain extent, dare to subvert the rules, despise authority, and criticize and ridicule the absurd and comical social reality from the negative side.
Based on the balance between banter and seriousness, Guan Hu successfully created such a patriotic film with alternative writing.
The characteristics of Guan Hu's films discussing serious issues in a burlesque form are similar to the comic spirit of Serbian director Kustuska. In Kusturica's film "Black Cat White Cat", the black sow who is hungry to eat a waste car, the goat who pulls down the toilet plank, Matt Gao, who sacrifices his son's love for money... The whole movie is noisy and noisy, like a nonsensical movie that is not marginal.
But like Guan Hu's films, in absurd and comical forms, the director discusses serious topics such as the delicate relationship between people, the inviolability of freedom, and the state of human existence in the historical context.
It can be said that the playful video language provides an alternative way for Guan Hu to discuss serious issues (such as history, human nature, vitality, freedom, etc.), showing a distinct comic spirit.
For example, in "Killing", Niu Jiushi Guan Hu uses ridicule and ridicule to criticize people's suppression of sensibility and foolishness towards the rigid order, and bravely says no to religious taboos and hierarchies;
In the Guan Hu film, which has a playful image language, all the false and ugly original forms are exposed, which makes people laugh and think deeply.
Director Guan Hu's exquisite narrative arrangement and colorful image expression undoubtedly make the wonderful stories in the film, but these stories are not only lively and sensational, but also carry profound humanistic thinking.
Relying on distinctive artistic representations, Guan Hu films have the capital to tell good stories and talk about things that cause people to reflect.