The premiere won 21 hot searches, CCTV released a high-scoring documentary, and I was not addicted to watching 8 episodes
In the summer of 2023 just past, a "mythological fever" has risen on both large and small screens.
On the big screen, in the movie "Fengshen Part 1", the nine-tailed fox fighting with Yin Jiao, and the gluttony that chased and killed Ji Fa were all ancient divine beasts in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas".
Small screen, Yang Zi starring in the hit drama "Sauvignon Blanc", its story background is also derived from this book.
Tanjianji's Xiangliu, based on the hydra in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", has nine heads and the body of a snake;
Zhang Wanyi's Lingyi, based on the Yellow Emperor's grandson Zhuān xū;
Deng Wei's Tu Shanjing is the nine-tailed fox in the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
The book describes the nine-tailed fox as a man-eating monster that cries like a baby and has a detoxifying effect on meat; After meeting Dayu, he became a "mascot"...
Before there was the movie "Fengshen "Thousands of Calls Came Out", and then there was the TV series "Sauvignon Blanc" was a hit, and the national IP "Classic of Mountains and Seas" can be described as dominating the screen one after another in the summer.
It can be said that most of the film and television works of fantasy gods and demons in later generations have its shadow.
Coincidentally, a documentary recently set off the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" fever again-
"Classic of Mountains and Seas"
"Mountains and Seas Jingqi" is a documentary premiered by CCTV at the end of August this year, with a total of 16 episodes, the first 8 episodes have been released, each episode is about 25 minutes, short and concise.
In fact, not only "Fengsheng" and "Sauvignon Blanc" and other domestic film and television dramas are based on "Mountain and Sea Sutra", Hollywood blockbusters and Japanese anime also draw inspiration from it.
The magical world written by J.K. Rowling has the strange figure of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas".
The ancient mythical beast Zōu Wú in "The Book of Mountains and Seas" was featured in the Hollywood blockbuster "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2".
Now, CCTV has finally made a move to shoot this classic IP that has been passed down for thousands of years.
You know, the ancient book "Classic of Mountains and Seas" is not easy to shoot, although it has a total of more than 31,000 words, but the whole text is ancient text.
It's obscure at first reading, let alone filmed out.
Moreover, the content of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" is all-encompassing, not only recording more than 400 gods and monsters, more than 100 historical figures, more than 40 states, but also covering astronomy, geography, mythology, religion, ethnicity, animals, plants, minerals and other aspects.
If you only use one documentary to show it, how to make trade-offs and choices? How to shoot to be easy to understand?
The difficulty of this can be imagined.
Fortunately, no matter how difficult it is, CCTV still filmed it.
Before the broadcast, the official trailer had already ignited the enthusiasm of the audience:
"This documentary can be played out and let the world know about Chinese mythology."
"Finally, there is an official to do the theme of the Classic of Mountains and Seas!"
On the first day of broadcasting, the praise was also continuous, and there were praise for the production level:
"The production is so good, it is worthy of being on CCTV."
There are some talks about the positive impact of this documentary:
"This is the real myth of China, our own cultural inheritance."
"It's still good at the moment, I have gained a lot of knowledge, and I can take my children to watch it together."
"The combination of story explanation and scene performance is really wonderful, especially for children, after increasing the sense of picture, I feel that children are more interested and more focused."
After the first round of broadcasting, not only did the whole network receive 21 hot searches, but the number of topics read also exceeded 120 million.
Next, let's walk into "Mountain and Sea Surprise" and feel the unique charm of the ancient book "Classic of Mountains and Seas".
What kind of book is the Classic of Mountains and Seas? There are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people.
Some people say that it is a geographical museum, others think it is an ancient survival guide, and some people boldly say that it is actually a non-fiction literature, a real "childish saying" from the childhood of ancestors.
After all, the Classic of Mountains and Seas is all-encompassing, but it is precisely because its content is very broad that it is difficult to define.
The "Classic of Mountains and Seas" that we see today was sorted out and proofread by Liu Xin in the Han Dynasty.
He decided that the ancient book he had seen had caused a great flood.
Legend has it that when Dayu was controlling water, he traveled all over the mountains and rivers of China, and conducted a large-scale field investigation on the soil, topography and landforms, fauna, plants and minerals of the mountains and rivers, and combed them into a book.
This is the origin of the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
"Mountain and Sea Surprise" is the first documentary to tell the story of ancient Chinese mythology.
Compared with traditional documentaries, the film uses animation, dance, clay, shadow puppets and other forms of expression to reproduce the magical world of mountains and seas.
The protagonists of each episode are different, some are ancient gods, such as the second and third episodes are about Nuwa and Fuxi, the two world-breaking gods.
Nuwa creates people and Fuxi paints trigrams, two well-known mythological stories have become more grounded under the interpretation of two-dimensional animation and immersive dance.
Some are heroic characters, such as the seventh episode, which devotes a lot of space to the hero Yi of the shooting sun, and with the help of animation, the mythical story of Houyi shooting the sun and Chang'e running to the moon is reproduced.
There are also ancient beasts, such as the episode "Gluttony, Desire Breeding", which reproduces the process of gluttony being devoured by desire, one of the four fierce beasts, through the expression of clay, in order to express the proposition of examining the self.
This kind of shooting method is not only refreshing, but also makes people feel the charm of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" spanning thousands of years.
In the film, the ancient gods and figures such as Nuwa, Fuxi, Dijun, Xihe, Changxi, Emperor E, Chang'e, and Yi all appeared.
The exotic beasts and mountain and sea larks depicted in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" such as the nine-tailed fox, Xiangliu, Luwu, Jiufeng, Ying Long, gluttony, poor qi, and Kui are also presented one by one with the help of animation special effects.
The reason why these mythical beasts and gods are presented in a childlike and abstract painting style, Lu Yan, the animation director of "Mountains and Seas Jingqi", explained it this way:
The Classic of Mountains and Seas was born in the initial stage of Chinese culture, similar to human childhood.
Therefore, they use a childlike and abstract animation style to show the charm of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", and strive to show the original childlike heart.
(A three-legged golden crow full of childlike fun, showing a sense of humility)
(Fuxi, who invented gossip, and gossip of modern buzzwords)
On the one hand, the image design adopts simple hook line modeling and bright colors, and refers to Han portrait brick and mural patterns.
On the other hand, in terms of scene design, it refers to the layout and composition of Chinese landscape painting.
The mythological stories in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" contain the magical imagination of the ancient ancestors, and after watching episodes one episode, there are too many plots that are thought-provoking and moving.
For example, the fourth episode of "Mountain and Sea Surprise" talks about the cultural relics unearthed in Sanxingdui, which seem to have a confusing connection with the "Classic of Mountains and Seas".
As we all know, the cultural relics unearthed in Sanxingdui are very "strange", the most representative of which is this bronze longitudinal mask.
The shape of the mask is extremely different and exaggerated, which is unforgettable.
I saw that its eyebrows were raised, its eyes were oblique, its eyeballs were cylindrical and protruding, 16 centimeters long, its ears were open outward like bird wings, and it had a mysterious smile on its mouth.
This unique and mysterious appearance has also triggered various speculations from the outside world.
One of the conjectures is related to the god "candle dragon" recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
According to legend, the candle dragon is the god of Zhongshan, the whole body is fiery red, the appearance is "straight eyes", as soon as the eyes are opened and closed, the world has day and night, and between breaths and breathes, the world is divided into winter and summer.
Literally, "straight eyes" refers to long eyes, and there is also a saying that the eyeballs bulge out of the eye sockets.
According to this statement, the image of the candle dragon is very close to the longitudinal mask of Sanxingdui.
In addition, the place where the mask was unearthed is the ancient Shu kingdom 3,000 years ago.
And the character "Shu" plus the word "fire" happens to be the traditional "candle".
When the main creators of "Mountain and Sea Surprise" designed the animated image of the candle dragon, they deliberately referred to the bronze longitudinal mask.
This striking similarity may confirm that what is recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas may be a world civilization that has actually existed.
For example, the last episode of the film is about the story of kuí, and the title of this episode is "夔· Harmony and Sound".
夔 is a mythical beast in Chinese mythology and legend, a one-legged sacred cow.
It is recorded in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Great Wilderness East Sutra" that it lives on the Liubo Mountain in the East China Sea, looks like an ox without horns, is pale blue, and has only one foot.
Every time there was a violent storm, the light on the body was as bright as the sun and the moon, and the roar was deafening like thunder.
At that time, the battle to chase the deer entered a fever pitch, and the Yellow Emperor hoped to use a single thing to restore morale and defeat Chi You.
Later, after the Yellow Emperor got the unusually loud voice, he made drums out of its skin, and the sound of drums sounded 500 miles away, threatening the world.
The "Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor" continues the story of the cow, and the Nine Heavenly Xuannu made eighty faces of the cow drum for the Yellow Emperor.
However, the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "The Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor" do not describe much about the process of making drums with a short skin, only a few strokes, but "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" is restored through scene reproduction and actor interpretation.
Under the ingenious conception of the main creative team, the process of making drums unfolds vividly with a shadow puppet play.
Under the shadow of the lights, a pale blue one-legged beast appeared with a drum.
It lives on the Liubo Mountain in the East China Sea, its voice is as loud as thunder, scaring away other birds and beasts, and it is lonely and only accompanied by its own echo.
On this day, the Nine Heavenly Xuannu turned into a swallow and traveled thousands of miles to persuade Kui to sacrifice herself and help the Yellow Emperor defeat Chi You with her leather drum.
The arrival of the swallow made Kui happy, but in the face of death, the fragile heart retreated and refused the swallow's request.
As time passed, Kui began to question his choices and felt more and more deeply about his mission.
At the end of the story, the awakened Kui obeys the swallow's persuasion and sacrifices himself.
On the basis of respecting historical materials, appropriate story adaptation is carried out, and the past and present lives are presented in the form of shadow puppets, so that the audience can understand Kui from another angle, which is very creative.
Similarly, the immersive shadow puppet play also makes people feel the romance and fantasy of Chinese mythology very intuitively.
Through this documentary, we can clearly perceive:
This is the myth of China, rich and colorful, twisting and splendid, stretching and continuing.
Like a majestic monument, it stands there silently, for future generations to taste...
Perhaps through this documentary, you can redraw the Mountain and Sea Sutra in the hearts of today's people and re-read the dreams of ancient Chinese.
This is another great significance of this documentary.
The documentary "Mountain and Sea Surprise" has only 8 episodes this time, and there are still many unfinished stories about "Classic of Mountains and Seas", and the remaining stories will be shown in the subsequent 8 episodes.
The charm of "Classic of Mountains and Seas" is endless, and we need more works like "Mountain and Sea Wonder" to tell its story, not just one.
Bluestone Movies | Mei Liqing
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