Zhang Meng is a film director with a great sense of space. His film works, whether it is "Blessed Ears", "The Piano of Steel" or "On the Balcony". All have the narrative space of formalism under the core of realism, including the selection of town scenes in the process of modernization, the audiovisual processing of space where the real and the unreal blend, and the spatial reorganization of ritual and mixed poetic reality. On this basis, Zhang Meng further expresses his remembrance of the lost industrial era and his deep concern for the "marginal" working class through the depiction of the cultural phenomena carried by space.
First, the narrative space composition of formalism under the core of realism
The spatial settings of Zhang Meng's films are similar, whether it is a dilapidated factory area or a demolition area, the space where the story takes place is almost all demolished or demolished towns, and his films always take the living conditions of the low-level characters in the process of modernization as the theme of display.
Compared with the previous films with similar themes in the mainland, most of them use realistic techniques to express the individual fate of the characters at the bottom. Zhang Meng adopts a formalist expression technique under the core of realism that is infinitely close to the reality of life, which makes the decaying and gradually encroached towns he constructs both real and poetic; Therefore, for Zhang Meng Shenying, the most important thing is to construct a real world that conforms to the background and social situation of the times. Let the image lead the viewer into the specific space where the story takes place. This paper mainly analyzes the composition of Zhang Meng's film narrative space from three aspects: scene selection, spatial audiovisual processing, and space reorganization.
(1) The selection of urban scenes for "breaking" and "standing" in the process of modernization
A scene is the process of making a film, including the production or filming site. In film production, people usually use "lens" and "scene" as the basic units to divide the narrative structure of the film. "A movie scene is a combination of several shots, and the space-time landscape of the characters' activities in a set or array of shots constitutes the scene of the movie, and the transformation of the scene also means the passage and development of the storyline." This shows that the scene is the carrier of the narrative information of the film, and the choice of scene will directly affect the narrative of the film. From the Northeast Heavy Industry Base to Shanghai, the story of Zhang Meng's film takes place in the town in the process of modernization, and the main scene selected presents a state of juxtaposition of the old and the new, showing the destruction and establishment of the town in the process of modernization.
(2) Audiovisual processing of space where the real and the unreal blend
Space runs through the whole of a movie, and the theme and style characteristics of the film are closely related to the space. The rendering effect of space depends largely on the processing of audiovisual language. Zhang Meng's films always express the content of the story between the conflict between reality and ideals, so the director's presentation of space is also unique, and the following will be explained in detail from two aspects: reality presentation and intention communication.
1. Realistic presentation
The era in which the background of Zhang Meng's film takes place is mostly in the past tense, and the most important thing is to make the audience feel real in the past tense, and the most important thing is to restore the era through various means.
2. Convey ideas
The above analyzes the audiovisual representation of real space in Zhang Meng's film. Looking at Zhang Meng's three films, it can be seen that he has shifted from a white description of life to a more subjective communication of the inner thoughts of the characters.
(3) Spatial reorganization of ritual and mixed poetic reality
The reorganization of narrative space includes the combination of scene space and lens space, but in the final analysis, it is still the combination of lens space.
Second, the cultural phenomenon of space
The orientation of space is pluralistic, and Lejivre believes that space is originally a material space, and when it is stably constructed, the material space and its existence that can be accurately measured by all existence are gradually conceptualized to form a spiritual space.
And when the material space construction is stable. The construction of the spiritual space is completed by reorganizing language and writing to achieve material reproduction as much as possible. A new level of social space has been formed, that is, what Sawyer called the "third space", and the "triadic combination" proposed by D. Lefebvre believes that spiritual space, material space, and social space do not exist independently, but are combined with each other. Culture not only contains intangible culture such as values, customs, and religious beliefs, but also material cultural elements such as buildings and cities with material entities. In the study of culture, more attention is paid to the study of intangible culture but the importance of material culture is ignored In fact, material culture is the product of people's social production activities, and the material space it constructs carries intangible cultural factors, so the environmental space created and lived by people contains cultural significance and reflects certain cultural phenomena. "As a reaction or re-creation of the real material environment space, the narrative space of the film not only carries the inherent content of material culture, but also reflects or contains the cultural tendency of the film creator himself."
- The working class on the "edges"
Much of the background of Zhang Meng's work is centered in his hometown of Northeast China. Northeast China has a special regional culture because of its unique geographical environment and complex and long history: Northeast regional culture is a complex containing the concept of cultural space and the concept of time of historical continuity, especially the history of immigration through the ages, forming Jinyuan culture, flowing culture, Russian overseas Chinese culture, Guandong culture, Northern Wilderness culture, etc. Northeast people have also formed the characteristics of hard-working, humorous and positive, good face and morality. These characteristics are vividly reflected in Zhang Meng's film works with the theme of "demolition" and "migration" and the northeast as the background, such as Wang Kangmei in "Blessed Ears" and Chen Guilin in "The Qin of Steel".
2. A portrayal of the mood of the times
Social space encompasses and acts on both material and spiritual space, and to some extent, society affects the subjects living in social space. In the 50s of the 20th century, the continent entered the industrial age. At that time, it was the era of collectivism, revolutionary heroism, iron man spirit, and Lei Feng spirit, and the working class was the main builder of the country. They are the leading class of the country and the masters of the country. With the development of economic globalization, people's material living standards continue to improve, and with the advent of modernization, the new culture has had an impact on the original culture.
III. Conclusion
In summary, Zhang Meng's film constitutes a formalistic narrative space under the core of realism through the selection of town scenes in the process of modernization, the spatial audio-visual processing of the fusion of real and illusory, and the spatial restructuring of ritual and mixed poetic reality. On this basis, Zhang Meng further expresses the embarrassing situation of the working class on the "edge" through the depiction of the cultural phenomena carried by space. and the author's personal cultural-emotional tendencies to portray the impact of the times on people at the intersection of the passing industrial age and the advent of modernization.
Through analysis, it can be seen that Zhang Meng as a director has a strong sense of space in film creation, and his films also have high spatial expression. Zhang Meng's selection and treatment of narrative space and the display of cultural phenomena carried by space also reflect the director's humanist spirit of thinking about society and the times and caring for the living conditions of individuals at the bottom, which makes Zhang Meng's film works achieve unity in artistry and ideology, and it is undeniable that Zhang Meng's film care for reality and the display of real problems have certain practical significance, and also have a high level of artistic expression, but under the wave of today's film marketization and commercialization. Zhang Meng's film creation should also pay attention to the commercial value of the film on the basis of paying attention to its artistry and ideology.
In his future film creation, Zhang Meng should pay more attention to the relationship between the image and the audience, preset the "implied reader" of the work in the early stage of creation, and attract more audiences to watch the film in the later stage by strengthening publicity and word-of-mouth guidance, so as to further achieve the unity of artistic, ideological and commercial nature of his film.