(Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Photo)
In 2016, 28-year-old Gu Xiaogang planned to spend 10 years making a trilogy of long-scroll films called "Landscape Map", with volume 1 being Chunjiang, volume 2 Qiantang and volume 3 being the East China Sea. Matching this self-consciousness and ambition, "Spring River Plumbing" (2019), which is the first volume of the book, has been repeatedly affirmed as soon as it came out——
It won Best Feature Film and Best Director at the FIRST Youth Film Festival, and then was selected as the closing film of the "Film Critics' Week" section of the 2019 Cannes International Film Festival – the first time that a Chinese-language film was selected as the closing film of this section. The following year, the veteran film magazine "Film Manual" announced the top ten films of the year, and "Spring River Plumbing" was among them.
In his first feature film, Gu Xiaogang completed the initial attempt to combine landscape painting with film, and dominated his aesthetics with the view of travel and the boundlessness of heaven and earth. The protagonist of the story chooses three generations of the Gu family living on the banks of the Fuchun River, who either have a disagreement with their families of different generations on the concept of marriage, or adapt to the changes in life brought about by urban changes, or are tired of escaping debts and taking care of children with Down syndrome, or are still helpless and worry-free when they are nearly 40 years old. The life of the market is wrapped in the mountains and rivers of the four seasons, the texture is full and clear, and the aftertaste is long.
At that stage, Gu Xiaogang said that he didn't know "what a movie is" and "hoped to get as close to the essence of film as possible", so he held a kind of mentality of a servant of film, regarded himself as a medium, and believed that there was a guide from things in a higher dimension.
Before entering the mainstream vision, Gu Xiaogang, who was not from a professional class, grew up in the developed independent film festival exhibition and training system at that time.
When he went to learn to draw because of the art exam in his third year of high school, in the dormitory, Gu Xiaogang and four other boys huddled together, his head against the bed, watching Shunji Iwai's movie through a screen the size of a mobile phone. In his junior year, Gu Xiaogang, who was attracted to movies, took a borrowed DV and made a short film about Hindus "The Believer", and was shortlisted for the youth film training camp of the Hangzhou Asian Youth Film Festival with the proposal of this work.
The academy lasted only seven days, but it provided him with most of the theories he needed to make a documentary in the future. Not long after, "The Believer" was seen at the Chongqing Independent Film Festival by director Apichatpong Weerasaku, who said that Gu Xiaogang's film was emotional, and reminded that being an individual as a believer is different from an individual as a filmmaker, and that if you want to be a special filmmaker, you must show your personality through your works.
After the youth training camp, the classmate called Gu Xiaogang to shoot Lao Jia's family practicing natural agriculture on Chongming Island, and he went with high interest. Five years later, his feature documentary "Planting Life" won the best documentary at the FIRST Youth Film Festival.
In the past five years, Gu Xiaogang graduated from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University with a major in fashion design and marketing, and went to the advertising directing department of the China Academy of Art to audit, and then went north to study at Li Xianting Film School and Beijing Film Academy, the former cultivating a sense of independent creation, and the latter clearly presenting him with film history, so that a young creator can find his place in the huge coordinates.
So, it's almost time to create a feature film. Gu Xiaogang wrote the script, prepared for a year, and started the film, but it didn't go well. "Spring River Plumbing" stopped filming for two years, during which he not only looked for money everywhere, but also did everything possible to maintain the main creative staff, such as playing the second child in the film is a fisherman who has been delivering fish for his own restaurant for a long time, and the other party has been in and out of the crew more than a dozen times in two years, one time to deliver fish, and another time to come back to film.
At the end of 2019, the filming of "Spring River Plumbing" was finally completed. Gu Xiaogang said in an interview: "I feel that after swimming for a long time, I can finally go ashore." But when I went ashore, I found that I was only at a doorway, a doorway to a real movie world. ”
It is difficult for those who have watched "Spring River Plumbing" to imagine that Gu Xiaogang filmed "The World of Grass and Trees". On October 28, 2023, "The World of Grass and Trees" premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival. After the end, Jiang Qinqin, the actor of Wu Mosshua, the protagonist of the movie, asked him why this was the case? That was the first time she had seen a finished film, and she had imagined that this one would be like the last one she particularly liked, "so beautiful, so quiet, and so sacred"; after watching the same screening, Yoji Yamada, who strongly recommended Gu Xiaogang as the winner of the "Kurosawa Akira Award", had a public conversation with Gu Youchang two days later, and said at the beginning: I really thought it would be like the second part of "Spring River Plumbing", but after watching it, it was a completely different movie, which was a little surprising.
"The World of Grass and Trees" was determined to distinguish itself from "Spring River Plumbing" from the beginning, and Gu Xiaogang tried to "face the audience". In Volume 2, the tea picker Wu Moshua mistakenly enters a pyramid scheme, and her son He Mulian (played by Wu Lei) sacrifices his life to save his mother. Gu Xiaogang combines MLM experiences with Buddhist stories to try to find a way to the depths of the individual, or rather, to find the birth of suffering, and ways to resist or transcend it.
This is a film full of symbols and metaphors, from the names of each character, to the selection of the story "Mulian Saves the Mother", to the murals in the Leifeng Pagoda that the camera slowly crosses.
On the one hand, Gu Xiaogang continued the non-fiction creation he was good at, entered the investigation of the MLM organization, and created a MLM organization "Butterfly International" according to the needs of the plot. Even the filming was like an experiment, and the actor Chen Jianbin mentioned his surprise on the set in a post-screening exchange at Peking University: "It allows each of us to look directly at our own spirit, into our own soul, that is, whether it is possible for us to alienate for some reason." ”
On the other hand, he turned to a more industrial approach to filming: co-writing with writer Guo Shuang, who wrote all the biographies of the characters to bring the fictional characters to the ground, working with professional actors to use a shorter shooting cycle to control the production funds of many times that of the previous film, and being responsible for the box office as the producer and producer of the film.
On April 3, 2024, "The World of Grass and Trees" will be released. On the eve of the release, Gu Xiaogang looked forward to more audiences seeing the movie, but he was also worried about the box office. One day at the end of March, while he was busy with the main promotional film of the Beijing Film Festival "Spring Dawn in the Ancient Capital", he accepted a seven-hour interview in a row, and had to catch up with another post-screening exchange.
This is very different from his usual life. Most of the time, Gu Xiaogang and his wife live in their hometown of Fuyang and have little contact with the outside world.
Our interview was about 6 o'clock that night, and he laughed at himself as if he had been on a pyramid scheme bus for a day, and he was physically exhausted and couldn't answer, and he felt embarrassed: "Sure enough, it's easy to go down after a day of interviewing, hahaha, in fact, I want to say it, but I just can't go back, hahaha, please understand." ”
"The World of Grass and Trees" does carry the expectations of many audiences, and also carries many missions such as the creator's attempt to balance art and commerce, the integration of storytelling and exploration of context, and the exploration of new possibilities for film language. The finished product under such a heavy burden has mixed reviews. Critics think it's chaotic and fragmented, while praisers think it's popular and down-to-earth.
But one thing is clear: eight years ago, Gu Xiaogang's original intention of making a "landscape map" was to record the changing scenery of the present, and to keep an open mind to tradition, connecting the past and the future. Since then, he has followed this self-directed path to this point.
Stills from "The World of Grass and Trees".
Here's what he had to say:
Imperfect Beauty Sufferer
Around 2018, when I was filming "Spring River Plumbing", at a family party, a relative and friend of mine told us about a product. I said objectively that this is likely to be fake, and TA introduced the company's background and said that it was also on the market, and there were many products, such as elderly health care products.
In "Spring River Plumbing", you will see that these family members of mine (note: they are the main actors in this film) are relatively simple, and the social security in Zhejiang is very good, I think MLM is far away from life, it is a news event, but I didn't expect it to hit my life with a solid punch.
I looked up a lot of information and how could I convince my family to come out. To be honest, it didn't work.
I went to their direct selling conference and found out, oh it turns out that this system is not about property, it is attractive, just like Moss Flower said in the movie: "I'm happy in it, I'm happy." ”
So what makes her happy and happy? In the movie, Moss Hua is a tea picker, and it is almost impossible for her to become Manager Wu or President Wu in her life. But MLM organizations bring two fascinating things: first, social identity across classes, and second, "spiritual enlightenment", which is the so-called thinking about who I am, where am I going, and what am I going to do?
These are actually what Maslow's needs theory says, the realization of self-worth on the basis of basic material survival. How can these be given as children and relatives? So the scary thing about it is that it's not an IQ issue.
Later, we contacted some anti-pyramid marketing people and went to a city in the western part of China to infiltrate a pyramid marketing organization.
On the first day I sat on the bus, in the morning I thought that these people were stupid, and those words that were a little bit brainy knew that they were false, for example, do you want to become a better person? Your current job is a traditional industry, but our industry is a very special new industry, and you can earn more than 10 million yuan at once, how many years do you say you have to do this job now, and so on.
Except for going out for a meal at noon, the bus has been winding around the road. They had three lecturers, two men and one woman, and they were there and they were talking non-stop, and his purpose was not to convince you, but to make you lose the will to think.
I really can't hold it in the back, so I don't want to. But when the brain doesn't want to, the right nonsense will slowly go in. Because I obviously feel that there are a few words that can come into my heart - do you want to be a better person, or do you want to make your parents live better? Of course. But the logic that follows is, you do what we do.
The deepest experience, (these people believe in pyramid schemes) in addition to the psychological reasons mentioned above, is more intuitive is physical fitness problems. By the afternoon, I couldn't hold it anymore, and I felt like I would pay if I stayed there for a long time.
However, pyramid schemes are not an obvious "disease," and for the victims of pyramid schemes, do people think that he is a fool? Or is he greedy and crooked, otherwise how could he be deceived? But in fact, it is very complicated. Not all of them are in it for wealth, many people have a lot of good wishes in order to give their parents a better life, or to give their children a better life, or to get ahead, etc.
Stills from "Spring River Plumbing".
Shoot the experiment
When we wrote this part of the script, we didn't think of ourselves as screenwriters, but as the organizers of MLM, and we did a whole organizational structure, curriculum development, product line, and a company promotional video.
During the shooting, it was according to the complete MLM process from beginning to end, everyone sat there to eat and drink, started to play promotional videos, and then everyone introduced themselves, played icebreaker games, and then recommended products. Three or four hours without shutting down. So there were rumors in the group performance, saying that someone here was doing pyramid schemes. There were also group performance teachers who left on the spot, so I went to the assistant director to find on-site psychological counseling to dredge. We're ready for that. As soon as the leading actor completed a convincing performance, he basically stopped.
Even in this case, Sister Qinqin's eyes are swollen from crying (note: in the story, the mentor destroys her will by denying her), words really have the power to attack, and will leave pain and scars in people's hearts.
Although the actors have read the script, they don't know what the final game of the MLM campaign will do. When it comes to the name (note: in the survival test in the movie, the tester imagines that he is sailing on a boat with 10 people at sea, and due to unexpected circumstances such as running on the reef, he must constantly throw people into the sea, and each time he throws one, the name is completely blacked), if he is willing to open it completely, it is equivalent to experiencing a test of life and death.
Because Sister Qinqin was very sincerely involved in this game, she really broke down on the spot. I hurriedly ran in, and as soon as I entered, I was scolded by the photography teacher, saying that the characters had just reached a state of nothingness at this time. I feel like she's like the movie "COCO", her soul has reached a place of exile, and if she lets it go a little further and longer, she won't know if she will come back. So I said don't shoot, hurry up and pull her back, tell her, fake! Sister Qinqin, fake!
The most dangerous thing for an actor is the moment when he gives his soul.
Therefore, the core of MLM is to destroy people's original personality and value system, and reconstruct a value system they want. Even if many people are rescued from MLM organizations, they have already become another personality, and it is very likely that they will return to their original lives because they can no longer return to their original lives.
Jiang Qinqin (left) won the Best Actress Award at the 17th Asian Film Awards for "The World of Grass and Trees", with director Gu Xiaogang in the middle (provided by the interviewee/photo)
key
In a way, MLM is just a means of this movie. Tea is at the heart of it.
Because our films are related to "landscapes", we first need a landscape space. Where there is tea, there are mountains.
Just like if there is no fisherman in "Spring River Plumbing", its aesthetics may not be successful. Because he represents Jiang's point of view, there is a lot of movement and vista throughout the film to watch this family. And in "The World of Grass and Trees", you will see a lot of mountain perspectives.
Both of these films are in a way a painting, and they are finished in the picture.
In terms of the theme, tea is not only the tea in firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea, but also the market. This layer is the boyfriend who corresponds to Moss Flower, the old money of the roasted tea master. Most of the time, we also live in a stage of firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea, where we are desperate, coerced, scrambling, or bitter.
Tea is also the tea of qin, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry, wine, tea, and it is the literati. At this time, tea no longer belongs to the material level, but a way to train one's spirit or self-cultivation.
But the third part of tea is what this movie really wants to talk about, that is, tea Zen taste. The third part is what we spend the most time on. Tea rose from the market to the literati class through Lu Yu's "Book of Tea", and then to the philosophical level through the Bodhidharma Patriarch, and now it has actually integrated the culture of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. For example, there are countless public cases about tea in Zen Buddhism, and the most heard is "eat tea", you ask me what I am doing, I say that I am eating tea, in short, it is to settle in the moment.
At the end of the movie, Mulian, who rescues her mother from a pyramid scheme, comes to the meditation hall, where he makes tea and drinks tea. That tea has actually disappeared, and we happened to meet a master who was working on the restoration of this tea, who wrote the "Book of Tea" in Guzhu in Changxing, that is, the place where Lu Yu wrote the "Book of Tea" when he was in seclusion.
Regarding tea, we can see that there are so good films in Japan that explore aesthetics, such as "Searching for Sen no Rikyu", then we also face tea, whether in its form or philosophy, what more in-depth or our own things can be shown?
In this process, we encountered the theme of pyramid schemes, and when we were thinking about how to connect, we found "Mulian Saves Mother" as the mother of the story. In the movie, Mu Lian's runaway father is called He Shan, "He Shan" is where is the mountain, what is the mountain? Mu Lian first saves her mother and then looks for her father, in fact, looking for her father is looking for the mountain, symbolizing finding herself, and in the whole movie as an allegorical bearing belonging to our own culture.
So how to resist pyramid schemes, in short, we still have to find ourselves, the real self, in the process to resist the bugs, greed, hatred, ideals, or desires from the many appearances of human nature.
"Knowing the fairness, chasing the danger"
(Reporter: Five years ago, after the completion of "Spring River Plumbing", you mentioned that "we are also constantly learning and exploring the language of film, and hope that this kind of exploration and learning can be deeply presented through this trilogy", what new understanding will there be five years later?)
The most difficult thing about this set of aesthetics is how to combine form and content.
In terms of a traditional skill training system, Sun Guoting's "Book Pedigree" mentions that the stages of learning calligraphy are: "To learn the distribution of the first, but to seek justice; to know the fairness, to pursue the danger, to be able to overcome the danger, to return to the right." "In fact, "Grass and Trees" is a process of "chasing danger", and I saw the possibility of a language, which can go farthest and have to be adventurous.
Now I think it's a great blessing to be able to let everyone see the movie. During the shooting, we wrote two slogans, one is "tenacious finishing" and the other is "smooth completion". At that time, it was still 2022, and everyone couldn't go to the theater to watch movies, and the capital didn't flow to the film industry.
In fact, in retrospect, "Spring River Plumbing" is also dead and alive many times, while filming while thinking in the hotel, you can also ask who to borrow a little money, how much Huabei can set, and then take out my wife's mobile phone, even if you can shoot for a few days a day, how to get the next money, and so on.
I just wanted to finish an assignment and shoot as much money as I could. I also understand when many management parties refuse. There was even a management side that I was particularly impressed with. At that time, we had already filmed a season, and there were tidbits, and I showed it to him, and he said why do you want to shoot four brothers, it costs money and trouble, and as a new director, you don't have that strong control ability, why do you shoot so big? You just pick one of the brothers and shoot this story well.
Actually, I think he has a point, but I've already framed it. The teacher who funded our film at the time also asked, "Do you want to wait a little longer?" I said no, I may not be able to make it if I wait a little longer.
Later, when communicating with peers, they often ask: What is the most important thing?
The most important thing is to have the ability to accomplish this. I always said that completion is more important than perfection, the reason is that film is a comprehensive resource industry, especially in the early stage, there is no perfect opportunity for everything to be ready, always waiting for funds, waiting for actors, waiting for the main creator, waiting for the weather, waiting for miracles, and waiting a little longer, you may be tired. Optimistic about the general direction, with limited resources, it is more important than anything else to act first.
Meng Yiyi, reporter of Southern People Weekly, and Li Yifan, intern reporter of Southern People Weekly
Editor-in-charge: Yang Jingru