This year's Qingming file should be the most volatile Qingming file in history. This festival, which was relatively deserted in the film market in previous years, has released 8 masterpieces of different genres in one go this year.
Among the many masterpieces, "The Yellow Sparrow is Behind" is undoubtedly one of the surprise dark horses. It has enough twists and turns to suspense the story to firmly capture the audience's attention from the beginning.
After giving people a hearty viewing experience, it has a very strong stamina, and the human feelings contained in the strange case are enough to make every audience think deeply.
As a rare original suspense crime movie in recent years, the story narration of "Yellow Sparrow is Behind" is plain, basically from the perspective of police officer detective, but under the plain writing, the director has led to a story with extremely rich layers and bizarre plot twists and turns, which shows the power of his script narrative.
Yuan Wenshan, a police officer played by Feng Shaofeng, takes over a murder case. Outside the Yellow Bird Villa, the song hall lady Guan Xiuying died mysteriously in the car.
This seemingly simple case is very complex, like a whirlpool, involving all the characters of the entire town. Divorced middle-aged couples, cabaret ladies, contractors of the decoration team, veteran cadres of the Finance Bureau, hotel cooks, social hooligans, etc., all appeared on the stage, each insisting on their own words.
The small Yellow Bird Villa, in just one night, is like a stage, accommodating three groups of families, the murdered Guan Xiuying, is actually a desperate blackmailer to get back the custody of his son, the couple who went to talk about divorce, it turns out that there is also the pain of stubborn resistance to the pianist's son and fate, and even the motorcycle hooligans who seem to be passing by are not simply passing by, but shouldering a heavy history beyond imagination.
Through very silky narrative processing, the director skillfully shifts the audience's attention from "who is the murderer" to "why the murderer" and then to "why is this".
The biggest feature of "Yellow Sparrow Behind" in creating characters is that almost all people's motives for committing crimes are not because of their own subjective malice, but for the sake of their children's bodies.
For the sake of children has become the most effective and convincing motivation of the film to the Chinese audience, and it is also the motivation that can make all Chinese people feel empathy. For the sake of children, these four words are simple, but they are sticky and greasy, trapping how many of us as children and how many of us as parents have been crazy.
No matter how exaggerated and absurd the behavior is, it can be explained by these four words, and no matter how simple the truth is, it can become blurred under these four words. It seems that for the sake of children, it is right to go crazy, it is right to blackmail, it is right to kill, and all the black and white norms of the law have become excusable in front of the four words "for the sake of children".
The sentence at the end of the film, "Don't let love break through the law, don't let growth lose the bottom line", is not only like a verse, but also like the author's exclamation, which makes the pattern of the whole movie go beyond the suspense story itself, and adds a layer of cautionary words.
It is very interesting that the theme of family love and crime was interpreted by three movies at the same time in the same period, and in the story of "Yellow Sparrow", I magically saw two perspectives of men and women, both the tragic sacrificial lifting of the family by decadent men, and the huge energy of women after being forced into the mud by unreliable men, as well as the voices of children in it, which is undoubtedly a unique perspective that only belongs to husband and wife directors.
For example, it is rare for me to see a gambler as a husband crying bitterly in the film and confessing his burden and inaction to his wife and family, and it is rare to see a mother abuser with mixed feelings of remorse when he sees a photo of the victim's young son.
These emotional outburst moments as parents and couples are unique angles rarely seen in previous suspense crime movies.
The huge turning point in the second half of the movie when the child takes the initiative to stand up is also a unique expression in the suspense movie that expresses family affection, injecting warmth and hope into the whole movie.
In the play, the two directors, Xu Wei and He Wenchao, show how love can break families and make people irreversible. Outside the play, I saw the positive energy that a family created with love has on the individual.
At the busiest time of movie promotion, the two still arranged the things to accompany their children in an orderly manner. The interview with director Xu Wei was conducted in the interval between him sending his children to martial arts classes, and the interview with director He Wenchao was also accompanied by the children's musical sound throughout the whole process.
In more than ten years of married life, Xu Wei and He Wenchao can be described as a condor hero in reality. Both of them have their own very dazzling work resumes, and they also have a tacit understanding of work and life.
In the five years leading up to the film's release, the experiences of co-parenting and co-directing a film intertwined, making this film the duo's first co-director all the more unique.
In fact, the opportunity for the two to co-direct the movie was also caused by the division of labor between husband and wife.
At the beginning, Xu Wei saw the script from his old classmate, Wu Jing, the screenwriter of this film, and was moved by the plot of the mother desperate for her child.
He took over the project and polished the script with the screenwriter, and during the pre-preparation of the film, Xu Wei's other film project made him have no time to separate, and He Wenchao, the wife of the director, naturally took over half of the project prepared by her husband and continued to move forward.
Before the start of filming, another project directed by Xu Wei was unexpectedly suspended, so he rejoined the crew and co-directed the film.
is both husband and wife, but the two have different explorations and preferences for movies.
Xu Wei has served as a director of photography for many years before becoming a director, and the style of his works is very changeable, starting from the filming of He Wei's director "Fat Dun Summer Camp" in 1999, he has cooperated with Zhang Lu, Zhang Ming, Han Jie, Yang Fudong, Qiao Liang, Cheng Er, Lu Le and other directors to shoot "Lai Boy", "Dou Manjiang", "Thirteen Paulownia", "Result", "Border Storm" and other works.
Some of these films are simple, some are enthusiastic, some are full of commercial sense, and some are extremely artistic.
Director: Xu Wei
With decades of experience in the industry, he is very good at executing and implementing good ideas, and can fit well with every director with a unique style.
Although he has already made three directorial works, Xu Wei admits that he is not the kind of director who knows exactly what he wants to shoot from the beginning, and he is still exploring his own directing style.
But in general, Xu Wei prefers commercial genre films, hoping to make films that balance commercial and artistic, and this pursuit of audiovisual skills and commercial genre can be seen in his previous works "Chasing the Murderer in the Ice River" and "Splendid Her".
Director He Wenchao is better at digging into the subtle changes of human nature.
When she was young, she was selected to star in "The Bride with a Flower Waist" to enter the film industry, but on the set she was particularly interested in photography and behind-the-scenes work. It is this unique hobby that brings Xu Wei and her together.
Later, He Wenchao was admitted to the graduate school of the Chinese Opera Directing Department, and Xu Wei was her director of photography from the beginning of directing student short films. The award-winning short films inspired her to pursue a career as a director. Her debut film, Sweet Eighteen, was also directed by Xu Wei.
In contrast, He Wenchao's advantage lies in his delicate emotions and is good at showing the subtle changes of human nature in complex plots.
She still remembers the first time she shot a short film, she didn't know much about professional shooting, and she didn't even wipe the lens, but despite the clumsy images, the teacher was full of praise for her creativity, and Xu Wei's professional team just made up for her shortcomings in shooting experience.
After learning the professional shooting process, He Wenchao's delicacy in images has been brought into full play. Whether it is the SK2 interactive commercial she shot before, or the short film "Blind Diamond" with Zhang Yi and Liang Jing, you can feel her deep insight into human nature in the novel narrative.
has different preferences for movies, but they can cooperate very well, such a partner is like the combination of the reversed personality of "Bouquet of Lovers", and it also makes people see a pair of partners who are busy with their careers, in addition to the game of internal friction and jealousy, a completely positive solution - learn from each other and help each other.
Xu Wei will study the relationship between husband and wife and being a father as an important topic as being a director, while He Wenchao has a strong sense of empathy and tolerance, and even she understands and sympathizes with the degradation of the male characters in the movie.
In life, when one partner is busy with work, the other party spends more energy on housework. When He Wenchao was pregnant and about to give birth, Xu Wei went out to shoot "Chasing the Murderer in the Ice River", He Wenchao went out to shoot an advertisement, and Xu Wei was a full-time dad at home. The spell "For the Child" that changed everyone in the movie also profoundly affected the two.
Xu Wei said frankly that part of the reason for the transformation from photography to director is that the director of photography always goes out throughout the year and has little time to spend with his children, while the director always has a stage of preparing projects at home and can have more time to take care of the baby. He Wenchao also said that if it weren't for having children, she would not have taken on commercials and been an advertising director.
However, both directors feel that such a change is not a sacrifice and a compromise. This change because of the children not only allows me to learn more skills, but also broadens each other's life experiences.
Xu Wei has improved his ability to solve problems from the trivial chores of raising children, not only to be improvised, but also to accept that children have their own ideas and respect children's choices.
He Wenchao found a balance between emotional catharsis and sensationalism in the process of advertising shooting, and she realized that just the right sensationalism actually has a huge appeal and can bring people a strong emotional experience.
Years later, the husband and wife co-directed a film for the first time, and their different preferences and past life experiences were maximized in the division of labor.
Xu Wei has rich experience on the scene and can quickly adjust the scene, and work with the director of photography to conceive how to shoot the story in the shortest possible time, while He Wenchao likes to communicate with the actors, and can adjust the actors' best performance state.
Due to the filming caught up with the epidemic lockdown, the crew stopped work in Zhangzhou, the filming location, for two months, Xu Wei carefully inspected every scene during the shutdown time, and drew a detailed storyboard script, but after the crew started work again, due to many restrictions such as actors' schedules and budgets, the shooting time was compressed by more than ten days compared with the original plan, and Xu Wei's original complex scene scheduling could only be abandoned, and he immediately discussed with the director of photography, overturned the existing plan, and changed it all to shoulder photography.
In the face of a short shooting cycle, the actors' performances also need to be adjusted accordingly. Fortunately, all the actors completed the performance at a super level with dedication.
Huang Jue played a more decadent father figure for the first time, in order to reflect the texture of a rough man, he showed off his oil cake fat gain in the crew, and finally presented the frustrated man on the screen, and he couldn't see a little bit of Huang Jue's previous appearance.
The police officer played by Feng Shaofeng originally had a complete story line, and he had to abandon it in the editing stage in order to highlight the main plot, but the plot involving parent-child relationship in the movie always made his eyes moist.
The mother played by Tao Hong was weak and forbearant in the first half, but in the second half, she had to burst out with great emotional energy, and her crying scene was layered, bringing the audience to the climax of emotions step by step.
There are also two rookie actors, Chen Yutong who plays the child Xiaotong, and Huang Mengying who plays the victim Guan Xiuying, the former made Director Wen Chao think that "he is Xiaotong" at a glance, and the latter was a temporary casting but gave her a big surprise, and the re-shaped role according to the actor's image also brought new development to the plot.
No matter how thorough the preparation is in the early stage, there are many unknown variables in the process of completion. Both directors feel that making a film is very similar to the process of raising children, and the most important thing is to accept and respect such changes. Perhaps it is precisely because of this realization that in the second half of the movie, there is a plot where the child Xiaotong returns from the airport and turns himself in to the police station.
The child takes the initiative to take responsibility, which is not in the original script. Later, in the process of discussing the script, the two felt that the growth of the child was very important, so they revised the ending of the movie.
This change eventually became a major emotional turning point in the second half of the whole movie, and it was this turn that made the emotions of the whole movie clear after the catharsis of the pain, as if providing a solution to the unsolvable knot of Chinese-style family affection, everyone is an independent individual in addition to the family identity of a father and son, maybe when a new generation of young people take the initiative to stand up, the sticky knot is broken.
This kind of treatment is also the thinking of He Wenchao and Xu Wei as a new generation of parents, although they hope that their children will have a happy and happy life, parents cannot do everything for their children, but must respect their children's independent choices.
In reality, the two directors also practice this concept of parenting, whether it is martial arts classes or other extracurricular classes, they are children's own hobbies.
Although both directors said that this co-directing was just a coincidence, and the two of them also had their own new shooting plans after that, I felt the unique advantages of husband and wife co-production from this film.
"The Yellow Sparrow Behind" has both a mature commercial narrative and a delicate emotional portrayal. The synergy created by the two is a soft force that is very different from the tradition.
It is not a complete overthrow of traditional thinking, but also contains some profound social reflection and gender thinking, which not only has a true description of the social situation, but also shows compassion and sympathy for the tragedy of reality.
And this kind of power is exactly what the Chinese film market needs the most, and it can also be in dialogue with the new trend of thought in the current world film industry on an equal footing.