The eleventh holiday has not yet passed, and the main theme movie "Changjin Lake" of the National Day file has received more than 3 billion box office, which is reasonable and unexpected.
It makes sense because it's a patriotic movie with a huge cast and huge investment. Unexpectedly, it is because in the era of weak film market under the epidemic, it can still create such amazing box office results, and even hope to challenge Wu Jing's "Wolf Warrior 2".
Chen Kaige, Xu Ke, Lin Chaoxian, too many people expect these three big directors to get together to collide with what spark, many fans watch the film not for the so-called patriotic feelings, but for the epic cooperation of Chinese film directors. In the movie "Changjin Lake", Chen Kaige, the representative of China's fifth generation of directors, sat in the C position without hesitation.
If it were not for this patriotic war blockbuster of a national nature that brought Chen Kaige into the public eye, many people would have forgotten that he was one of the representative figures of the fifth generation of Chinese directors, and only remembered the national teacher Zhang Yimou and the New Year master Feng Xiaogang. When it comes to Chen Kaige, they will only think of one "Overlord Farewell", and if they think about it carefully, there may be another "Wuji" that almost destroyed him.
In the two years from 2005 to 2006, Chinese films began to make great strides toward industrialization, and the representative event was the three costume blockbusters "Wuji", "Night Feast" and "Golden Armor in the City" directed by Chen Kaige, Feng Xiaogang and Zhang Yimou, the third generation of Chinese directors. These three of China's best film directors of the time worked hard to bring a cultural disaster to the audience, and China's big-budget bad films have been out of control ever since.
It's just that Chen Kaige has become the most miserable of the three directors. In 2005, when he was confronted with doubts, he replied in the tone of a lonely genius that no one could understand "Wuji" in ten years. Now that 16 years have passed, in addition to the divine prophecy of Cecilia Cheung's "nude photos gate" and her marriage with Nicholas Tse, few people still have the idea of what "Wuji" really wants to express.
Unfortunately, Chen Kaige was the "first to eat crabs", and the other two big directors tacitly put their commercial bad films in 2006 in order to attract firepower for each other, while the literary youth Chen Kaige could only bear the audience's scolding alone in 2005. He made an unheard-of and courageous attempt at Chinese fantasy films, while two other directors were obscene, one adapting "Hamlet" and the other adapting "Thunderstorm", the results can be imagined.
In the era when spoofs were just emerging, people took art seriously.
Hu Ge's re-edited spoof of "Wuji" "A Steamed Bun Caused by a Bloody Case" became popular all over the Internet, and the click rate far exceeded that of "Wuji" itself, making the film a complete laughing stock, chen Kaige had to sue as a threat, but the matter was ultimately over.
Hu Ge was on fire, and the spoof culture stepped onto the stage of history, but Chen Kaige fell to the altar and became the big director that people were most willing to slander. As soon as Chen Kaige's three words appeared, what came to mind was a big director who liked to be ignorant, after all, too many people did not know "Overlord Farewell" at that time.
In 1952, Chen Kaige was born in an artistic master, and his father, Director Chen Huaigao, was an absolute big name in the history of new Chinese cinema, and was previously taught by Hong Shen, Cao Yu and other top drama masters of the Republic of China at the Jiang'an National Drama College in Sichuan.
Such a family made Chen Kaige breed unlimited artistic cells in the growth environment, and the later publication of "Young Kaige" allowed people to see Chen Kaige's timeless and elegant but powerful writing on the back of the paper, and people believed that if he entered the literary world, he would inevitably become a prose master.
But chen Kaige, who was too idealistic, failed to storm Peking University, and eventually was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy, where he and his father went on the same path and became classmates with Zhang Yimou.
In 1983, Wu Tianming, director of Xi'an Film Studio, "snatched" Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou to make the famous "Yellow Land", and the representatives of the fifth generation of directors went to the historical stage together.
In 1993, Chen Kaige made the pinnacle of Chinese cinema, "Farewell to the King", which became the first Chinese film to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The following year, Zhang Yimou presented "Alive", which also went down in history, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Before the new century, the two top directors felt sorry for each other and continued to contribute high-quality films to Chinese films.
The film entered the era of industrialization, chen kaige and Zhang Yimou began to play unstable, they from time to time to present the audience with two commercial bad films, but Chen Kaige's decline is more obvious, and his bad films are becoming more and more difficult to understand.
He seems to be obsessed with stitching together multiple elements to solve the imagination that has nowhere to go, whether it is the hodgepodge of "Wuji" or the fusion of modern elements in "Taoist Down the Mountain", and even let Aaron Kwok and Zhang Zhen roll grass stage "rotten culture". Chen Kaige also said bluntly in an interview with Lu Yu that the script cannot be written too realistically, and as a director, he needs to find a way to recover the cost for investors, but his feet have been three kilometers off the ground, almost beyond the ability of ordinary people to understand.
Chen Kaige's later works made a rumor spread in the rivers and lakes, and the mythical "Farewell to the Overlord" was filmed by his father Chen Huaigao, and it is not denied that Mr. Chen Huaigao absolutely has such an artistic standard, but it is obviously impossible to shoot on behalf of him.
Chen Huaigao died of lung cancer less than 2 years after the film's release, and he was already in the advanced stage of lung cancer during the filming of the film, and he did not have the energy to direct such a masterpiece. Moreover, Chen Huaigao himself is the artistic director of the film, and it is also natural for Chen Kaige to listen to his father's opinion during the filming process.
The reason why Chen Kaige was able to shoot "Farewell to the Overlord", in addition to the hero created by the times and his own excellent shooting standards, Reed, who is known as China's first screenwriter, is also a character that must be mentioned.
Coincidentally, Zhang Yimou's "Alive" is also written by Reed, and director Wang Quanan's representative work "Tuya's Marriage" is also written by Reed, and any director's great work is inseparable from a great screenwriter.
In the movie "Farewell to the Overlord", Chen Kaige, Reed, Chen Huaigao, Zhang Guorong, Zhang Fengyi joined forces, plus Li Bihuali's painstaking original work, which was originally the strength of many people, but the audience gave Chen Kaige an overly high tone. "Farewell to the Overlord" became a divine work, and Chen Kaige also soared to ninety thousand miles, and since then, "Farewell to the Overlord" has become the frame of reference for all his later films.
People think that Chen Kaige is only a flash in the pan, and some people even feel that he is not worthy of becoming a representative of the fifth generation of Chinese film directors, but is just a pit and a deceitful person. But in fact, Chen Kaige was even more wronged than Dou E.
The two earlier films "Yellow Land" and "Child King", Chen Kaige's 7 films shot before 2000, in addition to the 6.8 points of "The Great Parade" on Douban, all more than 7 points, "Jingke Thorn Qin King" and "Child King" more than 8 points, "Overlord Farewell" reached the top level of 9.6 points. Before the chinese film was completely commercialized, Chen Kaige already had many works that could serve as a façade, not only "Farewell to the Overlord".
After entering the new century, Chen Kaige also has a little-known divine work - "The Depths of a Hundred Flowers". Chen Kaige created a shocking aesthetic expression in only ten minutes, and in only ten minutes, he showed the collapse of the group spirit from the individuals of the times.
Some netizens even praised: "On this short film, Guoshi will be the first in this life, and Chen Kaige will not fall in my heart." ”
In the end, Chen Kaige's worst work is nothing more than the infamous "Wuji", which failed to pass the 5.4 points, but 16 years have passed, if we have the heart to compare with the current shocking bad films, is "Wuji" really so bad?
Chen Kaige is just the use of artistic techniques is too exaggerated, want to express too many things, slaves, rulers, women, feathers, flower armor, too many metaphors and symbolic expressions, making it advanced, chaotic, out of date, he is just Chen Kaige's failed experimental work, somewhat similar to Jiang Wen's too jumping "One Step Away", obviously not a screen garbage that circles money.
An artist's achievements must be judged by the upper limit of his work, not the lower limit. Just like we judge Jay Chou, the reason why he is the king of popularity in our hearts must be because he has works such as "In the Name of the Father", "Sunny Day", and "Blue and White Porcelain", which naturally has nothing to do with "Pull Me Down If You Don't Love Me".
The reason why Zhang Yimou is a national teacher is because he directed the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, because he has "Alive" and "The Big Red Lantern Hangs High", which has nothing to do with his "Great Wall" and "Three Guns Shooting Surprise".
The reason why Chen Kaige is Chen Kaige is because he has "Child King" and "Overlord Farewell", and his "Wuji" and "Taoist Descending mountain" have nothing to do with him.
By the way, when Chen Kaige was bidding for the general director of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, he was extremely emotional in his heart, and he enthusiastically recited a poem by Du Fu on the stage, "Wen Guanjun Collects Henan Hebei", and then was eliminated because he did not introduce the creative plan.
This wild and uninhibited literary and artistic youth with high self-esteem is one of the representative figures of China's fifth generation of directors - Chen Kaige.
Believing requires naivety and courage – what matters is believing in itself, not what you believe. As long as people can still believe, there will still be salvation in this world -- Chen Kaige