At the 37th Hong Kong Film Awards Ceremony held a few days ago, Gu Zai won the title of Film Emperor, entered the industry for more than 20 years, and finally was affirmed by the award at the age of near destiny. Tea Water Lotus Sister, who has been in the industry for more than 30 years, won the "Professionalism Award", which caused a standing ovation from the audience.
However, looking at the list of winners, we can also clearly feel that today's Academy Awards seem to be much worse than before.
The best cross-strait Chinese film award of the night was awarded to "Big Buddha Plus".
It must be deserved, and the film has been parsed before the public name. There is a movie that may be recommended a little late now, but it is really one of the best Chinese films of 2017! Although the equally popular "Blood Guanyin" was defeated, it was dazzling enough at last year's Golden Horse Awards.
"Blood Guanyin"
The Bold,the Corrupt,and the Beautiful
Director / Screenwriter: Yang Yazhe
Starring: Hui Yinghong / Wu Kexi / Wen Qi
Genre: Drama
Release date: 2017-10-15 (Busan Film Festival) / 2017-11-24 (Taiwan)
In 7 mentions 3, the three most important nominations for Best Feature Film, Best Actress (Hui Yinghong) and Best Supporting Actress (Wen Qi) were all awarded, which is almost unprecedented in the history of Golden Horse Film. And among the many good films that ran for election last year, "Blood Guanyin" also won the audience vote for best film.
1
The director's style shifts
The film's director Yang Yazhe was nominated for the Golden Horse Best Director Award for the second time. In 2012, his self-written and self-directed "Girlfriend, Boyfriend" was nominated for the Golden Horse Best Director, and the lead actor Gui Lunmeng "sent" to the throne of the film queen.
He laughed that he was a "shadow queen", but he didn't have so many blessings. His relationship with GuiLun Magnesium began with "Blue Gate" 16 years ago. This film has been regarded as a classic Youth Film in Taiwan by many fans, and Yang Yazhe is the assistant director of the film.
"囧 Boy" (2008) is his first feature film in the true sense of the word, showing the youthful growth of children, very fresh and unworldly. In 2012, the director's "Girlfriend Boyfriend" became another classic of Taiwanese youth films.
Looking at Yang Yazhe's previous works, it is basically the freshness of Taiwanese youth films.
And "Blood Guanyin", which is full of honors, can be called a mixture of black belly, suspense, and eroticism.
This kind of "big breath" also brings some controversy to the film to some extent, because the film wants to talk too much. More is more miscellaneous, more is chaotic.
2
Strange and strange
From the perspective of film genre, "Blood Guanyin" has a mixed picture style, and it is more appropriate to call it a strange love film. In the opening scene, Taiwan's national treasure master Yang Xiuqing tells this cruel past in the form of "chanting songs" in a slightly suspenseful and judgmental tone.
"Reading songs" belongs to Taiwanese folk customs: based on Taiwanese folk songs, it is called chanting songs when performing, and the so-called recitation is naturally close to the tone of the language; and the song refers to the part that is sung.
The film adopts this form, which is different from the voiceover of "Big Buddha Plus", similar to the story meeting I saw when I was a child, and the speaker's voice is deliberately high and low, interspersed in the movie from time to time, making the plot more strange and eerie.
In "The Great Buddha Plus", the humble low-born belly and vegetable garden can only be confined to a small duty room, observing the wealth and evil of high society. Intertextual to this, Blood Guanyin presents the money and ugliness of high society directly and nakedly.
The whole story revolves around the different fates of the different personalities of the three women in Tang Province.
Lady Tang, also known as Tang She Yueying (Hui Yinghong), is the first leader of the Tang Mansion and the big boss in the story. On the surface, it is the introduction of needles and leads between the upper class society and politics and businessmen, but in fact, it manipulates the overall situation and the abdomen is extremely black.
In order to achieve his goal, he did not hesitate to sacrifice his daughter. In response to the words of Wu Zetian (Liu Jialing) in "Detective Di Renjie's Tongtian Empire", "In order to achieve great things, close relatives can also be killed".
Tang Ning (Wu Kexi) is the eldest daughter of Lady Tang and a pawn in her official field. On the surface, he wants to be open and cold, but in fact, he is buried in secrets, contradictions and pains, and has become a victim of this struggle.
Tang Zhen (Wen Qi) is said to be Lady Tang's second daughter, but is actually Tang Ning's illegitimate daughter. Her origins have become a mystery, and at a young age, under the cultivation of Lady Tang, she knows how to observe words and colors.
With the outbreak of the incident, her belly black attributes were also revealed step by step. The twisted family environment makes her eventually become a fierce character like Lady Tang.
The film mainly leads to the climax of the story with the annihilation of the whole family of tangfu friends, and as the puzzle is revealed little by little, the true face of all the characters in the story is also shown mercilessly.
"The world of the rich is colorful".
This is a line from The Great Buddha Plus.
And "Blood Guanyin" tells about the dirtiness and darkness of high society, and it is the naked presentation of "this color".
The script was carefully prepared for four years, and the film setting was also quite elaborate.
Most of the story takes place in Tang Mansion, whose mansion is the general's residence, coupled with Mrs. Tang's antique business, in the movie you will see the Japanese style, full of antique furniture, the picture is colorful, mostly close-up, invisibly showing solemnity and chill.
In order to hand over a better script, the director desperately nibbled on Zhang Ailing's novel. He also asked the actors to peruse The Golden Lock.
Zhang Ailing's novels are full of bizarre twists and turns, and many love stories are full of morals and references. Importantly, none of the episodes are Mary Sue, meaningless episodes. This may be related to the complex identity background of Zhang Ailing's "last fallen aristocrat", in such a decadent family, sensitive people can better appreciate the desolation and indifference of human nature.
The harmony of the big family is only the surface, and what is under all the surface is the truth. The director posted at the end that "the loveless future is the most terrible", which is actually the theme he wants to convey.
Tang Fu said to Tang Ning, "I am for your own good", tang Ning said the same thing when he wanted to take Tang Zhen to escape, but was laughed at by Tang Zhen.
Lady Tang and Tang Ning, who exercise moral kidnapping in the name of love, are no different.
Ke Jiayi plays Tang Zhen as an adult, and becomes a new generation of "Tang Lady"
At this point, it is understood that all love is not understood because it is not love at all.
"Blood Guanyin" vividly portrays a female group portrait, a scheming between upper-class women and a fly camp dog. No one is a completely innocent victim, and this is where the film's darkest is.
Both the titles of "Blood Guanyin" and "The Great Buddha Plus" have the same metaphorical reference, and Guanyin and Buddha statues complete the recognition of evil things in the name of good in the image. Originally, as the embodiment of Pudu sentient beings, the Great Buddha fell down and crushed all sentient beings; the broken arm guanyin flowed to other homes, but it brought disaster.
The reversal in the spiritual sense makes the plot more in-depth and interpretive. Sin filled with blood and Kannon, the embodiment of goodness, are combined, and the heavyness of the story can be felt just by looking at the title.
3
The road is not exhausted, and I want to say that I will rest
At the beginning of the article, I mentioned that the plot of "Blood Guanyin" has brought a certain controversy. The director wants to say too much, but it will cause some trouble to the understanding of the film.
Family fights, official politics, massacres, sisterly jealousy and other elements are all available, the opening storyteller is an all-knowing and all-powerful perspective, and then from the multiple narrative perspectives of internal characters, in terms of lines and story morals, the director wants to express a lot of things, and finally causes a certain degree of narrative chaos.
Tang Zhen leaked a personal relationship between his girlfriend and Groom to His mother, and used flashback techniques many times. Although the darkness of Tang Zhen's personality is explained, the flashbacks that have been repeated are not beneficial to understanding the narrative structure, but are more messy.
Tang Ning's pain, the love between Fei Fei and Marco, and the inner heart of Tang Zhen are not clear enough, and it seems that everyone's behavior and fate are in preparation for the great reversal of Tang Lady's "black eating black".
The settings of "reading songs", "meditating marriages", and "visiting the garden and frightening dreams" add a lot of strange and strange textures to the plot, and the story is like people's gossip after tea and dinner, and eventually it becomes more and more outrageous.
The film blurs the background era, and the story is endlessly desired. In contrast, the pattern of "Big Buddha Plus" is much simpler.
But both films make it clear that the more the times develop, humans can go to the moon in a spaceship, but can never explore the universe inside others.
Even close relatives inevitably have a ghost fetus. Let's walk together to that terrible loveless future.
In the current context, the exploration and reflection of love, power, and desire reflects the dark side of society. Yang Yazhe said that his vision follows the development of Taiwan's society, and the film is, to some extent, an expression of his attitude towards the current environment in Taiwan.
Movies have shadows of real events as well as fictional elements. The intertwining of reality and fiction makes people look amazing and sad. The small problems of the narrative cannot hide the depth of the overall presentation of the film, and I have to say that "Blood Guanyin" is really worth watching again.
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