In 1993, a 730,000-dollar Chinese film "Miscellaneous Mouths", together with Kieslowski's "Blue" and Robert Altman's "Silver Sex, Men and Women", was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 50th Venice Film Festival.
In the end, it won the gold medal of "President of the National Assembly", and Peter Weir ("Death Poetry Society", "Truman's World") who was the chairman of the jury at the time praised it.
The director of this film is called Liu Miaomiao, who was 31 years old at the time, but she was already alongside Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang and so on.
Liu Miaomiao was admitted to the directing department of the Beijing Film Academy at the age of 16, and was in the same class as Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Zhang Junzhao, Peng Xiaolian, Wu Ziniu, Li Shaohong, Hu Mei, etc.
At that time, she was not only the youngest in the class, but also the youngest student in the school (the oldest student was Zhang Yimou, 28 years old, in the department of photography). Later, these people became famous one after another, forming the famous "Nortel 78th" in the history of Chinese cinema.
▲ Nortel 78-level directing department, star-studded. The left one in the second row is Liu Miaomiao
Chen Kaige of the "78th Class" made the pioneering work "Yellow Land" of the "Fifth Generation" in 1984. A year later, Liu Miaomiao also directed his debut film Anecdotes of the Ocean, a film about the shipping industry.
▲ "Ocean Anecdotes", 1985
In 1987, Liu Miaomiao led the crew to shoot the feature film "Horseshoe Sound Breaking" on the Sichuan-Tibet Plateau, which used a unique perspective to delicately show the story of several female soldiers chasing after large troops during the Long March of the Red Army.
The times paved the way for her to be filled with flowers.
After winning the award in Venice in 1993, she became the director of Ningxia Film Studio, the youngest film studio in China, and filmed the feature film "Family Ugly", so that the Ningxia Factory, which was more than 400,000 yuan in debt and had incomplete regulations and equipment, began to produce feature films and put them into operation.
▲ "Family Ugly", 1994, starring Wang Zhiwen and He Bing
All this is smooth sailing for Liu Miaomiao. However, perhaps it was the trick of fate that Liu Miaomiao, who had a bright future, began to suffer a series of setbacks.
In 1994, she suffered from a serious mental illness first, and then the successive deaths of relatives hit her hard, and she suffered from bipolar disorder and was admitted to the hospital.
The pain of the disease tormented her repeatedly, the drug reaction made her hands tremble constantly, and the instability of her mental state also made her creations intermittent.
In 2018, Liu Miaomiao reappeared in front of the audience with his new work "Red Flowers and Green Leaves".
For her, this is a real "comeback", and she has never given up on her artistic ambitions.
In 2003, Liu Miaomiao came up with the idea of "returning to Xihaigu".
Ningxia as her second hometown, Xihaigu this place makes her feel closely related to her father and brother and her youth, so it has become her emotional sustenance;
And because she filmed "Miscellaneous Mouths" in Xihaigu, this represents a symbol of her career at the peak of her career.
▲ "Miscellaneous Mouths", 1985
On the basis of these thoughts, she wanted to return to Xihaigu, regain her faith, and heal her heart.
Through the introduction of the director's friend, Liu Miaomiao became acquainted with the famous Ningxia writer Shi Shuqing, who had already become the winner of the Lu Xun Literature Award with his short story "The Knife in Clear Water".
After that, Liu Miaomiao began to cooperate with Shi Shuqing. They have collaborated on two novels by Shi Shuqing, but for various reasons they have not been able to make them, until this latest "Red Flowers and Green Leaves".
"Red Flowers and Green Leaves" is adapted from Shi Shuqing's short story "Cousin".
The novel is about a young man who has lost faith in a love marriage and accidentally marries a capable and beautiful daughter-in-law, can they go on? This impressed the director.
Especially after the failure of the previous two collaborations, this time the director and screenwriter have established the line of continuing to shape the character from the beginning - and this is exactly the part that the director has seen.
In the creation of a good realistic theme film, shaping the character is the most important.
Whether it is the real issues that people are concerned about, the emotional dilemmas presented, or the core of tension of contradictory events, all of this is based on people.
Only by shaping the image of the character to be full, the event can stand up, and can it more directly resonate with the audience.
Therefore, from the very beginning, this film has decided to be a life flow film that shows the living state of the characters and portrays the emotional relationships of the characters.
From the novel to the movie, there are no small changes, first of all, the tone of the whole film.
The story of the original novel "Cousin" can be said to be more bitter, the film makes it tend to be warm, and even more humorous, neither sweet and greasy, but also not miserable.
Liu Miaomiao decided to put the background of its occurrence in the current era, which determined its tone, not so tragic.
The young Gu Bai, who originally lost confidence in love, met the gentle and beautiful Assiyan during the blind date, and they each had a "secret" past, but they suddenly entered the "arranged" marriage.
The two hearts, which were originally strange and alienated, were slowly brought closer because they lived together day and night. At this time, their respective secrets are revealed...
The whole film does not have too many strong dramatic conflicts, but more ink is colored on the portrayal of character relationships and the display of character emotions, giving people a sense of tranquility and simplicity.
Director Liu Miaomiao and screenwriter Shi Shuqing have determined such a tone from the script stage, hoping that the film will be as much like life itself as possible, rather than a film with twists and turns and this kind of drama is particularly obvious.
Of course, this is also done for the sake of cost and actors.
The film was shot in just 27 days at a limited cost. All the actors are non-professional actors who have never been exposed to the film before, and they need to avoid scenes that cannot be completed by non-professional actors who have a lot of emotional expression and need to show tension, and this is just in line with the temperament of the film.
More importantly, doing so will not allow the event to steal the "limelight" of the characters in the movie.
In the process of watching, the audience is slowly transformed from the beginning of the suspense of the story to focus on the emotional relationship and inner shaping between the couple.
It is precisely because of the unexpected encounter that it has led to a moving relationship that attracts each other, which is what the film focuses on expressing, that is, when facing the suffering of life, we are still full of hope and good.
There is a very moving line in the film:
"Even if it is a crippled sparrow, its hope is all-American."
This sentence may be the director's desire to express her understanding of life, emotions, and reality through the film.
Especially after experiencing the tribulations of their own lives, they have become more proficient and satisfied with these problems.
How to face imperfections in life is a philosophy of dealing with the world.
Although the suffering and grinding in life are not something we can decide and control, we can still change as much as possible through our own efforts and move towards a better and down-to-earth manner.
The whole film is from the perspective of the male protagonist Gu Bai, integrating a large number of his narrations and monologues, portraying his state of a woman from attraction to gambling, from thoughtfulness to attachment.
Such a delicate and moving ordinary feeling was bred on the thick and desolate land of Xihaigu, and it showed a hint of emotional layering in the grand regional background.
The love of Gu Bai and Assiyan is also like the red flowers and green leaves blooming in this northwest yellow land, supporting each other and belonging to each other.
Presenting the good rather than criticizing the suffering, as mentioned earlier in the article, the director chooses to sigh to express his inner pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty, which is also a kind of power.
In the vast sea of people, perhaps only by finding each other can we have the courage to go on. As for the imperfect trivial fragments of life, who can say clearly?
One of the most interesting points is that as the backbone of the female directors in the "fifth generation" group, Li Shaohong, Hu Mei and Liu Miaomiao have all ushered in the release of their new works this year, and coincidentally, the three female directors have also been away from the big screen for many years.
Liu Miaomiao's "Red Flowers and Green Leaves" still adheres to the emotional relationship issues that he is good at, and gently packages his understanding and understanding of life with universal traditional values.
Whether it is a commercial film or an art film, the three directors invariably convey the response to this era to the audience through the new film.
The film premiered at the Pingyao Film Festival last year and also appeared at this year's North Film Festival. For this long-dormant senior-level director, the industry still gave a high evaluation. Tian Zhuangzhuang said, "The work of a master." It's really good, but I'm afraid there aren't many people who can love, and everyone doesn't know the movie anymore, only remembers the movie theater."
Zhang Dalei, the director of "August", who won the Golden Horse Best Picture with his feature film debut, watched in the open air in Pingyao, "I have not seen such a simple, classical and affectionate, calculating and clever academic film for a long time, especially in this chaotic era."
Classical and rustic, is the evaluation of most people. Liu Miaomiao returned with these long-lost breaths.
When we talk about the "fifth generation", we always think of the grand narratives and emotional experiences of those homelands, nationalities, and pains, but Liu Miaomiao's works do not seem to have these labels, and are more full of independent individual emotional expressions.
For this point, director Liu Miaomiao said that on the one hand, because he is younger than other directors.
▲ Peng Xiaolian and Liu Miaomiao in the university era. Director Peng Xiaolian also watched this complete film before his death, and the evaluation was: quiet and not procrastinating, very powerful
The cultural revolution occurred at a time when the male students in those classes began to mature mentally and began to understand the whole society, so after the trauma, their attention naturally fell on the criticism and reflection of reality. However, due to her young age, the course of history was not enough to fully affect her understanding of the world and the relationship between people.
On the other hand, it may also be the reason for herself as a female director, she is more concerned with some dimensions related to the individual life of people.
I remember Hou Xiaoxian said a sentence, he said don't criticize, criticism is useless, meaningless. I agree with that.
To criticize, as if we were going to change a person through criticism, I don't think that makes much sense.
For this society to become better, it depends on the self-cultivation of each individual in this society. I feel like we, as artists, have the identity of artists. Too much criticism is pointless.
Therefore, she chose to replace criticism with exclamations and express emotions.
Just like the personality of director Liu Miaomiao, she has always maintained a strong independent thinking and vigilance concept for many evaluation standards of today's worldliness.
If you say that I am trendy, then I also do not like the word "keeping pace with the times", if it is according to the contemporary understanding, it is a short-sighted, roaring state.
But Chinese is so ambiguous, perhaps in some fixed context, these words will have a precise meaning.
This contradiction, or the ability to think deeply about the problem, also determines Liu Miaomiao's attitude and views on many things to a large extent. Not easily labeled, but at the same time not afraid of being defined. Especially after experiencing the ups and downs of life, Liu Miaomiao has become more calm and indifferent in the face of life and creation.
▲ In October last year, Liu Miaomiao (fourth from the left) and the crew of "Red Flowers and Green Leaves" were in Pingyao
In 2002, Zhang Yimou's "Hero" led the boom of "blockbusters" in the Chinese film market. After that, one commercial blockbuster after another with high investment and big scenes began to go to the market and go to the audience, and the path of small-cost literary and art film creation she adhered to seemed to be two completely different directions from her classmates.
The reason for this is of course affected by the physical condition to a certain extent, but it is more likely to be related to the director's personality. In her opinion, this is a personal choice.
Many literary artists in the history of literature and art, I am afraid that most of them have chosen a very natural, comfortable and simple way of life, which is also closely related to their creation, and this way of life also determines the style of their works, and the attitude of life and ideological emotions conveyed in his works. I think it's all normal.
But for the question of whether she will try to embark on a business path in the future, she bluntly said that she did not dare to try in the direction of too commercial.
"Now that the cost of making movies is getting higher and higher, and the market pressure is getting bigger and bigger, I still honestly do some low-cost films, so that I don't have much pressure in the market, I can still make the style unique, and still maintain the path of the author's film, which is very good." 」
Even when facing the identities of "female director" and "minority director" when creating, she did not have much pressure, nor did she think too much about the "creative limitations" brought to her by her identity.
I came here because I was educated in film school relatively early, and I caught up with the reform and opening up, and Chinese film talents are just when they are young and yellow, and then they take advantage of that opportunity to break out, in fact, it has nothing to do with whether I am Hui or not. As for whether you need to speak up for the corresponding groups because of your gender, ethnicity, and other identities, I believe in nine words:
"It is enough to have feelings and words to reach meaning."
Live transparently.
Author ✎ No Thoughts
This article was first published in the Adventure Movie: Cinematik
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