Speaking of the hottest movie in the world in recent days, it must be the new work of Chinese director Zhao Ting-
"The Land of No One"
When the first wave of film critics came out, rotten tomatoes had a freshness rating of 100%.
To Douban, it is 60 people who directly opened a high score of 8.9 after evaluation, which is enough to see its exploding reputation.
The film is based on Jessica Brudd's 2017 documentary novel The Badlands: Survival in 21st Century America.
It tells the story of the small town of Empel in Nevada against the backdrop of the Great Depression of 2011, which lost the economic pillar of its residents and eventually became an abandoned city.
Image source: Douban Movie
And among these people was a 60-year-old woman named Fern.
She lost her job and then her husband, and without much savings, she began her journey through the American West as a modern nomad living in a van.
The plot of the film is very simple, not even too much plot, some are just the temporary work that Fern worked along the way, and the same people who yearn for freedom.
The film's lead actress is Francis McDormand, who just won the Academy Award for Best Actress for "Three Billboards."
Although she does not have the delicacy of a big star in the film, a messy short hair, a wide and old clothes, at first glance, she is not an elite living in the upper class.
But in her eyes, she revealed a kind of calmness and firmness, obviously just a plain face and untrimmed photo, but let the audience feel her strength.
Maybe that's the strength of a top actor, every expression is acting, so that you can feel her emotions at any time.
Obviously, she is already a 60-year-old woman, and when she sees the world, she is still happy like a girl, and just one back shadow is enough to interpret her mood.
Some viewers believe that the film will bring three Oscars to Cohen's sister-in-law.
Image source: Douban movie screenshot
Sure enough, this work that shined internationally has received too many heavyweight honors:
Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Picture, Toronto Film Festival Audience Choice Award, New York Film Critics Association Best Director...
As well as the Golden Globe Awards, which has just announced nominations, it received four nominations for Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Screenwriter, becoming the absolute dark horse of this year's Golden Globe Awards.
Judging from the number of awards won by the film critics' outpost, Zhao Ting has been far ahead, and the foreign media predicts that this female director from China is likely to become the big winner of this Oscar and become a rich stroke in film history.
Of course, what is most exciting for filmmakers at present is that after 13 years of famous director Ang Lee, another Chinese face won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, and was also the first Chinese female director to win the award.
Prior to this, there were five domestic directors who won this honor, they were Ang Lee, Jia Zhangke, Zhang Yimou, Hou Xiaoxian, and Cai Mingliang.
Image source: Screenshot of Weibo
Compared with these five well-known directors, the name Zhao Ting is very strange to the audience.
In this regard, some viewers also raised doubts:
Who is Zhao Ting?
Why her?
What is even more surprising is that this movie is Zhao Ting, who was originally found by Cohen's sister-in-law.
It turned out that after she fancyd this book, she had not been able to find a suitable director.
Until I saw Zhao Ting's "Knight", I felt that the other party was the first person who could control this work.
After reading this story, Zhao Ting was deeply fascinated by the American West portrayed in the book, and the two of them opened the creation of the film as soon as they hit it off, and finally got results that far exceeded expectations.
I remember that when Zhao Ting won the Venice Golden Lion Award, there was a large number of reports in the domestic media about the "light of the countrymen".
What is unexpected is that she has achieved such success in the United States, and she is actually the stepdaughter of Song Dandan, an excellent actor familiar to the audience.
It turned out that, just like Liu Mei in "Family with Children", Song Dandan, after divorcing Yingda, took Batuu to marry Zhao Ting's father, who was the manager of a steel company in Beijing.
Born in 1982, Zhao Ting is not the well-behaved girl in the old Beijing hutongs of the public perception, with two thick braids and dimples that laugh sweetly.
On the contrary, when she was a teenager, she was very rebellious, did not like to study, but liked to draw comics, write fan fiction, and was a complete fan of movies.
In particular, Wong Kar-wai's "Spring Break" has become the enlightenment of her film road, she has watched it many times and is deeply attracted by the plot and feelings in it.
Talking about her own growth path, Zhao Ting is very fortunate to live in such an "atypical" Beijing family:
My parents were funny, they were just a little different from the typical Beijing parents, rebellious and strange. They never stopped making me really myself. When my grades were poor, like a wild kid, just drawing some weird Japanese manga, they just let me go, which is very rare.
Perhaps, as Zhao Ting said, it is precisely because of her parents' laissez-faire that she really grows wildly.
At the age of 15, Zhao Ting, who was not good at English, was sent by her parents to a boarding school in the United Kingdom to study, but her real yearning in her heart was the American life in the movie.
In this way, after living in London for two years, 17-year-old Zhao Ting moved to Los Angeles alone and saw the reality of the United States that ran counter to her imagination.
It is precisely because of this completely different reality from the video that Zhao Ting's curiosity about the United States has greatly stimulated her and allowed her to spend the most brilliant twenty years of her life in this strange country.
Source: Douban Movie
In the United States, Zhao Ting has worked as a bartender and a temporary worker, and those days of doing small work in the United States have added a little sense of reality to her future shooting of the story of small american people, that is, more grounded.
After receiving her bachelor's degree in political science from Monthorley York College in Massachusetts, Zhao Ting entered the New York University Film School and became an alumnus of Ang Lee, and Spike Lee, who won the Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award, was one of her teachers.
Here, Zhao Ting had the idea of making a movie as a director.
As a Beijing girl who dared to think and dare to do, she quickly turned her dream into reality.
At the age of 29, her first feature film work in her life, "The Song My Brother Taught Me to Sing", came into being.
If you use four words to describe Zhao Ting's debut work, it is a blockbuster.
The film was not only shortlisted for the American Feature Film Unit at the 31st Sundance Film Festival and the Director's Biwealth Unit at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, but also won Zhao Ting back the trophy of Best Female Director at the Gotham Independent Film Festival.
You know, at that time, Zhao Ting was just a newcomer in the film industry, without any practical experience in shooting, and even because she did not have pre-shooting funds, she could only edit while teaching herself, and even the protagonists in the film were all vegetarians.
But it is precisely this unpolished truth that makes Zhao Ting a new star representing the power of women in the film industry.
With the experience of the first work, Zhao Ting quickly handed over the second answer sheet, "Knight", in 2017.
It is still a small production that lacks money, only 80,000 US dollars in cost, the actors are all vegetarians, Zhao Ting took self-portraits and self-directed self-cuts, boyfriends temporarily acted as photographers, and six people's small workshops actually produced amazing movies.
The film was once again shortlisted for the Sundance Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival Director's Bi-Week, winning the Gotham Independent Film Award and the Best Film at the Pingyao International Film Festival, and the Hollywood Reporter praised the film as "a rare jewel", which is enough to show the high recognition and praise of the film by professionals.
The name Zhao Ting has really gained popularity in the international film circle.
She once introduced herself at the Pingyao International Film Festival:
I'm Zhao Ting, I make Westerns, I'm from Beijing.
Audiences who have watched these two works will find that the American West under Zhao Ting's lens has a different beauty from the classic American Western, and in the vast western world, people are just natural embellishments.
In Zhao Ting's films, there is never a so-called heroic character.
Whether it's the cowboy in Knight who can't play again because of injury, or Fern who loses everything in "The Land of NoBody", they are just the most ordinary people in the world.
There are dreams and pursuits, but because of the helplessness of various realities, it is difficult to easily succeed, and finally spend a short life ordinary.
Zhao Ting was asked whether she had deliberately structured cowboy spirit and American heroism in "Knight", but her answer was surprising:
When I made the film, I completely reduced the protagonist to the most ordinary person to perform.
There is no so-called protagonist aura, and there is no open life, just the most ordinary people who strive to exist in this world.
After "Knight", Zhao Ting's talent in directing was most truly displayed
The famous American director Kubrick once said: The best way to learn film is to make a movie.
And Zhao Ting, in this way, grew up in practice, and in the process of continuous trial and error, found her own skills.
Some people say that Zhao Ting's "The Song My Brother Taught Me to Sing", "Knight", and "The Land of No Dependence" can be regarded as a trilogy.
They are all based on her real life experiences in the American Midwest, focusing on marginal figures who live at the bottom of society and are forgotten by capitalism.
They are very small in the eyes of the world; but in Zhao Ting's lens, they are very vivid.
Even in the souls of those characters, they were all injected into Zhao Ting's own thoughts.
Because, she is precisely a person who actively chooses the status of nomad.
She lives in a rural area of South Dakota, usa, where she has the most primitive life, and she likes this freedom from the world, and she likes to relax and think in a familiar environment.
In an exclusive interview, Zhao Ting described her day, which was simple but fulfilling.
"I get up at six o'clock every day and spend an hour with myself before work starts, which is my favorite hour. My dog and the chicks stay with me, and then I start working, I work all day, and then I try to hike outdoors or go to the beach, and then I make dinner, and the day is over. ”
I have to say that this is really Zhao Ting.
After "Knight" shined, Zhao Ting received an invitation from Marvel to direct the filming of the blockbuster "Eternals".
In the eyes of the public, Zhao Ting, who is obsessed with Westerns, seems to be incompatible with commercial movies like Marvel, but the president of Marvel has bluntly said: Zhao Ting's publicity for this movie is the best he has ever heard, and her ability to create small personalized movies perfectly fits Marvel's "grand thinking".
It is understood that the Eternals are a new cosmic superhuman race that the Marvel Cinematic Universe will introduce in the fourth phase, and the film has invited many heavyweight actors to join, including Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek, Kit Harrington, Kumel Nanjani and so on.
If Zhao Ting can make this film officially and the audience recognized, then her path of directing will inevitably create glory again.
Zhao Ting's birth has made many people in the domestic industry see the shadow of Ang Lee, and there are too many similarities between the two people, and many fans call it "the next Ang Lee". In response, Zhao Ting's response was: First of all, I feel very honored, and secondly, there will be no next Ang Lee, only Ang Lee, the only Ang Lee.
Of course, there is only the only Zhao Ting.
We are constantly working hard in this world, not to become the next person, but to achieve a unique self, a self that can make us irreplaceable after we grow old.
In The Land of No One, a nomadic woman in her 70s is seriously ill and has been running out of time, but she is very satisfied with this short-lived, she describes this picture:
"On the river in Idaho, I've seen a family of elk, on the lake of Colorado, a big white pelican landed in front of my kayak, and after paddling a corner, there was a cliff there, and I saw hundreds of swallows parked on the cliff, and the swallows flew in the air, and with the reflection of the river, it looked like I also flew up, and the swallows were flying around me, and the chicks had just hatched their shells, and the small eggshells fell from the cliff to the water, and those white eggshells floated on the surface of the water, it was simply wonderful... ...”
Even if you have never experienced it yourself, as long as you hear it, you feel a beautiful picture, and you can't help but think of that Haizi poem:
You come to earth for a trip, you have to see the sun.
I came to see the world as I saw it; I saw it, and it was all worth it.
At the end of the film, this line is typed:
Dedicated to those who had to go on the road.
These people are Fern, Zhao Ting, those nomads, and we who walk in this world.
French director Godard once famously said that a movie is a reality of 24 frames per second.
Zhao Ting, who has never seen Western movies or books, has never been influenced by classic American Westerns.
All she did was record the west she saw in the most authentic way, and this was precisely the most touching point.
From China to Britain to the United States, Zhao Ting's ideas and creations have long ceased to exist in a single country.
As she herself said, her film is about letting the audience walk in, whatever they believe, whether they agree with me or not, let them see the perspective of these characters, enter the world with their own existing knowledge, leave with their own point of view, and then start a conversation.
And this is what she thinks of as the "power of cinema."