From before filming to after the release of the 1905 film network special article, "The First Burning Incense" was accompanied by controversy. The general public did not buy the film, Maoyan 7.3 points, Taobao ticket 7.5 points. On the Douban platform, where movie fans are mostly fans, there is only 5.6 points, which is a shocking failure score, which is the lowest score in all director Xu Anhua's current feature films.
Xu Anhua said in an interview with us at the Venice International Film Festival last year, "In the past few years, I have begun to have more confidence in myself, because I know more and more how to make movies", but after the release of "First Incense", it suffered such a bad review that Xu Anhua poured cold water on him.
What exactly did "First Incense" do wrong? In fact, from casting, performance, adaptation to marketing and publicity, "The First Incense" has problems in these links.
Controversy 1
Casting: Ma Sichun and Peng Yuyan are not suitable?
The first thing that caused concern and even disgust in "The First Incense" was the casting.
"Love is not the humility of one person, but the bravery of two people", Ma Sichun's initial understanding of the novel and Ge Weilong's "youth pain literature" style role has aroused the surprise and dissatisfaction of a large number of original fans.
The love between Ge Weilong and Ge Qiqiqiao has nothing to do with "the bravery of two people", their love is wrapped in money, power, and depravity, rather than Saying that Zhang Ailing is writing about love, it is better to say that she is writing about how women are forced to survive and survive in the sneering irony of love.
What is more criticized than Ma Sichun's misreading is that her and Peng Yuyan's appearance and temperament do not conform to Zhang Ailing's text description of Ge Weilong and Qiao Qiqiao. The novel's description of Ge Weilong's appearance is:
"Her face is plain and beautiful little bulge, and now this type of 'puff face' is outdated. Her eyes were long and beautiful, and the deep marks on her eyelids swept straight into her sideburns. Slender nose, small fat mouth. Perhaps her facial expression is slightly lacking, but only because of this sluggishness, it shows the gentle and thick ancient Chinese atmosphere. ”
From the characteristics of the face to the gentle and generous mood, there are some places on Ma Sichun's body that are appropriate, but the figure is completely out of proportion.
The novel writes that when Ge Weilong tried on her aunt's clothes, She also had to fold her waist with a pin, and her aunt also said that her legs were too thin, although the novel wrote that "Shanghai women are tamales" like her, but her figure was very thin.
Ma Sichun's innate skeleton and her own body shape line do not belong to the slender type, and the costume style designed for her in the movie does not show her strengths and avoids weaknesses, and Yu Feihong, Zhang Junning, Liang Luoshi, etc. are compared with the frame, but it highlights her disadvantages and deviates from the audience's ideal imagination of Ge Weilong.
Georgie Qiao, played by Peng Yuyan, also faces such a problem, and the novel's description of Georgie Joe's appearance is:
He was bloodless than Ji Jie, and even his lips were pale, like plaster casts. Under the black pressed eyebrows and eyelashes, the eyes were like the wind blowing through the Waseda field, sometimes revealing the blue light of the rice under the water, flashing, and then darkening. Man is tall and well-behaved, but his clothes are so obedient and casual that people forget the existence of his body. ”
Many readers imagine that Qiao Qiqiao's actor is a mixed-race and weak man like Zun Long, rather than Peng Yuyan, who is strong and healthy.
Although he loses weight to make his body close to "like a plaster cast", the body posture shown in the film is also very loose and unobtrusive, and the costumes he wears are on the large side, and he still can't hide his dazzling athletic figure, dark and shiny complexion, and strong muscles.
Screenwriter Wang Anyi responded in an interview, "Novels have always been written by Ge Qiqi as a sports person, such as he ran to Ge Weilong's balcony at night and climbed up from a field, which shows that he is a person who likes sports. ”
Qiao Qiqiao likes sports is not fake, but "no blood, pale lips" in Peng Yuyan is not reflected in the slightest, there is a douban with a bad taste color that has been praised by many netizens: "I feel that they are not flirting, but Peng Yuyan is talking to Ma Sichun about the personal training arrangement plan." ”
In any case, when explaining why Ma Sichun and Peng Yuyan were chosen now, Xu Anhua believed that it was because the two of them were suitable for a love play. Unfortunately, in the eyes of most people, Ma Sichun and Peng Yuyan lack a "CP sense" in the play.
Dispute 2
Performance: Trying hard, or still embarrassing?
Although film adaptations are not always limited to the framework of the original novel, the actors can look different, and through god-like performances, they can also change stereotypes and win back a round.
Many people have commented that Peng Yuyan's performance is a bit greasy, especially the dialogue between Ge Qiqiao and Ge Weilong when they first met, "--What are you staring at me, am I a thorn in your eye?" "It is the nail in the eye, this nail may not be able to pull out", although there are original words in the novel, but different from the context in the movie, the movie has not been reprocessed, and this dialogue from the current perspective seems earthy and greasy.
"Greasy feeling" may be what the role needs, Peng Yuyan did play the scum, waves and frivolity of Qiao Qiao, although he is affectionate but not handsome, he cannot support himself, needs the protection of the family, and is willing to rely on the strong, so he can only find his own existence in the weaker Ge Weilong and Wei'er.
Although the characteristics of Qiao Qiqiao's "eating soft rice" are placed on Peng Yuyan, the persuasiveness is greatly reduced, thanks to the intentional amplification of this trait of Qiao Qiqiao by the film plot design and character shaping, Peng Yuyan also grasps the inappropriate childishness of this character.
For example, he raises snakes, which is not in the novel, his father will be released after he finds out, And Georgie Qiao is aggrieved and fragile and cries, "Daddy"; for example, he begged Ge Weilong not to go to Shanghai with Situ Xie in bed, and it was like a very cute child.
Ma Sichun's performance controversy is even more.
Ge Weilong, who debuted, did not know whether it was a lack of performance design or a deviation in the understanding of the role, Ma Sichun played her as a "little white rabbit" without delicate thoughts, and even Wang Anyi thought that she acted too simple and did not show Ge Weilong's hidden "sophistication".
When Ge Weilong was heartbroken by Qiao Qiqiao, grabbing the Chinese clothes in the closet and crying, Ma Sichun showed an emotional state that seemed to laugh rather than laugh, like crying instead of crying, and over-scheduling facial expressions;
When Ge Weilong gave up going back to Shanghai and returned to his aunt's house to say that he wanted to marry Georgie, taunting his aunt to show love, Ma Sichun instantly presented an offensive posture of "white cutting black"...
Despite the hard work, some of the interpretations of Sima Sichun are also in place, and the whole still makes the audience feel that she has grasped the inner thoughts and deep motives of the characters, floating on the surface.
She still seems to be playing Ge Weilong with some methods and traces of "Left Ear" and "July and Ansheng", or is she self-indulgently using what she understands as "the painful youth that cannot be loved" to do simple and artificial interpretations.
Controversy III
Publicity: Sinking emotional marketing eats back at word of mouth?
Zhang Ailing, Xu Anhua, literary adaptation, love, literature and art... "The First Burning Incense" is placed in the dimension of the cinema market, which is not a configuration that can sell well at the box office, and the filmmakers still do everything possible to break through the audience circle of the film.
Previously, there were "A Sadder Story Than Sad", "I Am Waiting for You at the End of Time", "If the Voice Doesn't Remember", "Xibao", "Your Wedding", etc. Such small-scale and poorly word-of-mouth films have broadened the sinking market through emotional marketing on short video platforms, and finally boosted the film box office and exceeded conventional expectations.
And these movies are love themes, which are easily converted into topic points with communication power on the short video platform, triggering the emotional resonance of users, and then transforming into the movie box office itself.
As a romance film, "The First Incense" also chose to take such a route, trying to reverse the situation. As of now, the popularity of "First Burning Incense" in the Douyin movie list is second only to "Chosin Lake", but such a source of heat is more "black", not "red".
The main slogan distilled from the film is "give love but not a anniversary", and the promotional copy for the release date uses a harmonic stem: "21.10.22 = Love you, yes, love but not".
The copywriting on Douyin is all about: "Do everything, love one person." "If you let me go, I'll let you go." "Just accompanied you to play a deep-like drama like the sea, it's time to disperse"...
When Zhang Ailing's text entered the world of short videos, it was reduced to a straightforward and crude copywriter of the chicken soup style of the soul, far from the core expression of the original work.
Whether it is Zhang Fan or fans, they will scoff at this kind of low-quality, inconspicuous publicity, and it is easy to indirectly affect the judgment of the quality of the film. Unfamiliar audiences, after being attracted to the theater, found that the gap between the film from the narrative to the core and their expectations was too large.
If neither side has a good feeling, it is more likely to lead to word-of-mouth reaction, and "The Last Night of the Earth" "A Kiss on New Year's Eve" is a precedent.
Compared with last year's same type, the same period but the smaller volume of "Xibao", the emotional marketing of "Xibao" is quite successful, although the reputation is also very poor, but the film directly rose to the box office of breaking 100 million to achieve the purpose.
At that time, "Xibao" did not suffer from the two strong blockbusters of "Chosin Lake" and "Dune", and the current box office performance of more than 20 million yuan of "First Incense" was not satisfactory, and even the smaller "Uninvited Guest" could not beat it.
It can be seen that when a project positioning is misplaced and cognitively biased with different audience groups, the emotional marketing method is not very easy to use.
Controversy FOUR
Adaptation: Xu Anhua can't shoot Zhang Ailing well?
"The First Burning Incense" is Xu Anhua's third time to shoot Zhang Ailing's novel, and the first two encounters of this "half-life relationship" are different: "Love in the City" is a failure that Xu Anhua himself admits, and "Half-Life" is much better, but it is only at the middle level in Xu Anhua's works.
Xu Anhua once said: "You can only adapt Zhang Ailing's novels, and you can't borrow the title to play." "The movie "First Incense" did not deviate from the core of the original story, and two-thirds of the scenes were basically filmed according to the original plot of the novel, and many lines were not changed.
But the problem is that Xu Anhua did not think about how to translate the language of the novel into the language of the movie.
Zhang Ailing is very good at delicately writing natural scenes, using visual imagery to reflect the hearts of characters and strengthen the metaphor and atmosphere of the environmental space. For example, the first time Ge Weilong went to his aunt's house and saw a pot of plants, Zhang Ailing wrote:
As soon as Wei Long looked up at the piano, a cactus in the royal blue porcelain plate was exactly what the buds wanted to put, the thick green leaves, probing their heads around, like a green snake, the twisting red of the branches, it was like a spit out snake letter, the curtain behind the flower moved, and The smile and giggle came out. Wei Long shivered unconsciously. ”
The film's approach is only to turn these scenes written in the novel into lifeless sets, and does not use the language of images to express their advantages.
The film chooses to present the story from a calm and objective perspective, but ignores the in-depth portrayal of Ge Weilong's psychological state. For example, Ge Weilong was ill before she made up her mind to leave her aunt's house, and the novel uses a lot of brushstrokes to narrate her thoughts of tossing and turning and struggling in bed, but the film only directly goes to shoot her turning around in the house.
The vague and ambiguous code words in the text of the novel are hidden, and it is difficult for people to understand what Ge Weilong is really thinking and suffering in her heart, and it is even more difficult to empathize with this character and understand what she is doing.
On the contrary, the aunt is the character who is relatively plump, and the film uses multiple flashback passages and techniques to supplement the tragedy of this character and the reason why she entered the depraved situation.
Xu Anhua wanted to make specific references to the historical era, had the ambition to move closer to the grand, tied his hands and feet, and approached the end, detouring and staying too long in showing Ge Weilong becoming the "successor of his aunt".
The last shot shakes from Ge Weilong's cry to the entire city, and the momentum that was supposed to summon the wind and clouds of the times still can't stand up.
Xu Anhua's content adaptation and cinematization of "The First Incense" as a whole is dull, bulky and screwed, but it is not a useless bad film.
On the basis of the novel, the film continues to write about Ge Weilong's married life to Ge Qiqiqiao, which has become a finishing touch, especially a cruise ship scene, all the people in the bureau are on the fluctuating ship, their dangerous relationship is so balanced and turbulent, and the marriage contract between Ge Weilong and Ge Qiqiqiao's dirty transaction is also up and down in the bumps.
The more the film goes on, the darker and more frightening the color, and this is the marrow of the novel, when the film touches this, it glows with a different kind of vitality. Unfortunately, it came too late.
"The First Burning Incense" was "smashed", if there is a fourth chance to shoot Zhang Ailing, Xu Anhua still has to think carefully.
But this does not mean that Xu Anhua is not a good director, and she only wants to "make a good movie" all her life, and she hopes to continue to shoot.