Originally not ready to push today, but in the morning I went to see the re-screening of "Love Letters", even if all the plot and dialogue can almost be memorized, or I am very touched to see, Iwai Shunji is too good at shooting, love is a heavy cold!
This article is not to interpret anything again, spend two hours talking about the things behind the scenes of "Love Letters", most of the content comes from the interview with Shunji Iwai, the birth of the classic, full of all kinds of interesting coincidences, the time and place are favorable and less, even if Iwai Shunji shoots again, he is unlikely to do better.
Shunji Iwai has always wanted to make a letter story, and he was accidentally injured in junior high school and lay in the hospital for two months, and his classmates sent a message card, which gave him the idea.
How to write a specific story? In his early private interviews, Shunji Iwai was very frank in saying that "Love Letters" was "stolen" from Haruki Murakami, and the relationship between the characters basically imitated "Norwegian Forest".
Originally, Iwai Shunji wanted to remake "Norwegian Forest", but at that time, Murakami Jun traveled in Inner Mongolia, China, and could not buy the copyright if he could not contact it, so he simply started to make up magic, and the copyright fee was saved.
The following figure shows the main character relationships in Norwegian Woods:
The following figure shows the character relationships in "Love Letters":
Doesn't it feel like that? This echoes Picasso's words: "The poor artist imitates, and the good artist steals."
First of all, the theme is the same, "death and rebirth". The character relationship is direct Copy, in the novel Watanabe, Kizuki and Naoko are the trio of death parties, and in the movie, it is Hiroko, Fujii (an adult male) and Akiba-sensei, Kizuki and Fujii shu are all dead just after they came up, leaving two heartbroken people.
In order to prevent "Lu Yu'er", Shunji Iwai changed genders, but both people were surnamed "Watanabe", which is the most intuitive evidence.
The characters do not correspond exactly to each other, and Shunji Iwai breaks them up and reorganizes them, for example, some of Akiba's personalities are very similar to "Midoriko", which is the healing agent of Hiroko.
Reiko in the book is also the key to helping Watanabe stand up, corresponding to the female Fujii tree in "Love Letters", and then the finishing touch comes, Iwai Shunji makes the female Fujii tree and Hiroko look exactly the same, hanging on a beautiful and cruel thing.
Although Shunji Iwai said that he did not want to be as sad as "Norwegian Forest", the core of "Love Letter" is actually quite dark, and the male Fujii tree is even a little scum with his current eyes, and Hiroko has become a tool man in a sense.
The Beatles' famous song "Norwegian Wood" in the book is an important symbol, and Shunji Iwai changed it to Proust's "Remembrance of Water Years", and the narrative role is the same.
This "copying" is really clever, not focusing on the plot, but the inner impulses of the characters, Hiroko and Watanabe have two forces in their hearts, one is the centripetal force (can not go out), the other is the centrifugal force (embracing a broader life), determining the human setting, and filling in the blanks like a gestalt to build the narrative skeleton of the whole story.
From an interview, Shunji Iwai mentioned that he originally did not want Hiroko Watanabe to show his face, so he just sent a letter to answer, and the center was on the female Fujii tree, but then the producer felt that it was too simple, so he increased Hiroko's role.
Miho Nakayama's acting skills are really speechless, one person plays two roles, Fujii Tree is innocent and large, Hiroko is introverted and affectionate, and some distinctions are made with hairstyles, but the main interpretation is in place.
In October 1994, "Love Letters" began filming in Otaru, Hokkaido, and the reason why autumn was chosen was mainly because the budget was not high, and it was necessary to shoot summer and winter scenes at the same time, which required a lot of luck.
Otaru is located in the west of Hokkaido, at the intersection of cold and warm air, there is a lot of snow, and the terrain is somewhat similar to my ace "Snow Nest" in Mt. Ōtoshi.
October is really a little early, locals say that the chance of snow is not big, in addition to The schedule of most of the actors in Miho Nakayama has been set to die, after filming, Shunji Iwai is simply the son of God, 2 months of shooting is extremely smooth, snow or sunny days to give and take, only sporadically with artificial snow, such as when Grandpa sent Fujii to the hospital.
The summer scene was only filmed in December, the temperature in the bicycle shed has reached minus zero, but the actor is wearing summer clothes, in order to avoid ha gas, the actor can only eat ice in advance, the mouth is too wooden to say the line, shouting Cut immediately put on the cold suit.
Watching the day and eating in this way did not affect the shooting progress at all, and even the director said that it was a miracle afterwards, which was equivalent to catching several flushes in a row.
For various reasons, "Love Letters" was not introduced to domestic release that year, but because of the efforts of pirate dealers, Iwai Shunji became famous in East Asia, and he said more than once that he wanted to thank the pirates, no matter what channel, thank you for watching his movies.
Shunji Iwai once said that it doesn't matter what I think when I shoot, what the audience thinks is important, such as why the curtain is opened and the male Fujii tree disappears, and Hiroko shouts "Miss Fujii" in the ear on the street, and each of these viewers can have their own interpretation.
It's also interesting to write the behind-the-scenes story of the classic masterpiece, and find time to talk about it later.
Attached is an Easter egg, the pornographic painting that The male Fujii tree painted behind the roll, from a set of advertisements that Miyazaki shot for Minolta cameras in 1980.
Finish.