A while ago, the Los Angeles Times selected the top 20 movies of 2019, pairing two or two with similar themes or genres, of which three Chinese films, "Children of the Jianghu", "The Last Night of the Earth" and "Elephant Sitting on the Ground", were selected.
Today, Xiao Shi came to talk to you about "Elephant Sitting on the Ground"
About this film, there are already legends in the jianghu.
So Xiao Shijun went to Xining to see the film festival, mostly to see this film.
Logically, after reading it on the opening day, I should have rolled up my sleeves and rolled out an article, but I was tired of running to various screenings and did not take time.
Good food is not afraid of late, this is coming.
Before talking about the movie, let's briefly talk about its director, Hu Bo.
Hu Bo was born in 1988 and graduated from the Directing Department of the Beijing Film Academy. Before becoming a director, he was a writer and published two novels under the pseudonym Hu Qian: The Great Rift and Bullfrog.
I have seen "The Great Rift", the writing is delicate and fierce, mournful and powerful, if you continue to write, you will be a quite reliable novelist.
Then he wrote the script, signed the company, got the investment, and made the movie.
In the process of filming, there were some things that he could not control and helpless, one of which he insisted most fiercely was to keep the version for nearly four hours, and the producer rebuked him for not understanding things and vetoed it.
In the meantime, he occasionally wrote a brief account on his Weibo, which attracted people's pity.
The first time he became a director, Hu Bo faced a complicated and delicate situation, but no one thought that it would lead to big things.
In October 2017, the news of the death of young director Hu Bo swept in, and I think you must have listened to it.
We can't say that Hu Bo defended his film to the death. Just like people ask Jiang Wen, in "The Sun Also Rises", why did Huang Qiusheng's character commit suicide? Jiang Wen said that why a person commits suicide, only the person who committed suicide knows it.
But we still want to know why Hu Bo blatantly self-destructed when he only did half of it later in the film.
The only thing that answers us is his first and last film, The Elephant Sits on the Ground.
At the beginning of last year, the film was released once at the Berlin Film Festival, and after watching it, everyone was shocked at the scene.
In the middle of the year, when I heard that the FIRST Film Festival had finalized it as the opening film this time, I took out my mobile phone and operated it wildly, and the day before the premiere, I moved thousands of miles and stepped on the land of Xining.
This was the first screening of the film in China, and it was also the premiere of the best version in the world (the sound in Berlin was not matched at that time). Only a few hundred people sitting in the Galax1 hall of the Xining Galaxy Joy Cinema can see it. How fortunate I was to be one of them.
The opening film screening site is also the scene of the opening ceremony. I sat in the arena ten minutes early, stared at the FIRST Film Festival promo film that was looped on the screen for half a day, shot it in a stylish way, and watched it twice that I was about to memorize the words.
Near the opening, a big killer was released: an MV "Advanced Animals" cooperated by the previous judges and ambassadors of FIRST. Folks, there's nothing cooler in the world than pronouncing the 48 words in this song. My goosebumps rose and fell, like a groundhog that grew up, going down and popping up one after another.
When the blood vessels were smashed by one word after another and the body churned, FIRST CEO Li Ziwei took the stage and officially opened.
From this moment on, followed by a three-hour opening ceremony. It was also the most special opening I've ever attended.
In particular, this opening ceremony is like a grand Hu Bo memorial ceremony.
Li Ziwei is a cool and sharp person, which I saw at the FIRST press conference in Beijing a few months ago, and she is what Kind of Voice Tian Zhen has. The outlet does not leak and the words are exquisite, affectionate and sensational.
This time is different, she opened her mouth with choking, talking about today's opening film, talking about Hu Bo, only a sentence of "this stinky boy", can not continue. Plum zi was busy talking back and forth between saying a word and shedding a line of tears, in case he couldn't cry. The hearts of those present suddenly sank.
Then Li Ziwei invited Hu Bo's mother to the stage. Hu Bo's mother was crying red-eyed and could hardly speak, and she said that I was in great pain right now. I'm one of those people who rarely gets out of control in a movie theater, and I can't stop here, and my nose is flowing. Casually glance at it, everyone is wiping away tears.
Li Ziwei said that when he first watched the first cut, he couldn't help but sigh, if there really is a person who should be a director by nature, Hu Bo is. Then I said that today I put a director's cut version, which was not cut and interrupted for four hours. "I don't allow anyone to miss even a minute." , sit down, and by the end, it's best not to get up. If you want to go to the toilet, go quickly.
I felt like I was about to pee, and I couldn't hold back the tears on my face for a while, and I ran to the toilet. After several ticket checkpoints made up of volunteers, all snot and tears were flowing there. When we tearfully presented the ticket stub negotiations, we couldn't see each other clearly, and we all trembled when we spoke.
After the long boo, the waist is loose, the horse strides steadily, and the following is a four-hour drama.
This is a story that takes place in one day, four protagonists, each in a row, weaving a large net between the flying needles. Hu Bo's life experience and observations in the past thirty years are inextricably linked, fine enough and strong enough. Large nets sink, and algae and swimming fish and garbage rise from the bottom.
Brilliant and rotten is all the content of life's net salvaged.
You're tied to this net, you want to break free. Most of the time, the more you break free, the tighter you get. Occasionally you break free and crash head-on into just another net. The whole film gives people probably such a feeling.
I know that you are all very concerned about the performance of "Huang Mao" Zhang Yu. To put it simply, if Huang Mao is a big surprise in "Medicine God", then this time it is a joy and joy.
Huang Mao is the little brother that every big brother wants, and this time Zhang Yu leads a line in it, playing a big brother in the underworld who does not talk much and has many little brothers.
Most of the time, the eldest brother smoked a cigarette, his head was black and white, there was always a strand of hair in front of his forehead, his face was shaded, and his heart was heavy.
He may also be the most stubborn big brother in history: he has a pair of parents who can't stop shouting and kicking at him, and an old troublesome waste brother, and a vain woman who can't always be chased.
The eldest brother did something very unusual early in the morning of his usual day: he ran to a brother's house and slept with his brother's wife. The buddy turned back, broke through the ugly, jumped off the building in front of him, and died.
He was going to hide for a few days. But there was another thing he couldn't dodge: his wasted brother was beaten up at school and died. The parents were angry with the eldest son and loved the younger son, and ordered: You don't have a face, let me find out the scum that beat your brother!
Hitter, Peng Yuchang. His performance in this film can bear the humiliation of the four words, which is another big surprise. His current life can be summed up in one word: rotten.
The lame father who did not have a family and was expelled from the family because of accepting bribes, had a small drink, and did not have the ability to fart, and every day he knew that he would pick up his son to leave; he was studying in the worst middle school in the local area, and there were rotten boys like Zhang Yu's brother running rampant; he also had a friend who could not support the wall with mud, who was bullied by Zhang Yu's brother but wanted to calm things down, he shot for it, and as a result, he caused a human life.
The other two lines, one is a young girl who is obsessed with the deputy director of the school teaching office, and the other is an old man who is pushed by his children to a nursing home.
In a point-by-point manner, the four families behind the four people have done most of the misfortunes that can happen to an ordinary Chinese family. These misfortunes are like a vicious dog, chasing after them.
The vicious dog eventually surrounded the men and forced them to flee. Some did, some didn't. Hit hard by the harsh reality, they take off into the air and inadvertently achieve a common wish, that is, to go to Manchuria and see an elephant that sits there all day long.
Will the elephant sitting on the ground use its roar to tell them the answer to life?
In this film, Hu Bo shows a rare patience for sculpting life, and almost the entire film is completed by follow-up shots and virtual focus shots. In a plot, you can't see the people who interact with the protagonist clearly, and you can't see the world around the protagonist, and the only person you can see is the protagonist.
In this way, the audience will be infinitely close to the heart of the characters in the long-term gaze of the characters, while experiencing their own encounters in reality - we are different from them, but how much difference is there between us?
"The daily life of each era is actually the same, the details are slightly different, and your little confusion will be understood after a while." Hu Bo said this through the mouth of the deputy director of the teaching department in the film.
That being said, we embark on an inexplicable journey of confusion from the first minute – how did their lives collapse to this point?
In order to fully show this collapse, the film also occasionally adds sudden violent clips, involuntarily, unclear, so it comes and goes in anger.
For example, the dog bites the dog paragraph:
The old man has children and daughters and a home, but he is like a widow and a widow, living by a dog. One day, on the way to walk the dog, he was attacked by a large white dog, and the old man's dog was bitten to death on the spot.
Later, the old man accidentally saw a dog hunting revelation, and at a glance, it was the great white dog. Traces to find the owner of the big white dog, the old man only stated the fact that your dog bit my dog to death, and the other party has jumped the wall: Want to blackmail me? Two days ago, I crashed someone else's car without being blackmailed! How do you prove that my dog bit your dog to death? Did you kill my dog?
With this inference, the owner of the great white dog bit the old man and drove step by step. Good out of dog bite dog.
In the interfacing evolution of the main line and the horizontal branches of the branch line, our fear and anger were also lighted up little by little, and completely burned with Peng Yuchang's roar: You are scum! It's shit! It's the most disgusting thing!
After more than three hours of life's critical blows, at midnight, Peng Yuchang, the girl and the old man, bearing heavy scars, sat on the bus to Manchuria to see the legendary elephant sitting on the ground.
At the end, the bus stops halfway and the passengers scatter in front of the bus. In a wonderful and warm way, Hu Bo bundled the endless mess and darkness of life into the headlights of the bus, and the headlights lit up like a sharp axe, cutting out a path of light. Those who had escaped from life were on this road, kicking shuttlecocks and stopping, when the roar of an elephant roared through everyone's heart.
The whole story, all the way down, a urine to the end. It takes a little time at the beginning, getting used to its rhythm and design, and being thoroughly immersed in the middle of the section, and often being stunned by the rather masterful strokes.
Hu Bo spent four hours telling the story of our lives.
At the end of the screening, a group of creators took the stage. In order for Zhang Yu to speak, Li Zi turned his back and could not turn around for a long time. After Hu Bo's death, he wrote an article called "Hu Qian, I Save this blow." In the article, he repeatedly said that if only I had called him when I came back two days ago.
This time he said: "Elephant" is the way that people like Hu Bo who have confiscated their tools reclaim the world.
Wearing a white coat is Zhang Yu
I hope that "The Elephant Sits on the Ground" will be released in theaters one day, and we will all go to the world reclaimed by Hu Bo and listen to the roar of the elephant.