As early as the date when the cast of the movie "First Incense" was announced, the voices questioning the two male and female protagonists have not stopped. As the film on October 22 approached, a large number of film clips were revealed, Ma Sichun's "fat" and Peng Yuyan's "strong", once again becoming the two major disaster areas for the audience to complain about.
△ Movie "First Incense"
Prior to this, the most recognized male and female protagonist combination of Zhang Ailing was Li Ming and Wu Qianlian in the 1995 film "Half Life" directed by Xu Anhua, even if the combination of Liang Chaowei and Tang Wei in "Color Ring" later failed to stand out. Dawn's gentle elegance and Wu Qianlian's beauty and meticulousness are basically in line with Zhang fans' imagination of these two characters.
So what exactly does "Ge Weilong" and "Georgie Joe" look like? Wang Anyi, the screenwriter and writer of the movie "The First Burning Incense", gave an interview with the Morning News that Zhang fans may not have expected.
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Morning News: "The First Incense" has been questioned since the announcement of the cast, especially the heroine Ma Sichun. So first of all, I want to ask you about your feelings after watching, has Ma Sichun performed the feeling of "Ge Weilong" that you think is?
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Wang Anyi: I used to work with Chen Kaige on "Wind Moon", and the director's approach was to tell you who he might look for to play from the beginning, and then you would follow the outline of that actor, and you would be carried by him (to develop the plot). At that time, Chen Kaige told me that I would look for Zhang Guorong, then I knew this number in my heart.
Xu Anhua also told me when she first came up and said which actors she might be looking for, but these people I didn't know at all. I also made up a lot of movies, so I went to see Ma Sichun and Peng Yuyan (previous works). Before I didn't know who they were, I had to look at them.
How does Ma Sichun say it, I think she is at least not a net red face, I think this is OK, this point is really OK. Now there are too many internet celebrity faces, once it is an internet celebrity face, you will put it in a condom, right?
News Morning News: But she is not the delicate and flattened small round face of Zhang Ailing's pen, which is far from the "Ge Weilong" in Zhang Ailing's text.
Wang Anyi: In fact, I think it doesn't matter, it depends on your understanding, in fact, sometimes it is very likely to perform another way, which is also possible.
<h5>Morning News: Will Yu Feihong, who plays "aunt", be too beautiful? </h5>
Wang Anyi: I think Yu Feihong is quite good, and he should be more beautiful. (Is it beauty but not yet to the point of twilight?) Because if the character of "aunt" is not good-looking, it is even worse, so I am still satisfied with her.
News Morning News: Peng Yuyan is also not the best candidate for "Georgie Joe" in the eyes of the audience. Many viewers and readers will feel that Zhang Ailing's male protagonist should not be as strong as Peng Yuyan, but should be slightly more meticulous.
Wang Anyi: This is a misunderstanding, which is why I say that some readers don't know much about Zhang Ailing. Zhang Ailing's "Georgie Joe" is a muscle man, and we may have misunderstood this point.
We think in our minds that such a person who is flowing with the wind must be a small fresh meat or something. Actually not, you see I have made some preparations today (copied some of Zhang Ailing's text). First of all, if we don't talk about anything else, let's talk about "The First Incense", which has a scene in it, that is, the first time they were, "Ge Qiqiao" went to the "Ge Weilong" bedroom at night, and he went out again after the matter, the road was very dangerous, very tortuous, and he had to climb the mountain and jump the ditch. But he said he was very skilled, and although he was not an athlete, he had been naughty since childhood, so it was very convenient to deal with these. He was a very physically strong man.
Another point that everyone may never pay attention to is Zhang Ailing's view of foreigners. In Zhang Ailing's time, the view of foreigners was actually a bit like Gu Hongming's style, feeling that foreigners were very rough, and we Oriental talents were exquisite. So in Zhang Ailing's novels, you can go to find, but she writes about foreigners, they are very rough.
You see in "The First Burning Incense", Zhang Ailing wrote in Ge Weilong's eyes, Georgie Qiao even her lips are pale, like plaster; his sister said that he was a "grimace". In "Red Roses and White Roses", the Red Rose King Jiaorui decided to go on a date with Zhenbao one afternoon, and on the way she met a mother and daughter, whose mother was British, married a Chinese, and gave birth to a mixed-race daughter. Zhang Ailing writes about this mixed-race daughter, writing her with a sense of vigilance and nervousness, and she is insecure about her future. You see how Zhang Ailing wrote about this mixed-race daughter— "On that sharp white peach face, a pair of dark yellow eyes peeked at everything... Often nervous, two large lumps swollen under her eye sockets." In their time, especially in Zhang Ailing, the evaluation of mixed-race children was not high, believing that mixed-race children were a kind of person who had no cultural belonging and was not sure of their own destiny, and then this situation and mentality would also be reflected in the face.
△ Hand-painted stills from the movie "First Incense"
Zhang Ailing also has a novel "When I Was Young", which writes about a young man who especially dislikes his old-fashioned Chinese family, he always likes to draw lines on books, like Zhang Ailing himself, he only draws a side face, and this side face is the side face of a foreign woman. Later he met a foreign woman at school, and at first he felt that she was an ideal woman, but then he slowly felt that this woman was very rough, and this woman later married a russian inferior officer. In the eyes of this young man, the lives of these people are very hopeless.
So I think we have a little bit to imagine Zhang Ailing [the character in the work], and we think that Georgie Qiao is a mixed-race child, he must be a very handsome, sculpture-like man, and at the same time very weak. This is Chinese view of male beauty, which is different from foreigners, and they (Chinese) think that men who are good-looking must be slender.
I remember that a long time ago there was a movie "Wounded Death", in which the male protagonist Juan Sheng was played by Wang Xingang. My father was very dissatisfied when he saw it, saying that the beautiful men of that era were definitely not this kind of burly, masculine, very man (image), and he said that the good-looking men of that era could not be so tall. The mixed-race men of Zhang Ailing's time would not be as delicate as we think today.
<h5>News Morning: There is a problem here, that is, if Georgie Joe is not a handsome and tall man in the eyes of orientals, even a little rough, nor very rich, then why do Ge Weilong and his aunt like such a man at the same time? </h5>
Wang Anyi: I think they have their own reasons. The novel is very clear, Zhang Ailing has a long description, Ge Weilong likes Qiao Qiqiao, because she looks at the men around her and feels that there is nothing to see, and at this time, Qiao Qiqiao has already started to act first and began to tease her.
As for the man next to her aunt, Zhang Ailing also said that there were fewer and fewer suitors in the past, the door was cold, and the young boy was still by her side, because he wanted to eat soft rice. Georgie Joe is not the best choice for Wei Long and her aunt, just a choice they can find within a limited range, it should be said that it is so.
→ Interview with Wang Anyi (2) 丨 "No matter what Xu Anhua comes to me to do, I will agree to it"
→ Interview with Wang Anyi (3) 丨 "From the perspective of fiction, she writes very well, but her values are different from mine."
Source: Thoughtful