<b>Time.com Feature </b>"I don't know from what day onwards, there's always something that excites me. Whether it's the crowded crowds on the streets when the sky is dark, or the white vapor coming out of the food stalls when the sun first shines, it makes me feel a real presence. Life, whether stretched or twisted, floats so hurriedly before its eyes. Life passed unconsciously, and as they walked by, I smelled the strong smell of sweat on them and on my own. When our breaths merge into one, we communicate. Jia Zhangke wrote in his personal film notes.
Coming from a small-town background, he always tended to understand a seemingly mediocre life. After 21 days of real shooting and spending 380,000 yuan, "Xiao Wu" was born. This is a scene that occurred in the spring of 1997 in a small county town in northern China.
A thief, a momentary dream. The film is like a tragedy about affection, and the untimely "idealism" and "collision" even after 20 years, compared with the current society that is still developing and changing rapidly, it still has practical significance.
It's a film of dazedness and loneliness, and some good things are quickly disappearing from people's lives and getting worse. In the era of materialization, the connection between people and between people and society gradually became commercial links and economic interest links, and emotions and destinies were more and more nowhere to be placed, which gave Jia Zhangke a huge impact.
In 1998, his Nortel graduation work premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and was hailed as "the lightning-fast light of hope in Asian cinema."
On the Hong Kong propaganda poster for "Xiao Wu", Jia Zhangke used a sentence: This is a rough movie.
He explained: "This is my attitude, a real experience of grassroots folk life, and I can't face it because this life has no romantic color." Specific to the characters in "Xiao Wu", I want to show how they exist humanely under such a specific condition. It is a vague, rough and vibrant existence, like a weed on the side of the road. ”
<b>Everyone seems to be living in some kind of predicament</b>
<b>How "Xiao Wu" was born</b>
Fenyang F4
In the Spring Festival of 1997, Jia Zhangke, who had not returned to Fenyang for a year and a half, felt that his hometown had changed greatly. Every day, there are classmates and friends to visit the door, but everyone seems to be living in some kind of dilemma, whether it is between parents, husband and wife, brothers, neighbors, all kinds of realistic conflicts of interest are making the relationship between small counties become indifferent.
Looking at the playmates from childhood, it seems that after the age of 18, life "stops": going to the unit, entering the factory, living day after day, the cycle is repeated, and there is no longer any vision. The transformation of these interpersonal relationships without romantic color gave Jia Zhangke a deep stimulation.
Walking down the street again, the various feelings are even deeper. There is a "Fenzhou Market" on the edge of Fenyang County, which originally sold clothes and other daily necessities, and at that time it was all changed into a song hall. Fenyang has a main street, the locals are called "Zhengjie", people are eager to try to pick up old houses, build a lot of construction, because Fenyang is about to upgrade into a county-level city. And these plots of picking houses are one of the reasons why Jia Zhangke first came up with the filming of "Xiao Wu". Social transformation is having a huge impact on small counties.
Jia Zhangke said that after entering the film school, he came into contact with only two types of Chinese films: one is completely commercial and consumer, and the other is ideological, but in a country in a critical transition period, there are too few films that truly honestly record the changes of the times.
Xiao Wu is in the village
Originally, Jia Zhangke envisioned the protagonist as a tailor or a blacksmith, in short, a person who uses traditional craftsmanship to make a living on such a street, and after constantly being impacted, he engages in futile confrontation with society in his own way.
But in the process of writing the script, a classmate who worked in the public security bureau chatted with him and talked about the recent situation of another classmate named "Donkey", who said that "Donkey" had become a thief, and always talked to him and talked about philosophy. This inspired Jia Zhangke to suddenly complete a creative graft in his consciousness: the craftsman → a thief.
Later, it was suggested that thieves did not have universal significance and did not conform to Jia Zhangke's creative intention to record the era. But he feels that talking about whether a character in a work is universal is not based on what its specific identity is, but on whether the creator can grasp this particular role from the perspective of human nature.
The reason why I am interested in the role of thief is because I can show an interesting relationship transformation, such as Xiao Yong, a friend of Xiao Wu, who was originally a thief, but through selling cigarettes and opening a song hall, he became a local entrepreneur with a head and a face. Here there is a transformation of value relations, smuggling cigarettes→ trade, opening song halls→ entertainment industry, people like Xiao Yong in such a world can be successful in this way, constantly changing social status. But there are only thieves, and at all times they are only thieves.
Xiao Wu and Hu Meimei in the song hall
In the movie, the protagonist Liang Xiaowu, although a thief, harbors an anachronistic "idealism". He wore thick black-rimmed glasses and a two-size suit, dangling around the county town, which was heavily built. He didn't talk much, he didn't laugh much, his head was tilted, and his tongue was always on his cheeks.
Hearing that his former friend Xiao Yong got married, Xiao Wu wanted to keep his promise to pay the gift money, but Xiao Yong, who had become a famous entrepreneur, felt that the money was dirty and returned. Later, Xiao Wu got acquainted with the singer Hu Meimei, who was shy and thought that it was love, and was still singing "Heart Rain" in the bathhouse, but he did not expect Mei Mei to say goodbye. Xiao Wu then returned home and gave the ring he wanted to give to Mei Mei to his mother, but her mother gave it to her second sister-in-law who had not passed the door in order to fill the façade, and Xiao Wu was thrown out of the door by her father after arguing with her family.
Xiao Wu was watched. Because the crowd of onlookers could not disperse during the shooting, Jia Zhangke improvised this scene
The "strike hard" throughout the film gave Xiao Wu a fatal blow. During a routine theft, the pager that Meme suggested he had bought rang inappropriately and he was caught by the police. In the final scene of the movie, Xiao Wu is handcuffed to a roadside power line, and the crowd of onlookers looks at him indifferently, and after losing his friendship, love and affection one after another, Xiao Wu finally loses his freedom and becomes a prisoner.
<b>Born in 1970, in Fenyang County</b>
<b>Jia Zhangke personally described the roots of his creation</b>
Jia Zhangke speaks for actors. He made a cameo appearance in the film as Xiao Wu and Xiao Yong's "messenger"
Whenever he talks about his creative roots, Jia Zhangke will show two things: he was born in 1970, in a county town called Fenyang in northern China. On September 21 this year, Jia Zhangke was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Award in Japan and went to Kyushu University to give a speech, mentioning these two points again. On that day, the day when his 9th feature film "Children of jianghu" was released in China, Jia Zhangke, who was absent from the publicity, smiled and said: "It feels better to review the creation with everyone here, and it will help me find peace." ”
Jia Zhangke received the award in Fukuoka
Why does Jia Zhangke always talk about the time of birth? Because China was going through the Cultural Revolution in 1970, he described it as an "era of chaos and no rule of law." Jia Zhangke was born and raised in that environment, until he was eight or nine years old, and witnessed the process of China's reform and opening up, so in his mind, he not only had memories of the past, but also witnessed the changes in the past 40 years of reform and opening up.
In China, the county seat is between the big city and the countryside, and basically the information of the big city will be transmitted to the countryside through the county seat, so it is in the middle zone and can receive information from these two regions at the same time.
At the time of Jia Zhangke's memory, the reform had not yet begun, and the most memorable of many memories was the memory of the body - hunger. At that time, a five- or six-year-old child's breakfast was cornmeal nest head, and elementary school students had to attend a total of four classes in the morning, and by the end of the two classes, most of them were already hungry because there was no heat in the nest.
At that time, China's material supply system was still a system, and the food of each family was distributed according to the population, including daily food. Jia Zhangke remembers that one year in the Mid-Autumn Festival, his mother took a ticket to supply tofu to let him go to the mall to buy, but when the long line came to him, the tofu had just been sold out, he was very painful, and he did not know how to explain to his mother.
By the end of the seventies, these memories gradually disappeared, and with the advent of reform and opening up, eating was soon no problem, and the whole society entered a very active stage, and when looking at the arrival of this change from the perspective of a child, it also began with material.
In the past, Chinese families only had bicycles, and expensive motorcycles were unaffordable for ordinary families. At that time, only two kinds of people had motorcycles, one was a policeman and the other was a telegrapher. Small children are very adored by people with motorcycles.
Jia Zhangke had a friend who was many years older than him, and said that his greatest wish in life was to own a motorcycle. As a result, this wish was realized about two or three years later, and by 1982 and 1983, motorcycles were running all over the streets, and the Economic Reform Commission brought vitality to China.
Jia Zhangke remembers that when he was in the third grade of elementary school, one day the school put on a movie about the production of washing machines in Shanghai. That's also a very motivating thing for them, like science fiction. Because since I was a child, my mother washed clothes by hand, and the movie actually said that Shanghai produced a washing machine? And this kind of thing that seems to exist only in movies, and after two or three years, the washing machine has entered the homes of ordinary Chinese people.
Xiao Wu and the Cabaret Girl. Jia Zhangke deliberately selected several of the "most vulgar" songs of the year in the film.
For example, "Heart Rain" and "Overlord Farewell" are like a kind of feedback from social emotions
Material change is one thing, and more importantly, cultural change. Before the reform and opening up, there was basically no entertainment in the lives of Chinese. Most of the films were propaganda films to promote government policies, revolutionary songs were heard on the radio, and television was not widespread.
However, in the 1980s, Chinese Hong Kong and Taiwan culture, including Japanese culture, began to enter the lives of young people, which was a very important thing for Jia Zhangke. For example, hearing Teresa Teng's "The Moon Represents My Heart", he realized that in the revolutionary songs of the past, the message conveyed was "we", the plural, and the main body of popular music became "I", Jia Zhangke sighed: "The original 'love' and 'I' can also become very important." ”
Hong Kong films have also begun to be released on the mainland, the most representative of which is "Shaolin Temple". The Cultural Revolution eliminated many temples, and many Chinese knew very little about Buddhism. But in the early eighties, when I suddenly saw a movie about monks, the shock was "difficult to describe" for Jia Zhangke.
At the same time, a large number of Western philosophical and literary works have been translated into China. At that time, Nietzsche or Sartre's works could be seen in a county book stall.
It is precisely the three points of pop music, Hong Kong movies in the video hall, and philosophy that have a great influence on Jia Zhangke's youth. On the one hand, the ideological desire to absorb everything new, on the other hand, the rapid opening and change of society has brought many strange things. These two points fused together to form the original inspiration for "change" in Jia Zhangke's film.
<b>The Age of Upheaval and The Yellow Land</b>
<b>Jia Zhangke found the direction of creation</b>
Humei plum received water
Jia Zhangke had a primary school classmate who opened a bicycle shop at home, and later when there were more motorcycles, they also began to repair motorcycles. One day when he came home from school for dinner, the classmate did not come back in the afternoon, it turned out that his father had fixed a motorcycle and let him ride out to try it, and as a result, the car crashed and he died.
That was the first time in Jia Zhangke's life that he faced death, and he also saw something called "fate". After more similar things happened, he gradually had something to say in his heart.
Once a few classmates went to the movie, and at that time, the ticket was a circular window, put the money in, told the conductor to ask for a few, and then took out the ticket. A group of people entrusted a classmate to buy a ticket, and suddenly there was a big chaos, the classmate was pressed to go, and the police came. It turned out that the moment he put his hand into the window to buy a ticket, he saw a hand next to him, with a watch on his wrist, and he suddenly lost control and went to get the watch, and as a result, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for robbery.
Jia Zhangke felt that in the era of drastic changes, life was full of changes and accidents, which made people surprised.
When you want to speak, the first thing that comes to mind is writing, because writing only requires a piece of paper and a pen. That's when he started becoming a campus poet. When I was in high school, I also organized a poetry club. I also began to write novels, most of which were longing for love.
Because he wrote poetry and novels, Jia Zhangke was not admitted to college, and he only scored 17 points in mathematics. Later, his father told him that "if you don't want to learn to paint", on the one hand, he likes it, on the other hand, he can leave his hometown and go to the larger city of Taiyuan.
Poster of "Yellow Land"
It was strange that at that time, he studied painting during the day and wrote novels at night, but Jia Zhangke felt that these seemed to be unable to satisfy his desire for expression, and he longed for something more obvious. Until one day, by chance, he saw Chen Kaige's "Yellow Land" in a dilapidated theater next to the school, when he was 21 years old, as if he had found the way to the future.
In the film, Jia Zhangke sees the endless yellow land as familiar as his hometown, and those who wear black cotton jackets and sit in cave dwellings are very poor, like friends and relatives in his village. Before that, such a land, such a person, he had never seen on the screen, he did not feel that the life he was in could become a "dream" movie, and it could be so poetic.
Jia Zhangke took three years to enter the Beijing Film Academy, and in that era in China, only state-level film studios could make films, and private companies did not shoot them. In the process of studying, he found that there is a working method called independent production, so Jia Zhangke and more than a dozen classmates organized a team called the Beijing Film Academy Youth Film Experimental Group, there are students of photography, learning recording, learning art, learning acting, learning literature, everyone divides labor and cooperation, Jia Zhangke's first short film "Little Mountain Homecoming" was born, which also opened his cooperation with group member Wang Hongwei.
Wang Hongwei in "The Hill Comes Home"
Jia Zhangke said that China in the 1990s had begun to urbanize, and young people like him who grew up in rural areas or small towns poured into the big cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. When he saw them on the streets of Beijing, he knew where they came from and how they lived, so he decided to write the script for "Little Mountain Coming Home."
At that time, they called themselves the "egg fried rice" film crew, because the equipment was borrowed, the money was made up by everyone to shoot advertisements or be gunmen, and after the shooting every day, everyone's money was only enough to eat one egg fried rice per person.
After the editing was completed, everyone also held a premiere ceremony in the dormitory, and invited the students to watch. In a small room, at least 50 people were huddled together, and he and the other students in the film crew were in the corridor, nervously watching everyone's reaction. The film is 50 minutes long, and by about 25 minutes, people are gone.
They were so disappointed that they put "The Hill Comes Home" in the drawer and didn't plan to take it out again. After another month or two, I felt that it was not so bad, so I took the film to Peking University and put it on display, probably because I was not a student of film, so they were very tolerant, discussing the problems of China's economy and the life of young people coming to the city. This gave the film crew confidence, and later won an award at the Hong Kong Independent Short Film Festival.
Through this short film exhibition, Jia Zhangke also found his long-term collaborators, his cinematographer and producer. Before "Xiao Wu", Jia Zhangke had only made two short films, but this gave him two very complete film experiences, and when he first had the opportunity to make the first feature film "Xiao Wu", he had no lack of confidence.
<b>The better you play in Jia Zhangke, the harder it is to have a chance in others</b>
<b>"Xiao Wu" plays Wang Hongwei</b>
"Xiao Wu" Japanese title "A Momentary Dream". A moment of love in the backlight, Mei Mei sang "Sky" for Xiao Wu
A thief, a marginal person, a momentary dream, "Xiao Wu" is like a tragedy about affection, even after 20 years, compared with the current society that is still rapidly developing and changing, it still has practical significance. In the era of dilapidation and the new, some people hitchhike with unlimited scenery, and some people are at a loss to live in the past.
Wang Hongwei, an actor who plays Xiao wu, was a senior in the literature department of the Beijing Film Academy with Jia Zhangke when filming "Xiao Wu". Jia Zhangke is a native of Fenyang, Shanxi, and Wang Hongwei is from Anyang, Henan. Jia Zhangke described Wang Hongwei as a very introverted person, who was reluctant to say many things, and he liked this wordless tacit understanding between people. This seems to fit the character Xiao Wu.
Wang Hongwei plays Xiao Wu
Although the starting point of the actor's career is the big screen male protagonist, there are not many scenes after "Xiao Wu" to find Wang Hongwei to play the leading role. After several works of "Xiao Wu" and "Platform", he only appeared as a supporting role in Jia Zhangke's films.
"The things he's interested in aren't necessarily right for me, including 'The Old Man in the Mountains and Rivers', and there's no role in it that suits me. Filmmaking still has to find the right one. Wang Hongwei once explained.
In recent years, except for the occasional media interview, the young man with amazing acting skills has rarely been mentioned. Many reporters have seen the middle-aged "Xiao Wu", most of them describe him as still wearing a pair of glasses, but more humorous than "Xiao Wu". Wang Hongwei's main identity now is the head of the Li Xianting Film Fund, film curator and teacher.
Wang Hongwei, Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao took a group photo
Wang Hongwei has always disliked commercial movies, and when he was young, he always liked to find a bunch of Kusturica to hide in the dormitory, and the reason why he occasionally came out to shoot films was entirely for his livelihood. In 2017, he starred in Cai Shangjun's film "Under the Ice", as a supporting role, with only two scenes. Although this movie won the Golden Jude Film Emperor for Huang Bo, it has not been released.
Chinese opera professor Gu Zheng, a classmate of Wang Hongwei and Jia Zhangke, once said in an interview with the magazine: "In terms of artistic talent, Wang Hongwei is a very good actor. His image, Jia Zhangke also grasped more accurately, which is very good. But it also brings bad things, and other art film directors are unlikely to find him to star again. An art film director's work should be innovative and have personal characteristics, once Wang Hongwei is found, is it possible to have the characteristics of Jia Zhangke? This is a very taboo thing. So the better he plays in Jia Zhangke, the harder it is to have a chance in others. ”