Author l Wei Chunliang
Source l Liangmi (ID: liangjian0624)
Xu Anhua's "First Burning Incense" was released, and the Douban score fell from 5.9 points at the beginning of the score to 5.6 points now.
When Xu Anhua made "The First Burning Incense" into "The First Furnace of Steel", more and more people began to miss Ang Lee and his "Color, Ring".
I said in the article "The First Incense" that the screenwriter and director understand Zhang Ailing, but I am afraid that the audience will not accept it, so I have done a lot of tricks and feet to change the whole story beyond recognition.
But after I watched Southern Weekend's interview with Wang Anyi, the screenwriter of "First Burning Incense", I found that I was wrong. It turned out that Xu Anhua only wanted to make a love film and love it once. She didn't understand Zhang Ailing at all.
Fortunately, Ang Lee understood.
After 14 years, Ang Lee's "Color, Ring" is still the best step for all Zhang Ailing's works to adapt film and television dramas.
965,000 people, a high score of 8.5 points, ranked 195th in the Douban Movie Top250.
What did Ang Lee do right with the adaptation? Or, why can Ang Lee shoot Zhang Ailing well?
From the analysis of the plot alone, there are two points worth mentioning:
1. Strengthened the identity of Wang Jiazhi as a drama actor;
2. Give Mr. Yi a mental journey of falling in love with Wang Jiazhi.
The former is mainly in the first half of the film, the latter is mainly in the second half, and the two deepen in three bed scenes and intersect in the pigeon egg diamond ring.
Let's start with Wang Jiazhi.
In the novel, Wang Jiazhi's acting plot is only a few sentences, but in the movie, it occupies a large space. Ang Lee even made a very important preparation for this, that is, Wang Jiazhi's father.
Wang Jiazhi's father fled to England, taking only her brother with him, and allowing her to exile a girl from the mainland to Hong Kong. Later, her father got married again in England, and although she could write congratulatory letters calmly in front of people, she cried into tears when she watched the movie "Cold Night Piano Pick" alone in the cinema about extramarital affairs.
It was this ordinary female student, who was abandoned and neglected in the chaos of the war, who experienced the sense of glory of being Hua Dan on the drama stage and in the roar of thousands of people that "China cannot die".
In the novel, it is written:
After stepping down, she (Wang Jiazhi) was so excited that she couldn't relax, everyone ate supper before dispersing, she refused to go back, and took a double-decker tram tour of the river with two female classmates. There were few passengers upstairs, the body swayed in the middle of the wide street, and the neon advertisements in the darkness outside the window were as intoxicating as the cool breeze after drinking. ”
The film makes this scene full of vitality and vitality. In particular, Tang Wei's small action of sticking out his tongue to lick the rain was too expressive.
Compared with the ordinary female student in the real world, Wang Jiazhi loves herself in the play more. She may not have much enthusiasm for the revolution, nor a strong sense of responsibility for the country, but out of vanity or escape, she likes to stay in the play.
There is a detail in the movie, when the students proposed to Wang Jiazhi the beauty timer to seduce Mr. Yi, she happened to be on the stage. This is no coincidence, I believe it must be the director's intentional design, it implies that Wang Jiazhi is just walking from one stage to another.
As Zhang Ailing said in the original work:
She has acted in a play, and now she is still selling her life on stage, but no one knows, and she is not famous.
A strong will, calling orders to her from a high place. With one turn, Wang Jiazhi's fate changed dramatically.
Maybe it's because of the excitement of not having another chance, or maybe it's just because of the vanity of playing Kota, Wang Jiazhi is getting more and more into the drama, and it is Mrs. Mai's style between her hands and feet. Always facing the risk of dew filling and life and death, such a drama is enjoyable and exciting.
In the original book, it is written:
"An unprecedentedly successful performance, after getting off the stage and not wearing underwear, I feel that Gu Panjian is shining. She didn't want them to go, she wanted to go there again. ”
In the movie, Wang Jiazhi, who did not apply powder before, even after returning, is still immersed in the role of Mrs. Mai and wears makeup, and even begins to smoke, and looks like a model.
However, the assassination is not a drama, and although the identity is false, it is true to rent an apartment, play cards and spend money, and wear gold and silver. Especially for Wang Jiazhi, the physical breakage or rape is also real and cruel. Such cruelty is unthinkable by these naïve students who originally swore to shout "lead the knife into a fast, live up to the head of the teenager".
When Mrs. Yi called back to Shanghai, all the efforts of the students immediately turned into a joke, and Wang Jiazhi's situation was even more ironic. But the unbearable result does not mean that the process is meaningless. Here, Ang Lee shows the same unsentimental and unsympathetic and resolute attitude as Zhang Ailing: Wang Jiazhi was still twisting and pinching when she first had a relationship with Liang Runsheng, and the second time (the second time in the movie) was already very active.
Xu Anhua added two black-and-white flashbacks to the aunt played by Yu Feihong in "The First Incense" to find an excuse for her depravity, but Ang Lee refused to sympathize with his protagonist 14 years ago. On the level of understanding of Zhang Ailing, the two made a judgment at this high level.
After Wang Jiazhi returned to Shanghai, she scolded snobbish eyes, started as an ordinary student again, and broke off contact with her former classmates. With the lessons of Hong Kong's absurd experience, it is reasonable to say that Wang Jiazhi should not return to her old business. But when Kwong Yu-min, the object of the old ambiguity, came to her, she agreed to the request to seduce Mr. Yi.
This is very strange, in the original work, Zhang Ailing's reason is simple and crude:
"They had to come to her again, and she was obligated."
This reason is difficult to justify in fiction, and it is even more difficult to convince people when used directly in movies.
But Ang Lee is a master, and he uses a flash of footage to give enough rationality: after returning to Shanghai, Wang Jiazhi likes to read books, or drama scripts, and still loves to watch movies. Maybe to escape, don't forget that at this time, Wang Jiazhi sent people to the fence, her father wrote that she could not afford her travel to England, and that in wartime Shanghai, where people would die on the streets at any time and be pulled away, in Wang Jiazhi's words, "I feel that I have less and less left."
As a result, the gray-headed Wang Jiazhi re-evolved the glorious Mrs. Mai.
But as she succeeds step by step, she finds that things are far less simple than she thought. "He not only drilled into my body, but also drilled deeper and deeper into my heart like a snake." She was frightened, and at the same time slowly indulged in it. So that later, Mr. Yi disappeared for a while, and she doubted him as a spy about whether he had any actions, but as a mistress, she doubted whether he had another woman.
On the stage where only her own life is performing, Wang Jiazhi slowly discovers a strange thing: in reality, her father abandons herself, her aunt abandons herself, her classmates use herself, the revolutionaries squeeze themselves, the ambiguous object does not have the courage to face herself, and even the so-called revolution is a bit paradoxical; on the contrary, the enemy she wants to kill in the play has given her sexual pleasure and spiritual comfort. Even if this pleasure and comfort is short-lived, with "bloodshed and crying."
But in this chaotic world, what is long-lasting? A woman who has been abandoned by almost the whole world, the revolution and ideals are empty and empty, and what can be grasped is nothing more than this moment but rare warmth. In the shop where Mr. Yi bought her a 6-carat diamond ring, someone downstairs ambushed and waited for an opportunity, and Zhang Ailing let her protagonist fall deeply into the fascination with "Moment":
Only now, at this moment when the tension stretched to eternity, the small indoor balcony was illuminated, reflecting the white sky light on the doors and windows downstairs. There was this Indian next to him, only to feel that it was the two of them alone under the lamp, close and restrained, and had never been. ”
Wang Jiazhi tried to convince herself that the means of buying a diamond ring were just a trick of the veterans, but his "smile at this moment is not at all ironic", but "a gentle and pitiful spirit", Wang Jiazhi completely fell, and all disasters were lost:
"This person really loves me, she suddenly thought, and her heart exploded, if something is lost."
In the movie, Ang Lee and Tang Wei came up with detailed design and acting skills that matched Zhang Ailing's amazing pen power. Tang Wei's nervous convulsions to the point of almost crying, with a crying voice and can't help but be moved, especially the first sentence of "go fast" that is so light that it is almost inaudible, which perfectly puts the hesitation, struggle, and thousands of turns in Zhang Ailing's text on the screen perfectly.
The sincerity of that moment was enough for her to sacrifice herself. This stupid woman, where she died from the pigeon egg, it was clear that she died from the greed for warmth in her heart.
When Mrs. Mai received care and care beyond Wang Jiazhi's imagination and ability to bear, she could not continue to act.
She played it out.
In the original work, Wang Jiazhi has a cold heart that seems to see through everything. She knew that to seduce Mr. Yi, not for money, but suspicious; she thought that the timing of Mr. Yi's diamond ring was calculated and should be intoxicated.
In the movie, Wang Jiazhi is cold-eyed and calculating on the surface, but her heart is hot. This should have been a change that should have violated the spirit of Zhang Ailing's original work, but unexpectedly the same destination: in the cold world, mixed with a person with a body temperature, it is even more cold and harsh.
In this sense, Ang Lee shows a more complete nothingness than Zhang Ailing. Everything is unreliable, life is like drama like life, maybe only in the extreme sex of painful blood and crying, they can feel that they are alive.
Ang Lee grasped the nothingness and desire, and also grasped the essence of Zhang Ailing.
—The End—
Originally, I wanted to use an article to talk about Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yi in Ang Lee's "Color, Ring", but who knew that Wang Jiazhi alone wrote 3,000 words. Mr. Yi is a bigger character that Ang Lee has changed, and it is more interesting, see you tomorrow.