◎ Liang Kun
In fact, it is long overdue for a documentary to talk about Xu Anhua. After watching "Make a Good Movie" in the text, I think it came just right.
Who is in the text? Senior art director, the collaboration with Xu Anhua began with "Man Forty", and then collaborated on "Golden Age" and "When is the Bright Moon". The idea of making a documentary for Xu Anhua began during the filming of "When the Moon Rises", and the idea was quickly granted by Xu Anhua. After nearly three years of shooting, I finally had this "Good Movie", but because of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the release and distribution of the film were affected. Fortunately, the aroma of wine is not afraid of the deep alley, and the color and sincerity of "Make a Good Movie" have not been buried.
Wen Nianzhong and Xu Anhua are already familiar with each other, and there is also the convenience of working together day and night, close enough and understanding enough, the camera can penetrate into Xu Anhua's world. The perspective in Wen Nian is both a friend and a partner, coupled with the dictations of his family and Wu Nianzhen, Shi Nansheng, Xu Ke, Hou Xiaoxian, Du Duzhi and many other big names in the industry from different angles, the film presents a comprehensive, almost "no dead end" Xu Anhua.
What does the name Hui Anhua mean for Hong Kong films and even Chinese films? An important representative of Hong Kong New Wave films, he has many works and a wide range of subjects, winning the Academy Award for Best Director six times, the Golden Horse Award for Best Director three times, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the 77th Venice International Film Festival last year... She is a female director who has made movies all her life and has long been famous.
But under the aura, this person, who is called Aann by his old friend, has no house and no car, rents a simple apartment with his old mother, the movie is the companion, the literature is the lover, and each movie is made as the last one, because I don't know if anyone will invest in her next time.
When Xu Anhua agreed to wen Nianzhong's filming of this documentary, she had said, "I'm just afraid that no one will watch it." Worried about making their own movies no one to watch, worried that no one to watch their own movies, lack of confidence in their appearance, lost their temper at work and quickly reflected, bought snacks and milk tea for everyone to apologize... The director who couldn't leave his hand and won the award had so much trepidation. "Make a Good Movie" depicts an angular and angular picture, but it is difficult for us to define, and she herself cannot define Xu Anhua.
In order to accurately convey Xu Anhua's truth through the documentary lens, the film contains two clues: one is Xu Anhua's growth and life experience; the other is her creative path. The two form an intertextual relationship, and use thematic structure to connect all aspects of Xu Anhua's creative habits, temperament, and life in the world.
Xu Anhua was born in 1947 in Anshan, Liaoning Province, which is also the origin of her name. Two months old, he moved to Macau with his parents, went to Hong Kong at the age of 5, finished his Master of Arts at the University of Hong Kong, went to the London Film School in the United Kingdom to study film, and finally returned to Hong Kong to make films. In the film, Xu Anhua himself expressed his confusion and thinking about the concepts of "hometown" and "locality", "Which is local culture? It's hard to define. There are many local cultures, such as colonial architecture, which are not really indigenous cultures, which are imported from abroad, but if we don't discuss these, we can't define ourselves."
When she was 16 years old and knew that her mother was Japanese, she understood her mother's pain of not being accepted and understood, and later she projected the love of her grandfather in her childhood, the estrangement from her mother, and the upheaval of individual fate in the background of the grand era, all in the story of "Guest Autumn Hate".
Xu Anhua's creations cover a wide range of themes, including the martial arts of "Book sword and vengeance", "Princess Xiangxiang", the thriller of "Crazy Robbery" and "Ghost in the World", the romance of "Love in the City" and "Half Life", the plot suspense of "Jade Guanyin" and "Extreme Road Tracking", and the epic of the era of "Golden Age" and "When is the Bright Moon", etc., but the most brilliant is the social reality theme that she is deeply concerned about, and "Ketu Autumn Hate" is just one of them.
As Xu Anhua HKU's classmate Zhan Delong said in an interview, "Saddle's world view, I think it is relatively gray, you don't think there are many people living in happiness in the world, you think there are many problems in the world... So you tend to make stories about these kinds of characters."
As early as his tenure at Hong Kong Television, Hui Anhua's "Under the Lion Rock" series focused on the current era issues and social phenomena. After entering the film industry, the stories of "Running to the Fury Sea", "A Thousand Words", and "Auntie's Postmodern Life" all come from the unique attributes of the times and the problems that exist in them. And "The Day and Night of Tin Shui Wai", "The Night and Fog of Tin Shui Wai", "Sister Tao", such works that pay attention to the social reality of Hong Kong, in the record-like observation and narrative, contain a broader universal significance, they are rooted in Hong Kong, but beyond the region, the country, even if you do not understand China, do not understand the place of Hong Kong, you will also be stirred by their stories, thinking about the similar advantages and disadvantages of human nature and the commonality of human society.
"Make a Good Movie" is not Xu Anhua's film success, the film not only makes this director who has been in the industry for forty years and is more than seventy years old "timid" from time to time, but also always grasps her shortcomings. This is a question that is not contrary to Xu Anhua's success, and always questions the standard of success - the market. Xu Anhua said many times in the film that making a movie did not make her get much improvement in the economy, she did not need too much money herself, and the investor should not lose money. Words like these came out of the mouth of Xu Anhua, who was so diligent and undistracted, and this helplessness was quite heavy.
From Hong Kong to the mainland, Hui Anhua's creation has never been aimed at occupying the market, for the sake of film, she has compressed her personal life to a very low standard, following the light of ideals, but still inevitably experienced ups and downs. Through the documentary, we seem to be at Xu Anhua's side, and we feel that we are facing a defamiliarized and polarized Xu Anhua: she is a "director of directors" and seeks like an ascetic; she is deeply concerned about social reality and extremely sincere to the supremacy of ideals.
The film uses Xu Anhua's self-descriptions, documentary clips, film clips, and carefully constructed video time and space of relevant character interviews to form a meticulous and interesting narrative logic, allowing Xu Anhua to walk from behind the scenes to the front of the stage and personally interpret his own strengths, both the folds of history and the temperature of reality.
She is the epitome of a generation, a banner of Hong Kong cinema and even Chinese cinema, and an honorable elder who has been loyal to one thing all her life... Several labels are far from enough to define Xu Anhua, and when she won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film Festival as the first Chinese female director, the last four words in her speech were exactly the present and far away in her eyes: "Long live the film".
The high skill of this documentary is also reflected in the title, whether it is "Make a Good Movie" or Keep Rolling, which is the most appropriate expression of Xu Anhua.
Long live the movie, don't shout "card".