A water
There is a line in the Hong Kong film "Lao Kasa" (2015) to the effect that: "The most popular and representative star when you were a child was Andy Lau." When you were a child, you called him Hua Tsai, and when you were your uncle, Hua Tsai was still Hua Tsai, and it wouldn't be long before you became a desperate old man like me. ”
Andy Lau debuted forty years, has been an unbreakable myth in the Chinese world. Needless to say, when my uncle became a grandfather twenty years later, Hua Tsai was still Hua Tsai. He can be compared to Clint Eastwood in western film, always handsome and handsome. Time sculpts him, not erodes him.
On the evening of July 29, during the Douyin live broadcast, Ma Dong asked him a series of questions about "shuai".
"What is the state of handsomeness?" "It was feedback from others."
"Are you handsome or Liang Chaowei?" "I think I'm more handsome than him, I don't know if he approves."
"Will any director think you're too handsome?" "Yes, Du Qifeng and Chen Musheng said that I was overly handsome. I have to play .) ”
Screenshot of Andy Lau's 40th anniversary of his debut on Douyin
When taking the screenshot, I found that Andy Lau had no dead angles, thin ankles, a straight posture, beautiful hands, and any angle and expression were good-looking. On the empty and suspended white stage, he describes this forty years of serious work and exceptional luck with gentle self-deprecation, modest humility, decent pride, and occasional teasing.
Myth is unbreakable because it is constructed by countless imperfections and instabilities over the past four decades, and is the result of a person making choices and consistently adapting to his circumstances. For this reason, Hua Tsai, who has been debuting forty years, will not appear condescending to call himself an "ordinary person" in the douyin premiere.
"Stupid Kid" is the closest work of his acting career to his personal experience. The Asir Gu Puzzle Boy in the movie, the hero and anti-hero, are all the characters played by this "stupid child". Hua Tsai is a really beautiful boy, really diligent, but not a very talented kind of artist, so calling "ordinary people" has its own appropriate place.
"Stupid Kid" album cover
But there are ordinary people as he is as silently everywhere as he is. His on-screen image constitutes a dream world to escape into, with romantic love that ends in death over and over again, and heroic men playing the role of a policeman and a bad guy. In the fictional world, this handsome face is the source of everything, the lock of the key, the code to the new world. He gives people comfort: beyond the world you live in, there is a world that is worth a walk.
Andy Lau's most important professional identity is as an actor. Ma Dong asked him: "Is it better to sing or to act?" "Sing." After saying that, he laughed and blushed, "Thank you for your tolerance and give me forty years to improve."
Stills from Dark War
In 2000, 19 years after debuting as an actor, Andy Lau won the title of Film Emperor for the first time with "Dark War". The wonderful people on the list of Hong Kong film emperors can be roughly divided into two kinds: one is that their personal charm and role complement each other, complete the performance together, take out the actor's self, and the role will also be eclipsed, Chow Yun Fat, Zhang Guorong, Andy Lau, Ren Dahua, Li Ming, Chow Xingchi, etc. are among them; one is the face of an ordinary person, hidden in the city, the personality bank and life experience, the human world, the seven tricks of the human heart, liu Qingyun, Wu Zhenyu and other acting schools belong to this category.
The combination of Liang Chaowei and Liang Jiahui has both superstar brilliance and understanding of the hearts of lovers in the world, and can also accurately externalize them through performances to arouse the empathy of the audience. They honed their skills in the era of The boom of Hong Kong films, and there are still good works from time to time after they have fallen.
Stills from "Carmen Mong Kok", Ajay (Played by Andy Lau), Ah E (Played by Maggie Cheung)
In the career of the film queens, there is a turning point in the acting leap (or let the audience see the leap), and then steadily enter the new level of acting. For example, Maggie Cheung suddenly opened her mind after "Carmen in Mong Kok" (1988), from an idol actress who only knew how to react, she figured out that acting was actually "looking for the depth of feelings", and since then she has sincerely regarded filmmaking as a life career.
Andy Lau, who starred in the same play as her, also had a leap in acting skills in "Carmen Mong Kok". Before 1988, Andy Lau had already suffered the collective job hopping failure of the "Wireless Five Tigers" and was drunk by the life stick of 400 days of snow. Previously, his star path was relatively smooth, and when the same period of the TVB artist training class was still running the dragon set (except for Liang Chaowei), he had already become a protagonist in dramas such as "Eagle Hero" (1983) and "Deer DingJi" (1984).
Stills from "Deer Ding", Kangxi (Played by Andy Lau), Wei Xiaobao (Played by Liang Chaowei)
Hua Tsai's face is the god to appreciate the meal to eat, the previous TV pixels are poor, shaking screen in this face is very prominent. Andy Lau's facial contours resemble Zhang Che's early death of Fu Sheng, full of youth and infinite energy, but the lines are more meticulous and convergent than Fu Sheng. The debut hua tsai does not need too strong acting skills, and practices to be able to accurately and naturally express joy and sorrow, which is already beautiful.
Stills from "Carmen Mong Kok"
"Carmen in Mong Kok" moderately loosened Andy Lau's handsomeness. The "big guy" he plays in the play is not even an anti-hero. As a low-level, this character is a fly camp dog soldier who will block all the way to the street. Of course, Hua Tsai is still handsome in this movie, but this handsome shell is thinned by Wong Kar-wai, revealing a rare side of himself - instinctively driving destruction everywhere, without rules. In the chaos, actor Andy Lau enters the depths of the role and truly reacts to the inevitable fate, showing fresh and natural acting skills.
In 1989, Carmen of Mong Kok brought Andy Lau the nomination of the Academy Award film emperor, and Jacky Cheung, who played his little brother, won the best male supporting little golden man. This play proves that under the role of the right director, script and partner, Andy Lau can also be a good actor. It's just that there weren't many such opportunities back then. He starred in about sixteen films that year, plunging into the booming Hong Kong film machine. He continued to hone his acting skills in high-intensity work, integrated with the industry, was educated by the entertainment industry, and forged a steel-like professional ethics and work attitude.
Stills from "Run to the Fury Sea"
Andy Lau in the 1990s shone like the sun, and the art film director Hui Anhua ("Run to the Fury Sea", 1982) and Wong Kar-wai, who had worked together in his early years, were destined to appear only occasionally. Andy Lau is busy and doesn't have the luxury of spending a lot of time on a role like other actors. He worked hard every time he went to the scene, but he could not be as stubborn as Zhang Zhen, practicing eight pole boxing for three years, and then playing a boxer after winning the first prize in the country. Hua Tsai's film and television song work is always full, which also means that he cannot separate the set from his daily life like other Hong Kong stars, take the subway, visit the vegetable market, and eat in long lines of food row restaurants, and bring fireworks into the play.
Most Hong Kong stars are willing to retain the atmosphere of urban life. There are many people in Hong Kong, and when you turn around the vegetable market mall, you can see countless fragments of life and the faintness of human nature. Hua Tsai has rarely had such an opportunity, at most wearing a hat and mask in private time to take the hotel guest elevator. When he was working, he was "transported back and forth like jewelry, and could only cooperate."
The more difficult it is for him to be invisible, the harder it is for the public to forget his handsomeness. Even if the role he plays is temporarily downcast, he is still handsome enough to let the audience play for a second, and he can't forget for a moment that this is Andy Lau acting. His kindness, sobriety and self-discipline are projected on the characters all the time, to some extent preventing the viewer from entering a deeper emotional experience. In this period, The Liu Dehua was bigger than the drama, and the shell of the beautiful boy began to thicken again.
As the 1990s transitioned to the new millennium, Hong Kong cinema boomed and declined, and the pressure on stars in the external environment decreased. Andy Lau's personal situation also gave him more than ever. In the 1990s, his Tianmu Film Company lost money continuously, and Hua Tsai's monthly salary was known to everyone for frantically taking over the drama to pay off debts. Later, the debt was paid off, and when it came time to freely pick the script, he was still "looking at the character first, then looking at the script", coupled with the inertia of busyness, the identity of the company owner, the promotion of newcomers and the sense of responsibility for Hong Kong movies... In all these ways, Andy Lau still rarely has the opportunity to work slowly, although today he will, and willingly, shoot a shot of holding a helmet and looking back on the set all night.
Stills from Infernal Affairs
In 2002, "Infernal Affairs" became a long-sluggish Hong Kong box office savior, pointing a way for Hong Kong commercial films for the next two decades. Andy Lau is once again at the center of the revival of Hong Kong films. Some fans will point out that Andy Lau's acting skills in the double male drama are slightly inferior. Indeed, in a scene of rooftop duel, Liang Chaowei's eyes, corners of his mouth and lines of law are constantly changing, and the psychological activity of the high-pressure moment is not inferior to the flow of clouds above the roof.
Andy Lau's micro-expression is less than his opponent's, and when he is pointed at the center of his eyebrow, the camera gives a close-up of his eyes, only to see his eyebrows jump slightly, his eyes do not move, and he looks wooden in front of his opponent. But after all, he extracted several nodes of the character's inner changes, the cooling of the smile at the corner of his mouth when he was rejected by Liang Chaowei, and the light in his eyes was in place. The two males confronted each other, moving and quiet, Hua Tsai's acting skills and aura did not lose to the talented actor on the other side.
The light of the "Infernal Affairs" series is like the sunset afterglow, and the audience who loves Hong Kong films bathes in it to relive old dreams. Unconsciously, police films have become the absolute mainstream of Hong Kong commercial films. The aging film emperors take turns to play the male lead in it, and the actresses who support the roles are iterated from Hong Kong actresses to mainland actresses, forever young. It's a strange feeling, there are always a few such afterglow works every year, and you can't help but look at them when you go out on the street. Watching the youth of the film emperors pass, in the dim light of the movie, the complexion is dull, the face is stiff, and only the eyes are still light.
Stills from Bomb Disposal Expert II
Dreamy cop story after nightmare plays out in these films. Most of the stories are darker and more serious than they were when they were younger, and the joy and freedom disappear together with youth. There is no longer irretrievable romance to squander, death comes without negotiation, bang. In "Bomb Disposal Expert II" (2020), Andy Lau plays a bomb disposal expert who still enjoys a heroic death after being blackened into a terrorist, and is a rare dinosaur in Hong Kong police films.
Stills from "The Disciples"
The other end of Andy Lau's "blackening" career has been upgraded from a young gangster to a gangster in "Disciple". Andy Lau, who is not a talented player, cultivates the skills of actors like fossil accumulations. Such traces can be seen in detail. In "The Dragon on the Edge" (1999), when the gangster big brother Feilong played by Hua Tsai confronted the police at close range, he showed a fake smile cooling and his eyes frozen expression changed. This successful way of acting was brought into a series of films such as "Dark War" and "Bomb Disposal Expert II", enriching the black roles that were difficult to control in his youth.
Andy Lau has a kind of "fixedness" in his body, which becomes more and more obvious with age. This kind of "concentration" is not necessarily concentration, and when he encounters a bad play or the opponent actor is too strong/wrong, he may still be at a disadvantage. His calming power comes from the audience's incomparable familiarity with his screen image, from the trust in himself. The character he plays, even if blackened, is a rogue thief and will turn back. If the actor is born a bad person, he is swayed by fate, which is also regrettable.
Stills from "Black Gold"
Countless screen images condensed into Andy Lau's unique sense of simplicity. Naturally, the complexity and ambiguity that he lacks is a constraint on the identity of the actor. In "Black Gold" (1997), Andy Lau plays a policeman against Zhou Chaoxian, a gangster played by Leung Ka-fai. Liang Jiahui made hundreds of thousands of character notes, deducing a process in which the desire of a strong person expands, mutates, and regurgitates itself. Compared with him, Andy Lau's righteous side seems to be missing, and only the actor's own familiar existence is like a warm and melting sun, illuminating the short process of shadows on the earth from birth to death.
The sun has the sun good. We don't expect the sun to change, we just want it to rise. Of course, Andy Lau will also see the old, but he is still good-looking. His bones are good, the lines on his face are sharply angled, and the wrinkles are clear. No matter how gloomy the plot is, he can still sweep away the haze with a smile, and there is no one who is easy to appear after he is old and does not smile. The magic of this face penetrates the light of the golden age of Hong Kong films.
Stills from "Ah Hu"
In 2000, Andy Lau made his hundredth film "A Hu", "after which I didn't count". In 2011, he collaborated with Xu Anhua on "Sister Tao" thirty years later. Sister Tao took care of Roger (Andy Lau) for a lifetime, and was sent to a nursing home after a sudden stroke. The audience has no way of knowing Andy Lau's real life, but the producer Roger starring him is credible. Roger is successful but lonely, and there should be a peach sister outside of his public life, carrying the life of an ordinary person who should always have.
Sister Tao is loyal and righteous, dignified, and has a stoic and simple personality. At the time of filming, Xu Anhua was 64 years old, unmarried and childless, and lived with his mother in a small house in North Point. The subtle touch of female creators and performers gives the film a sparkling texture. The water once again peeled off Andy Lau's shell, and the acting skills accumulated over the years were also washed away. This time, Andy Lau seems to have completely assumed the role of Roger, forgetting that he is Andy Lau, pulling aside the floating clouds of dreams, sincerely and delicately wandering in the story, awakening deep reactions.
Andy Lau was born in 1961. There are many half-truths and half-false questions on the barrage, "What are the Four Heavenly Kings?" Ma Dong asked him, "What is an idol?" "Idols are role models." The question of the "Four Heavenly Kings" is even more difficult to answer. Like the "Five Tigers", it was launched in response to the needs of commercial packaging, and after the sailboat entered the sea, it prospered an industry, leaving behind a classic role and legend.
Andy Lau is one of the models of being a man before acting, he adheres to the creed that the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility, and respects his own choices and the love of others. Forty years is quick and long. In the near-vacuum live broadcast room, Andy Lau is a tangible marker of time. Time can sing and act, cry and laugh, and it is very close and far away from you. The time is him.
This issue is edited by Zhou Yuhua