To this day, Jia Zhangke announced that he would withdraw from the Pingyao International Film Festival in the future, and I still can't accept it.
The person who personally founded and continued the film style is not as good as the sun, but it is also the glory of the film industry.
Director Jia is not only an internationally renowned film director, who has been debuting for nearly a quarter of a century, and his views and criticisms of Chinese cinema and even culture have also made him an opinion leader on cultural issues. In addition to the aforementioned Pingyao International Film Festival, he even contributed to the preparation of the Lvliang Literature Season for his hometown.
His contribution is definitely not just a matter of words.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > unique Shanxi feelings</h1>
The sixth generation of directors is known as the "generation of the city", mainly because they debuted in the 1990s, when China was fully marketized. Under the tide of the market, the social and cultural landscape has also changed drastically, so the film lens of the sixth generation of directors is always aimed at the subculture of urban young people, urban and rural migrant workers and other issues.
However, the urban connotation of this batch of "urban generation" is different, some directors lock up urban space, Lou Ye is an example; Jia Zhangke returns to his hometown from the city.
Compared with other sixth-generation directors, Jia Zhangke is indeed more organic and attempted to pay attention to the contemporary, but the contemporary must also involve history, so even if the story line of "Mountains and Rivers" has reached the future timing of Australia, the characters are still dealing with the problems of the past.
He has always adhered to the creative policy of shooting what he wants to shoot, and even when shooting documentaries, he also specializes in unfamiliar subjects: "Useless" is the eye-catching costume, "East" is the painter's eye-catching, and "Legend of the Sea" is a feature of Shanghainese. On the one hand, to broaden horizons and satisfy curiosity, on the other hand, he believes that record and fiction are equally important methods of truth, and that film is a medium used to satisfy human beings' inner desire to restore the real world.
All his works not only capture the existence and passing of time, but also include the strong flow of space, from "Platform" to the Mongolian Ulaanbaatar to carry the imagination of the distant places, to "Destiny" across Shanxi, Chongqing, Hubei, Dongguan, "Mountains and Rivers" migrated from home to the world. He revealed that even if he wrote the script, he was never in the study, always had to drive out for a month, walked during the day to see the scenery, and returned to the hotel at night to write, and many of the first drafts were completed in the process of moving. Jia Zhangke, 50, said he was still restless.
The cancellation of the release of "Destiny of Heaven" caused a great blow to him, he showed helplessness and fatigue in the documentary "Fenyang Boy Jia Zhangke", smoking a cigarette and saying to the photographer and sound engineer who has worked with him for a long time: "What I am thinking about now is not which one to shoot, the first choice is whether I want to shoot or not, this is not a bad mood, but I can't do it in this industry." ”
Six months later, he started the shooting plan of the new film again, and finally completed "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers".
Jia Zhangke said:
People are not in the cross-section, can not cut the past and the present, Chinese films in the past by the influence of literature and propaganda is relatively large, it will be divorced from the real world, exaggerated propaganda, but in the real world everyone has seven emotions and six desires, the world has black and white sides, for art is important to face the whole life.
Then he passed the age of confusion, precisely speaking, around the age of 43, he had a more transparent understanding of the difficulties and freedoms in love, the inescapable parting of life and death in family affection, so he wanted to describe those emotions that could only be truly understood by personal experience with the long time span in "Mountains and Rivers". The plot of the heroine's father suddenly dying and returning home with her body is also his own experience.
Why is he so interested in jianghu?
It is because Chinese literature, such as Hong Kong films in the 1980s and 1990s, has reflected the situation in the mainstream world through the jianghu, like the Ming Dynasty in Hu Jinquan's films and the Qing Dynasty in Zhang Che's films, which are all changes in a general environment, so in fact, those films can be called political films.
Because they are all talking about the politics of that era, just from the perspective of the jianghu, this is an angle that our very good predecessors found.
It is true that "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers" is a film that he hopes to make a slightly exposed emotion and politics, in the past, Jia Dao's works were not willing to let emotions flood too much, and the overflowing emotions would drown out some kind of rational brilliance, from this point of view, he admired the Buddhist philosophy very much, in Buddhism it is not emotional, but it is about compassion.
"The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers" embodies compassion.
But there are too many details of Jia Zhangke's personal life in "Mountains and Rivers", and Jia Zhangke must shoot it, because it is the most popular, from the 90s to the present almost all Chinese have experienced, this is a film that is closer to the audience in terms of emotional resonance, more popular.
"The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers" also continued the style of his later works.
His films depict the story of China to audiences around the world through the appearance of his hometown of Shanxi, and as the period of his works gradually elongates, the world appearance presented in his film works gradually becomes universal, involving the expression of social violence, the loss of history, the generation of roots and so on.
Although his films are filled with a variety of dialects, the similarity of these stories does not create an interpretive barrier, he said:
Each of my films is shown in an average of 40 countries, and even in Europe or South America, audiences read more accurately; even rural audiences understand my work better.
There is no sense of the modern version of Pu Songling.
Jia Zhangke's hometown-themed works have some common elements, such as in the process of economic development, successful people often do illegal things to profit. For example, in "Xiao Wu", "smuggling is for trade, and opening a song hall is for entertainment industry" and other people can often become model young people in the county. "Xiao Wu" is also a small-scale successful person, and the real niche lies in Shanxi's specialty - coal mines.
The coal mines were black, but under the cooperation of money and power, the country retreated and the coal mines became shiny gold mines; the original state-owned pits were turned into private ownership, and overnight the Shanxi coal boss was born.
However, this has also become the source of anger among the masses of the people, and such elements are also interspersed in "Destiny of Heaven", "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers" and "Children of the Rivers and Lakes".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > three kinds of nostalgia</h1>
Spanning 26 years, "Mountains and Rivers" begins in the 1990s, with China's rapid development in the 1990s, then jumps to 2014 at that time, and ends with the future 2025.
The picture also varies from small to large, from Chapter 1:1.33, Chapter 2 1:1.85, to 1:2.39 in 2025.
The film space is separated from fenyang in Shanxi, the son with his father to Shanghai, and the immigration to Australia, which are three distant places. Although the different formats of this film are not deliberately arranged, but because some of the pictures are from the director's long-term collection of video records, they have become an important feature of this film, which highlights the feeling that the scenery is still the same and the people are not right.
In Fenyang in 1999, shen Tao, a primary school teacher, fell in love with the miner Liangzi, but due to the reality of the two forced to break up, Shen Tao married the wealthy coal mine owner Zhang Jinsheng, and Liangzi and Zhang Jinsheng also broke up. This triangle relationship has never been stable, and Shen Tao's choice also reflects the values of Chinese society at that time, which was the era when the market fully embraced capital, and even love could be bought and sold.
Liang Zi left his hometown, leaving behind his former lover and former hometown.
The title of the film" appears at the end of the first chapter, so that the audience understands that those who love and hate, as well as the lives and people who contain traditional ideas and values, are left in the mountains and rivers that remain day after day and never.
Even, the value of capital supremacy has not changed after 15 years.
In 2014, Shen Tao and Zhang Jinsheng had divorced, and the child Zhang Zhile followed his father to Shanghai, which was more developative than Fenyang, and the mother and son did not reunite because of the funeral until Shen Tao's father passed away. Zhile and Shen Tao are very strange, and the Zhilexin family has always longed for overseas even though they have lived in bustling Shanghai.
They are like many people who are constantly chasing capital, constantly chasing freedom, running from small counties to metropolises, and from this end of the sea to the other end of the sea. By 2025, Zhile, who has lived in Australia for a long time, will no longer say Chinese, while Zhang Jinsheng, who immigrated with him, is still living a Chinese-style life in Australia, and there is always a translation software between him and his son.
It seems that he has nothing to do with Chinese life, but he is unexpectedly attracted to Chinese teacher Mia.
"Leaving" and "nostalgia" are almost the most important elements in "Mountains and Rivers". All those who stay where they are will face the departure of others, whether they are born or die, and no one can accompany anyone to eternity.
After people leave, the memories will gradually fade, perhaps not forgotten, but eventually become thin, or exist in small corners of life, and occasionally think of them will be entangled by endless thoughts.
Leaving is also accompanied by nostalgia, and the nostalgia of "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers" is not the separation brought about by the war, not forced to move into the new land, but the unexpected melancholy when people leave one after another under the rapid changes of society. Shen Tao's side from the original Liang Zi and Zhang Jinsheng company, after the divorce with the father's dependence, the father after the death of the son briefly reunited, to the last person dancing alone in the snow, but also highlighted the only constant in the world is the mountains and rivers; the only one in the world can accompany him to eternity is himself.
Zhang Jinsheng is very different from the nostalgia of Coming to Music, and Zhang Jinsheng is the epitome of many overseas Chinese communities today. They have emigrated abroad, but they still have their hearts set on their homeland; they left for a better life, but today they live their lives overseas. They say that Chinese, listen to Chinese songs, and use porcelain ornaments with oriental colors and aesthetics, which are incompatible with local society and form a circle of their own. They never adapted to a new life, let alone integrated into the local customs.
Zhang Jinsheng's nostalgia has a strong direction, he understands what he misses, but he can no longer return to the homeland of his dreams. Unlike his father, Zhile's nostalgia is so uncertain, except for his appearance, his language and lifestyle have been different from the previous generation of immigrants, but he has not really integrated into the new society.
Zhi Le is still kidnapped by the "Chinese" values of his elders, awkwardly at the junction of integration and return, and his nostalgia is more like looking for identity. The Chinese teacher who attracts him to the music almost symbolizes a certain part of the culture that he is unfamiliar with, but very much like he belongs to.
At the same time, it also implies the thought and love for the mother. The superimposed figures of the mother and the homeland have become the intractable knots Chinese many immigrants today.
This is Jia Zhangke's work in 2015, and the "future" in the film is set in 2025, which is exactly ten years of time. The implication of this can only be understood as ineffable.
The rapid changes in China in "Mountains and Rivers" from the 1990s to the 2010s – the rise of the middle class, the widening gap between urban and rural areas, the Chinese's perception of the world – will face the dilemma of losing roots and identity by 2025, Jia Zhangke's critical force is so deep, sad but precise and powerful, not only highlighting the alienated and pale human relations in the big era, but also pointing out the dilemma of overseas immigrants who cannot integrate into the local area and cannot return to their hometown.
Until now, I especially remember a scene where Jia Zhangke patted his stomach and smiled:
Making a movie, like being pregnant, can't because you are a girl, you can't give birth, boys and girls have to be born.
After finishing the speech, he picked up the lighter, lit the cigar in his hand red, and puffed up the scent of tobacco around him, as if he had seen the end of "Destiny" again, standing in front of the stage full of audience, staring expectantly at the next action of the corner on the stage.
The Pingyao Film Festival is still like this, although Jia Kechang "went into hiding", but the mountains and rivers and the deceased are still there.
This is what he left us.