In May 2019, Gu Xiaogang's film "Spring River Plumbing" was screened as the closing film of the "Film Critics Week" of the 58th Cannes Film Festival. Charles Taysson, director of this year's Critics Week at Cannes, said: "This is definitely a film that will leave a strong mark and cannot be diluted! ”
Charles Tyson delivered a speech at the premiere of Spring River Plumbing
Charles Tyson felt exactly the same way I felt!
As a young director, Gu Xiaogang in 1988 was first widely known for making documentaries. As early as 2015, he won the best documentary at the 9th FIRST Youth Film Festival for his debut film "Planted Life". "Spring River Plumbing" is the debut of Gu Xiaogang's film, which not only shined in Cannes, but also became popular at major film festivals in China: in July 2019, "Spring River Plumbing" won the best feature film and best director at the 13th FIRST Youth Film Festival; in September 2019, "Spring River Plumbing" was shortlisted for the 32nd Chinese Film Golden Rooster Award for Best Small Cost Feature Film and Best Music (Dou Wei); in November 2019, "Spring River Plumbing" was shortlisted for the 32nd Chinese Film Golden Rooster Award for Best Small Cost Feature Film and Best Music (Dou Wei); in November 2019, "Spring River Plumbing" As the closing film of the 2019 Wu Tianming Youth Film Summit "The Era of Reflection - Tribute to Realistic Cinema"...
For a young director to achieve such a high level of achievement and recognition in the first film, it is obvious that his work is very exploratory. Here, Sister Pickpocket uses the film "Spring River Plumbing" to interpret the realism of young director Gu Xiaogang for you.
Gu Xiaogang
600 years ago, the Yuan Dynasty painter Huang Gongwang used the style of the Fuchun River as a material to paint a masterpiece - "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map"; 600 years later, Fuyang is carrying out the construction of a new city in full swing in preparation for the 2022 Asian Games. "Spring River Plumbing" tells about the banks of the Fuchun River, the four brothers take turns to take care of their dementia mother in the spring, summer, autumn and winter seasons, and the four families face the test of family affection and life, and slowly unfold like a picture through the changes of the cold and warm of the four seasons...
<h1>Photographing the Present with Ancient Meaning: The Perfect Combination of Traditional Culture and Realism</h1>
Realist cinema was born after World War II and arose in Italy in the 1930s. In order to show the real life of people after the war, filmmakers at that time used natural light and simple film language to restore the most authentic world. More representative directors and works include Rossellini's "Rome, the Undefended City", "General Rovere"; Vittorio de Sica's "The Child Looks at Us", "The Bicycle Thief" and so on. Domestic realist works are also emerging in an endless stream, including "pioneering works" such as "Wrangler" and "Furong Town" directed by Xie Jin; there are also "top works" such as "Farewell to the Overlord" directed by Chen Kaige and "Alive" directed by Zhang Yimou; and in recent years, "I am not a medicine god" and "Dog Thirteen" and other "word-of-mouth works" also belong to realist films.
Through the title, we are intuitively associated with Su Dongpo's poem "Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet". Coincidentally, Su Dongpo wrote this poem while in Hangzhou, and Gu Xiaogang himself lived in Hangzhou. At the same time, the filming location of the film is selected on the banks of the Fuchun River, which is reminiscent of "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map". The film intends to use the way of "dialogue" between the present and the ancients, shooting and using the "next brush" technique of landscape painting, to frame the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and the replacement of "another spring" at the end, which is very in line with the literary imagery and aesthetic methods in traditional culture!
The real scene of the Fuchun River and the part of the "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map"
The plot of the movie "Spring River Plumbing" is very simple, the elderly mother is demented by stroke, and her four sons take turns to take care of them according to the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. If you look at the plot alone, such a simple and straightforward narrative is obviously no different from a documentary. However, the director cleverly put the realistic problem of supporting the elderly into the background of traditional culture (the current Fuchun River is still the river where Su Dongpo's duck swims, the river painted by Huang Gongwang), which obviously shoots the daily life around us, but gives people a poetic beauty of landscape brush and ink painting.
This kind of shooting method that combines traditional culture and realism is very rare in the group of young directors: the script and plot of the film adopt the filming method of the documentary; the language and behavior of the characters are put into the background of ancient meaning; and the artistic conception in the poem and painting is "cruelly and calmly" put into real life, forming a strong contrast. It builds a "bridge" between the ancients (traditional culture) and the present (realism), allowing the audience to come and go freely in this "bridge" and experience the beauty of traditional cultural artistic conception, so as to reflect on practical problems in real life. To put it more in layman's terms: the expression of this kind of film is "to write about the practical problems of today's people by the hands of false ancients; to borrow the mouths of ancients to talk about the real problems of today's people." "Su Dongpo's "Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet" - the grim reality of the ancient people's "prophet" to support the elderly? Huang Gongwang's "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" is full of business, compared with today's Hangzhou has just entered the first-tier city, held the G20, and the next Asian Games... - Will the ancients also have reflections and reflections on practical problems in the midst of the Taiping And prosperous world?
Perhaps, if we understand Gu Xiaogang's realism, we can get answers to these questions.
<h1>Dialect, ordinary actors: photograph the current life experiences and emotions of ordinary people</h1>
"Spring River Plumbing" was originally called "Gu Family Hotel", and Gu Xiaogang wanted to shoot a family film from the perspective of his parents (who opened a hotel) in the early days. Later, even if he restructured a new story, the layout of the film was still placed on the life experiences and emotions of ordinary people at present.
What is even more amazing is that the actors in his film all use ordinary people who have no recognition of acting experience - the actors in the play are Gu Xiaogang's relatives and friends.
At the same time, he let these ordinary people freely tell their real life experiences and emotions in a dialectal way, intertwining the memories of the times and history, daily trivial life with grand narratives, senses of impermanence and destiny. The director looks at the experience with the "peace" of the participants and witnesses, and refrains from expressing his true emotions. Neither sad nor sympathetic, nor has it found a solution for us. The director just makes a movie, and everyone's life goes on by everyone!
Gu Xiaogang's realistic approach gives the audience a strong sense of substitution: real, as if it happens around; empathy, you and I have experienced or are experiencing in front of the screen. But the main thing is that through the language of film, he makes us think more about the past, the present, and the future. And this kind of thinking has a reaction to the film itself - it is endlessly evocative and emotional!
<h1>Chinese films need Gu Xiaogang's "realism."</h1>
Gu Xiaogang's realism draws more from early documentaries, and "Spring River Plumbing" is only his first film. But even so, his use of ancient meaning to shoot the current techniques; the combination of traditional culture and realism; the use of dialects and vegetarians (Bi Gan's "Night on earth", "Roadside Picnic") as film elements of the expression of the method, is still very worthy of today's filmmakers to learn and learn.
From Xie Jin and Wu Tianming to Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, the older generation of filmmakers have made a big breakthrough in Chinese film realism;
From Hollywood blockbusters to domestic commercial blockbusters, we see that movies are fully marketized.
However, today, when Chinese films have long been marketized, we can still see works led by young directors such as Gu Xiaogang who rationally pay attention to real life and improve people's ideological resources and values. They do not care about the box office, do not pay attention to word of mouth, only pay attention to the current life and emotions of ordinary people.
Chinese films need Gu Xiaogang's "realism", and look forward to more and more realistic works in Chinese films!
I am a pickpocket sister outside the circle, like me please pay attention to me!