Wen | Ma Yuan
Douban has a score of 8.3, the highest score for Chinese films in 2021.
Chen Jianbin directed again, coupled with the appearances of Zhou Xun, Dou Jingtong, Dapeng and others, the quality of the movie "The Eleventh Time" is definitely worthy of this reputation.
The film was shortlisted for the Beijing International Film Festival in 2019 and won two awards: Best Screenplay (Chen Jianbin, Niu Jianrong, Niu Niu, Lei Zhilong) and Best Supporting Actress (Dou Jingtong). However, after that, there was no chance to meet the audience, and it was not until the Golden Rooster Film Festival in 2020 that "The Eleventh Time" met with the media for the first time.
After the screening, the first round of media reviews of "The Eleventh Time" "exploded", and Chen Jianbin used the double dream woven by "drama-movie" to make this group of media who had read countless films in the past intoxicated.
Drama is the impulse to open Chen Jianbin's creation of "The Eleventh Time".
Therefore, when the audience sees this movie, the full dramatic tone and the perception of real life wandering are born, the plot is a past event and the rehearsal of the current theater troupe echoes, and the chapter body is edited, even if there are a large number of drama lines in the film, Chen Jianbin implanted a very dramatic red cloth, but the film did not make the audience have too much separation, but made the script more playful and playful.
And the perception in drama and film seems to have an impenetrable "sense of distance". We can often see the audience's "complaining" and "excessive sense of stage drama" in some works; but there are also works like "The Eleventh Time", which are praised for this sense of drama.
So, how much distance is there between theater and film?
The egg under the drama
"Drama" is the most core keyword of "The Eleventh Time".
Lei Zhilong, one of the screenwriters of "The Eleventh Time", wrote on social platforms after watching the finished film for the first time in the theater that "The Eleventh Time: Eggs under the Drama" was originally the name he wanted to evaluate the film, but after watching it, he felt that it was not accurate.
So how to accurately decrypt the relationship between "film and drama" in "The Eleventh Time", we might as well start from the timeline of Lei Zhilong's entry into this project.
Lei Zhilong (second from right)
Lei Zhilong and director Rao Xiaozhi have collaborated for many years, and together they have created the movies "Hello, Madman", "The Unknown Generation" and many theatrical works. After the film "The Unknown Generation" was completed, Rao Xiaozhi accepted Chen Jianbin's invitation and participated in the supervision of the film "The Eleventh Time". At the same time, Chen Jianbin sent a version of the script "Brake Killing" created by Niu Jianrong and Niu Niu to Lei Zhilong, hoping that he could make some suggestions.
"Brake Killing" is the predecessor of "The Eleventh Time", when the script had a very complete film core - about the brake killing, and 30 years later, a drama troupe wanted to change the event into a stage play.
"Chatting with Director Chen will make you laugh, and when you come across a script that expresses so interesting, of course I am willing." Although there were other projects on the job at the time, he set aside 2 months for the script to be adapted.
Chen Jianbin called this creative group including Lei Zhilong, Rao Xiaozhi, Wang Xuebing, Han Jie and others the "Compound Eye Literature Group", and the name originated from the biographical literature "The Image of the Compound Eye" created by Akira Kurosawa's imperial screenwriter Hashimoto Shinobu, and the Japanese master director Akira Kurosawa was praised by posterity as "Shakespeare of the East".
As an actor in the National Drama Theatre, Chen Jianbin himself has a natural affection for drama. If the film is simply made into a love letter dedicated to drama, perhaps it is not enough for him. "The Eleventh Time" can, although it is about what happened now, but the story that happens now involves the past.
It is such a powerful storyline that "can put my love and affection for stage drama into it, and the works can complement each other." "On and off the stage in the movie, they entangled with each other and influenced each other, and finally Hu Quentin was "Li Jianjian", Jia Meiyi was 'Zhao Fengxia', and Zhen Manyu was "Ma Fuli", explained in the most straightforward words - life is like a drama, drama is like life.
Lei Zhilong told us that Chen Jianbin's standard for this drama is to demand us from the height of Chekov's drama. ”
"Offensive to the audience"
In "The Eleventh Time", Hu Quentin, played by Dapeng, quoted a line from the drama "Offending the Audience", which directly echoed the play within the play.
This kind of dramatic line is not uncommon throughout the film, Lei Zhilong told us that in the creative process, director Chen Jianbin asked the team to sort out 100 classic drama lines, and find the right content and integrate them into the film script. But this kind of blending is not simply stacked, but accurately put into the expression of the whole story, and appropriately combined with the performance of the stage scene in the movie.
Elements of classic dramas such as Hamlet, House of Dolls, Salem's Witch, and Offensive audiences can be found in them.
The entire creation time was stretched infinitely from the original 2 months to 9 months.
The process is painful, but the harvest is amazing. Judging from the current word of mouth and achievements, all these efforts are worth it.
If "The Eleventh Time" is a mirror, to some extent, Lei Zhilong's first screenplay film "Hello, Crazy" is like its B side. Looking closely at the evaluation of the two films, "strong sense of stage" is the most frequent phrase, but in the context of the former, it is mostly praise, and the latter is slightly critical.
"It seems that when the work is said, it becomes a problem." But is this really a problem? Probably didn't find a very accurate affirmation. As a creator, Lei Zhilong is equally confused about this kind of evaluation, when he first started making a movie, he would read every comment on Douban carefully, and when faced with such evaluations, he would reflect.
When "The Unknown Generation" was first released, Lei Zhilong would read reviews at home every day, and the short and long reviews added up to almost 6 or 7,000, "I will watch each one, and from the feelings of those viewers after watching, I will find a cognition that can be used to correct my own treatment of script creation later." ”
This also happened to director Rao Xiaozhi, who told us that when he first started making movies, he would think about whether the inertial thinking of doing drama in the past was transplanted into the movie, but when "The Unknown Generation" was released, there were still such evaluations. This self-reflection has also slowly turned into a reflection on the market, especially for the use of theatrical style, and proper integration is the most accurate.
In the movie "Crowded", Rao Xiaozhi directly adopted the stage style in many places, for the simple reason, "because it is appropriate." ”
How can theater and film be combined so as not to "offend the audience"?
Film and drama divorced
In the history of cinema, there has always been an intricate handover between film and drama, and even when film first came to China, it was called "shadow drama". This model does not only occur in China, to this day, many directors and actors in the United Kingdom are still from theater backgrounds, and Broadway in the United States has also bred many brilliant filmmakers and film works.
So where does the audience debate about "film and theater" come from?
In the 1980s, Zhong Yifei, a theorist of Chinese film, put forward the idea that "film and theater are divorced", which became one of the slogans of film modernization at that time. At this time, the public has made a new thinking about the aesthetics of movies. Subsequently, the entire literary and art circles never stopped on this topic, and even some people once raised the question of whether they should choose theatrical actors to star in the movie.
In the voice of doubt and recognition, the aesthetics of Chinese films are also constantly innovating, and theatrical actors still stand up to the "half of the sky" of the film circle. Pu Cunxi in "The Last Nobleman", Li Xuejian in "Drum Book Artist", and even Jiang Wen and Gong Li in "Red Sorghum", each of them is a theater professional or drama actor.
But it seems that in the past, the relationship between drama and film has been more about the discussion of the use of actors. In addition to the occasional film and television works such as "Changing Face" and "A Dead Man's Visit to the Living", as well as classic dramas such as "Sunrise" and "Thunderstorm", there are few films in the Chinese mainland film market that directly adapt dramas like Hollywood.
Until 2015, "Charlotte Troubles" and "Villain Angel" turned out, and the distance between drama and film represented by drama seemed to become blurred again. Judging from the current comments, drama actors such as Shen Teng, Ma Li, and Ren Suxi have been recognized by the audience, and "Happy Twist" has also been accepted by the audience as a powerful film brand.
Even so, the comments of "sketches" and "drama sense" still appear in the evaluation of these works, and even "Hello, Li Huanying" has not escaped.
If criticism is not free, praise is meaningless. "Maybe it's become a way for audiences to express their dissatisfaction, and we as creators have no way to control it, but as a screenwriter, I might want more styles of films to appear and have audience recognition." Lei Zhilong expressed his opinion, "As a creator, one thing is unavoidable, that is, you can't please every audience, and any work will be liked by some people, and there will be people who don't like it." ”
If the charm of the film is to take the audience into the story, then the "presence" of the drama is the most fascinating place for it. Of course, when the drama becomes a movie, this kind of "presence" is not necessary, and what really matters is the story itself.
Lei Zhilong also said that in terms of the shooting method of the movie "Philharmonic City", a lot of musical scheduling is used, but this does not affect the audience's love.
Of course, since a large number of drama directors entered the film circle, they have also experienced the process of learning, studying and mastering the characteristics of film while promoting the progress of film. And when these directors re-engage in drama creation, they can integrate the film language into their own works, and this subtle influence can be seen everywhere in the later drama performances.
Just like the variety show "Drama New Life", which just ended a while ago, it tries to let the audience understand the drama and enter the world of dramatists. Although the final number of broadcasts is not as good as other variety shows, the recognition in the hearts of the audience is far ahead. Perhaps drama is currently niche, and "drama-film" still has a threshold, but at present, does film aesthetics still need to pursue and "divorce" from drama?
The answer must be in the hearts of the audience, and "Eleventh Time" will be a good verification.
What do you think of the fusion of theatre and film?
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