Four years ago, Zhang Dalei won the Best Feature Film Award at the 53rd Golden Horse Awards in 2016 with his debut film "August", which was a blockbuster.
He creates films in his own unique style, good at capturing the details of life, long shots of life showing his memories of the past, and the age-rich music in the film is also a highlight of his films.
"Blue Train" is Zhang Dalei's second full-length work, starring Liang Jingdong and Haiqing. From the film's completion in 2018 to the shortlisting for the main competition unit of the 4th Pingyao International Film Festival" "Hidden Dragon" unit, some people said that "this blue train is finally going to come out".
Since the ticket was issued, "Blue Train" is the first film to sell out, and many fans and friends have a hard time getting a ticket.
This time, he still describes Zhang Dalei's "hometown" in his heart, telling a past story in the fictional small city of "Kucun" at the end of the 20th century.
The film "suddenly" breaks into the audience's character behavior without background explanation, and there are so many long shots that the amount of information is too small. After the premiere in Pingyao, the audience's evaluation was mixed.
In this regard, Bajie talked with director Zhang Dalei and listened to him tell the characters and details in the story, as well as his thoughts on the mixed praise and criticism of the film.
"Think about what each of them looks like?"
The origin of "Blue Train" is that Guo Jialiang, a classmate who is also a director, first provided ideas to Zhang Dalei. "The earliest thing was that he (Guo Jialiang) wanted to make a genre film about gangsters that had a grudge but was very crisp and not too long, and didn't want to make it too complicated." Zhang Dalei said.
The original title was not "Blue Train", it was called "One Way". "There is a character of Ma Biao in 'One Way', mainly about how he returned to his hometown, a city on the border between China and Russia, and then how to re-enter society and find a job, but in the end he also met the enemy family again."
For Zhang Dalei, "Blue Train" is completely interested and loved by the characters. More than half an hour of conversation, discussing "people" basically took up all the time.
"This is someone I've always been interested in, and I like this kind of person. Some are stupid, some are too paranoid, some are very childlike, belong to the kind of people who will have a very golden part of their hearts, but they are easy to lose. ”
Old Ma is a man with a story. 20 years ago, he formed a relationship with a gangster and went to prison. Released from prison, he wants to get his former girlfriend and feelings back. But after 20 years of vacuum, he was more like a cold winter. Zhang Dalei said that one criterion for the role of lao ma is "like a piece of bacon dried in winter" or "like frozen meat taken out of a cold store.".
On the basis of the protagonist Ma Biao, Zhang Dalei found many friends for Lao Ma and established the image of a woman selling bread, a cowardly policeman Xiao Su, a childlike Xiao Wei, and Xiao Wei's girlfriend Xi Qian. They were people who resembled lao ma and put them together in a city called "Ku Village".
Later, Zhang Dalei talked about the woman who sold bread played by Haiqing. She is a hurt, less trusted and secure, relatively closed woman.
Xiao Su is different, living in unreal fantasies. "I myself don't want conflict between people. I hope that everyone is like the cartoon of "Blue Train", whether it is a mouse or a fox, or a crocodile, in the end, they can actually find a common point. ”
But Xiao Su is actually a failed and incompetent policeman. "The police are in order, and they may even use extreme methods to stop the violations, but he does not." His identities with Lao Ma are actually opposites, but they have become friends, which is very interesting. ”
If it were not for the reason of time, Zhang Dalei would carefully recall each character one by one.
"About the Soviet Union, it is a memory of my childhood"
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Zhang Dalei was 9 years old. About the Soviet Union, left in his childhood memories. "All my so-called plots are actually brought to me by the people around me before, and this is also the space of my life that brings me."
Zhang Dalei grew up in the courtyard of the Inner Mongolia Film Factory, and since he was a child, he has been close to movies, and it is easy to hear Soviet songs and hear adults chatting about Soviet movies and literature.
"We are not far from the Soviet Union. Mongolia, again under Soviet influence, is very similar. We also see Soviet cartoons locally, and all this information is in my impression. ”
"The culture of the Soviet Union, it has a place that attracts me, it is very sad, unlike Northern Europe, it is romantic sadness."
When he was a child, this atmosphere often made Zhang Dalei feel it, but at that time he couldn't tell what this feeling was. As he grew up, he saw the reason little by little.
"Like Russian music, which is basically music in minor keys, it sounds very sad, but their rhythm and lyrics are full of some hope, or something high-spirited. I didn't realize this until I went to Russia. ”
In "Blue Train", Zhang Dalei expresses his inner "hometown" Kucun: huge spray paintings of astronauts, children can play rocket models on the side of the road, and reinforced concrete left by industrialization.
Khabarovsk looks like this.
"The city is actually under construction, but it has this area, basically there is not much change, that is, backward area, there is the style of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in the past, and there are very local things."
The renamed Blue Train is derived from the Soviet cartoon Cebrashka, which represents a symbol of getting along.
As Zhang Dalei said at the press conference: "This song is the reason why I created this film is very important. The sense of getting along in "Blue Train" belongs to the past, and the train is gone. The English title 'Stars Await Us' is waiting for us, and it is a feeling of hope. Two titles, one is Snow and One is Hope. ”
"If I put 'Blue Train' together with the previous 'August', 'August' may be my real hometown." It happened in a particularly specific location, possibly in Inner Mongolia or a small city in the northwest. The space of "Blue Train", I think it is called 'Kucun', not the Soviet Union, not China, it exists in a unique space. I think it is also my hometown, then this hometown may not be the real country, but the image of the heart. ”
During the filming of "Blue Train", just in time for Russia's presidential election, many scenes were not allowed to enter, let alone shoot. In this description, Zhang Dalei said regret twice before and after. After telling the story, the word to describe "regret" changed from "some" to "very".
"Now we're seeing more of a space where old horses live, and there are a couple of specific spaces. We were meant to have a panoramic space for the city, which is a pity. ”
"I will continue to create according to my own rhythm"
For the mixed evaluation after the premiere of this year's Pingyao International Film Festival, Zhang Dalei sincerely said that he had reflected: "Speaking from the creative point of view, in fact, I have been thinking about the problems that occurred in this shooting, including the entire production of the film. ”
He believes that the disadvantage is that there are some places in the middle that do not handle the rhythm well. From a creative point of view, the rhythm was not handled well, or it could be expressed in another way, which was what he later thought.
When it comes to the amount of information or the sense of lag and fatigue brought about by long shots, Zhang Dalei feels that this is not its problem. He explains:
"I just talked about this movie, I always follow the context of the characters, and even the reasons for the relationship between most of the characters are omitted, and the cause and effect are not talked about. Of course, the script is clear to us, but there is no cause and effect presented, so it is not a complete narrative in the standard sense. So when people are in a certain state, such as walking in the snow, sometimes the woman's static state, may make everyone feel that this is a lack of information. Because we don't explain causation when we look at it. ”
"There will also be another feeling, which is also my personal feeling. After watching it, some viewers feel the same as me, he entered the "Ku Village", he can feel the characters and causes passing, so he will enjoy the characters he sees. This may have been my original intention, and it is also the last way I have left out when I make editing adjustments. ”
Zhang Dalei finally concluded: "Of course, there are problems, some places are indeed not well done, but this idea I think is uncertain. ”
Although after the Golden Horse Award for Best Film "August", Zhang Dalei admitted frankly: "The pressure of creation is indeed no. ”
So far, Zhang Dalei has written a lot of scripts, including the separate stories of Xiao Wei and Xi Qian in "Blue Train". As for the creative style, he said: "It is actually more mixed, the style or presentation style of "August", but it is easier than "August". ”
In the future, Zhang Dalei will still focus on specific ideas and creative considerations, mainly around this film or a development direction after this film.
"All I can say is that I continue to want to shoot something, according to my own rhythm, according to what I like, and I don't particularly care about the judgment of others." 」
Zhang Dalei came to the Pingyao Film Exhibition this time on crutches. He said of his accidental leg drop: "When I was playing with my son, I bumped into it, and that's it. ”
At the end of the conversation, he said that his son touched and touched him, and found that the child especially loved to perform and was very dramatic.
Editor-in-Charge: Timmy
Interview, author: Luo Yuting