A tree tree
[Editor's note]: This is a nostalgic theater.
I still vividly remember July 2001, when news of Beijing's successful bid to host the 2008 Olympics had just come on live television. After experiencing the failure of the previous bid, the efforts of hundreds of millions of us have finally been recognized and are invaluable. This great sense of glory and pride made the whole country rejoice and stir. News said 400,000 people marched to Tiananmen Square to celebrate that day.
It was in this atmosphere that the school played the newly released "Shaolin Football" in the auditorium for the first time in the world. That's how I first saw the film.
This somewhat memorable relationship can roughly show that "Shaolin Football" was once a film with extraordinary social significance. In fact, at the Hong Kong Film Awards the following year, it won seven awards such as Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Supporting Actor, which is not a huge creation in art, but for the Hong Kong film market that has declined as a whole around 2000, it is an exciting shot in the arm.
Moreover, this is the first time that Stephen Chow has fully controlled the film.
Poster of Junior Soccer
In fact, zhou Xingchi, as an actor, has become a guarantee for the market since the 90s of the last century. With the success of a series of box office explosion works such as "Gamble Saint" and "Truant Weilong", the status of star film superstars has become increasingly clear. In addition to the role of actor, he is not willing to be only a performer, and gradually enters the field of directing, increasingly adding creative opinions to the film production process.
We have no way of knowing exactly how the specific star master has influenced the direction of each film. Only from the credits, we can see that from 1994, "Domestic Lingling Paint", Zhou Xingchi and director Li Lizhi began to sign as directors, and then the two joined hands to create the well-known "God Eater" and "King of Comedy". In addition, there is also the "Great Inner Secret Agent Zero Zero Hair" co-directed with Gu Dezhao.
Li Lizhi, not only directed, but also appeared in many comedies. Together with Stephen Chow, he has created a number of well-received films. There are rumors that during the guidance of "Shaolin Football", Zhou Xingchi scolded Li Lizhi on the set, causing the two to break up unhappily... In fact, the two did not cooperate anymore.
Li Lizhi should be regarded as the director who has the greatest influence on Zhou Xingchi's artistic creation. Although his style is not as postmodern and compassionate as Liu Zhenwei's Journey to the West, he is good at adding delicate emotional expression to funny bridges. The above three films co-created by him and Stephen Chow all have touching and profound emotional passages for men and women. And his "Tang Bohu Dian Qiu Xiang" and "The King of Destruction" as a director have also become the representative works of Xingye over the years. At the same time, these films also added a rather affectionate and helpless color to Chow Sing-chi's original crazy and exaggerated comedy style. It can be said that it is the influence of Li Lizhi that makes Zhou Xingchi unconsciously push his performance style to maturity.
From "The King of Comedy" to "Shaolin Football", Stephen Chow's performance style has become more and more low-key. It is a manifestation of the increasing maturity of acting.
The style of "Shaolin Football" and the previous "King of Comedy" is obviously different, which can be seen as Stephen Chow finally got rid of the influence of the directors he had worked with and began to pursue the creative direction he wanted.
This creative direction also basically ran through his next 20 years: it was roughly based on simple story conception, coupled with the design of martial arts actions and computer special effects, which constituted the business model of blockbusters; and from the core of each scene, he directed all actors to complete highly stylized comedy performances, forming a unique rhythm of "nonsense comedy".
In terms of business model, Stephen Chow's films have always had selling points. As the line in "Shaolin Soccer" says: "Kung Fu plus football, there must be a head."
The structure of the whole film is actually very simple, it is the story of a group of retired Shaolin martial monks playing football. They go through the stages of "reuniting to form a team - winning every victory - encountering a strong player - finally winning the championship", which is nothing more than a common pattern in sports films. This kind of story that can be understood by the whole world, coupled with the "kung fu" element that is quite admired by Westerners, and the bonus of computer special effects in that year, make this film the first film in which Stephen Chow can gain mainstream recognition in the Western world. Even a decade later, in 2011, Time Magazine's "25 Best Sports Films of the Year" list won a place for this film.
For a comedian who mainly relies on expression action, nonsensical lines, and rhythmic recitation to create laughter, the language barrier was originally the biggest obstacle for him to go overseas, but Stephen Chow's first film overcame these difficulties. It was a great success. It was the success of "Shaolin Soccer" that won the favor of Columbia Pictures in the United States, which gave Zhou Xingchi greater investment and created the later "Kung Fu".
The crew of "Shaolin Soccer"
In fact, such success is also inseparable from Zhou Xingchi's careful planning in advance as a film producer. In order for the film to achieve the greatest commercial success, he chose the element of "Shaolin Kung Fu", which was originally a selling point that was also quite topical in the mainland region. The choice of Zhao Wei, who has just become popular with "Huan Zhu Gege", as the heroine, is also out of the maximum box office consideration.
Even in the publicity period that year, it was also rumored that Zhou Xingchihai selected an unknown passerby, and the mainland girl Li Hui played the heroine. Including filming in the mainland, there are important filming scenes outside Shanghai Plaza 66 and other news. However, when the film was actually released, it was found that this audition gimmick earlier than "Super Girl" was basically just a 5-second shot that appeared at the end of the film.
The so-called "Star Girl" with a huge momentum has only a few shots in the end. It's also a kind of commercial propaganda.
The film's explanation for this was once promoted as actress Li Hui was originally the first heroine, but problems such as acting skills caused her to only appear as a group performance in the end. The actress, who had never proved her strength, then played a major role in "Young Bao Qingtian 2", and then basically disappeared.
For the various practices of Star Ye in the commercial aspects of the film, we are not in a position to comment more. It can only be said that many times his cooperation with investors is not particularly pleasant, and often disputes will be settled with war of words or even direct lawsuits afterwards. And these news, combined with his relationship with the actors who cooperate in filming, are not handled so properly, it is difficult to say that there is no problem with the way he runs the film.
Among them, there may be no one else who can understand it more clearly except for the parties. It's just that no matter who it was, I'm afraid I wouldn't have expected that "Shaolin Football" was actually the last cooperation between Zhou Xingchi and golden partner Wu Mengda...
Uncle Da has passed away, and his last screen photo with Xingye remained in "Shaolin Football". It's a pity for fans who love them...
Artistically, "Shaolin Soccer", as director Stephen Chow's debut, presents some differences from his previous films. Because the theme is team combat, Zhou Xingchi began to consciously or unconsciously use a large number of supporting roles that he promoted, including Tian Qiwen, Lin Zicong, Chen Guokun, etc., as well as the "sauce explosion" that was deleted when it was released in the mainland. The addition of these personnel has brought a lot of lively and fresh elements to the film, so that the role of the protagonist Stephen Chow himself has been deliberately diluted. It seems that from this point on, he was very resistant to continuing to play the role of pretending to be crazy and stupid in front of the screen, and instead sought a more restrained performance style. He concentrated his creative energy behind the monitor, and as a director, he began to copy countless copies of the performance of "Zhou Xingchi" from the supporting characters. Even Zhao Wei was forced to put on an incomparably ugly image to help complete the tragic and joyful mood of the nonsense comedy.
Of all these supporting roles, only Uncle Da may still retain his own acting style. He continues to play the role of an "unreliable elder" in the previous twenty years of cooperation with Zhou Xingchi, sometimes full of indifference, sometimes serious reprimand, with an old naughty boy mentality that sees through life, leading the role played by Zhou Xingchi to the road of final maturity.
Stills from Shaolin Soccer
Whether it is the director's obvious control of the overall performance style of the film, or the attempt to caricature the computer special effects, it shows Chow Xingchi's own pursuit of a certain "interesting" and "fun" pursuit of the film. The films he directed himself are not complicated, and they all seem to embody a certain kind of children's playfulness. However, sometimes because it is too simple, it may not be like "The King of Comedy" and "Journey to the West", which is worth watching repeatedly and experiencing life.
However, "Shaolin Soccer" still has some highlights of social experience compared to his subsequent works. The protagonist hopes to find the process of recovering the master brother, like an unsuccessful classmate association, the ideal of life is exhausted, and the world is cold and cold. Simply talking about feelings seems to be not enough for everyone to reunite, but in the end, all the partners are still coming, saying that the protagonist has awakened their ideals or not, saying that they are touched by love and righteousness, and the middle-aged people who have done nothing have decided to get together and let go, which is still a sad and inspirational bridge section that audiences around the world can see.
However, this bright spot may already be the last artistic light of Xingye.
This line is somewhat like an empty slogan for MLM mentors. But Stephen Chow's films can always bring beauty to the audience, and it seems that small people can really achieve salted fish turning.
Years later, if the audience mentions Stephen Chow again, what else can we remember?
Maybe it's not the nonsense performance of the founding school, or the influence of decades of creation and subsequent imitators on the comedic style of the Chinese film industry, but perhaps the truly touching parts of his film — a self-deprecating compassion for the fate of small people.
No one is more heartfelt than the little character played by Stephen Chow. These characters are always at the bottom of being ridiculed by society, and no matter how hard they try, the results seem to be ridiculous. Even when they have the opportunity to change their destiny, when they climb up the slightest ladder, they will make the most merciless mockery of their old friends. These little people, only when they really see through the impermanence of the world, will they understand that human dignity does not come from clinging to the powerful or the position of money, but from overcoming the small self in the heart, and can they gain really powerful power.
The profound self-deprecation and display of the psychology of the underlying characters is the part of Stephen Chow's art that can really touch the audience. It seems to be exaggerated, but in fact, the essence is real life.
Zhao Wei played Amei in the film, and the exaggerated and rough makeup style could not make people feel funny. There is also a sadness that small people have empty wills, but they are powerless to change their fate. Associated with the "dream of salted fish", it is quite a reality.
This "Shaolin Soccer" is precisely because of this touching spiritual core, and it is worth the opportunity to see it again. Unfortunately, most of the films directed by Stephen Chow in the next 20 years lack the desire to watch again.
This issue is edited by Shan Zou