In the recent cinema, there is a domestic animation film that has attracted much attention.
This animated film was filmed 38 years ago and produced by Shanghai Fine Arts Film Factory.
In the history of Chinese animation, Shanghai Meiyi Film Studio is a monument that can be recorded in the annals of history.
Since its official establishment in 1957, the studio has been established for more than 60 years, contracting the childhood memories of generations of Chinese people.
One of the major contributions of meiyi studio in the history of animation film is to make the "Chinese school" animation famous in the world, and the animated film "Tianshu Qitan", completed in 1983, is undoubtedly another artistic peak of Meiyi Studio in the 1980s.
The film is the second animated feature film in the history of the Studio to last more than one hour (before that, only one animated feature film of "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" lasted more than an hour), but for various reasons, this animated feature film, which was originally prepared for the theater, did not enter the theater that year, and was only broadcast on TV.
Now, after 38 years, the 4k restored version of "Tianshu Qitan" can enter the theater screening, which undoubtedly makes many audiences who grew up watching the works of the Us Film Studio have a chance to relive their childhood memories and make up for the movie tickets that have been owed for many years.
"Heavenly Book"
the legend of sealed book
As an animated film, "Tianshu Qitan" represents the honor and glory of domestic animation in that year.
Just like the behind-the-scenes birth process of many film history classics, it is a film history legend in itself. "Tianshu Qitan" is no exception, and the film can be called the strongest lineup in the history of domestic animation from the front of the stage to the backstage.
The origin of the film was when the British BBC TELEVISION proposed to cooperate with the American Film Studio and planned to cooperate in the production of an animated film. However, at that time, the Chinese team did not recognize the four-unlike script given by the British screenwriter, so before the cooperation, they proposed that the US film studio re-create the script.
In the original script of the British side, the story prototype is taken from the "Biography of Ping Demon", and the screenwriter recreates the script on this basis, and many plots can almost be found in traditional Chinese folk tales. The film began to be screenwritten in 1980, but due to various reasons, the co-production could not be completed, so it became an independent project of the American Film Studio.
At that time, the Studio attached great importance to this film, and gathered many of the top animation filmmakers in China at that time to join behind the scenes:
Director Qian Yunda ("Little Sister of the Prairie Hero", "The Adventures of the Dirty King") and Wang Shuchen ("Nezha Noisy Sea", "Landscape and Water"), screenwriter Bao Lei is a famous children's literature writer, styling design Ke Ming ("Zhang Fei Zhengua", "Cao Chong Xiang"), art design Mark Xuan ("Nezha Noisy Sea", "Three Monks"), the dubbing lineup includes Ding Jianhua, Bi Ke, Tong Zirong, Yu Ding and other famous dubbing performance artists.
It is worth mentioning that there is also a hidden big coffee behind the scenes of the film: the film's artist is lou Ye, the future sixth-generation director.
In addition to the strong team behind the scenes, the success of "Tianshu Qitan" mainly comes from two aspects:
The storyline is not low and has a profound meaning, as well as the elegant and quaint traditional aesthetic of the Oriental way.
The story of "Tianshu Qitan" is adapted from the classical masterpiece "The Legend of Ping Demon", but in fact, the plot of the film has little to do with the original work, and can basically be seen as the original of the screenwriter. What is amazing is that the film not only shows a fantastic mythical world, but also uses interesting and connotative plot sections to outline and depict a picture of human beings.
The story tells that Yuan Gong, a deacon of the "Secretary Cabinet" of the Heavenly Palace, took advantage of the fact that the Jade Emperor went to Yaochi to gather, knocked open the stone niche door, privately took the Heavenly Book, and carved the text of the Heavenly Book on the stone wall of the Baiyun Cave of Yunmeng Mountain, hoping to teach it to the next generation of people.
Yuan Gong violated the Heavenly Rules for leaking the Heavenly Opportunity, and the Jade Emperor punished him to guard the Shibi Heavenly Book for life.
Unexpectedly, the Book of Heaven was stolen by three fox spirits, and after the fox cultivated the spell, it transformed into a human form and endangered the people everywhere.
One day, Yuan Gong stepped on the clouds and patrolled the mountains, encountered a crane on the road, the crane gave birth to an egg, Yuan used a spell to transform the crane egg into a human form, named egg raw.
In order to spread the Book of Heaven to the world, he instructed Egg Sheng to wait for the incense burner at the mouth of baiyun Cave to raise colorful smoke, bring white paper, and expand the Heavenly Book on the stone wall of the cave, and Egg Sheng expanded the Book of Heaven according to Yuan Gong's instructions.
Yuan Gong also instructed egg students to study hard and practice diligently and use the Book of Heaven for the benefit of the people.
Egg Sheng inherited Yuan Gong's orders, studied the Book of Heaven, cured locusts and disaster relief, and eliminated harm for the people.
However, the three fox spirits who are making waves in the human world collude with the government and harm the people. Egg Sheng chased after the Heavenly Book and fought with the fox spirit many times.
When Egg Sheng and the Fox Spirit competed for the Heavenly Book, Yuan Gong arrived, he withdrew the Heavenly Book, took out the white stone mirror from his arms, and crushed the Fox Essence to death under the Yunmeng Mountain.
Yuan Gong, anticipating that he would not be able to escape the Heavenly Court's legal net, handed the Heavenly Book to Egg Sheng and instructed him to quickly remember the heavenly book in his heart. Then Yuan used a divine fire to burn the Heavenly Book to the end.
Suddenly, thunder and lightning were exchanged, and the Jade Emperor issued a holy decree to take Yuan Gong back to the Heavenly Court for questioning
If you look at it from the current point of view, the story of "Heavenly Book" is actually very adult.
At the end of the story, the good guys don't necessarily have good rewards, and the villains are not simply faces.
The film sets up a chaotic world where gods, people, and demons coexist, and Yuan Gong, a god from the Heavenly Court, steals the Heavenly Book privately and wants to pass it on to the next generation of human beings, so Yuan Gong, who intends to benefit mankind, is called punished.
Yuan Gong pursues "Heavenly Dao Selflessness" and hopes to give the next generation the opportunity to learn immortality. He was a rebel against the order of the heavenly court, a traditional Confucian concept of martyrdom, and from a modern point of view, Yuan Gong is similar to the image of Prometheus, the fire robber in ancient Greek mythology.
The protagonist's egg is hatched from the egg of the crane, which metaphorically refers to his noble origin. The egg born in human form was not only educated by Yuan Gong, but also favored by an old woman at birth, so after learning the Heavenly Book spell, Egg Sheng inherited the life concept of Yuan Gong, who was also a teacher and father, and planned to use the Heavenly Book to benefit the world.
The enemies that Egg Sheng encounters in the human world are three fox spirits, who are also pregnant with the Heavenly Book Spell, but they use spells to endanger the human world, symbolizing the greedy desires of the human world. The fox mother is cunning and sinister, good at demagogy; the fox girl is charming and charming, often deceiving people with beauty; the fox is stupid and blindly obeyed, following the fox mother and fox girl to help and abuse, and the evil of the three foxes highlights the innocence of the protagonist's egg.
In addition to the fox demon that stirs up trouble, the human figure in the movie is also very impressive. The old monk in the temple is a hypocrite with a straight face, the county order and the prefectural yin as a parent official are the image of a greedy and lustful villain, while the little emperor of the dynasty is a pampered and wayward bear child. These human characters are ignorant and greedy, and the heavenly book in the story is like a mirror for insight into the truth, making them reveal their original form one by one.
And some of the plot design of "Heavenly Book" is also quite meaningful. For example, the county grandfather grabbed a cornucopia, a steady stream of gold and silver treasures, the result of his father fell, one after another father came out to quarrel, and finally ate the insatiable consequences of self-indulgence.
The whole film does not use a particularly complex story structure, nor does it have a grand scene, but the narrative of the whole film is extremely smooth, the plot is compact, the twists and turns are vivid, and it is rare that the choreographer does not deliberately preach, but uses solid and vivid characters and plots to silently display the theme in the eyes of the audience and leave it for the audience to think.
Regarding the aesthetics of the film, "Tianshu Qitan" is another high-level masterpiece of Chinese school animation, and the film also concentrates on the unique animation aesthetic concept of the Chinese school, that is, the distinct traditional folk style elements, which can be summarized as an authentic Chinese style classical aesthetics.
This aesthetic concept can be seen everywhere in the film, such as:
The story involves a lot of traditional folklore and oriental fairy culture, and many plots have traditional literati-style interest and blank space;
The art style also uses a large number of traditional folk elements, such as faces in Peking Opera, paper-cutting, door gods, mud dolls and other elements;
The scene composition draws on classical garden architecture and splashed ink landscape paintings, uses the pen to paint the cultural landscape with heavy colors, and paints the natural landscape with light and elegant ink, showing the freehand aesthetics of Chinese painting to the fullest.
It can be said that the picture of each frame of the whole film is very elaborate, showing ingenuity from the details.
And this is the reason why "Tianshu Qitan", as an animation born 38 years ago, can still be praised.
Today's re-screening of "Tianshu Qitan" is a 4K HD restoration of the film's screen with new technology.
In the past, because of the complex production process, long shooting cycle, the older generation of animation artists limited creative conditions, the birth of animation needs to go through pencil drafts, line drawing, coloring by number, foreground background fitting, camera shooting and other cumbersome processes, each shot to draw dozens of pieces of paper, thousands of shots, need tens of thousands of pieces of paper to draw.
The older generation of animation artists have used patience and perseverance to complete this vast project with one stroke and one stroke.
More than thirty years later, in the main creators of "Tianshu Qitan" that year, director and screenwriter Wang Shuchen, screenwriter Bao Lei, animation stylist Ke Ming, composer Wu Yingju, dubbing artist Bi Ke and Shang Hua have all passed away, and one of the directors, Qian Yunda, is now over ninety years old.
As a treasure of domestic animation, the restored version of "Tianshu Qitan" has a new look from sound to picture on the basis of maintaining the essence of the original film, which is not only a promotion of the Chinese school of animation that once stunned the world film world, but also a tribute to the older generation of animation artists.