(This article was originally produced by Sir Movie: dushetv)
Thousands of calls, today, we finally waited on the screen for "Fanghua".
Some people say that the best Feng Xiaogang movie.
Some say, too stuffy, too long, too far away.
And Feng Xiaogang himself said that "Fanghua" is my movie.
Feng Xiaogang is 59 years old this year, and if "Fanghua" is "his" movie, then it must reveal some of the words that Feng Xiaogang has hidden in the past.
These words may be niche, but they must come from the heart.
Feng Xiaogang's coordinate system has been reversed -- no longer facing the horizontal "x", but toward the longitudinal "y", which is also what he said, the first half of life down the river, the second half of life against the current.
This is not necessarily the climax of the audience, but it must be the gospel of Chinese cinema.
@Uncle Yun hasn't been around for a long time.
He was touched by "Fanghua" and he had something to say.
Text | Uncle Yun
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Jiang Wen has a widely circulated evaluation of Feng Xiaogang's words. He said: "A movie should be wine, even if it is only one sip, but it must be wine. The thing you shoot is grapes, very fresh grapes, and even frost hanging. Xiao Gang, you should make grapes into wine, not just be satisfied with making cup after cup of freshly squeezed grape juice. ”
Of course, Feng Xiaogang was not satisfied with making only grape juice, so "Fanghua" became wine.
This wine was the most powerful cup he had ever had in his shadow.
Note, how does the film show Liu Feng and He Xiaoping entering the literary troupe?
An immersive long shot —
The spacious compound, the lively rehearsal room, the high music, the youthful flesh, the full image of the times, accompanied by the movement of the handheld camera, it is easy for the audience to feel slightly drunk.
That's what made the audience take their first sip.
Whether it is from the early trailer or the feedback from the movie, everyone is impressed by the "sunny day" of the female soldiers of the cultural and labor troupe that is best rendered in the film.
In one word, beauty.
Taste, slightly sweet.
But I don't think the flavor of "Fanghua" is more than that.
Because the taste of wine is not only sweet, but sour, astringent, and even bitter.
The glass of wine of "Fanghua" is actually full of sour and bitter, and even the focus of the whole film is also sour and bitter.
The youth of the two protagonists of the film, Liu Feng and He Xiaoping, in the Cultural and Industrial Park, has actually been accompanied by cruelty.
He Xiaoping was discriminated against from the first day of joining the regiment until he left, Liu Feng at first seemed to be admired by everyone but no one really cared about him, and he also suffered a serious waist injury. Under the seemingly beautiful light and shadow, there are irrevocable high-pressure marks of the times everywhere.
Liu Feng left the regiment, and it was He Xiaoping, a mentally destroyed person, who took the initiative to care for this physically disabled person. Because He Xiaoping was crazy in the war, it was Liu Feng, who was physically disabled, to comfort her, a mentally disabled person.
When the tide of the reform era rolled over, these two lonely people could only snuggle and support each other.
These passages are both cruel and warm, but they best reflect the weight of time.
Thinking of the first scene of the film, it is two people talking and laughing, facing the back of the wind and rain full of hope for the future.
In the last long shot, the two survived from torture, and the front of the face full of bitterness is pulled out, and Fang hua has passed away and is dependent on each other.
The first sip of wine may be sweet, but the echo after the brewing of fate in time is complete.
As soon as the film opens with a voiceover, it is already implied that this is an old man's memory.
Why did this old man use the voice of a young girl's narrator? Because the end of the film says "Forgive me for not wanting you to see them grow old".
Everyone's memories of the past are not contradictory.
The so-called nostalgia for youth is because youth has passed away. The so-called looking back at Fanghua is also because Fanghua is not there.
So I prefer the "gone" and "not in" parts of the film.
Than how Xiaoping's last Fanghua is a solo dance on the grass in the dark night.
Her mind had gone "crazy", reason had disappeared, but what she saw and heard, her body led her, subconsciously and intuitively responding to music, responding to her youth in the most emotional way.
For example, Xiao Suizi bid farewell to her youth, it was on the truck driving in the dark night, she secretly opened the small box of the crush object, took out the love letter pressed inside, and took advantage of no one to tear up the pieces of paper and sprinkled it in the vast night.
Another example is Liu Feng, and there are many warriors like him, who have left their Fanghua on the battlefield forever. That long shot is proof of their stay in the world, including the willingness to sacrifice their arms and repeatedly pull out of the swamp of comrades who are actually hopeless.
None of these clips have any dialogue, only cinematic language, or romance, or sadness, or realistic descriptions of their "passing" and "absence".
All kinds of long shots, like the dance between the camera and the characters, run through the whole film.
At first, it was the brisk dance of youth, the low return dance when depressed, the hell dance of the battlefield, the parting dance of the breakup, the angry dance of the veterans and the joint defense team, until the final calm departure dance.
This is the movie.
Akira Kurosawa said a passage: "At the end of "Rhapsody in August", chasing his mother-in-law in the rain, when the sun umbrella blew over, everyone cried. Why I cried, I can't explain. All in all, this is the movie, the place that can be called the movie. ”
All directors actually want to find a place in their work that can be called a movie.
This is not something that can be done through a simple sense of form, it requires a lot of emotion and narrative preparation, and then in the most critical places, it is presented in a clever and direct way.
This is the key to making a good wine. And time is the best seasoning.
But the problem with wine is that it's not for everyone.
The wine is too strong and aggressive. Just like Jiang Wen's films, the wine-flavored "The Sun Also Rises" and "One Step Away" are all works of word-of-mouth differentiation.
The praises of youth in "Fanghua", the nostalgia for the era of the literary and labor troupe, and the attitude toward war are all too obvious and full, and even some lack of restraint incite emotion. For viewers who are not good at this taste, it may be difficult to swallow and cannot be substituted.
The way of scattering stories will also make the group portrait characters have some confusion in perspective and the focus is not prominent.
Young audiences may not be able to fully understand that the personal tragedies of that generation basically belong to the tragedies of the times.
At the scene where the uncle was watching the movie, some of the old ladies and aunts of the literary troupe could not cry, which was their common memory.
There are also some young people who are bored playing with their mobile phones.
The movie "Fanghua" was not optimistic about its sales at the beginning, because it was not a popcorn blockbuster that mainstream moviegoers liked.
Therefore, it is valuable, not only because of the authenticity of the production, but also because of the sincerity of the attitude.
After all, a movie can't just be made for people in the present, it should be made for the past, for people who have passed away. Because from the invention of film, one of the greatest functions is to record — that is, to remember.
That generation deserves and deserves to be remembered, whether you like it or not.
Because sooner or later, you will also become the elderly of your parents' generation. Your youth will also be laughed at as old earth and dog blood.
But that's your fanghua.
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