The golden rooster awards for Chinese cinema, an annual film event, kicked off in November, and the list of nominees was announced in the middle of the month.
As we all know, the nominees for the Golden Rooster Awards are mainly mainland films and filmmakers, but in fact, over the years, Hong Kong and Taiwan works and filmmakers have often appeared on the list.
This year's Best Director Award has two Hong Kong people nominated, one is Chen Kexin, an important figure in the Chinese film industry who directed the 2020 bloody work "Win the Championship", and the other is the film "Young You", who directed the word-of-mouth and box office film "Young You", he is Zeng Guoxiang.
Coincidentally, the person who brought Zeng Guoxiang into the film industry and taught him to make movies happened to be Chen Kexin.
And Chen Kexin was able to shoot his debut film "A Tale of Two Cities" was an opportunity given by Zeng Guoxiang's father, Zeng Zhiwei.
The connections of the "second generation of stars" are enviable, but Zeng Zhiwei's help to children only stops here, as for how to shoot and find who to invest, these are the problems that Zeng Guoxiang himself has to think about and deal with.
From 2001 to the present, Zeng Guoxiang has made a total of six films, on the one hand, because of his excellence in film creation, on the other hand, because he has to do it himself from the preparation of the film to the release.
Of course, these times are not all spent on film creation, and many people do not know that Zeng Guoxiang has actually been an actor for more than ten years.
The marginal role of the mixed-up B-grade film, familiar with the psychology of the actor
Zeng Guoxiang once joked in an interview that he did not look like his father Zeng Zhiwei.
Although it is a joke, it is undeniable that Zeng Zhiwei's appearance has indeed caused great restrictions on him, which has made him play some funny, ghost horses and even greasy and obscene roles for many years.
This made Zeng Guoxiang as a child feel that he could not bear to look at it directly.
However, even so, Zeng Zhiwei did not give up making efforts and breakthroughs.
In 1992, he played a small character with a heavy heart in Chen Kexin's debut film "A Tale of Two Cities", and his performance style was also very different from before, without any funny and witty.
The film also allowed Zeng Zhiwei to win the first film emperor in his life, and contributed the classic line:"The biggest failure of my life is to fall in love with the sea, which makes me unable to be down-to-earth." ”
Perhaps under the influence of his father, "breakthrough" has also become a major feature of his son Zeng Guoxiang's performance and director.
Unlike his father, Zeng Guoxiang's appearance and height are quite in line with the standards of actors in the public aesthetic, and he also has a bit of "pimple" in the angular, so he does not have the sense of esight of a righteous male protagonist.
So most of the roles he plays are supporting roles, and they are usually some characters on the fringes of society.
For example, the greasy youth in "Ghost Love Letters", the blind prostitute in "Golden Rooster", the soft rice man in "囡囡"... There is also a series of, wasted characters.
These films are not mainstream films, that is, what everyone usually calls b-grade films.
It wasn't until 2016 that he first became the male lead in the movie "Lao Kasa", where he played the helplessness of a decadent young man who was accidentally involved in a robbery, and the film's black humor style was also very interesting.
His performance career of more than ten years has given Zeng Guoxiang a very deep understanding of the actor industry, and he clearly knows what actors need and fear, which also plays a crucial role in his later tuning and guiding the performance of actors.
In the filming of "Young You", because the heroine Zhou Dongyu is not a skilled actor, she originally had the opposite personality and the role, and she sometimes could not find a state in the face of more than a dozen crying scenes, at which time Zeng Guoxiang would pause filming and then walk next to her to tell her her story and let her better enter the play.
When it comes to "breakthroughs", Zeng Guoxiang also dares to make his film actors change their faces.
For example, Zhou Dongyu, most of the roles she played earlier were pure and lovely, but in "July and Ansheng", Zeng Guoxiang let her turn into a rebellious Andeng, and in "Young You", he let her put away her emotions and play the introverted Chen Nian.
There is also a youth idol Yi Yan Qianxi, in "Young You", the shape alone has completely broken through the scope of "idol", the standard flat head, dark skin, at the beginning of seeing the trailer Many people can't believe that it is Yi Qianxi.
Chen Kexin: Zeng Guoxiang's film introductory master
In fact, as early as 2000, Zeng Guoxiang went to Chen Kexin to study under the introduction of his father Zeng Zhiwei.
However, the son of the big guy did not have any preferential treatment, and Zeng Guoxiang played around Chen Kexin for two years, serving tea, pouring water, running errands, and doing everything.
In the third year, Chen Kexin let him edit the mv, and the first time he did the scene was in the 2002 movie "Three Changes Homecoming".
These three years are a learning opportunity for him that is worth remembering for a lifetime.
Zeng Guoxiang admitted that Chen Kexin's serious attitude to the film made him very admirable, and he would participate in the entire process of film production from beginning to end. In addition, what moved him the most was the communication between director Chen Kexin and the actors, who could be delicate enough to suggest when the actors would cry and when they would shed tears.
Of course, Chen Kexin's influence on Zeng Guoxiang is far more than that.
As one of the first directors to go north after the cepa agreement was signed in 2003, Chen Kexin's sensitivity to the potential of the mainland film market is significantly better than that of many filmmakers.
Zeng Guoxiang also directed several films such as "Lover's Whisper" and "The Last Night", and in 2015, he went north to shoot the film "July and Ansheng", which gave birth to the Golden Horse Double Film.
By the time of 2019's "Young You", Zeng Guoxiang is obviously very familiar with the operation mode of mainland and Hong Kong co-productions. Both films have the participation of Chen Kexin, although it is a work independently directed by Zeng Guoxiang, but it is more or less influenced by the introductory master.
Chen Kexin once lamented that I watched him as a director next to him (Zeng Guoxiang), just like his father watched me on the first day as a director.
The humanity and social concerns of the film
Zeng Guoxiang has a long history of love for movies, but his major in university is sociology, in addition, he also majored in psychology, history, political science and other disciplines.
These specific knowledge and learning experiences also make him more delicate in portraying and dissecting human nature and emotions, and also makes him form the habit of thinking about society and reality.
Therefore, his works often focus on various issues in people's inner world and society, such as the transformation of An Sheng and July's outlook on life, and the campus violence encountered by Chen Nian and Xiao Bei.
In the context of the flood of youth films in 2016 and the quality of criticism, Zeng Guoxiang's "July and Ansheng" was not expected at first, especially Annie Baby's original novel has been criticized as a work of dog blood, so many people have speculated that this is estimated to be another bad film.
However, the film has won acclaim for its clear and brisk pace, clear and natural narrative style, many reversals of the ending setting and careful details, and the name Zeng Guoxiang has also entered the vision of mainland audiences for the first time.
Because he likes to explore the psychological and emotional world of people, when portraying the characters of the film, Zeng Guoxiang said that July and Ansheng are not two people, but two sides of one person.
Therefore, the focus of this film is to analyze the two sides of people, and does not spend too much ink on the two heroines' temperament and the dog blood scene of tearing each other, so that the audience can experience a person's inner conflict and self-reconciliation.
When it came to the movie "Young You", Zeng Guoxiang focused on the problem of school bullying.
As a Hong Kong director, Tsang is very concerned about the authenticity of shooting the daily life of mainland students in their senior year, and personally went to the examination room to capture a lot of materials when the college entrance examination was in progress.
In addition, Zeng Guoxiang often gave personal demonstrations for the actors on the set, such as rolling down the stairs without any protective measures, running wild on the street, and slapping himself hard...
Therefore, in the end, the film showed the audience the most real school violence incident, in addition, Zeng Guoxiang also stood in a grander social perspective to think about the causes of violence, such as the education system, the original family and other factors, which made the film "Young You" more critical and thinking value.
Although zeng Guoxiang's two works currently well known to the public belong to the "youth film" genre, his pattern is obviously not limited to the traditional theme of youth pain, he always insists on exploring complex human nature and human emotions, while not forgetting to reflect on the relationship between people and the surrounding society.
Such a creative concept also allowed him to break through the limitations of the region, and his works have been recognized and supported by the two sides of the strait and three places in a broad sense, and in this year's Golden Rooster Awards, "Young You" has won a total of ten award nominations including best director, best actor and actress, and best supporting actor and actress.
Zeng Guoxiang has been in the industry for twenty years, and he has his own thinking and achievements in directing and acting, but he has also faced many doubts for a long time.
When he first entered the industry, the title of "Son of Zeng Zhiwei" often bothered him, and he once said angrily: You can say that I did not shoot well, you can say that I acted badly, I did not mind. But you say I rely on my dad, I'm really going to get angry!
Now that he has independently directed "July and Ansheng" and "Young You", two films with very good reputation and box office, the phrase "the scene is not well filmed" is obviously not true.
Therefore, works and achievements are always the best proof of breaking prejudices.
The final winners of the Golden Rooster Awards are about to be announced, although the opponents are also very strong, but in terms of the quality and influence of "Young You", it is not impossible to win the award, and it is hoped that Zeng Dao will win the first trophy at the top awards ceremony in the mainland.
Bluestone Movie | Ke Tang
This article is the original content of Bluestone Movie, please do not reprint it in any form without authorization!