In 1986, Chow Yun Fat starred as a supporting actor in the classic gunfight film "The True Colors of Heroes" directed by Wu Yusen, but was nominated for the role of Xiao Ma Ge in the film and finally won the 6th Hong Kong Film Awards.
This marks that Fa Ge has finally gained a foothold in the film circle after leaving TVB.
This year was both a bumper and a busy year for Fa Ge, who starred in a total of 10 movies throughout the year. Before the success of "The True Colors of Heroes", he had participated in 5 movies, and although the performance was very hard, it had not been able to usher in a breakthrough, and was once considered a "box office poison".
Among these films, the fantasy film "Dream Man" cooperated with Lin Qingxia is a more special one. Co-written by Hong Kong screenwriters Qiu Gangjian and Wen Jun, and directed by Academy Awards artist Ou Dingping, the film tells a story spanning more than 2,000 years.
One
In the film, Fa Ge plays an orchestra conductor named Song Yu, who and his girlfriend gorgeously go to Hong Kong to give concerts. After arriving in Hong Kong, he began to hallucinate frequently, seeing a woman of the Qin Dynasty dancing in front of him, but it was like a dream, and he couldn't understand what was going on.
Song Yu also dreamed of a terracotta warrior that looked very similar to himself floating out of the water, and the terracotta warrior had a piece of red jade on its chest. When he wakes up, he is puzzled, until one day his girlfriend gorgeously takes him to see his grandmother and reveals the secret of his past life.
The gorgeous grandmother is a questioning mother who knows how to touch bones and divination. She calculated that Song Yu was an ancient person from the Qin Dynasty, who was 2197 years old, and came to the world in this life to end a fate. When Song Yu was half-convinced, Grandma advised her granddaughter to leave Song Yu and not hinder his love affair with another woman.
Song Yu and Hua Li were surprised, but they did not pay attention to it, until one day when he visited a Qin Dynasty terracotta warriors exhibition, he saw that the terracotta warriors and horses were very similar to the images in the dream, and recalled the memories in the dream, at the same time he met a very special woman.
This woman is jewelry designer Zhang Yuexiang (played by Lin Qingxia), who often dreams that she is in the Qin Dynasty, with an ancient person who looks exactly like Song Yu. At the end of the dream, the ancient man was strangled to death, and a piece of white jade he was wearing was stained red with blood.
When Yue Xiang saw Song Yu, she was also very surprised, she did not expect that there was really a man in the world who looked exactly like the person in her dream. She first hid and did not dare to face Song Yu, but then the two soon met and spent a pleasant night together.
In order to unravel this mystery that spanned more than 2,000 years, Yue Xiang took Song Yu home to meet her father Zhang Kenan. It turned out that Zhang Kenan had been a member of the inland scientific expedition team, and 28 years ago, he and his colleagues Li Chang and Wang Han excavated the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, and dug up a terracotta warrior with a piece of red jade embedded in his chest.
When they dragged the terracotta warriors back to the laboratory with a boat, Wang Han suddenly went crazy and wanted to take the red jade on the chest of the terracotta warriors for himself. Li Chang hurried forward to fight with him, and in the process of snatching, the two fell into the water, and the terracotta warriors also fell into the water and disappeared.
Zhang Kenan left the waters in a boat out of fear, and his wife gave birth to Yuexiang on the boat that night, but died in childbirth at the time of the eighth son of the first month of the fifth lunar month in 1957. At the same time, there was also a baby boy born in Xi'an, that is, Song Yu, which is exactly the same as Yue Xiang's birthday.
Later, Wang Han, who fell into the water, was drowned, but Li Chang returned to the archaeological team with hongyu, and after 28 years of hard work, he finally became a famous terracotta warrior archaeology expert in the mainland, and the terracotta army exhibition in Hong Kong was run by him.
The terracotta warriors that sank into the water also suddenly surfaced recently, although it was a state secret, Li Chang secretly took photos and brought them to Zhang Kenan's research. After Song Yu saw the Terracotta Warriors, the memories of the Qin Dynasty, which had been buried for more than 2,000 years, appeared little by little.
It turned out that during the Qin Dynasty, he was a craftsman captured by Qin Shi Huang and helped Qin Shi Huang build a mausoleum. After the completion of the project, Qin Shi Huang was afraid that he would reveal the secrets of the mausoleum, so he ordered him to be executed.
Yue Xiang was the wife of the craftsman at that time, she crushed her husband's body and molded it into terracotta warriors in the dirt, and she also committed suicide with a short sword.
Before dying, she lay on the terracotta warriors, and the white jade worn on her chest was stained with blood and inlaid into the terracotta warriors. The souls of the two also remained on the terracotta warriors, and it was not until it was excavated by the archaeological team that they were given the opportunity to reincarnate.
Although this life was able to continue the frontier, Song Yu had been with Huali for 8 years before meeting Yuexiang, and they had originally planned to get married, and Song Yu was also in a dilemma.
And Because Hua Li couldn't let go of Song Yu, he actually chose to commit suicide and martyrdom, which caught the two off guard.
Although Song Yu and Yue Xiang have a heart to heart, they can't face Gorgeous's death, and in the end they can't come together because of their guilt for Gorgeous.
Two
If the crossing of the soul can also be counted as a crossing, "The Dream Man" is the earliest Qin Dynasty to modern cross-cutting film in China. This is 3 years earlier than Li Bihua's "Ancient and Modern Wars of Qin Figurines" written by Li Bihua and directed by Cheng Xiaodong, and Cheng Xiaodong's film obviously borrows the creativity of "Dream Man".
However, "Ancient and Modern Wars of Qin Figurines" is one notch higher than "Dream Man" from the film pattern, story integrity and investment scale. And Cheng Xiaodong took the crew to the mainland to shoot in person, of which Fu Huadao was extremely attentive, and it was a commercial blockbuster in 1989, which was incomparable to the low-cost "Dream Man".
Therefore, "Ancient and Modern Wars of Qin Figurines" later received a box office performance of 20.99 million Hong Kong dollars, becoming the 7th place in the annual box office; "Dream Man" only had a box office of 7.29 million Hong Kong dollars, and did not cause much repercussions. The film received four nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards and only one Award for Best Original Film Music.
But the whole film of "Dream Man" is full of ancient and modern time and space switching, the continuous flashback of memory and reality, with a strong sense of fatalism and mystery. The truth is wrapped in layers of fog, slowly revealed as the plot progresses, until the final realization, which can firmly grasp the curiosity of the audience.
Screenwriter Qiu Gangjian has created "Ruan Lingyu", "Run to the Fury Sea", "Rouge Buckle", etc., which are classic works in Hong Kong literary and art films. The advanced creativity and mournful story of "Dream Man" are also enough to prove that his screenwriting ability is not inferior to that of the talented woman Li Bihua.
As for director Ou Dingping (Mao Shunjun's husband), he is a high-achieving graduate of the London Film Academy and has won the Best Artistic Contribution Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival and the Best Art Direction Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. His achievements in film art design are obviously higher than those in the ability of directors, and it can be seen that fu Huadao in the film has done extremely well.
Three
When the film was made, Lin Qingxia, born in 1954, was 32 years old; Zhou Runfa, born in 1955, was also 31 years old, but the two were not equal in the film industry at that time.
Lin Qingxia, who debuted in 1973, has been in the Hong Kong and Taiwan film circles for many years and has accumulated extremely high popularity; while Zhou Runfa, although he is a tvb brother, has encountered a bottleneck in the film circle and urgently needs to prove himself with a good work.
"Dream Man" is a rare intimate cooperation between the two, but the performances of the two in the film are somewhat restrained, leaving some regrets for the movie, but Lin Qingxia's image of wearing women's costumes in the Qin Dynasty is beautiful.
Yang Xueyigan, who plays the gorgeous female second, dedicated herself to art, and has a more prominent performance in the film, but it has attracted a lot of criticism. This has had a great impact on Yang Xueyi's acting path, and has also become a thing that "Dream Man" has been talked about by fans outside the movie.
Yang Xueyi debuted after winning the Miss Hong Kong pageant in 1983 and signed a contract with TVB to become the host of "Hong Kong Morning". After a year of work, she bid farewell to the TVB offensive film circle, although she starred in many works, but the response was mediocre, so in "Dream Man", she sacrificed a handful for her acting career, hoping to make a breakthrough.
Unfortunately, contrary to his wishes, in Zhou Runfa's "dedication to art" film, the passion scene with Yang Xueyi was greatly controversial and was also greatly devalued by newspapers and magazines - for which Yang Xueyi also left the film circle for 4 years in a huff, and did not come back until 1990.
After starring in "Heartbeat" in 1999, Yang Xueyi disappeared from the curtain. But in 2008, she participated as a producer in the production of Wu Yusen's film "Chibi", which was her last footprint in the film industry.
Four
Although "Dream Man" failed to make Zhou Runfa successful, his "Hero's True Colors" in the same year finally made him famous and rich, which shows that opportunities are always left to those who are prepared. Since this year, Chow Yun-fat has had a smooth ride in the film industry, and eventually became a legend of Hong Kong films, together with Stephen Chow and Jackie Chan, known as "Double Monday Cheng".
Now That Lin Qingxia has long since retired, and Zhou Runfa is also in a state close to retirement, their appearance is no longer as youthful and beautiful as it was then. After buying the copyright of the film, Starry Entertainment repaired the negatives, making the original rough picture bright and meticulous, and also allowing fans to appreciate the super high appearance and outstanding acting skills of Lin Qingxia and Zhou Runfa in the golden age.
(Rotten Tomatoes Movie Editorial Department: Blood Dan Heart)