Movie "Hello, Zhihua" poster Image source/Douban
Shunji Iwai is one of the most familiar Japanese directors for Chinese film fans, and has gained wide attention with "Love Letters", "Swallowtail Butterfly" and "Flowers and Alice". Now, he's making his first Chinese film, a story of emotion, loss, regret and warmth.
"Life is not something you can write and understand by pulling and pulling."
This is the drunken truth of the frustrated young man Zhang Chao played by Hu Ge in the movie "Hello, Zhihua" to the writer Yin Chuan, played by Qin Hao. In the movie, Zhang Chao is a small-town youth mixed in college, and in order to satisfy his inner loss, he pursues Yuan Zhinan, whom Yin Chuan has liked since childhood. After the two get married, the cruelty of life leads to The Suicide of The South.
On the early morning of Yuan Zhinan's death, he left a letter and an invitation to a classmate's party. Zhou Xun's younger sister Yuan Zhihua attended the junior high school reunion in place of her deceased sister, but met Yin Chuan, a male classmate he liked in middle school. Zhihua began to correspond with him in the name of Zhinan, and Zhinan and Zhihua's daughter Mu mu and Sara also joined the ranks of correspondence because of a letter sent by Yin Chuan to his hometown. In the correspondence, a memory of youth is gradually pieced together.
This is Shunji Iwai's first film in China, and like his film debut love letter, the opening scene of "Hello, Zhihua" also begins with a funeral, and the medium of letters is used as an important prop. Fans who are familiar with Shunji Iwai are wondering if he has made a Chinese version of "Love Letters".
From "Love Letter" to "Swallowtail Butterfly" and "Flowers and Alice", Shunji Iwai's label of "cruel youth theme director" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and he frankly admitted that when "Hello, Zhihua" was first created, the theme was indeed youth, but as more and more characters experienced social refinement later, he found that the theme is not only youth, but also about life misses and regrets.
Stills from the movie "Hello, Zhihua" Image source/Douban
In this regard, actor Hu Ge has a deep understanding. He loves Shunji Iwai's films and dreams of having the opportunity to work with him. The first time I met director Iwai, I was "quite embarrassed", it was in the second half of 2012, in Shanghai, a good friend and Iwai Shunji had dinner together, so I asked Hu Ge to accompany him to the appointment. Hu Ge drove to the door of the restaurant and hesitated for a long time before getting out of the car. After that, he also talked about cooperation with the director, but it did not work out, until the cooperation of "Hello, Zhihua", and finally did not miss.
Although Zhou Xun is in his forties, it is the first time that he has played the mother of a teenage child in a film and television drama. "I was just looking for a breakthrough, and it was just a coincidence. At the same time, putting aside the identity of the actor, the story of "Hello, Zhihua" made me feel the life process of a person, which made me feel deeply. And this is a group portrait movie, from the perspective of Zhihua to bring birth to the lives of other people, to bring out the proposition of missing out on the still beautiful propositions in life, this is interesting. Zhou Xun said.
Shunji Iwai is very slow to answer questions, always thinking for a long time before giving answers carefully, he does not think too much about the theme of the film is too single, only care about doing what he likes: writing, forming a band, making movies... "Since I was a teenager, I will not only tell things directly, for me, it is more important to express what scenery and what environment the protagonist sees. Some people say that my work expresses loneliness, and I am not particularly aware of it. My theme has always been the same, which is to use feelings and scenery to let everyone experience the sadness, sadness or happiness of the person at that time. Whatever I do, I use this logic to create. Specific to the movie "Hello, Zhihua", I would like to say that there will definitely be misses in life, and there are many unsatisfactory places, but I want to convey a warm feeling to the audience. Shunji Iwai told China News Weekly.
"Great subject matter"
Shunji Iwai and Chen Kexin met each other through their respective works "Love Letters" and "Sweet Honey". When Shunji Iwai led his band to Shanghai for a concert earlier, the two discussed the possibility of cooperation when they met. Soon, Shunji Iwai sent the script of "Hello, Zhihua" written to Chen Kexin.
When Chen Kexin saw the funeral and letter similar to "Love Letter", he was once worried that Shunji Iwai would remake "Love Letter", but after reading the entire script, his doubts disappeared. The film discusses the misses and regrets of life, which is actually a "very big theme", but Chen Kexin believes that for Shunji Iwai, who has entered middle age, this kind of subject can now be mastered.
Soon, Chen Kexin, as a supervising producer, found Zhou Xun, Qin Hao, Hu Ge and other powerful actors to join.
Zhou Xun communicated with Shunji Iwai that she wanted to give Zhihua a color label, and she pointed to the sky blue on the palette and said that Zhihua should be this color, which coincided with Shunji Iwai's idea. Although the two do not speak the same language, there will still be an emotional connection. "In fact, at our age, with a certain amount of life experience, many experiences and emotions can be perceived without verbal expression." Zhou Xun said.
During the filming, Shunji Iwai dined with Zhou Xun, who shared many Chinese customs with him. When it comes to filming the funeral scene, the Chinese funeral customs are even more surprising to him, the funeral ceremony in Japan often takes two hours, plus other activities, it takes a whole day, and the Japanese movie "Funeral" has filmed a full day of funeral activities. Funeral ceremonies in China are short and largely concentrated in the morning.
On the day of filming, the funeral home gave the crew a short time and was surrounded by people. Shunji Iwai can only adjust the shooting plan temporarily according to the scene. He shoots with three or four machines at the same time, which will be more efficient and will not interrupt the actor's performance emotions, he does not want the actor to play the role step by step, he hopes that the actor can bring him surprises.
The middle-aged writer played by Qin Hao is very similar to Shunji Iwai. Shunji Iwai told Qin Hao a lot about his daily writing life, and he condensed a lot of things he saw in this role: from the student days to the present, there are many colleagues or friends with common goals who give up halfway, and some people continue to chase their dreams.
In the film, there is a rival scene between Qin Hao and Hu Ge, which is difficult to perform, and there are many strips. Qin Hao had almost no lines, but he had to react to every line of Hu Ge, and every reaction he presented to Hu Ge was very accurate. "Qin Hao and Hu Ge's performances have their own personalities, and they will give me a lot of new performances after careful consideration, and constantly run into this role." Including Zhou Xun, originally I was not sure whether Zhou Xun could act like this, but I saw that Zhou Xun really let go to act, and many times you see that state just like Zhou Xun himself, suddenly there are a lot of unexpected performances of small details, small actions, small expressions. Shunji Iwai told China News Weekly.
In this film, Shunji Iwai not only plays the script, editing, directing and other work, but also the soundtrack, photography, and sets are also personally controlled by him, and he often carries a machine by himself and personally adjusts each beam of lighting. He also often made small inventions on the set: because of the limited shooting time, he needed to master the method of making rust quickly. In a scene on the beach, the staff often left a lot of footprints on the beach, and he tried to invent a shoe that did not leave footprints. It's a lot like making an independent film.
Not only in this movie, but also in previous films such as "Flowers and Alice" and "Vampire", Shunji Iwai is also a multi-tasker, and he likes to control the quality in all aspects of the film, especially the music part. He compares film to oil painting, and music to watercolor painting, "The process of film is relatively long, it requires patience to wait for the result, and music needs inspiration." When I compose music, I immerse myself completely in the world of music. Writing novels is the world of fiction, writing movies is the world of movies, and when creating different types of things, the channels in my brain are separate, and the partitions are very rigorous. Shunji Iwai told China News Weekly.
Shunji Iwai likes the sound of the piano and violin. In his films, the beautiful picture is often accompanied by a large number of piano solos. In All About Lily Week, Shunji Iwai selects a large number of Debussy piano pieces. The works of Debussy and Eric Satie, French composers with "impressionist" overtones, often bring joy to film directors because of their rich sense of picture. He was very fond of Debussy, "and there is a mysterious oriental temperament in his music.
According to the habits of most people listening to songs, usually the most familiar part is the first part of the song, and then you may fall asleep after listening to it. But when you put it in the movie, the music follows the picture to the end, and you will find that it is so beautiful, which makes me reacquaint myself with his music. From then on, Iwai said, whenever he heard Debussy's music, even in the lobby of the hotel, he would stand and enjoy it until the end of the track.
In May, at the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, Shunji Iwai led his band to a concert. The tracks on the program list such as "Love Letter", "Swallowtail Butterfly", "April Story", and "Enigma Transfer Student" are all soundtracks for Shunji Iwai's films.
Shunji Iwai has been fond of piano since childhood, but he did not really come into contact with the piano until he went to college, and often sneaked in to play for a while when the piano room was empty. When he was a student, Iwai Shunji's only piano education was to practice scales, and it was this simple scale that subtly achieved his film aesthetics since then, "to shoot pictures that flow like music." ”
In 2006, Shunji Iwai filmed the documentary The Tale of Ichikawa Kun and wrote the soundtrack himself. In this work that pays homage to his predecessors, Shunji Iwai discovers another force beyond music. At the end of the film, there is no narrative, and a large number of words and pictures appear in the picture. The music advanced little by little, and the audience burst into tears. It was then that he realized how powerful the power of words in the musical context was.
The acclaimed "Love Letters" and "Swallowtail Butterfly" were both adapted from Shunji Iwai's novel of the same name, and since Shunji Iwai was unable to compose the soundtrack at that time, he sought out friends in the music industry to cooperate. Get the soundtrack of "Love Letter", the melody is extremely beautiful, can be put into the picture, most of it is inconsistent. "I had a headache because I had a good communication with the composer before, but when I got on the screen, I was stupid. It wasn't what I wanted at all. But the song itself is very good, and in the end it can only be re-matched to have today's appearance. This situation does not exist in "Hello, Zhihua" because we already have our own music creation ability and are more experienced. He said.
"Even if one day, I will no longer be a director and I will not feel bothered"
"If I had been good at instrumental instruments in college, I would probably have become a musician and wouldn't have gone down the path of directing." Shunji Iwai, who has been crossing borders, said that when he was in college, he studied painting and began to try to shoot with a video camera, and at that time, he shot mv, which gave him the opportunity to experiment with various music, editing, and photography.
At one point, he was fascinated by a film that told the story between Alice's archetype and the author in Alice in Wonderland. This film is "Dream Boy", he found this film in the video rental shop, rented the videotape, excerpted the clips related to the two protagonists in the film, connected together, cut into a separate ten-minute short film, and made two versions, but the results of the editing experiment made him unbearable to look at.
In addition, he has worked on various film-related part-time jobs, the most interesting of which is the promotion of summer film conventions. A combination of two men and one woman, riding in a Toyota Hiace vehicle with a projector and film, toured various small supermarkets in Kanagawa Prefecture for two years. Almost all of the money earned was spent on film, and the last thousand yen was also used to buy film. After the cost was exhausted, he went to borrow it from his high school brothers. As soon as they met, the master brother said to him, "Ah, you boy, are you not dead yet?" "He wasn't ashamed because he was at the peak of excitement." If that's a precursor to death, I don't think death is anything scary. My brother invited me to dinner and borrowed me a sum of money. He recalled.
Shunji Iwai Image source/Douban
Since the 1990s, the Japanese film industry has set off a "new film movement", and filmmakers represented by a group of young and middle-aged directors such as Takeshi Kitano, Shunji Iwai, and Masayuki Zhou Fang have gradually begun to move towards the international vision. Shunji Iwai has become a leading figure in the younger generation of directors with fresh images such as "Love Letter" and "Swallowtail Butterfly" and the rich emotions in his works.
But after "Flowers and Alice", Shunji Iwai gradually slowed down his filming speed and devoted himself to the creation of short films, dramas, and even cross-border fields such as painting and music. His themes also transition from aesthetic youth to social reality, and even to the generation of anxiety about the future of mankind.
In Swallowtail Butterfly, Shunji Iwai constructs a dystopian society filled with immigrants from the bottom. The use of a lot of fast editing, dirty visual styles, musicians, prostitutes and hooligans and other marginal characters, have shown their own cruel trajectories of fate; in "Wallace Mermaid" with the nature of science fiction, because of love, human beings are eaten by human beings, and human limbs are now a burden and will naturally fall off. They combine scenes, "beds full of blood, scattered hands and feet"; in the science fiction novel "Inuyasha" set in the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, humans divide three, six, and nine by reproductive ability, and develop a "sperm bank".
Next, Shunji Iwai may adapt a novel about Nan written by writer Yoon Chuan in the movie "Hello, Nowa" into a movie. "Although people often call me director, I feel that I am a director only when I am shooting movies. Although I have been a director for more than twenty years, the rest of the time, I have been a screenwriter and producer, writing, making music, drawing... Some people like to be called directors, and their lives are for the word 'director', but I am not like this, maybe I should be called a creator. Even if one day, I will no longer be a director and I will not feel troubled. Shunji Iwai said.
Article/Reporter Li Xing
Cover image source: Douban
Editor on duty: Luo Xiaolan