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A few days ago, the 4k restored version of Jia Zhangke's directorial debut "Xiao Wu" premiered worldwide at the Berlin Film Festival.
This realistic film, which brought Jia Zhangke to the international film scene, returned to Berlin after 22 years and once again caused a sensation.
In 1998, "Xiao Wu" made Jia Zhangke's hometown of Fenyang, Shanxi, a "Chinese business card" in the world film world, and in the following twenty years, Jia Zhangke has not left his hometown, passing on the nostalgia and abandonment of his hometown with different individuals.
Not only Jia Zhangke, in fact, many directors have a "hometown complex" that is constantly cut and chaotic: such as the thick and desolate northwest in Zhang Yimou's films, such as guizhou Kaili in Bi Gan's films.
They are like wanderers who are close to homesickness, infiltrating the haunting hometown into the bones of the film and condensing it into a unique self-expression.
The same is true of Ning Hao, who is famous for the "Crazy" series, and Jia Zhangke, who is also a Native of Shanxi, started his hometown Taiyuan in his debut film "Incense", and has since begun a brilliant film career.
Leaving aside the student work "Thursday Wednesday" in the Beijing Normal University era, "Incense" is Ning Hao's true feature film debut.
However, if you mention the shooting experience of "Incense", Ning Hao is afraid that he is not willing to look back.
In 2001, Ning Hao, who had just entered nortel's photo photography major, had just turned 24 years old, and he wrote such a script after class, full of expectations and ready to do a big job.
After reading the script, Mr. Han Xiaolei of the Department of Directing helped him to pull 40,000 investment from a rich student, but perhaps out of jealousy of the risk of the subject matter, the other party withdrew not long after.
Reluctantly, Ning Hao himself pooled the money, purchased 20,000 pieces of photographic equipment, and returned to his hometown to persuade his former secondary school classmates to star, so the "Incense" crew of a total of 8 people took shape. Chinese New Year's Eve night, the fifteenth day of the first month.
However, after the film was filmed, it could only be set aside because there was no market, until 2 years later, Ning Hao was famous in the circle by shooting mv, and only then did he meet nobles who sent his "Incense" to some international film festivals to test the water.
Unexpectedly, the film really won many awards such as best film at the Tokyo Ginza Film Festival, and Ning Hao's talent was finally recognized, and his directing career entered a new chapter.
27 years later, when we look at Ning Hao's debut work, although rough and childish, Ning Hao's trademark black humor temperament has begun to show its sharp edge in this work.
In a village where families slaughter sheep for a living, there is a broken temple that stands out.
There is only one monk in the broken temple, wearing a pair of large-rimmed glasses, who does not speak much on weekdays, has no relatives, and lives on a little incense money.
The monk's life was not good, from winter to summer coat, how many times he patched cloth shoes, and sometimes he had to rub a meal at a friend's house in the village.
What caused the monk the most headache was that the Buddha statue, which was already full of holes, could not be supported, and on this day it became a pile of ruins.
It doesn't matter if the temple is broken, but the Buddha statues for people to worship are gone, and even the little incense money to maintain their livelihood will be lost.
Someone else, looking at this situation, had already rolled up and left, but the monk struggled to hold on.
He stubbornly and firmly thought that a village is full of killing, and there must be a temple to suppress this bloody atmosphere.
As a monk who rings the bell for a day, he doesn't want this century-old temple to be destroyed in his hands, and even if he leaves here, what can he do?
Moreover, if the Buddha statue is repaired, the incense money will continue to flow, and the monk has already made his own small calculation in his heart.
The monk began to raise money to repair the statue, but he did not think about how much it would cost.
After inquiring, the monk learned that it would cost at least 3,000 yuan to build a Buddha statue, which was tantamount to a huge amount of money for him.
The monk first thought of asking for help from the government, and he remembered that when the director of the religious office and the township chief came to the village last year, they promised to help him repair the temple.
He came to the Religious Affairs Office, and the director of the Religious Affairs Office first expressed deep sympathy, and then he poured out bitter water: it was not that he did not help, but that he was powerless.
Big temples can't be repaired now, who cares about a small temple that no one cares about?
The director proposed to the monk to find the staff of the Cultural Relics Office, and then greeted the church staff who had come to "ask" for help in building the church with gifts.
But when it came to the antiquities office, the person in charge of the matter also shook his head, and he told the monk that it was not in their control, and he couldn't help it.
At the beginning, the discouraged monk wanted to come and go, ready to ask for help from the master brother who was practicing in another large temple.
I thought that the master brother would take care of the friendship of the same door for many years, but when the monk explained his intentions, the master brother even lamented that he was in a difficult situation, and persuaded the master and brother to come here.
The monk understood that no matter how deep the friendship was, it was an empty talk in front of the money.
In desperation, the monk was not allowed to use the ultimate trick that the Buddhist gate had been passed down for many years: the transformation of fate.
Ten yuan, twenty yuan, or even fifty cents did not refuse, and the monk relied on the help of the good men and women to help them, and it was difficult to "transform" more than 1,000 yuan.
He carefully recorded the names of the donors in the "merit book", and perhaps one day, when he had money, he really wanted to give them a merit monument...
Before the money was warm, the monk was taken into the police station by the police and locked up as a liar.
After tossing and turning several times, no one really helped him, and the only ones who were willing to help him repair the Buddha statue were a few "young ladies" who were locked up with the monk.
The monks and the dusty women at opposite ends of the moral scale share a room in the most unlikely place to meet, and the impermanence of the world is speechless.
At this moment, they no longer have moral superiority or inferiority, and under the majesty of the law, they are all prisoners in a dilemma.
To put it bluntly, the monk was just like these girls who didn't know the world, just to survive.
After all, under the influence of the tide of the times, everyone cannot be left alone, especially in the nameless people at the bottom.
Even this monk, who accompanies the Buddha all day long, in the face of the mixed social reality of fish and dragons, is still called heaven and earth, and has to go with the flow...
People around him are advising him to marry a daughter-in-law and make a small business, is it not better than being a monk?
The monk was so stubborn that he did not want to accept defeat, but he went back and forth on the path leading to the outside of the village, running around to raise money...
Under the overlap of drama and reality, Ning Hao completed a rather "black" turn in the desperate monk.
Because he helped a young man "match" his marriage with his girlfriend, the monk was inspired: why not also set up a stall to tell fortunes, maybe you can make a profit.
After a whole day of talking, the monk did make a lot of money, but in the end he was snatched up by the little in the name of collecting tolls, and he could only eat Huang Lian dumbly, swallowing grievances and anger into his stomach.
The blue-nosed monk walked in the bustling crowd, and the bustle and noise around him had nothing to do with him.
On the way back, the monk met a kind uncle who took him back to the village, and the uncle asked the monk to do him a favor.
It turned out that the uncle's wife was paralyzed in bed, and after many years of treatment, she still did not get better, and the uncle wondered if his wife was hit by any evil.
But the monk knew all this, and seeing that his hope was getting slimmer and dimmer, the monk could not take much care of it, so he promised it with his mouth.
From the time of setting up the stall and telling fortunes, the monk went step by step to the opposite side of the Buddha's gate, and he seemed to have forgotten that the monks did not speak in tongues, and that the Buddhist monk's pure heart and widowhood had no desires and no desires.
He had a fight with his uncle, and finally sold the Buddha statue he bought at the stall as a magic instrument that "opened the light" and sold it to them for three thousand yuan.
Amitabha, sin and sin, this money is right when they accumulate virtue and do good...
With three thousand yuan in hand, the monk happily invited craftsmen to repair the Buddha statue, and joyfully packed everything up to welcome the new life of the temple.
But what I thought was to see the sun in the clouds did not expect to become a bamboo basket to draw water.
The arrival of the county highway bureau personnel awakened the monk's unfinished dream, and they told the monk that the road would be built here soon, and the temple would be demolished after the New Year.
The "road to riches" became the monk's "broken money road", but the painstaking efforts were in vain, and in the end there was a sigh.
The monk looked into the distance at a loss, and the huge word "demolition" on the wall was particularly eye-catching...
The sound of the Buddha on the horn seemed to mock the monk's useless work, and everything quietly ended in the embarrassment of making people laugh dumbly...
The same unpolished images, the same roles rejected by mainstream society, and the same skin-to-bone reality, can see a little shadow of Jia Zhangke's debut "Xiao Wu" from "Incense".
They all invariably aim their debut works at the most overlooked areas in society, and write a primitive picture of Chinese society with an attitude of facing reality.
At the Berlin Film Festival, when someone mentioned two Chinese films that quit for "technical reasons" at last year's film festival, Jia Zhangke said this.
He said that as a filmmaker, I wouldn't change the movies I wanted to make.
Whether it is Jia Zhangke or Ning Hao, they always adhere to the expression of their own spirit and leave the most authentic and vivid record of the changes in Chinese society.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Ah Zhi
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