Since returning from the Nine Parts trip, I have been looking for related movies, from Spirited Away to The City of Sorrows. The former is fantastic and romantic, and the latter always conveys a thick atmosphere of sadness.
Hou Xiaoxian tells the rise and fall of the Lin family with his signature long shots, from the birth of a child to the death of Wenxiong, the pillar of the pillar, which is a wound. From the recovery to the end of the 228 incident, it was pain. The Taiwanese dream of a homeland is thus destroyed, and the end of the multi-line narrative is often a bloody scene that is mildly handled. The Japanese soundtrack, including the story of the woman who committed suicide told to Wenqing, seems to reflect consciously or unconsciously a certain lack of humanism, which may be more withdrawn to reflect the confusion of the people of that era, no, the weak sense of belonging of the Taiwanese people to this day. The blood gap between Taiwan and the mainland probably began in that sad year.
Speaking of the 228 incident, I only learned about it after returning from Taiwan. The 228 incident occurred in Taiwan, but there are different memorial parks throughout Taiwan Province. Taipei's 228 Park is near the Taiwan Land Bank, when visiting the Taiwan Natural History Museum, I passed through it, the park is lined with trees, there is no feature, but Qi Is strange in the taipei city park every one has squirrel activities, and is not afraid of people. Later, I learned that 228 Park was actually a gay gathering place in Taipei, and it was no wonder that young men were seen in the park in the middle of the day.
Back to the movie. Because I couldn't understand Hokkien, I needed to stare at the subtitles for the first time, and I have to say that this affected the complete picture of the movie to a certain extent. Although I don't understand it, it doesn't mean that I am not familiar with this tone, during my time in Taiwan, I watched a very interesting old program "The Strange Case of Taiwan", in which the narration to the performance is in Hokkien.
Finish dubbing and say music. Some of the music selected in the film is also excellent. Shizuko's farewell to "Red Dragonfly" (赤とんぼ), which sounds when Shizuko says goodbye, is filled with a sad and nostalgic atmosphere, from the female oratorio to the piano playing. Kuan Mei gave Wen Qing the German "The Loreley", Wen Qing could not hear the voice, could not enter the discussion of intellectuals, and music became another language of annotation. This has also become a scene that I have been deeply impressed by, and in the past few days, whenever I think of "City of Sorrows", this picture has always been the first in my mind. The young Liang Chaowei added a lot of points to the role of Wenqing, and I can't tell how much love for Liang Chaowei is mixed in the love for Wenqing, the last son of the Lin family (watching this film before the second brush is the color ring). Wen Qing was like a pure edelweiss flower in this chaotic world, which had not yet fallen to the ground, and his short life had come to an end. In his deaf and dumb film world, everything that happens around him is invisible, and even some dirty work for survival seems to have nothing to do with him. His love affair with Kuanmei made all the world yearn for it in that era, but it was doomed to be fruitless. And Kuanmi is like a little angel, and her voiceover runs through the entire film.
"Good day, there are clouds", if you choose the most beautiful voiceover narration of Chinese movies, I think she can be ranked in the top three.
Finally I want to talk about this film from an editing point of view. As we get older, we acquire more and more knowledge. The understanding of the composition of a film and the division of labor of the main creator is also becoming more and more detailed. The writer, the director, the editor, only the editing I didn't know. I recently cut a few video transmission stations as a hobby, and I have a general understanding of the process of turning an original film (whether it is complete or fragmented) into a film, no less than the thrill of sparrow turning into a phoenix. If you find a version of a movie called the "Director's Cut," you should take the time to see how different the same movie is in the eyes of the editor and the director.
Speaking of the film's director, Liao Qingsong, Taiwan compatriots call him a talented editor. In terms of its performance in "City of Sorrows", I think it can afford this name. Liao Qingsong has said in public that he now has two main criteria for selecting co-directors - one is whether the director has his own expression, and the other is whether the film is good enough. "If my help gives you extra points, I'll help." This alone violates the cognition of many people, because it is rare to hear that the role of editor can have such a big voice in a movie, and even pick the director?
"We believe that film can be a conscious creative activity, film can be an art form, film can even be a national cultural activity with a sense of introspection and history... Films that fall within the scope of commercial activity have their own economic laws to support and eliminate. ...... However, the other kind of film (those with creative intentions, artistic tendencies, and cultural self-consciousness) may contribute more to the overall social culture, and the economic resources they can grasp may be more scarce; at this time, cultural policy, the field of public opinion, and the critical activities find the objects they should care about, support, and support. Liao Qingsong said.
In 1989, Liao Qingsong helped Hou Xiaoxian cut "City of Sorrows". When he first got the material, he felt very tricky - Hou Xiaoxian had a characteristic of filming, and he felt that he simply did not shoot where it was too wordy, so the more than two hundred scenes in the script were actually only filmed more than a hundred times in the end. When the material is in Liao Qingsong's hands, he has to do a riceless cooking: how to connect can't work, how to cut will step on the air.
After many days of struggle, Liao Qingsong suddenly remembered "Tianjing Sand · The artistic conception of "Autumn Thoughts": "The ancient road west wind is thin and thin, and the intestines are broken in the end of the world." There is no strong narrative, but the combination of those images can accurately convey emotions. So he said to Hou Xiaoxian, "Let's cut it according to the feeling of the poem." ”
That year, "City of Sorrows" won the Golden Lion Award at the 46th Venice International Film Festival, becoming the first Taiwanese film to win the first prize at the three major film festivals. When talking about the aesthetic techniques in it, Liao Qingsong said: "The transformation of virtual reality is actually the most basic state. For example, when I shoot light, you see a change in space, but in fact I want to talk about a change in time. Talking about the hidden plot in the movie, he said: "The part you don't say is actually more important, because you don't say it, so the superficial and non-expressive parts that are clearly expressed should be seen together, and the parts that are expressed should be seen together with nothing." ”
Young directors liken movies to children, with directors and editors as parents and teachers, respectively. I think it's very graphic. Also put this sentence out for everyone to understand. Just as apps want to pursue retention, now blockbusters have become modern, to show off, afraid that the audience's attention will leave, but they forget that the most important part of the film is the emotional part.
Because I'm a product manager by profession, I know the impact of subjective perspectives. A director has a mind to make the film a, but in fact it is b, but the director does not think that it is b, so he will try to modify the material of b to a. "But if you are an editor who is objective enough, he will not be confused by the director's a dream, but will tell the director that it may be the right way to treat according to b." When he was in his thirties, Liao Qingsong would have many dreams about movies every night, and when he woke up, he would write inspirations to the floor. His cultivation is getting closer and closer to the realm mentioned by Wang Guowei in "Words and Sayings on Earth": "The realm of no self, looking at things with things, so I don't know what is me and what is things." ”
Under the city of sorrow, the scenes of Jinguashi, Jiufen, Taipei, and Keelung intertwined in 1947 (the thirty-sixth year of the Republic of China) and my first visit in 2018, just like those excellent tragic films, which began with tragedy, but did not only convey sadness. Each of us can always find warmth and warmth that we can rely on from our own past, which is the humanistic force of film across racial and national boundaries.