At the 70th Berlin Film Festival, the Chinese ink animation short film "Qiu Shi" was shortlisted for the new generation unit, which caused a lot of discussion about "domestic animation". One of the works in the discussion was repeatedly mentioned, that is, the 1988 ink animation film "Landscape and Water" filmed by the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Factory.
"Landscape and Water" is a Chinese animation with no commercial elements at all, the plot is not complicated, and it is about the love of "Zhiyin" and "teacher and student". The whole film is about 18 minutes long, without any dialogue, but the unique style of ink painting and the virtual and real artistic conception have conquered many audiences at home and abroad. 32 years ago, it won the Best Short Film Award at the Montreal International Film Festival, won back the only international A-category film festival trophy in the domestic animation industry so far, and was selected as one of the 100 greatest animated short films in the world by the Annecy Animation Festival in France in 2006...
The reason why a classic animation has impressed the world is nothing more than two: culture and skill, but now it seems that "Landscape and Water" has more of a "ancient tune although self-love, many people today do not play".
A violinist stood on the shore between the mountains and rivers, and before he saw him, he heard the sound of his voice - the melodious flute sounded, startling a pool of wild geese, and the young man on the ferry flew in a small boat. Along the way, the white water is vast, the teenager uses a small wooden pipe to play a self-created song, happy and free, and the old violinist listens carefully and thinks.
There is no dialogue between the violinist and the teenager, only the babbling water and the cries of wild geese, which set off the flute sound of the teenager, reverberating between heaven and earth, and the indifferent and elegant style of ink painting is vividly sprinkled.
The old violinist who got off the boat somehow fell ill and fell to the ground, and the guqin made a "clanging" sound, causing the teenager to rush forward to help. The next day, the old violinist recovered physically, and when he was excited, he took out the guqin and played a song. The sound of the piano led the boy to him, and at the end of the song, he motioned for the boy to pluck the strings according to his fingering.
The young man learned without getting tired, the old violinist taught people tirelessly, and the two masters and apprentices used the piano as a medium to live in the deep mountains. Spring to autumn, the young man's skills soared, and even attracted a group of fish to call for peace, and the old man was very happy. But in addition to the comfort, he also thought about how to make his disciples go to a higher level.
During this period, the pictures are covered with autumn leaves, bamboo shadows, moonlight fluctuations, snow-capped fireplaces for warmth, long-singing birds, singing frogs, and fish swimming by bait, each frame is like a poem. Ink paintings, which are mainly ink colors and supplemented by Danqing colors, depict the best landscapes of China lightly and elegantly, making people yearn for them.
By chance, the violinist saw the picture of the eagle hitting the long sky, and the young eagle first flew to the sky under the leadership of the mother eagle, and then soared alone, and for a moment he suddenly opened up. With the apprentice, he drove a boat between the mountains and rivers, and ascended to the heights of the river. The teenager was attracted by the magnificent scenery and couldn't help but play. After the old violinist gave the guqin to his apprentice, he turned around and walked alone into the landscape and the earth. The teenager looked in the direction of his departure, stroked the piano to send each other, and bid farewell to this sincere teacher-student relationship.
A parting song, the picture looks back at the process of the two people meeting, knowing each other, and teaching each other. Swimming "mountains", experiencing "water", showing "love", under the hue of the water, the old violinist and the teenager who swing the boat seem to meet in Pingshui, and it seems to be too close, leaving the audience with endless imagination space, and all emotions are in the unspoken.
Chinese emotions have always been implicit and not outward, and the characteristics of ink paintings that "rhyme vividly and write gods in shape" can achieve the expression of this emotion. The teacher-student relationship in the story does not have any preachy meaning, but all the emotions are invested in the relationship between the characters and everything in the painting, and what kind of feelings can be experienced are fully entrusted to the audience.
Anyone who can specialize in one thing is called a craftsman, and this painting "Landscape and Water Feelings" is the ingenuity of a Chinese painter.
Ink animation can be said to be a form of animation pioneered in China, which uses Chinese ink painting techniques as a means of expression for character modeling and environmental space modeling, because there is no obvious contour line, so it cannot be in accordance with the process of draft-line-filling like the production of general animation films. In the era without computers, the method of creation was as follows:
First of all, the brushwork of the ink painting is made into a stamp to ensure that the brushwork of each frame is exactly the same, and when coloring, the same character should be divided into four or five colors, which are painted on several transparent celluloid pieces. Each celluloid film must be repeated separately, and finally put together to form an ink rendering effect, an animation is four or five times the workload of ordinary animation!
On the ingenuity, no one can compare with these ink animation producers, and it took decades of production and grinding to get the 4 works of "Little Tadpole Finds Mother", "Shepherd Boy", "Deer Bell" and "Landscape and Water".
This technique has found a new way of development for the integration of art and the nation, and "Landscape and Water" has a special feature in the production of the scene of "Young Fuqin Bidding Farewell to The Master" in the film, in order to be more realistic and layered, the method of "painting on the spot, shooting directly" has been adopted, and finally synthesized with the animation created by the animator. This way can better match the rhythm of the story, and also fully demonstrates the advantages of free ink and one-shot. The participation of Chinese painting masters Wu Shanming and Mr. Zhuo Hejun laid a solid artistic foundation for this animation.
Japanese animation film director Takahata also mentioned in an interview: "We are amazed by Chinese ink animation films. It can be said that our works with more blank space are influenced by it. ”
Although the essence of ink painting is not in the "shape" of "God", "Landscape and Water" is still very exquisite in details.
For example, there are about thirty kinds of fingerings commonly used to play the right hand of the guqin, and there are eight most basic fingerings. The organist in "Landscape and Water" wakes up and plays the song with a close-up of the hand movements, and many professional organists know that it is the same as the real thing when they look at the fingering. Mr. Gong Yi, the player of the background music, recalled that in order to complete the animation creation of the fingering, several painters surrounded him and drew the same fingering from different angles, so it took countless manuscripts to come out of the picture of just ten seconds.
Think about some costume dramas now, when playing the piano, the sound of the guzheng comes out, not to mention the fingering of the actors, such a quick and profitable production, can it come out of the boutique?
The first time the old violinist and the teenager met was in the summer when the reeds were pumping, and then when the master and apprentice practiced, the side gradually became the autumn of maple leaves, the winter when the snow flapped fell and everything withered, and then the birds chirped by the river where the snow and water faded to herald the arrival of spring, waiting until the lotus flowers bloomed frog jumping, the summer reincarnation, and the year rushed by. Each seasonal change has distinct animal and plant representatives, and the smooth picture overly forms a complete timeline, such detail changes make the story more complete, and the teacher-apprentice emotion is precipitated.
Confucius said: The wise man enjoys water, and the benevolent one enjoys the mountain.
In "Landscape and Water", with landscape as the medium, you can see a lot of traditional Chinese ideas. For example, the Taoist spirit of "all things are one with me" when the old violinist holds the violin standing on the shore; the sound of the piano and the young flute should be harmonized, and there is a realm of "alpine flowing water to find the sound"; the mountains and rivers that the master and apprentice often have, is it not to restore the good scenery that we are familiar with, "the green mountains cannot be covered, after all, the east flows"?
This kind of perception that can only be understood and cannot be expressed can be accepted by all cultures, and it is also the style that only our purest national style culture has.
In Western animation, the most important thing is "realism", they think that the closest to reality of the picture, emotion is the most moving. For example, Pisker's animation of "Finding Nemo", "Flying House", etc., in the details of the almost harsh pursuit of reality, in the plot "story is king", the spirit of which is the feelings between people. Their rivers have fluttering droplets, and our flowing water can appear in a few strokes; their characters' eyes are full of emotion, and our clothes are fluttering with the arrogance of the literati. Loud sounds, elephants invisible is like this.
Miyazaki, who has embarked on his own animation path internationally, was also amazed when he saw the ink animation "Little Tadpole Finds Mother".
The heart is tied together, and nothing can be done. At that time, the artistic pursuit of ink films by the US film studios at all costs was simply a kind of "dedication" that regarded money as dung in the film and television animation industry, which now pays attention to efficiency.
After the 1980s, we have entered an era of market economy, the film and television industry pursues the maximum economic benefits of a hundred flowers blooming and how fast and good the province, this creative attitude that does not consider any business is difficult to survive in the world, so it is not an exaggeration to say that "Landscape and Water" is the "watershed" of Chinese ink animation.
The sound of the piano suppresses the clouds, but the inheritance of the mantle can be encountered and cannot be sought, so why is Xiao Suo, who left the old violinist, not the Xiao Suo of the ink animators?
It is difficult to imitate, and it is not easy to inherit - this is the dilemma faced by ink animation. Sun Lijun, the director of "Qiu Shi", said that due to the characteristics of ink painting itself, ink animation is not suitable for cinema feature films; at the same time, its unique production difficulty makes it more difficult to produce feature films in the short term.
With the continuous development of animation production technology, if Chinese ink animation wants to become a national work that goes out of the world, it is necessary to constantly try to combine traditional art with modern technology, and innovate from the plot, bring the audience into the plot and story, maintain the art style, and ensure viewability.
The history of cinema is also more than a hundred years, we still have a long way to go, and watch!