Wen | Xiaoyu Chop Chai Academy Columnist Editor | Qian Zhongsu 24 years ago, "A Chinese Journey to the West" was released in the mainland, and the response was mediocre; 20 years ago, "A Chinese Journey to the West" was rescreened and received rave reviews and was regarded by countless people. classic. Looking back and looking back now, we can understand the nonsense that was once hilarious, and understand the love that promised to be in love for 10,000 years. Even at the end of the film, it still leaves a lonely back.
A lot of people said that the joking lie of Supreme Bao was taken as sincere by many people. Those people are really stupid. But who can predict that the more fake things will often become the most sincere things, taking root in countless people's hearts.
Xu Gehui once asked Zhou Xingchi: Which line do you like best in "A Chinese Journey to the West"? Stephen Chow did not hesitate: There was once a sincere love before me, I did not cherish... At that time, Zhou Xingchi might not have thought that a line written in a hurry, a deceptive lie, turned out to be the epitome of his life's destiny, mighty, without complaint. Now that I walked into this movie again, I saw not only Zhou Xingchi, but also myself. Jiang Wen once said: "What I provide to the audience is definitely not boiled water. I want to make wine, and then get drunk with everyone in the theater."
In Jiang Wen's words, frankly speaking, "A Journey to the West" was not a drink at the beginning. Good wine, because the film failed at the box office after it was released, how terrible was it? Stephen Chow's own Xingcai company went bankrupt as a result. It was 1995, and a total of 45 million yuan was invested during the production of this film. "A Great Westward Journey: Moonlight Treasure Box" was actually prepared as a "pioneering work" after Zhou Xingchi and Yang Guohui formed the Playmate Film Company, and it is such a film that should be carefully prepared to start shooting. There is not even a detailed script, only an outline of the script. At that time, the people at Xi'an Film Studio were confused after seeing the outline, but due to Stephen Chow's influence at that time, they decided to cooperate with it. Then, the film began to write while filming.
During the filming, due to problems in communication and coordination between the mainland and Hong Kong, there were even violent conflicts that caused the filming to stop and the entire crew became chaotic. In fact, this is not difficult to understand. The preparations in the early stage are too scattered, and there are naturally many quarrels in the later stage. If the trigger is not fixed in advance, the gun will easily misfire. This is the same reason. The Westward Journey of Dahua is divided into two episodes, "Moonlight Treasure Box" and "The Great Sage’s Marriage", but they were completed in more than 100 days. The friction and hardship during the period can be imagined. Even the Xi'an Film Studio publicly stated that "Dahua" Journey to the West cannot represent their artistic pursuit. To put it bluntly, they think "A Big Story Westward Journey" is too vulgar and boring. Now, when we watch this movie now, we might laugh at others who didn't understand Zhou Xingchi's artistic taste, but after all, we judged this way more than 20 years later. The famous French film theory master André Bazin once said: "To better understand the tendency of a film, it is best to understand how the film expresses its tendency." Zhou Xingchi's comedy films and other comedy films The biggest difference is that Zhou Xingchi’s movies have a strong sense of humanism. He will not rely on various pieces of jokes to tickle you, but will bring people or things you can meet in real life to the big movie. Screen, make you know how to smile.
In the movie concept at the time, this way of expression was obviously a bit advanced. From a technical point of view, "Journey to the West" adopted a parallel time-space story background that was rarely seen at the time. The two time-space interspersed back and forth caused many viewers to have a lot of misunderstandings. And today, many years later, when expressions such as "crossing" begin to appear frequently on the screen, we will understand how much meaningful Zhou Xingchi's seemingly chaotic expressions at the time actually contained. The grotesque plot at the beginning of the film strongly embodies the unique nonsensical style of "Zhou's Comedy". We can see that Stephen Chow completely disrupted and reorganized the relationship between the characters in the entire "Journey to the West", but the audience naturally accepted it. Such an arrangement. The dim color style of the film itself and the strong visual effect of color contrast make the audience have the urge to keep watching. The
film does not modify the scene too much. Just so, the audience is more easily integrated into the scene because of the naturalness and reality of the scene. There is no doubt that "Western Journey", both in terms of narrative techniques and tonal guidance, pioneered later films. A new path has been established. Me oneZhi especially likes the words of Director Ang Lee: There is no answer to life, but the movie must say one. The artistic tension in the plot of "Western Journey" once again reflects Stephen Chow's profound movie skills. Each scene paves the way for the development of the plot, and each setting pave the way for the subsequent plot. The thick hair under the bandits' feet at the beginning of the movie created suspense for the three moles on the soles of Zhizunbao's feet; Zhizunbao traveled through time and space again and again to rescue Bai Jingjing who committed suicide, but gave Fairy Zixia and Zhizunbao a reason to meet... ...the classic line of
"I once had a sincere feeling in front of me, but I didn't cherish it. I regretted it until I lost it. There is no more pain in the world than this. If God can give it again If I have a chance, I would like to say three words to that girl: I love you. If we must add a period to this relationship, I hope it is ten thousand years." When Monkey King completed the two on the wall Personally, he carried the golden hoop on his shoulder and left like a "dog", never looking back from beginning to end. Once we were ignorant when we watched this movie for the first time, we laughed with our stomachs in our hands, and we saw Supreme Treasure; when we grew up, we went to see the re-screening, and we cried in the cinema, and we saw Stephen Chow. Perhaps it is precisely because of the difficulties behind this movie and the entanglement of the stars that we can see all the regrets and unwillingness shown in this movie. "Westward Journey" has become a representative work of tragicomedy after the New Year. We finally understand that when Fairy Zixia blocked the shot of the Bull Demon King for Monkey King, he completely lost. He finally knew after Fairy Zixia died. The person in his heart is holding his hand, and he is her hero.
We finally understood that Master Xing told us a big joke in more than an hour, but in the last few tens of minutes, he told us a truth that everyone should understand. Only by leaving Zixia, the Supreme Treasure can become Monkey King. In the past, I often wondered whether "A Chinese Journey to the West" is a comedy or a tragedy? What if the sunset samurai didn't walk towards that girl? Today, when I see the two people embracing each other on the city wall again and again, I finally know that this issue is no longer important. Everything is at the moment when the phrase "he is like a dog" appeared in the movie. Exit sadly. There is nothing wrong with it. That is Zhou Xingchi's examination of himself, and it is also the best summary of love, justice and separation in this movie. Since the release of "Westward Journey", various remakes or imitations have emerged one after another, but I personally think that strictly speaking, these follow-up works are not comparable to the original version of Stephen Chow. "A Westward Journey" is highly praised by everyone, but on the contrary, this movie is as ordinary as life to the extreme. It is this extreme that the subsequent versions cannot imitate in any way. In a recent show, "Actors, please take their place", Guo Jingming re-adapted the movie, which aroused heated discussion.
Let’s abandon Director Guo’s previous movies. Only for this adaptation, Guo Jingming has made bold changes from the narrative perspective. From the perspective of the four female protagonists, he explained a completely different emotional story from the original version. . Although Guo Jingming also tried to grasp the complex emotional thoughts between several people, and he did reproduce some of the original classic charm as much as possible to increase the atmosphere, but I still felt a little embarrassed when watching this performance. Leaving aside the acting skills of a few young actors, the whole plot seems to me more like a drama pieced together with skits, even a cross talk. In the original movie, although Stephen Chow also had some funny and undecent bridges, we can clearly see that Stephen Chow did not mix any teasing and playing in the last part of his emotional talk. This can be seen from Stephen Chow. How rigorous and serious I was in directing this part. And Guo Jingming threw the jokes and tears to the audience one after another. This makes the whole story seem to have many faults. The actors are amused in the first second, and the next second they will start to affection, making the audience inevitably feel that they are there. Moaning without illness.
On the other hand, Guo Jingming expanded the emotions of several female protagonists, which seemed very full, but this just ignored the central role of Supreme Treasure in this drama, making the original full-tone orgasm plot become tensionless. Just like there are only small rockery and stones in a fish tank, but no fish, this kind of emotional expression is incomplete, and once emotional expression is incomplete, the affectionate effect will be unbalanced. The biggest difference between Stephen Chow’s crying scene and the crying scenes of many fast-food movies now is thatWhen fast food movies want you to cry, they are more like forcing you to cry. When Stephen Chow wants you to cry, he will not force you, but slowly cut an onion in front of you. Maybe, you may all cry, but these tears are different. I have watched the movie
more than 20 times. Even if there are some plots that I can recite effortlessly, I want to watch it again, maybe because of my age, I saw it at every stage Everything is different. At first, I saw Monkey King, then I saw Supreme Treasure, then later, I saw Zhou Xingchi, and finally, I saw myself.
