I did not hesitate to give this year's best domestic film to Diao Yinan's "The Party at Southern Station".
is the ultimate presentation of film aesthetics in domestic films over the years, and it perfectly integrates Western violent aesthetics with local elements, and expresses the director's authoritarian artistic intentions while breaking through the scale of stories and themes.
"The Gathering at South Station" was unanimously recognized by judges at home and abroad at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year. As the only Chinese-language film shortlisted in the main competition unit of Cannes, it can compete with South Korea's "Parasite" and Quentin's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" on the same stage, which is enough to demonstrate its good quality.
Quentin praised the film even more, saying that he "is addicted to it, and the next day after watching it, he still has a crush on the film"! Fans who have watched the film directly included it in their "Annual Top Ten List."
Currently, "The Gathering at South Station" maintains a high score of 7.6 on the Internet. As of 20:00 on December 7th, the box office has exceeded 80 million, and the number of films scheduled is second only to the Hollywood blockbuster "Game of the Brave 2", with cumulative box office Over 100 million is only a matter of time.
"The Gathering at Southern Station" is the fourth work of director Diao Yinan. Although he debuted for many years, he strives to make every film meticulously crafted. In 2014, he won the 64th Berlin International Film Festival with "Fireworks in the Day". After the Golden Bear Award, it took Diao Yinan five years to come up with a new work. His attitude towards movies has gone beyond rigor and reached a level of trickery.
But it is precisely because of this deadly tricky attitude that we have seen his ultimate bloom in film aesthetics. "The Gathering at South Station" is definitely a large-scale film.
First of all, speaking from the story, it is super-class. The violence and erotic elements of the film cleverly walk above the red line, reaching the bottom line as much as possible, but will never cross it. The
story tells the accidental collapse of a motorcycle thieves group. Zhou Zenong, the gang leader played by Hu Ge, had a dispute with his gang because of the chassis division problem. The two parties agreed on a time-limited stealing contest.
can be in an open and secret contest, an accident happened, the brother died tragically, Zhou Zenong killed the policeman by mistake for a breakthrough. On the one hand, he has to avoid being tracked by the national police, and at the same time, he has to guard against his brother's betrayal. Before he died, he had only one long-cherished wish. He left the 300,000 bonus that the police offered to capture him to his family. "Accompanying Swimming Girl" Liu Aiai (Gui Lunmei) accidentally entered this life and death battle for ransom.
gradually developed a complicated relationship between the two, from doubt to trust, and finally willing to entrust their lives. This "party" at the South Station became a turning point for everyone's destiny. This dramatic main line of the story, with a bit of blackness and absurdity in the Coen Brothers film, shows the most perishable and unstable state of human nature under this situation and pressure. The first act of the
film is extremely stunning. Diao Yinan not only shows us the underground bandit gang with local colors, but also joins the "accompany swimmer", a local and unfamiliar female character, in black. The image of "femme beauty" that is used in the movie adds a new way of representation. The most amazing thing about the
film is that it is wrapped in a colorful formal coat outside the core of its film noir. The presentation of the scale does not rely on simple and crude plasma and ketone bodies, but uses the form of the film to give the film a higher level of expression through sound, mirroring, composition and editing, to present a unique audio-visual experience. The whole film of
has no waste scenes. Almost every scene contains some creative skills, which continuously increases the pleasure of watching the movie.
The design of light and shadow is the first to catch the eyes of the audience. The signboards in the downtown area, the street lights on the mottled walls, and the well-designed lighting, similar to the expressionist style of Western "neon aesthetics", dominate the audience's visual impression of the film for most of the narrative time.
was fighting in the rain at the beginning, and the red motorcycle walked through the majestic rain. A lone lamp illuminates the face of the character, perfectly bringing the inner state of the character into the scene, and accurately conveying it to the fans in a poetic way. .
The use of light and shadow is not only to create an atmosphere, reflect the emotions of the characters, but also express the behavior and relationship between the characters.
at the end of the movieIn the chase scene, the lights project the shadows of the police and the bandits on the wall, and the distance between each other and the chase of you and me are highlighted through the change of the projection size.
A large number of night scenes have reserved enough time and space for the use of light and shadow. On the one hand, it adds the formal beauty of the picture and also adds a textual metaphor about the fate of the characters. The design of light and shadow is not only working in the dark, but also worthy of fun in the day. There are shanty buildings in the film many times, and the tarp has become a natural curtain. Through the position of light and shadow and the narrative design, the relationship between the characters is ingeniously presented. The
lens uses the curtain as the background color, the shadow and body of the characters as the center, and there are two lone shadows on the canopy. Zhou Zenong hides in the dark and looks like a "monster". In fact, it has long gone to the end and has lost the body and the initiative. Liu Ai'ai looks like "petite and pitiful", showing her body with her body, being in the bright spot, seeming to be controlled by others, but in fact she has a strategy in her heart and has already mastered the initiative.
Light and shadow co-edited lies, blurred the reality and the reality, kept blank for the film, and left a rich interpretation space and poetic interpretation path for the text. The most noteworthy thing about
is that the artistic representation and white space constructed through light and shadow are not unattainable and unreachable. Most audiences can get aesthetic pleasure from it and understand the basic intention of the director. For example, the weird contrast of scarlet blood and colorful light and shadow; in a closed room, a transparent umbrella forcefully penetrates the abdominal cavity, the umbrella surface opens, and blood spills on the umbrella surface. After
uses light and shadow to provide an attractive visual perception, the poetic and metaphorical part of the film has a solid foundation.
The interaction between the image of light and shadow and the style of the scene is a channel to explore the underlying logic of the creator. And those symbolic props integrated in the narrative are another hidden channel to see through the soul of the film. Umbrella and flowing water are the two most critical text symbols in the film. The transparent umbrella has been in the mirror many times. It symbolizes loneliness and alienation. The transparent material allows outsiders to see the umbrella supporter, but not the whole picture.
is separated from the umbrella, as if separated from the true heart. Umbrella holders are habitually avoiding, and those outside the umbrella always want to find out. The tension between the characters is metaphorized in the square inch of the umbrella. The water flow
often attached to umbrellas is also an important channel for interpretation of the film. The accompany swimmer and the current together constitute the source of continuous desire.
On the endless water, accompany the swimmers and the guests teasing and playing, they speak boldly with each other, and their bodies are dark. When the embryo of desire develops, they will remove their serious disguise, take people away, and go away with joy.
The turning point in the relationship between Liu Ai'ai and Zhou Zenong also happened on the water. The woman slid to Zhou Zenong's abdomen skillfully, and after a few heavy sighs, Liu Aiai gargle with a tuft of lake water nearby, spitting out the liquid mixed with desire and returning it. The smell of sexual desire faintly floats in the corners of the town, pushing cups and changing cups with sin, and dancing together.
When the song "The Beautiful Solo River" sounded throughout the film, the imagery and poetic expression of the water was like a tide, slowly flooding your body and five senses, and finally reaching your heart.
Therefore, advanced artistic expression is not a dazzling technique. While greatly improving the beauty of the film, Diao Yinan took care of the interpretation ability of more audiences, balanced self-expression and commercial attributes, lowered the threshold for viewing movies, and threw enough to kill. With the powerful bait, most of the audience firmly pressed into the chair and pulled into the whirlpool of the story.
"The Gathering at Southern Station" is rarely used on the big screen in the mainland to tell traditional noir films with "exotic colors", which challenges the audience's existing aesthetics and successfully evokes the mind-seeking mentality. Even if you look internationally, The Wuhan dialect and the regional characteristics of the city will bring unique viewing experience.
It is worth mentioning that, compared to Diao Yinan's predecessor, "Fireworks in the Day", "The Gathering at Southern Station" is undoubtedly more pleasing and gorgeous. The excessively rich aesthetic expression and the interspersed metaphorical expression make the whole work obviously biased. The weakness of the story and the thinness of the characters limit the height and breadth of the theme, and more or less hinder the fluency of the narrative language.
But for the entire domestic film market, what we are most scarce at the moment are films with authorial styles. Therefore, for "The Gathering at Southern Station", we should give more encouragement and support to cultivate the audience’s differentiated aesthetic expectations. Bring more possibilities for Chinese movies.
