对话 · 奚美娟
以下为采访摘要
演绎多年最复杂的一次表演
△奚美娟
面临不可对抗的衰老、病痛和遗忘，我们该如何应对？ This is a life proposition that touches everyone, and it is also a common issue that Chinese society is facing.
released the movie "Mom! ", tells the story of an 85-year-old mother taking care of her 65-year-old daughter with Alzheimer's disease. "Old drama bone" Xi Meijuan plays her daughter in the movie. The various symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and the sudden life difficulties caused by it made Xi Meijuan's role unknown and full of challenges, and it also gave her a rare life experience. Xi Meijuan said that this role is the richest and most complex performance practice she has performed for many years.
△Mom! "Poster
Movie "Mom! "At the beginning of the story, mother Jiang Yuzhi is capricious and cute, and has been relying on her daughter's care. Daughter Feng Jizhen is strict and indifferent, living a self-disciplined life for a long time. Although the two elderly people who are both retired university professors have different personalities, they stay with each other in their later years. Their daughter's sudden diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease started a turning point in their fate.
Xi Meijuan: More and more people in the society are paying attention to people with Alzheimer's disease. From many years ago to the present, our TV series, stage plays, and literary and artistic works have always been involved in this theme. However, it seems that there are not many works that face this theme head-on in the film and tell the story of a mother and daughter facing such a dilemma in their lives. I also went through a process when
decided to play this role, is not considering whether to take it or not, but whether I still have the ability to start myself a second time? At 60, am I still creative? was unknown to me at first about the character, and in the decades I've been building characters, I haven't come across such a character. What exactly is Alzheimer's disease? I can't even experience it myself. So this time the challenge is quite big.
△Mom! "Poster
Xi Meijuan: When Dr. first told her daughter that she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the blow to her was thunderous. When expressing this state, it is impossible for you to say that I designed an action to express it on the spot, no. To really experience the real feeling of a certain moment, it must be that you let go of everything, you are not Xi Meijuan, and then imagined that he was that person, I just got that kind of disease, that state is dark and dark, and the brain seems to be trapped by something Live, how can not leave . To feel her from the heart, when you are close to her, it is really mixed.
I remember that when finished filming this scene, I was dripping with sweat and exhausted, as if I had entered the world of an unknown person, and I felt that I had touched the heart of an unknown person. This feeling is strange and exciting at the same time. Playing this role is an experience that I have almost never had. There is the joy of creation, but also the difficulty of creation, and there are some unknown things that need to be explored, which are very complicated. I think this kind of complexity is very good. I am very happy to have such an opportunity to try it, and I am especially grateful to director Yang Lina for giving me this opportunity.
△Mom! "
Yang Lina (director of the movie "Mom!"): I set my mother to be 1930People born around 2000 have come from the Republic of China, and their generation has a very unusual life. My daughter's generation has experienced educated youth going to the countryside. Sometimes people make one mistake and they may bear the burden for the rest of their lives. Daughter is such a character.
Xi Meijuan: I also discussed with the director, the daughter in the play is close to my age. There is a plot in the play when the daughter was in the third grade, one day her father came back, and the daughter did not open the door to her father because of fear and fear, and then her father came to a bad ending. Why did the daughter get so entangled in this matter that it caused her enormous mental and psychological pressure? Maybe the daughter was not very conscious, or did not understand the consequences of not opening the door to her father. But once a bad result occurs, when a person grows up and becomes more and more mature, when she reflects on her childhood behavior, her self-criticism, entanglement and pain will be deeper. daughter has always wanted to confess to her father.
△Mom! "Poster
Xi Meijuan: Actually, I heard from a professional doctor that Alzheimer's disease is not only affected by the genetic gene , but there are other reasons that can induce this disease, which are still being explored. We had an audience meeting in Hangzhou before. The audience included doctors who have been studying Alzheimer's disease for more than ten years, as well as family members, social workers, and nursing staff... They talked a lot about their impressions and gave us a lot of education. We gained a lot of things we didn't know before. For example, they say that we should try to understand their world and our world, which is the first time I hear this expression.
The doctor who had been doing research for more than ten years said that there was only one identification of this disease in the past, which was irreversible. But after so many years of research, he believes that as long as early intervention is carried out, there is still the possibility of improvement. He realized that if humanistic care was carried out in the early stage, the development of the disease could be delayed. I think they gave us some benign information, the better information I got after this movie.
In 15 years of tempering
, I got a chance to be on the screen. In the drama "Mahjong", which was translated by Ms. Lu Yan, focusing on the topic of retirement, Xi Meijuan was in the urban drama " Depends on the Elderly " directed by Zhao Baogang , and the recent hit drama " Settled Home ". All have performances that are well-received by the audience.
Xi Meijuan: In the past ten or twenty years of , from a global perspective, art works focusing on the elderly have been involved very early. There is a play called "Mahjong" in the United States, which won the Pulitzer Prize for screenplay in the 1970s. At that time, Ms. Lu Yan translated it into Chinese and gave it to Beijing Renyi , and then and teacher and Zhu Lin made their premiere in China.
△Drama "Mahjong"
Xi Meijuan: "Mahjong" was introduced to China in the early 1980s, when we just entered the early stage of reform and opening up, and everyone had a strong desire to improve their lives. Everyone was so enthusiastic that we didn't pay much attention to the topic of old age, and we hadn't entered the stage of aging at that time. Therefore, although "Mahjong" is such a good script, it does not get as much attention as it is now.
In 2019, Pu Cunxin reenacted "Yangmahjong" once, and I also performed it once in Shanghai in the same year. What's particularly interesting is that when we were rehearsing this drama in 2019, sometimes before we started rehearsing, people often said that I was helping my parents find a nursing home recently. Do you have any good resources to help introduce? Nursing homes, the elderly want to enter nursing homes, it has become a good idea at that time.The content that many people care about, this topic suddenly comes to you. So when we were performing this play, the social repercussions were very big.
△The drama "Mahjong"
Xi Meijuan: In 2021, director Yang Lina approached me and said that he would shoot "Mom! ". In fact, in those three years, I performed a stage play and a movie, all about retirement, life and death, and illness. I think this is also a reflection on the current situation of society. In my artistic career, I think it is quite meaningful to reflect some social reality by entering works of art.
In Xi Meijuan's resume, she has almost won the Best Actress Award in the Chinese drama industry, film and TV series, but she said that her resume is very simple, and she finished writing in two lines. In 1973, the 18-year-old Xi Meijuan was admitted to the Shanghai Theater Academy to study acting. After graduation, she was assigned to the Shanghai People's Art Theater and began her splendid and simple performing arts career.
Xi Meijuan: When we were young, the artistic environment was not as good as it is now, and we didn't go to the theatre much. In addition, my parents were from ordinary working-class families, so I didn't have the conditions to go to the theatre. When I was a child, I didn’t understand it, and I felt that singing and dancing were art and artistic performances. But when I came to Shanghai Theater Academy, maybe I was born with fate. I liked it very much when I entered the acting major. You can present a work without singing or dancing. What's particularly interesting is that because I'm from Shanghai, the pronunciation of the opera school and the drama academy are similar in Shanghai dialect. At first, I thought I was going to sing when I took the exam at the drama academy. Too ignorant, too clueless. It is really from a blank sheet of paper, from zero to enter the professional learning of acting.
Our generation is very lucky. When we graduated from reform and opening up, many good possibilities and landscapes suddenly appeared in front of us. In 1986, Shanghai hosted the "First Shakespeare Festival in China". At that time, the British Secretary of State for Culture came to Shanghai to participate in the festival. I played "The Taming of the Shrew", and I also played " Romeo and Juliet". ". The next year we went to the UK for a month as a return visit, just to go to the theatre. Definitely an eye-opener for a young actor. You can see a lot of performance forms, see how people understand Shakespeare, see how we present it, see how they present it... It can be watched, inspected and thought. I think having such an experience at a young age can improve quite a lot.
△Xi Meijuan
Xi Meijuan: At that time, Mr. Huang Zuolin was the director of Shanghai Renyi, and he used young actors very much. Because before we went, Shanghai Renyi hadn't assigned new people for ten years. So after we went in, it was not like the previous actors who had at least two years of group performances, had a secondary role in the third year, and then played the main role. At that time, it seemed that I couldn't wait for this. After we entered, we were given a lot of burdens. People may be pushed up in this state. It wasn't until the early 1990s, after 15 years of training on stage, that I had a chance to step onto the screen.
In 1990, Shanghai Film Studio Wu Zhennian directed the film " Fake Girl True Love ", and Xi Meijuan was chosen to play the heroine Wang Yujuan. The film tells the touching story between Wang Yujuan and a veteran, Wang Fushou. The interpretation of family affection and the exploration of the old man's search for spiritual dependence are the prominent themes of the film.
△The movie "True Love"
After the movie was broadcast, Wang Yujuan's role was well received by the audience, and the role of Liu Huifang in the hit TV series " longing for " was featured by "Xinmin Evening News"Known as "Film and Television Double Star", Xi Meijuan also won the Best Actress in the 11th China Film Golden Rooster Award.
Xi Meijuan: When I first started filming and filming, a reporter asked me whether I preferred the screen or the stage? I find this question difficult to answer. I used to be so obsessed with the stage, and then when I switched to another form, if I didn't study it, and there was no love in it, you couldn't do it well. Later, film and television dramas have a little more income than stage, which has a temptation for many people. But my whole 80's, or 15 years on stage, I really didn't think about what to do. The stage was really more attractive to me at that time, and there was a time when I even felt that I was born for the stage. Later, because there were too many film and television dramas, I did not return to the stage for 10 years. But as long as I have the opportunity to return to the stage and stand on the stage again, I feel like I have never left. I don't get stage fright because I haven't acted in a play for 10 years. Returning to the stage is like coming home, there is a particularly good feeling. So come to think of it, I'm actually quite obsessed with the stage.
In Xi Meijuan's eyes, no matter what role she plays, she tells herself that she must take it seriously. She has played 6 roles adapted from real events. In order to let the audience feel the real and vivid characters, she chose the most stupid way to experience them one by one.
She said that to observe the characters and feel the details, the characters that come out are flesh and blood and warm. She often goes to the art archive to watch films. She likes Robert De Niro , so she chooses his works to watch one by one, or sees Meryl Streep 's works to study how she handles them Role. When Xi Meijuan saw the gap, she said that she would not be satisfied because she still had expectations for this profession and herself.
Xi Meijuan: I have only done one major in my life, and I don't think I can change jobs again. It is very interesting to create a character from scratch as an acting major, and this thing has a strong attraction to me to this day. Including pick up "Mom! "This role, I am 60 years old, is a great test of my creativity and productivity. There is also self-awareness, which will make you unable to stop. It may be these aspects that people live and learn. I am also a very happy thing to do well as an actor.
(some pictures from the Internet)
