The recently popular first TV series "Flowers" directed by Wong Kar-Wai has attracted widespread attention and discussion with its highly stylized form and cross-border features. A Hong Kong film director directs a TV series that reflects Shanghai's Shanghai Beach in the 1990s. It is quite similar to Huang Zhan, a senior figure in Hong Kong's cultural circles. He wrote "Running on the Beach" for "Shanghai Beach" before ever having been to the Huangpu River. Thousands of miles of roaring river water forever. Endless famous scenes. In this kind of crossover, Wong Kar-wai composes the Hong Kong-style Shanghai dream in his own unique way.
Although the story told in the TV series "Flowers" takes place in Shanghai in the 1990s, as the voice-over memory at the beginning of the drama reminds us, it is not the Shanghai that experienced the reform and opening up in the last century, but the Shanghai dream that spans time and space. . The establishment of the status of market economy in the 1990s has enabled various market entities to participate in it and show their talents. The relationships and emotions between the characters also revolve around fame, wealth, and status. The relationships between the characters are full of attachment and calculation. In the narrative of the story, the story of Shanghai Beach continues to repeat itself, except that the name of Shanghai Beach in "Flowers" becomes the Yellow River. Along the way, the love-hate relationship between Chow Yun-fat and Zhao Yazhi has turned into the overall transformation history of A Baobao, and the old feud in the world has turned into various secret wars in finance. In this way, the TV series "Flowers" is distinguished from those works such as "The Way of Heaven" and "Chicken Feathers Flying to the Sky" that also reflect the entrepreneurs of reform and opening up. In this kind of nostalgic narrative, Wong Kar-wai is not so much showing the neon lights and the sea of flowers as the bosses of the Yellow River Road. It is better to use the feasting and feasting of the 1990s that Hong Kong directors are more familiar with to interpret the success of Shanghai in the Republic of China. The Yellow River Road is named after the beach. It was in this story of the two cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong that Wong Kar-wai found his strength.
In terms of creative method, Wong Kar-wai used his filmic approach to compose the Hong Kong-style Shanghai dream. The play is adapted from Jin Yucheng's 2012 Shanghai-language novel "Flowers" published in Harvest magazine. The novel won the 9th Mao Dun Literary Award and was once praised by critics as one of the best Shanghai novels in history. Jin Yucheng lived in a bungalow on South Shaanxi Road since he was a child, and later became an editor and reviewer of "Shanghai Literature". This also made the novel "Flowers" highly regional, readable and rhythmic. These novel characteristics at the textual level also made the novel "Flowers" unique. Screenwriter-centered video adaptations are fraught with difficulties. Wang's film-based creation method is to dismantle and reorganize the original novel in the sense of film ontology, and to structure it using film language. On the basis of clarifying the relationship between the characters, Wong Kar-wai asked Shanghainese Hu Ge and Tang Yan to interpret the stories of their parents' generation in the 1990s.
fills his dream of Hong Kong-style Shanghai with the actors' excellent performances. You Benchang, who plays Uncle Bao, based on his years of understanding of the character, transformed the somewhat wretched image that was originally hiding in the shadows into a seasoned, scheming, business-savvy veteran who remains calm in times of crisis. In Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong-style Shanghai dream, the relationship with the traditional Shanghai dream narrative is also adjusted. In films such as "In the Mood for Love", "Chungking Express", "Ashes of Time", "2046", etc., Wong Kar-wai focuses on fleeting emotional experiences and aestheticizes them. In "Flowers", Mr. Bao himself is also set to be a love prodigal, wandering between Lingzi, Miss Wang, Li Li, etc. for various reasons. The deep love for my first love, Betty, was based on some kind of nostalgic shared experience. As the monologue said, I remember when we were children, Betty and I liked to climb to the top of the Orthodox church near my home to look at the clouds in the sky and the trees on the ground. Time is like water, bringing people and taking them away together. It can be seen that in the TV series "Flowers", Wong Kar-wai chose to compromise and compromise. On the one hand, he retained his deep love for Bai Yueguang, but on the other hand, it did not hinder his life among thousands of flowers. .
Wong Kar-Wai used exquisite images and film rhythm to reproduce the life history of Abao, the trend-setters of the market economy in the 1990s, and told this story in a stylized Hong Kong-style Shanghai dream. This method does not make people feel inconsistent, because this expression presents the self-confidence and even narcissism of the market economy trendsetters to the audience.
