It seems that another literary film "won".
"The World of Plants and Trees". The
movie was released for 10 days, with a box office of 79 million. Maoyan predicts that the final box office will reach 110 million, which is indeed a pretty good result for a literary film.
especially director Gu Xiaogang.
Although his last film "Spring River Plumbing" entered Cannes and won the best film and best director at the First Film Festival, it suffered from no one to distribute it and could only be released on streaming media.
has achieved a turnaround this time.
Before watching the movie, most movie fans were also looking forward to the movie.
In terms of reputation, this film was nominated for the Best Film at the Tokyo International Film Festival;
Jiang Qinqin won the Best Actress at the 17th Asian Film Awards.
The best actor of the same year is Koji Yakusho in the Wim Wenders movie " Perfect Days ".
When " Grass and Trees World " was preparing to be released, the posters that were thrown out were also extremely high-end.
trailer poster designed by Huang Hai -
should be stylish;
should be connotative.
but. After the release of the
film, fans fell silent.
Douban 6.5 may not be too bad, but the audience’s disappointment is palpable.
Why?
Today, sir will use this movie to talk about the recent path that the film market has taken, which has become more and more biased and deformed -
Whether freedom of creation depends on commercial value, is it impossible to have your cake and eat it too?
01
Ningba
In "The World of Grass and Trees", sir saw a kind of compromise resulting from random grafting.
As Gu Xiaogang's second work, he has really continued the style of the first work, setting the background of the story in the water town of Hangzhou. Many green lakes, cascading trees, green mountains and other elements have also been added to the film shots. Try hard to bring your style closer to "Spring River Water Warmth".
Even at the beginning of the movie, in a very poetic way, he asked the peasant woman picking tea to "wake up" the mountains.
At the end of the movie, in order to recall the "soul" of his demented mother, the son carried his mother back to the forest of his hometown.
Whether the mother has regained consciousness, whether the son is still alive, etc., all leave an open ending for interpretation.
The addition of these quite symbolic contents is doomed. It will definitely not be like " All-In-One " and " She Disappeared " -
can quickly and directly, like the legal promotional video, attract the audience I quickly understood the story that the movie wanted to express, and quickly got the "refreshing" feeling of the story.
Therefore, when it comes to the posters of "The World of Grass and Trees", they have gone from the warm-up posters written by Huang Hai to the new version of "Switching Shots for Cannons".
and the publicity materials that appear simultaneously, such as the style of small advertisements posted on the walls of public toilets.
has already explained.
Its announcement still wants to ride on the traffic of "All or Nothing".
That’s right, this kind of hard work is very effective.
This is also the reason why the film’s box office will eventually exceed previous media predictions.
but. The side effect of
is that Xuanfa abruptly separates the content that the director wants to express, and takes the movie to another extreme in an eye-catching way.
This is what Sir often calls "artistic film fraud" propaganda.
It was not originally a great movie, but it had to be packaged as a "great movie".
Audiences who have watched "The World of Grass and Trees" will feel that these 118 minutes have been painful.
It seems to be a loose puzzle, adding the director's artistic film shooting techniques, adding real hot search topics, adding the theme framework of the folk myth and legend "Mulian saves his mother", and adding Jiang Qinqin's "Joker" style performance imitation. Finally, a very imagistic ending is added - the consciousness transformation between the tiger and his mother.
Even, at a certain moment, you seemed to see the invasion of drama elements.
It has everything.
But, after spelling it out, it doesn’t look like anything.
Is it an art film?
is not.
Is it a commercial film? Neither does
.
In the end, the audience can only attribute it to a "bad movie".
However, maybe this would be a bit biased.
sir prefers to summarize it as a confused work that keeps wandering between commercial films and self-expression, and finally can't find its direction.
It has a compromise for commercial films -
From 90% amateur actors in the first film to almost an all-star cast team now, director Gu Xiaogang wants to make this film a breakthrough, at least at the box office. ;
In the movie, a lot of the process of MLM brainwashing people is included, which reflects the horror and viciousness of MLM, just like in "All or Nothing", the fraud team beat and bullied the code farmers who were deceived into going to Myanmar;
However, It also wants to have self-expression.
For example, He Mulian, played by Wu Lei , has a very close relationship with nature, inner introspection and awakening of his own Buddha nature, which is very similar to Wu Taihua, the mother played by Jiang Qinqin who fell into "hell". Strong contrast.
also has several very exciting rivalry scenes between mother and son. It also follows the form of a literary film, exaggerating the character's body movements and self-emotional analysis, rather than the intense and exciting plots that commercial films are known for.
Yes, it’s just bad. The director
wants to establish a good sense of self-expression and also wants to seize the gimmick of commercial films, but he is unable to take into account the rationality of the film's story and the construction of characters.
For example, Wu Taihua's character was not strong at the beginning. She spent her whole life frugally to save money for her son. But in the end, how could she be willing to sell her house to buy MLM products and embark on the path of awakening the consciousness of an "independent woman"? ?
In order to save his mother, the son entered the MLM organization, and even made a choice that went against his heart under the brainwashing effect of the MLM personnel. After so many hardships, in the end, when he destroyed the MLM organization, he just put a wiretap in the leader's bag. device? No other details were revealed.
's weakness in the story and shortcomings in character setting all reveal Gu Xiaogang's embarrassment -
he doesn't want to "rescue the cat", but he has to "rescue the cat".
02
Save the cat
Yes, recently because of " Galaxy Writer ", this special term in the film industry has become popular again -
Save the cat.
comes from the book Save the Cat by Blake Snyder.
To put it bluntly, this book is a universal formula. As long as you learn this, you can incorporate anything into it, and the output will be a commercial blockbuster template that meets Hollywood standards.
The origin of this term is an example given by the author in the book -
When the protagonist appeared, he saved a cat. This action not only defined who he was, but also made the audience fall in love with this person.
This is a very "routine" movie plot setting.
This plot can also be found in "The World of Grass and Trees":
Wu Taihua can't bear to kill a tea bug, and He Mulian feels guilty when faced with the job of deceiving the elderly. These are all part of the character positioning, so that They gain empathy from the audience.
of course.
It would not be enough to say that Gu Xiaogang was referring to "Save the Cat" just because of this plot.
But if you scratch the surface.
Remove the artistic attributes of the movie and look at this story. You will feel that this is clearly written according to a routine commercial movie. How to say
?
For example, the core of "Save the Cat" is actually how to set the "metronome" of the movie story, such as "layout", "triggering events", "villain approaching", "losing everything", "dark night of the soul" "Etc. Specifically, on which page of the movie script should these plots appear.
and some of the principles mentioned in it - when the film reaches the midpoint one beat, the script will have a "fun and games" part, it must fulfill the promise of the premise.
refers to the reason "why should I watch this movie".
This can be found in "The World of Grass and Trees".
Take the latter as an example. The so-called "reason" refers to "I want to see how my mother entered MLM and how it poisons people."
It is the core of movie posters.
is also the most interesting part of the movie.
an example.
Wu Taihua transformed from a village woman into an urban woman after being brainwashed through MLM.
In the previous frame, she was still unkempt, but in the next frame, she was sitting on a cruise ship on West Lake in Hangzhou, with unfashionable curly hair and purple eye shadow. The sudden change in
's character style is not to show that Wu Taihua has truly found herself.
Instead she became a clown who was kept in the dark, using poor makeup to transform herself into someone else.
This kind of exaggerated makeup and hair is ironic.
At this time, it was also the first time that Mu Lian realized that her mother had been deceived by a pyramid scheme.
and after this plot.
They had a huge quarrel, and Mu Lian called the police and sent her mother to the police station.
When the mother and son walked out of the police station, the scene on the poster appeared: Wu Taihua stood on the table under the bridge like a clown, cursing the world for being unfair to her.
This section can be said to be the "drama" of the entire movie.
but.
The problem is that when Gu Xiaogang followed the principle of "saving the cat", he ignored the foreshadowing of personality transformation.
How does a person cross from "cautious" to "crazy"?
Perhaps in vulgar Hollywood movies, such transformation relies on some comedy scenes, and some eye-catching scenes are obscured, and the audience does not care.
But "The World of Grass and Trees" presents "reality" to the audience from the beginning.
The result of this is that before you have time to think about it, the story moves on to the next chapter-
The emotion of the movie is interrupted by the so-called "script rhythm". Same for
.
At the end of the movie, the "breath of death" will inevitably come.
It will use this part to kill a character in the movie - it will make the protagonist's life in ruins and there will be no hope.
So with 20 minutes left in the movie, Sir got his wish and waited for "death".
Wu Taihua's good sister jumped to her death after learning that her younger brother was doing pyramid schemes.
Regardless of whether this suicide makes sense or not, it is more like she committed suicide for the sake of committing suicide. She is just a "tool person" who caused Wu Taihua's mental breakdown.
is required by the plot.
or movie rhythm needs?
This is more like the latter.
The framework of "Save the Cat", if you look carefully, it wanders around in "The World of Grass and Trees" from time to time, weakening the director's authorship and failing to reasonably extend the commerciality of the film.
Director Gu Xiaogang wants to have his own shooting style and production rhythm. However, he may not be accustomed to this shooting method, or to put it more bluntly:
He cannot use his own style to make a "commercial movie" that the public wants to see. ".
However, "The World of Grass and Trees" still exaggerates the commercial gimmick of the "MLM" part, and paints the film's background into nondescript.
This is the conflict between "saving the cat" and the author's nature.
The "save the cat" formula seems to be resisted by some domestic film creators.
is like the actor Liu Tong in "Xi Er". After watching "Galaxy Writer", in his long film review on Weibo, he also talked about the imprisonment of creators by "saving cats".
△ From Weibo @李同二号, "Not a film critic, but a Galaxy writer"
It frames the freedom of creation.
limits the author's self-expression in the film's narrative process.
divides the rhythm of the film, allowing the director's self-expression to be framed under the "metronome" of Hollywood.
Moreover, under this system, the movies produced must comply with the "one-sentence theorem" -
△ Excerpted from "Save the Cat"
Wang Hailin was once very angry about such "one-sentence stories".
Under such requirements, the movies produced must be simple, crude, and without deep connotation.
When a movie like "The World of Grass and Trees" appears, it is too general to simply say that it is a "artistic film fraud".
They are not just cheating on the promotion like "The Last Night on Earth".
But in the process of creation, the first time he writes it, he is destined to struggle with "saving the cat".
Finally, it’s both necessary and necessary.
can only hurt both sides.
03
It’s not the cat’s fault
Of course, Sir is not saying that “saving cats” is useless. It can even be said that for commercial films, “saving cats” is the foundation.
is like building a house.
You can't say that I only built a foundation in the end, let alone that I couldn't even build the foundation, so I just wanted to do those fancy designs.
There’s nothing shameful about the “save the cat” cadence.
If the character's inner nature can be captured more solidly, or a commercial film with both good reputation and box office can be made first.
Do you have the guts to say that I disdain the use of "save the cat"?
Take the overturned "artistic films" "The World of Grass and Trees" and " Parrot Kills " in recent years.
Putting aside the director’s confusion of self-expression, the bugs in character setting and plot logic are also flaws that cannot be removed from the movie.
This has nothing to do with limiting self-expression, or being forced to compromise to "save the cat."
, on the contrary, the "foundation" has not been laid well.
Of course, Sir knows the concerns of many new directors. Literary films are inherently unable to attract the public, so we have to engage in fraud in the promotion and add "save the cat" to the content that everyone can accept.
Artistic film workers also need to eat.
but.
If literary and artistic films want to make money, can they really only cheat and make themselves look nondescript?
certainly not.
Take last year as an example, there were two literary films that provided us with good examples.
" Error by the River " has a total box office of 300 million.
" Universe Exploration Editorial Department ", without traffic actors, 67 million.
Although they have given up on hot topics that follow the crowd, the inner portrayal of characters and the expression of the authorship of the film are still online.
This is the prerequisite for their success.
Take "The Mistake by the River" as an example. In the announcement of
, it steadily followed the line of literary youth, emphasizing the adaptation of "Yu Hua's novel". On the poster, it focused on "no answers" and was not a "murder mystery film".
In this movie, director Wei Shujun and screenwriter Kang Chunlei gave up the clue of "solving the murder" and followed the content of Yu Hua's original novel.
Their story focuses on "going crazy".
The "madness" here is not a movie-style hysteria, but a subtle fear that gradually takes over the protagonist's heart.
For example, the criminal police captain Ma Zhe, played by Zhu Yilong, was entangled in a murder case for many days. The pressure of work and life gradually caused his mental breakdown. How to express
?
projected the "disappearing third-class merit" (work pressure) that the director has always emphasized (work pressure) into the embryo in his wife's belly (life pressure) that may have inherited his mental illness through a bowl of ping pong balls, and projected it into his mind. On the movie screen.
Through this "big screen", we seem to have a glimpse into Ma Zhe's heart.
In "Space Exploration Editorial Department", the character setting is even more like this. A suspense is set up from the beginning, "Why is a person who is crazy about civil science so obsessed with aliens?"
Finally, in After getting the ultimate answer from the alien, the deepest motivation in the character's heart is revealed - the father's endless guilt for his daughter's suicide.
In these two movies, no matter how unrealistic the film is created, its final destination is the psychological needs of the characters, which allows the audience to empathize with them.
Instead of saying, we need to create some "dark night of the soul" so that the characters can "grow".
This is in line with the essence of authorial movies.
is correct.
In an era where capital is king, it is even more difficult for an author-director to maintain his authorship.
On the one hand, commercial films with less authorial style are selling like crazy, and on the other hand, directors who try to retain their authorial style lose everything (such as Ning Hao).
is in the game with capital. The authorship of director
is completely at a disadvantage.
But after all, the movie is the work of the director. If there are difficulties, it does not mean that you need to compromise blindly.
Especially for literary and artistic films, when we go to the cinema to watch literary and artistic films, what we are often interested in is the director, rather than how many commercial elements there are in the film, and whether it has the so-called "cat-saving" rhythm of taking care of the general public.
What we look at is the style and expression of the work itself.
maybe this time.
They relied on their previous reputation accumulation and bluffing publicity to attract many viewers into the cinema, and they had enough explanations for investors.
What about next time? After
drove away the fans who silently supported it.
In the next movie, do we really need to learn all about how to "rescue cats"?
The pictures in this article come from the Internet
Editorial Assistant: Oda won’t let you cut
