"The Stars Are Waiting for Us" may be the one with the dimmest "starlight" among the four Chinese-language films shortlisted for the main competition of the Golden Goblet Award at the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival. But the movie tickets still sold out early, and it was hard to ignore its existence. Because the film's director Zhang Dalei has previously been shortlisted for the Berlin International Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, Pingyao International Film Festival and other works with " august ", "Blue Train", "Moses on the Plains " and "Half the Afternoon". Zhan et al. At this year's Shanghai International Film Festival, in addition to "The Stars Are Waiting for Us" being shortlisted for the main competition unit, its short film "Why We Dream" was also shortlisted for the short film unit.
"The Stars Are Waiting for Us" had its world premiere at Shanghai Cinemas yesterday, and the mystery was finally unveiled. The movie tells the story of Lao Zhang, a native of Northwest China, who faces difficulties in life and career and wants to drive a pickup truck to the desert to give himself an explanation. Along the way he meets some strange people who are strange, mysterious and yet familiar. Everything that happened next left him in a trance, making it difficult to distinguish reality from dream. In the end, these idealists crowded into the broken pickup truck and drove into the night toward their respective ideal places. The story is very simple and bland, and even the poetry pursued by the director is somewhat artificial, which made many live audiences feel sleepy.
Zhang Dalei revealed that the character Lao Zhang actually has a prototype character, "A friend once asked me to film a Shaanxi entrepreneur. But I think it is best for a real character to exist in a real form, and the movie should still be More room for creativity." In the end, Zhang Dalei combined this prototype and created a group of "people who clumsily persist in their dreams" in the movie. At the same time, this film also includes characters from his previous work "Blue Train". "The characters in "Blue Train" will appear in my other films in the future. It's as if they live in the movie space. For example, when I met Lao Zhang this time, we all walked together."
Male in "The Stars Are Waiting for Us" Liang Jingdong, who plays the protagonist Lao Zhang, has served as art designer for Jia Zhangke's works such as "Xiao Wu", "Ren Xiaoyao" and "Three Gorges Good Man". It was also from Jia Zhangke's "Platform" that he became a "part-time" actor. He also participated as an actor in Zhang Dalei's first two works, "Blue Train" and "Moses on the Plains." He said that a pure movie lover like Zhang Dalei has a "magnet-like" attraction to him. The heroine Huang Lili said that although the film was only shot for 20 days, the whole process was very happy. "I even forgot that we were making a movie, as if we were living together." It is said that the director will Let the actors read the script several times before filming begins. After filming begins, ask them to throw away the script and not read it again. Use feelings and experiences instead of thinking to shape the characters. This creative process made Huang Lili reflect on herself and said that she used to be a little more serious about life, but after filming this movie, she felt that "it seems that people can live a good life if they are dumber and slower." (Xinmin Evening News reporter Sun Jiayin)
