As the only Chinese-language film shortlisted for the main competition at this year's Cannes International Film Festival, "The Romantic Generation" has been in the news: on the eve of its release, the film studio stated that it would be released within 22 days and would not wait

As the only Chinese film shortlisted for the main competition of this year's Cannes International Film Festival, " Romance Generation " can be said to be in constant news: on the eve of the release of

, the film studio stated that it would be released for a limited time of 22 days and would not wait until the expiration date; soon after, pirated copies leaked out , director Jia Zhangke was heartbroken. Both words and deeds hope that the audience will go to the cinema to watch "The Merry Generation".

But compared to Jia Zhangke's "Old Friends in Mountains and Rivers" and "Children of Rivers and Lakes", this kind of movie that "records the times and faces in the era" has no obvious storyline and is unlikely to have a high box office. Maoyan predicts the total box office No more than 6 million yuan, which seems reasonable.

was a movie that took 22 years to shoot and 3 years to edit from more than 1,000 hours of material. Some people expected it to be Jia Zhangke's "pinnacle work", but its Douban score was only 6.1, and it was only a few days after its release. Then it slowly rose to 6.3 points.

Why is this?

一

"The Romantic Generation" was filmed in these stages: the "Ren Xiaoyao" stage from 2001 to 2002, the "Three Gorges Good Man" stage from 2005 to 2006, and the 2011 to 2012 period before "Destined" Year. After

, Jia Zhangke was not very eager to organize these materials until the epidemic came. "I think this era is about to pass." In addition, artificial intelligence broke into our lives, and he felt "it is time to complete this movie." , so I shot the contemporary parts, salvaged the past materials, and edited them into the final version.

It is the flow, iteration, renewal and relentless momentum of time that gave birth to this movie; and Jia Zhangke also took advantage of this trend and let his eternal heroine Zhao Tao serve as a "tour guide of time" Duty, leading the audience to experience how time "takes all things for granted", destroys and reshapes our lives.

This film has three time nodes, which divide the film into three acts:

Act 1: 2001, Datong, Shanxi.

A few sets of shots took the lead in setting the tone: In a cement house heated by a foreign stove, several women sang. Outside the house was cold and desolate, the radio was hoarse, and there was gradually wind and sand. Later, a group of workers sat in front of the deserted auditorium, waiting to be photographed; in contrast, workers in the mining area were drinking and fist-fighting.

In the dance hall transformed from the Cultural Palace, laid-off female workers dressed up and sang on the stage. Men in the audience occasionally "tapped" 10 yuan while eating melon seeds. When the camera glances at the street: hospital advertisements, art departments, street chess stalls, newsstands, slogans posted everywhere, low-rise buildings, and dilapidated tile-roofed houses can be seen everywhere.

The heroine Qiaoqiao (played by Zhao Tao) sometimes dances in the square, sometimes walks on underwear shows, and goes to dance halls and singing parties from time to time. With a cold face, she maintains a distant relationship with this society; the male protagonist Brother Bin (played by Li Zhubin) wanders around in the world. In various discotheques, KTV private rooms and other places, you can enjoy a life of leisure but not enough fun amidst the feasting and feasting.

One day, Brother Bin, who wanted to go out and make a living, took the green train and left. The chapter of Datong ended here, and the second act came to the Three Gorges in 2006.

The fishermen on the ship, the ruins waiting to be demolished on the shore, the water levels marked everywhere, the immigration project mentioned at any time on the radio, the silent old man, the children passing by, the lonely Jay Chou stickers and student certificates on the wall are everywhere. Recording that era of rolling rivers.

Qiaoqiao is a middle-aged man who comes to the Three Gorges looking for Brother Bin. She walked through it, listening to women telling stories about their past rapes, and watching workers worrying about money.

At this time, Brother Bin was wandering around construction sites, saunas and docks, like a clumsy, sentimental, sophisticated and vulgar gangster. When Qiaoqiao found him, she just said: "Let's forget it."

The third scene, leading to the present moment, Brother Bin flew from Chongqing to Zhuhai during the epidemic to look for his old friend. The old friend fell ill and was looking for business. I don’t understand the rules of short video operation in the Internet celebrity era, so I have no choice but to return to Datong.

As he was getting older, he unexpectedly met Qiaoqiao, a weigher in a supermarket. Qiaoqiao seems to be ageless. Without saying a word, they walked through the park, passed sculptures, neat streets, tall buildings, listened to the songs of Wutiao people, and came to the wide road.Brother Bin couldn't help but say that he was old and homeless, but Qiaoqiao tied his shoelaces, dressed neatly, and went straight to join the mighty night running team.

The video ends here.

Although words can summarize something similar to a story, the film is full of unfamiliar faces with unknown origins and destinations.

Jia Zhangke once said: "Getting close to these people who are running around for a living and accurately recording their lives is a sacred thing in my opinion. The most precious thing in life is in this vast sea of ​​people. Pay attention to every face, You will find so many respectable people "Yan's individual."

He held up different cameras in different eras. The hardware and technology kept changing, and the location also changed from the Yellow River to the Yangtze River, then to the Pearl River, and finally back to the Yellow River. The only thing that remained unchanged was the large number and duration of the shots. Amazing crowd faces.

All the expressions of shyness, timidity, bravery, fearlessness, perseverance, doubt, indifference, helplessness, numbness, avoidance, devotion, struggle, etc. that a face can carry can be placed in his camera sequences by Jia Zhangke. A fable about time:

Time is the only judge. It judges the changes of the times and the changes in the world. It can especially reveal the relationships and situations of people in different situations.

二

There are enough faces in Jia Zhangke's lens, and they belong to different geographical spaces and historical eras. From this, the audience may be able to read a narrative sense of "twenty years of history rolling forward", and also There will be a kind of loss of being "abandoned because they cannot adapt to the times".

As an audience, especially Jia Zhangke’s audience and those who have experienced the magic of time, they can naturally connect themselves with the high-walled tiled houses, telephone poles, newsstands, stern piers, saunas, high-rise supermarkets, wireless broadcasts and movies in the film. Things such as outdoor high-definition large screens establish emotional connections and resonance.

But this connection is weak, because the huge number of faces in the film have been diluted, chopped, and diverted by the long timeline of 21 years and three eras, making what should have been in focus become out of focus. symbol.

is just like the five people singing songs in the park in the new century in the film. No matter how much they sing about disillusionment, there are no corresponding scenes and characters to echo it; another example is that on the streets of Datong in 2001, the classic song "Kill" by Magnum Youth Hotel "That Man from Shijiazhuang" appears, and the camera moves accordingly, sweeping across the living beings on the street, but the audience outside the screen knows nothing about them and can only evoke a fragile nostalgia or lamentation.

They -

The strange faces that broke into the camera one by one were reduced to a sculpture and a landscape; a story that should have been thick was forced to become thinner.

"The Romantic Generation" is like a collection of short videos on social platforms: old people working hard, young people frustrated by life, delivery workers crying on the street, village women carrying children on their backs to earn a living, all kinds of ridiculous Yu Hua styles "Alive" scene, coupled with a lyrical rock or a life-burning song, I thought this was the tears of the times.

Jia Zhangke is of course more "advanced", but compared to his earlier films where time and space were relatively concentrated and he calmly led the audience into one city and one place to see a person or even a generation, "The Romantic Generation" still feels shallow. It seems like "a breath away" from a masterpiece.

Jia Zhangke's two highest-rated works, " Xiaowu " and "Platform", are both relatively focused.

Perhaps Jia Zhangke is aware of this problem, so he added two more to this short video highlight film that is almost reduced to a pile of symbols. The focus is to set up two protagonists: Qiaoqiao and Brother Bin, and use their love stories to connect the mighty 21 years.

The faces of the group are documentary-style reality, while Qiaoqiao and Brother Bin are the only fictions in the film. As long as the fiction is reasonable and moving enough, those out-of-focus group faces can acquire a meaning and are no longer mere symbols.

The fiction of this film is very simple: in the first scene, Brother Bin wants to run away, and Qiaoqiao is angry; in the second scene, Qiaoqiao travels thousands of miles to find her boyfriend, and eventually breaks up; in the third scene, when the man reaches middle age, he reunites with his old friends, and there is a lot of sadness.

Jia Zhangke once explained that Qiaoqiao is one of the representatives of contemporary women's awakening and growth. In the early stage, she was deeply in love and relied on emotions. In the middle stage, she found a home for her emotions. In the end, she became a "person who can completely control emotions."

On the contrary, you can also summarize these three scenes as: the man who used to dance freely and dominate the pier is half-limped, and encounters his ex-girlfriend who he has let down; and this person will still feel sorry for him, tie his shoelaces, and... He walked through the night road, as if to accept mediocrity.

Due to the lack of sufficient plot and details, both of the above explanations can be explained. But the role that time plays in them is very different - in the former, time judges life fairly: some people will wake up, and some will fall into . This is a realistic narrative based on history; in the latter, time will make two people The couple who went around and around and experienced the changes in things and people finally reunited. This is a romantic narrative based on emotion.

is definitely the leading star of "The Romantic Generation", but this leading actor has a vague face and ambiguous attitude, and relies more on the audience's own perception. Obviously, for Jia Zhangke, who has made masterpieces such as "Xiao Wu", "Platform" and "The Good Man in Three Gorges", "The Romantic Generation" should not stop here.

三

Regarding the title of the film "The Romantic Generation", Jia Zhangke said that this term appeared in the late 1970s, when our country had just begun to change. "It is about the generation in their prime, eager for change and hoping to gain more." The generation of personal freedom." He, Qiaoqiao and Brother Bin in the film all belong to this generation.

According to his understanding, this generation is basically an enterprising and vigorous generation. Zhao Tao's understanding of Qiaoqiao seems to be biased. She believes that Qiaoqiao is "a person trapped by life." In the past, she was trapped by emotions, but now she is trapped by a place like a supermarket that represents rich materials and a large number of customers. Trapped, in short, she was a trapped person.

Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao Pictures According to Visual China

Forging ahead or being trapped may not be clear-cut, but there should be a bias. In other words, the river of time, carrying generations of people, will it tend to be high-spirited or biased? Depressed? For the audience, of course, this proposition has their own judgment and intuition; for Jia Zhangke, what is his understanding can be discussed from the two adapted fragments of "The Romantic Generation".

Model Qiaoqiao and "Fengliu" Brother Bin were on the bus. The woman stood up to leave, but the man pushed her back to her seat with one hand and repeated this process more than ten times. This scene appeared as early as in "Ren Xiaoyao" (2002, directed by Jia Zhangke). In the film, Qiaoqiao is an exploited woman who cannot escape from the boss. The bus is a prison for her; in "Feng Liu" "Generation", this scene once again shows that men want to go out and have a career, but women are unwilling to do so. From women's dilemma to love entanglement, from struggle to coquettishness, the same shots have completely different meanings.

Another clip is about the successful Olympic bid and collective celebration. Qiaoqiao in "The Romantic Generation" is walking on the street, sees the cheering team, smiles and joins happily; and in the earlier "Ren Xiaoyao", it is also about the Olympic bid. Although there are fireworks, applause and celebrations for success, the numb-looking street gangsters lurking behind the crowd know that the times are moving forward and they will eventually be left behind.

Stills of the Olympic bid sequence of "Ren Xiaoyao"

From this shift in focus and emphasis, you can feel why the ending of "Ren Xiaoyao" in the past was the young man Bin Bin who attempted to rob a bank, and his back was Leaning against the wall of the police station, he sings Ren Xianqi 's song solo - "Whether it makes me suffer or makes me tired, let the wind float, the world is free"; but in 2024's "The Romantic Generation", the ending is full The armed Qiaoqiao blends into the young night running crowd, following the trend and heading towards a new era.

"Time keeps erasing their old selves and adding new layers. Objects are static to us, but people's faces are changing." Jia Zhangke reads from Qiaoqiao, not Bin Ge's face. At this level of change, in other words, Qiaoqiao played by Zhao Tao is more representative of Jia Zhangke's tendency and understanding.

With such an ending, we can only think that when Jia Zhangke walked out of Fenyang, he was no longer lost and no longer trapped in time. He was able to use time freely to weave his high spirit and Work hard.

This may be Jia Zhangke’s “Brief History of Time”.