On November 22, Jia Zhangke's new work "The Romantic Generation" was released nationwide. It reflects the social changes in China in the past 20 years through the emotional journey of an ordinary woman from the beginning of the millennium to today. As for what the "Romance

On November 22, Jia Zhangke’s new work " The Romantic Generation " was released nationwide. It reflects the social changes in China in the past 20 years through the emotional journey of an ordinary woman from the beginning of the millennium to today.

As for what the "Romance Generation" is, Jia Zhangke explained that it comes from a poem "Romance Song" that was popular in the 1980s. This poem says: "Merry, Merry, what is Merry? The emotions in my heart are like the green willows in spring." In Jia Zhangke's early film "Platform", Yin Ruijuan, played by Zhao Tao , once recited this poem.

"This poem is about a generation in their prime, which gives rise to the term romantic generation. It refers to people who were born and grew up in changes, a generation that longs for more personal freedom and is unstable." Jia Zhangke explain.

Throughout the film, a time span of 20 years flows from one city to another: Datong, Fengjie, and Zhuhai. The curtain of time and space is constantly changing, and the protagonist Qiaoqiao played by Zhao Tao remains silent without saying a word. Until the end of the film, on a snowy winter night on the streets of Datong, the middle-aged Qiaoqiao, wearing fluorescent sportswear and a mask, threw herself into the crowd of people running at night and shouted: "Ha!"

At the Shanghai road show of "The Merry Generation", Jia Zhangke said that he hopes that the movie can not only bring some resonance to people who have experienced the millennium era, but also to those who were born in the millennium and have no memory of the first part of the movie. The audience brought some additions, "What did the world look like when your life just started?"

Continuous shooting for 20 years

The creation of "The Romantic Generation" began in 2001, and the original name was "The Man with a Digital Camera". In the new millennium, digital cameras have just begun to become popular. The lightweight and flexible machines can help Jia Zhangke shoot the kind of movies he most wants to make. He can directly enter life with a camera without determining the relationship between characters and the direction of the plot, but in real scenes. Traveling and capturing at the same time, working on documentaries and feature films at the same time.

"Looking from today to 2001, it seems to be a somewhat chaotic era, but full of vitality and vitality. Change is accelerating, the economy is developing, and many new things have emerged, such as the popularity of mobile phones and the Internet." Jia Zhangke said, That era attracted him very much, so he spent two or three years traveling to several cities including Beijing and Datong to shoot.

In the past 20 years, Jia Zhangke has made many movies, such as "Ren Xiaoyao", "The World", "Three Gorges Good Man", "Destined", "Mountains and Rivers Old Friends"... This "Man with a Digital Camera" is progressing intermittently: "This movie was originally It's time to end, but I always feel like I can't find a reason to end. Everything has just begun.” Until the epidemic, he felt that everything was still and orderly, but people were very lonely. “The news every day is about artificial intelligence , bioengineering, and autonomous driving. Just like the millennium, a new era is coming." Jia Zhangke feels that this movie should end.

So, he shot contemporary images in 2022, and edited them into "The Romantic Generation" with the image materials accumulated before. In his view, this movie should not just stay in the past, "it should stand today to see how we can move from the millennium to a dynamic, tolerant world where people can have many attempts." The society of possibilities and possibility has come step by step to today, moving from the Internet society to the era of artificial intelligence."

Because the videos were shot in different eras, they used various equipment. The first was dv shooting, the middle was film photography, and finally there were VR equipment, etc., as well as some still photos. Therefore, the title of the film "The Man with a Digital Camera" is no longer appropriate, and "The Romantic Generation", which is more suitable for the protagonist's growth history, became the new title. The English title of the film "caught by the tides" hints at another meaning of the "romantic generation": being trapped by the tides.

The protagonists of the film Qiaoqiao and Brother Bin are characters who often appear in Jia Zhangke's films. These two characters appeared in "Ren Xiaoyao" and " Jianghu Children "."The Romantic Generation" contains image materials from Jia Zhangke's other previous works such as "The Good Man in Three Gorges", "Ren Xiaoyao" and "The Old Friends in Mountains and Rivers". It is the use of materials from past works that has attracted some criticism.

In May this year, "The Romantic Generation" was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the Cannes Film Festival. The first batch of viewers to watch the film gave mixed reviews. Some viewers pointed out ruthlessly that Jia Zhangke's filming of "The Merry Generation" was like cooking without looking at the recipe, only looking at what's left in the refrigerator.

On November 24, at the post-screening talk of "The Merry Generation" held by Kubrick Bookstore and the podcast Xian Ningqi, Lu Ye, a professor at the School of Journalism at Fudan University, believed that it does not matter what food is in the refrigerator. Simple. "What's in the refrigerator basically shows what kind of person you are and what era you come from. It also shows your state and your choices when you put the food in the refrigerator."

The video records the Three Gorges Dam Dam project migration and natural landscape. Jia Zhangke said that when he went to Fengjie for the first time, he was shocked: "Chinese paintings, the kind of natural landscape shown in Tang poetry, the majesty of mountains and rivers, when I stood on the top of the mountain and looked at Kuimen, I thought it might be similar to what Li Bai saw. It’s the same, very nostalgic. On the other hand, since the Three Gorges Project, man-made landscapes are disappearing rapidly, a new county is growing, and the world is undergoing great changes. This scene is very attractive to me. "

Ordinary people's faces

The beginning of "The Romantic Generation" shows a group of women singing and chatting in a room. They push and heckle each other, with intimate and shy expressions. The camera skips each face one by one, recording their moods when singing, and their simple yet touching singing voices. From the Huangmei opera "The Fairy's Match" to the pop song "Don't Ask Me Who I am", in their respective repertoire, we can see the entertainment life of ordinary women at that time and the spiritual world they pursued. That was Datong in 2001, a fragment of the real life of the most ordinary group of people. Jia Zhangke, who was 31 years old at the time, chose them as the protagonists of his shots.

Lu Ye believes that this is an important part of Jia Zhangke’s film. This segment is not intended to show that “the past was better than now.” “At that time, there were not many choices and entertainment. The song the girl sang at the end was about love. , is a more personal thing.” In her opinion, when Chinese films have made great progress in concepts, it is particularly important to see where they came from. “In Datong at that time, which was not the most fashionable place, look at what the young people were doing at that time. , and then think about whether we still have the mentality to accept such changes today."

Regarding the lives of ordinary people that Jia Zhangke’s works always focus on, he himself explained: “This is an instinctive choice. I grew up in a large courtyard, with seven or eight families, including workers, farmers, teachers, soldiers, and police. Growing up in that environment, when I became a person who had the opportunity to express myself and create work, it was a group of people that I found difficult to betray and leave."

film changed from a high-spirited young man to an old man with a vicissitudes of life, and finally returned to Datong with hemiplegia and crutches. He could not tie his shoelaces independently after they came loose. Qiaoqiao has also entered middle age and works as a weigher in a supermarket. Due to the long filming span of the film, Li Zhubin and Zhao Tao, who played Bin Ge and Qiao Qiao, also aged at the same time as their characters.

In Lu Ye's view, the ending of the film is very powerful: "Qiaoqiao's state has a kind of resilience from women, which is an explanation of the changes in Chinese society in the past 20 years. She has not been completely defeated by life, but still devotes herself so seriously The torrent of running is still her own in the times. "Brother Bin and Qiaoqiao. The story is not an individual's destiny. "For every ordinary person, we may go up, or we may slip down at any time, just in this tide. Jia Zhangke consistently focuses on ordinary people."

“If it weren’t for the great era, we wouldn’t be where we are today, and if it weren’t for the great era, we might not be where we are today.For most of us, there is really no choice but to follow the trend of the times. "Lu Ye said, "For most people, the times have given each individual more than they can bear, and we can only bear it. "

Director Zheng Dasheng had many emotions after watching "The Romantic Generation": "The feature film part of the film is like some kind of non-fiction, and the documentary material is very moving. Through the journey of the heroes and heroines in Jia Zhangke's films, we once again pass through the times in such a concrete way. ” He said, “We love to see their faces and their situations. After nearly a quarter of a century, looking back through this lens may be a farewell or a decisive ending. We saw that in the end some people were stranded on the shore, while others continued to run forward, so we also look forward to continuing to pass through time and eras through the men and women in Jia Zhangke's film universe.”