The movie "Revolutionary" was released on July 1 to play Li Dazhao is the least confident time in the industry

 Zhang Songwen: I only performed the tip of the iceberg of Mr. Shouchang

  Acting is a perceptual job, but Zhang Songwen is like a scientific researcher. He loves to ask a motive and why in everything, so that he often "drives the director and screenwriter crazy", begging for mercy: "Do whatever you want. , Just act as you want."

  The same goes for playing Mr. Li Dazhao in the movie "Revolutionary". Zhang Songwen wants to understand how Li Dazhao grew from a farmer in Daheituo Village, Laoting County to a pioneer of the Chinese communist movement, a great Marxist, and an outstanding proletariat. Revolutionary, one of the main founders of the Communist Party of China, why did Li Dazhao have such a firm conviction to make him so calm in the face of sacrifice?

Zhang Songwen said: "Mr. Li Dazhao's fearless spirit is not something that Zhang Songwen's mentality can achieve. I am afraid that I will be disrespectful because of my incomprehension. If I do not understand, the performance will be lost. If the performance is lost, the audience will not accept it. ."

  Now, "Revolutionary" will be released on July 1. Zhang Songwen told reporters that he was very nervous. When filming, he was worried that he could not play Mr. Chang. Now, he is worried that the audience can accept it, "This is my career. For the least confident time ever, I feel that I cannot use acting skills to complete this shaping. If I use acting skills to shape the role of Li Dazhao, I am sorry for him. So this time, I want to try to understand more. He, come close to him."

 Never play Li Dazhao

 Research from Li Dazhao's childhood

  "Revolutionary" is supervised by Guan Hu, directed by Xu Zhanxiong, and Liang Jing is the chief producer. It counts down 38 hours before Li Dazhao goes to the gallows. It uses a multi-perspective narrative structure. It is from different classes, holds different ideas, and lives. Starting with multiple roles of various groups, from the multiple identities of father, husband, mentor, opponent, etc., a comprehensive interpretation of Li Dazhao, an outstanding proletarian revolutionary, is carried out.

The film restores the image of a more flesh-and-blood revolutionary figure, more pyrotechnic, and more humane. Li Dazhao not only lives in the literature and historical materials, but also lives in a drop of blood, a drop of blood and a tear.

  After receiving an invitation to play Li Dazhao, the four words that came out of Zhang Songwen’s mind were "Supreme Glory": "How can I be able to play Li Dazhao? It is a great honor. The next thing I think of is'trouble'. I am worried about this role. Can it be done?"

  Zhang Songwen recalled that there was still a month and a half before the filming of the film started, and the script had not yet been given.

Zhang Songwen’s reply was to try, “I told them that it’s best to find a backup actor, “If I feel that I am not competent in preparation, I will tell you immediately.” I don’t want to fight an insecure battle. Li Dazhao cannot bear failure. Yes, although as an actor, there are many roles you can play in your life, even if you don’t play it, but I can never play Li Dazhao."

  After agreeing to try, Zhang Songwen immersed himself in reading a lot of materials for 15 days, and Li Dazhao’s image in Zhang Songwen’s mind became fuller. In these materials, Zhang Songwen said that Li Dazhao’s childhood growth had touched him a lot: "Li Dazhao’s parents died early, he was When his grandfather was brought up, he also encountered a lot of blindfolds when he was a child, and he was scolded with no father and no mother. Such children often develop into two extreme personalities, either extremely inferior, personality split, or constantly striving for self-improvement. Li Dazhao is the latter, his education and His strong self-discipline has allowed him to grow into a great person."

  Speaking of Li Dazhao’s story, Zhang Songwen was eloquent. He said that Mr. Shouchang’s grandfather had invited three private school gentlemen for him. One was better than the other. The third gentleman even went to the Imperial College to participate in the palace exam. A private school Mr. not only has real talents, but also has seen the scene. Although Li Dazhao was born in the countryside, he received a very good education. Later, he came into contact with Western science and went to Japan. His self-improvement and strong self-discipline Ability, his knowledge, and vision allowed him to see Marxism in the darkest moment of China to save China, go forward and ignore the back, carry the darkness and face the light. Instead of complaining about the darkness, it is better to carry the lamp and move forward."

  Before the acting, Zhang Songwen was full of awe in playing Li Dazhao, "I am more in awe when I go to the set every day. I am full of awe for every role I play, but this time it is the most awe-inspiring, and after the performance, I am more in awe. I'm in awe."

Can’t accept only recognized appearance

  Like to improvise and add words and dramas

  For Li Dazhao, the great man, historical materials mostly explain the events and rarely explain the character. Zhang Songwen thinks this is the difficulty of performance. "I am afraid that I will not be able to express a real Li Dazhao. I am afraid that this is Zhang Songwen’s understanding, not Li Dazhao’s sincere heart. During the filming, the China Li Dazhao Research Association and Li Dazhao’s grandson Li Jiansheng wrote an official letter in which they wrote a long section about my performance. I was very excited. I think it’s more important to be recognized by them than anything else. They think I’ve acted for my grandparents. I was very happy when I performed a living person. I was afraid that I would act as a symbol. Others say that you look alike. That’s the credit of the crew’s makeup teacher, not the way I acted. As a professional actor, I can’t accept that people just say I look like."

  Li Dazhao is a firm communist. How to perform that firm heart made Zhang Songwen think for a long time, "I want to perform his hesitation, is firmness without thinking? I need to make a choice. After repeated weighing, I feel wrong. If one doesn’t think about it and says the answer without hesitation, it’s actually quite wrong. The greatest firmness should be the firmness after careful consideration. That’s the power of faith."

  Zhang Songwen likes to improvise, and when his emotions reach inspiration, he starts to play. There is a scene where Li Dazhao and ordinary people are in the farmland. The director asked him to act casually. Plowing the fields and chatting are fine. "I saw the one next to me. The old man was smoking a cigarette and lighting it with wheat stalks. I suddenly felt good, so I told the director that I wanted to smoke. The director said that smoking may not be able to broadcast. I said that I don’t care. I will shoot first. I just sit on the floor and just sit down. The old yellow dog came over and sat next to me. The old man who smoked the pipe chatted with me about the daily routine and asked me if my house was farming and where to get the water from the rice. I said to try the old man’s pipe, and he handed the burnt yellow pipe. Give it to me, I said that I just took a sip, it was too choking. At that moment, I felt that I caught Li Dazhao's temperament. Why can he be so well-known that he can get along with the people? I feel that I can suddenly be able to get along with the people at that moment. I can feel it."

  Zhang Songwen would also add improvisational words. For example, in the film he asked his wife Zhao Renlan: "Do you think this experiment I did succeed?" This was added by Zhang Songwen himself: "Because I want to perform Li Dazhao's humanity, he is not only firm, but also contradictory. , Fragile and hesitant places, these aspects will make this character more three-dimensional."

  In the film, Li Dazhao suggested that all sectors of Shanghai industry and commerce should unite to strike for an hour, threatening the Russian embassy to hand over the thugs. Finally, after a three-hour strike, the Russian embassy had no choice but to hand over the thugs. They hated Li Dazhao and told him to wait. Li Dazhao calmly replied with "Welcome to China": "This is a temporary line I added. China should be self-improving. It is not only mentioned today. It has been mentioned for hundreds of years. It has been mentioned in every period. My generation needs to rise. China is self-improving."

Be an actor's addiction to being a "acting director"

 Don't be superstitious about the security of fame

  Zhang Songwen has now become a recognized "acting school", and his late blooming story is also quite inspirational.

He was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy at the age of 24. He was the oldest student in the school at the time. Because he was a Cantonese, he was late in learning Mandarin. After he arrived at the Film Academy, he learned to perform. "Four is four, ten is ten". In "The Power of Time", he once told that he practiced with a stone in his mouth every day, and once made jokes because of the name "Director."

  When he graduated, Zhang Songwen graduated with the first grade in his major and was highly anticipated by his teachers. He did not expect to have no acting for three years after graduation. In the first year after graduation, he met more than 300 crews, all of which were rejected. In the second year, more than 200. About 200 in the third year, and rejected by seven or eight hundred crews in three years.

  Three years later, Zhang Songwen began to take on a lot of small roles, and slowly he was discovered by many people with Lou Ye's "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind", and he became popular with "The Hidden Corner" and was discovered to be a "treasure actor". ".

  In those years when he was an actor, Zhang Songwen was a "god man" in the actor circle. He is known as a "performance director". Many people don't know how to act, so others would recommend looking for Zhang Songwen.

  Speaking of why he could be acting instructor, Zhang Songwen narrated that he stayed at Beijing Film Academy as acting assistant in 2002. At that time, many Hong Kong and Taiwan actors came to the mainland to film and wanted to learn. However, they could not spend a few more years on it. The film academy said that Hong Kong TVB has an artist training class. I hope that the crew can also find a teacher for them to provide short-term training. So the crew finds the film academy and hopes to send a teacher to the crew to communicate with the actors one-on-one.

"I was the youngest, so I went, and after teaching a few times, I spread it out, saying that I could find Zhang Songwen, and more and more people introduced it. In a few years, I had fewer opportunities to film, and teaching acting became part of my income. I think I’m a god. I wanted to act too much but didn’t have a chance. I taught them to be more involved than when they acted. Sometimes after the show, the director came to see us for class, and I told the director that I would act for you again, they After watching it, he said, wow, you acted so well."

  Zhang Songwen said that he did not have the opportunity to act, so he could only become an actor when he was a acting director. What made him puzzled was that everyone recognized his guidance, but why he was not allowed to perform?

"This industry especially believes in the word safety. I am a little better now. Everyone said,'Find him, and the play will be guaranteed.' It is still the same thing that I did in the past. In their opinion, I was not well-known at the time. There is no guarantee. Now I sometimes say that this role can look for someone, they say they have never heard of it, why do they believe it? If it is suitable for the audition, I don’t know if it is not famous, even the opportunity to try it is difficult. ."

  Zhang Songwen is a little helpless about this. The market has given new actors and actresses the opportunity, and has not improved much. "I hope that this industry will not be superstitious about the sense of security brought by the so-called fame. I never believe that celebrities can bring box office guarantees."

 Aiwen Motivation also attended a psychological training class for this

  After three years of no filming, Zhang Songwen received a small role. The deputy director told him that he was filming with the male and female protagonists. Only when he arrived on the set did he find out that it was the male and female protagonists who were eating together, and he was eating with six or seven people behind. , "I can't say that an extra 30 yuan a day does not act, because if you do not act, there will be no other performance opportunities."

  But this performance was not pleasant, because Zhang Songwen kept asking, what is the name of this character?

What job do you do?

how old?

People say that you don’t need to worry about what job you call and what job you are. He asks what character the character is at your age. They say you just sit there and eat. Then he asks the education level of the character’s parents. They say you don’t want to shoot. Let's go, and when I was asked later, I told him to let him go.

  For Zhang Songwen, he plays a role, whether it is 50 meters or 100 meters away from the camera, he wants to know the ins and outs of this person, how he came, what he did, and what books he read recently?

This "hundred-thousand why" questioning spirit caused Zhang Songwen to torture the screenwriter a lot, and it also prompted him to go to a psychological training class of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

  It was 2009. Zhang Songwen told that he could not reach an agreement with the screenwriter in the process of acting and teaching performance. He told the screenwriter that the opening and the following were wrong. Considering the character's personality, he could not do the following things, which is untenable. .

The screenwriter said that he wanted the story to look good, "'You said that the character is untenable, then you can tell what his character is', I can't tell, I can only say that I can't convince him, so I have to understand the character. Someone. Tell me about Pavlov’s psychology. I also like the story of Ericson, the world’s number one hypnosis master. I studied him, but it was painful to study. My friend enrolled me in a psychological training class and said I was admitted. Yes, I went with my schoolbag on my back."

  After I went there, Zhang Songwen was deceived, because as soon as I went in, people wore white lab coats and handed out business cards to this hospital and that department. "People asked me which hospital you were in. I said Guangdong, but I dare not say that I am an actor."

  In the first week of class, Zhang Songwen said that he seemed to be reading a bible book. The teacher asked him what band therapy he would use to treat autistic patients. Zhang Songwen had to confess to the teacher that he was an actor and did not understand at all, "That class is very expensive. Poor, now that I have already paid the tuition, I can’t bear to leave. I have been going through it every day for a month. These doctors taught me the basic theory and helped me keep up with the progress. Now many doctors are still good friends of mine. Tian also said to me,'Wen Tsai, I just watched your "Sweeping Darkness: Decisive Battle". You are a service-oriented character.

  Zhang Songwen’s memory is always praised because he remembers the time and other details clearly when he recalls the past, but Zhang Songwen said that his memory is not outstanding at all in this training class. “One time an old lady in her 90s came to give it to him. When we were in class, she was helped in. She wrote hundreds of numbers on the blackboard, let us look at it, and then let us turn around and write the numbers on the blackboard in order. I could not write 11 numbers in order. It came out, and when I got the answer, I found that the sixth one was wrong. Someone in the class was wrong. There were more than 30 wrong. This number is irregular and it was written randomly. The old lady asked me to write it on the blackboard. She wrote more than 100 numbers randomly. She chatted with us. After the chat, she wrote all the more than 100 numbers in the correct order. She is over 90 years old. Let me know about this lesson. The secret of human memory. It is said that the person with the strongest memory ability in the world used less than one thousandth of his brain capacity when he died, so don’t worry that you will memorize useless information and take up brain space. You can memorize it boldly. Even if you move the library into your head, it won't take up much space."

  Although he went to the wrong psychological training class, Zhang Songwen still gained something. He said that criminal psychology is very useful for his performance. "Criminal psychology talks about motivation. Once I made a scene about a person having breakfast. Throwing the plate aside, I asked the director for the reason, because I think the character of the character will not take the plate over, and the director can’t stand me, so he said, “It’s fine if you are comfortable. Come on your own.

  There are causes and results. Zhang Songwen attaches great importance to motivation. He said that he likes to perform with scientific methods. "So I like to perform physiological reactions. When I get scalded, I will retract my hands. If you don’t shrink, it’s not a normal reaction. "In ", I must understand Li Dazhao's motives for words and deeds. If the motive is not established, I can't pass the hurdle in my heart."

 Not afraid to be more grateful for good works to appear

  Zhang Songwen's interpretation of Li Dazhao's scene when he was on the gallows pushed the "Revolutionary" to a tragic climax. Mr. Shouchang sat sideways with his back naked in the cell, listening to the graceful composure of his execution notice; shaved his head The conversation and laughter with my comrades in the past and a little nostalgia for the world; the heartfelt words of "you must believe..." that I said when I put a rope around my neck are all extremely shocking pictures, showing Zhang Songwen's performance skills It can be seen that Zhang Songwen has mobilized all the physical and mental strength to get close to the spiritual world of the constant, showing the dignity and dignity that life deserves.

  At the premiere of "Revolutionary" on June 26, Zhang Yongxin, the director of "Awakening Age", and starring Zhang Wanyi and Cha Wenhao also came to the scene. Zhang Yongxin said: "When I saw Li Dazhao standing in front of the gallows, my My heart hurts, as if I have seen the unbearable moment in 1927."

  "The Age of Awakening" Zhuyu was in front and asked Zhang Songwen if he was worried that his role of Li Dazhao would be compared. Zhang Songwen confidently answered "not afraid".

He said that when "Revolutionary" was about to end, "Awakening Age" began to play. He watched the opening of the first episode and said, "This movie is really good." Others told him it was a TV series, "I didn't watch it again because I was filming. I can’t be distracted by watching other works. After I finished filming "Revolutionary", I watched this drama. The filming was really good, and there were good performances among my peers. I was very happy."

  Zhang Songwen said he was grateful for the release of "Revolutionary" after "The Awakening Age" because the audience will have a reference, "I am grateful for good works to appear, because it allows everyone to learn history in entertainment." In Zhang Songwen's view, Learning history and understanding history are obviously necessary. "I think there are three benefits to knowing history. One is to cherish the present, the other is to create the future, and the third is to have wisdom."

  Nowadays, Zhang Songwen has been involved in the shooting of the new drama, but the shooting scenes and even the camera positions and lines of the film of "Revolutionary" can still be clearly recalled to reporters, showing the depth of investment.

Zhang Songwen is also very eager to hear the real feedback from the audience, "It doesn't matter if I play well or badly, I just performed the tip of the iceberg of keeping regular, unable to fully restore him, but the spirit of keeping regular will be a long way for me in the future. , Will stay with me for a long time, even for life."

  Text/Photo courtesy of our reporter Zhang Jia/Cai Cai