China News Service, Beijing, October 23rd. Title: Interview with Xu Anhua: From "The First Incense" to the "Shape" of the Movie
China News Agency reporter Gao Kai
Xu Anhua is one of the directors with the most adaptations of Zhang Ailing's works, 1984's "Love in the Allure", 1997's "Half Life".
This time, it was "The First Incense".
On the 22nd, this inherently topical film was released here, and its reputation has yet to be evaluated, and its popularity has already exploded.
In the heated discussion inside and outside the theater, Director Xu Anhua recently accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter from China News Agency. From his thoughts on "The First Incense" to the future of movies in the post-epidemic and new technologies, he talked about the future, or You can get a glimpse of the "shape" of the film that the director of the Venice Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award has formed in his heart for many years.
About Zhang Ailing
As one of the most prestigious novelists in the Chinese literary world, Zhang Ailing's novels have some very unique qualities in narrative, imagery and style. This temperament has fascinated countless readers and caused more difficulties in their film and television adaptation.
Regarding her choice this time, Xu Anhua said, “Zhang Ailing has many readers who have very high expectations for the work. The things described in the book are all different when they are photographed. Everyone knows this.”
"This time I am challenging myself, that is, to make this story written by Zhang Ailing into the "shape" of the movie. The so-called "shape" includes many things. Various color music narrative characters, when it is aggregated and formed on the big screen, the audience How will you feel from it."
"I don't want the audience to see a lot of profound truths after watching them. I think Zhang Ailing is good because she is very profound, but at the same time she can understand it at a glance. You can see her works after you finish reading them. Yes,'Ah! I'm in (I)', instead of doing a logical proof in it, this person reacted from A to B to C to D, and then added up, she didn't write it like this, but suddenly came to a very complicated, A feeling that people didn't expect but can understand and experience very well."
Xu Anhua believes that the "shape" of the resulting film should also be the same. "I also hope that in my film, people will feel some overall relationship in the cooperation of some pictures, people, etc., rather than a single certain A line, or a single relationship between two people."
About "The First Incense"
"For me, "The First Incense" is definitely not a moral understanding. For me, it is a good story, with good pictures and colors in it, and it is a bit like a painting in itself. I hope to use the form of a movie. Show what I feel."
Xu Anhua said bluntly, “Zhang Ailing never label characters, nor do I, so the focus is on how to express. I hope to present the protagonist’s living state, each person’s different background, and everyone’s understanding of what is happening around them. They are in a dangerous and deformed relationship network and don’t know it. For example, aunt, many of her practices, she herself needs to do that to get the kind of satisfaction she needs."
"For all this, I don't make judgments in the movie, right or wrong, this is not what the movie needs to do, what I want to do is to show everyone's state." Xu Anhua said.
The background of the novel of "The First Incense" is set in the complex field of Hong Kong, and the background of the times is diverse and complicated, which in turn makes "The First Incense" an extremely rich interpretation.
Although Hong Kong has been shown in front of the camera many times, Xu Anhua said that in order to show the background in the story, he still did a lot of data collection.
"Hong Kong in the 1940s and Hong Kong in the 1930s was actually divided into two districts. One district was green and white. There were many trees and white colonial buildings. One side was brown, such as the wharves and the poor in Wan Chai. District. In "The First Incense", getting off the dock is a bit like another world, the (poor) class information is mentioned in these places, and the story itself is mainly in the high-level society. The Chinese and Western cultures are concentrated in Qiao At home, the ancestry of the two brothers and sisters and their mixed traces in all aspects represent the history of the city itself." Xu Anhua said.
The "shape" of the movie
Xu Anhua once expressed his opposition to concept first, against the "learning" function of the film, emphasizing the form and content of the film, and Xu Anhua bluntly said that he was very curious about the audience's feelings and imagination of the film, "How the audience will watch this movie."
In Xu Anhua’s films, there are very few strong emotional expressions. There have been comments that the emotional presentation is often calm and gentle. Therefore, for Xu Anhua, there is a kind of interpretation of "reconciliation." Since there is no criticism, this calm presentation Whether it means some kind of reconciliation, Xu Anhua does not agree with this, "Reconciliation or not, whether from the perspective of the characters in the film or from the perspective of each viewer, it should be an individual experience. Everyone is different. , I think it should be like this. Light and shadow present what I want to show, whether it is on the screen or off the screen. Everyone is different. If there is too much consistency, they will all become robots."
Looking back on her career in filming, Xu Anhua said that her biggest change now is "I have become more and more aware of the essence of film. I am very confident about this. I don't think it means how to shoot and how to act, but to have energy. , The energy in creation is what the movie needs most. Every part needs this energy. Take the actor, even if you play a dying person, the actor can’t perform without that kind of energy. So I see An actor also depends on whether he has energy or not. I think it is more important than appearance."
"The movie itself is something different from literature and music. The movie is not just a story, but a variety of ways to get you involved." Xu Anhua agrees with the film's pursuit of "immersion" in the future. "I guess film It should be developed there. On the one hand, technically, what Ang Lee has tried in recent years is to pursue a more immersive experience in watching movies; there should also be such a pursuit in content, which is to let the audience feel in front of the big screen. 'That's us'." (End)