On October 9, 2005, Huayi Brothers and Huanya Company jointly spent 20 million US dollars, and the movie "Night Banquet" directed by Feng Xiaogang was officially launched.
"The Night Feast"
At that time, the benchmark movie of "Night Feast" was very clear, that is, Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Since Ang Lee's film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction (Ye Jintian), Best Original Score (Tan Dun), and Best Cinematography (Bao Dexi), Chinese mainland has also followed the trend and risen a wave of "costume blockbusters", the most famous of which is "Hero" directed by Zhang Yimou in 2002, "Heroes of Heaven and Earth" directed by He Ping in 2003, "Wuji" directed by Chen Kaige in 2005, and "Night Feast" directed by Feng Xiaogang in 2006. Even Hong Kong is moving with the wind, and in 2002, Yang Ziqiong approached Bao Dexi and asked him to direct a "Legend of Tianmai".
Heroes
"Night Feast" not only directly poached the artistic director Of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" Ye Jintian and the original soundtrack Tan Dun, but also invited the famous director Zhang Li as the director of photography, Zhang Li's royal editor Liu Miaomiao as the editing director, "Eight Masters" Yuan Heping as the supervising producer, Yuan Jiaban (Yuan Xinyi, Yuan Xiangren, Gu Xuanzhao) as the action director, and the theme song "I Repay Love with Everything" was sung by Zhang Liangying, who was on fire at the time.
In terms of actors, "Night Feast" is starred by Zhang Ziyi, Ge You, Wu Yanzu, Zhou Xun, and Huang Xiaoming, Ma Jingwu and other strengths to join, which can be said to take into account both idol and strength.
Like "Hero" and "Wuji", in order to gain the double-sided recognition of audiences in the East and the West, Feng Xiaogang and other main creators can be described as painstaking.
"The Night Feast" is a mixture of styles
"Night Feast" is a mixture of Cao Yu's "Thunderstorm" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet", not only has unrequited love, but also the revenge of the prince, both the ethereal and freehand bamboo forest song hall, and the gloomy and eerie temple torture, and the elements include action dramas, palace dramas, coup dramas, love dramas and many other genres.
"Night Feast" is also an attempt by Feng Xiaogang to fully transform from comedy, and Feng Xiaogang not only completely abandoned his familiar themes for this purpose, but also pulled such a huge investment for the first time. After filming "Party A and Party B", "Not Seen and Not Scattered", "Endless" "Century Trilogy", Feng Xiaogang successively filmed "A Sigh", "Mobile Phone" and "No Thief in the World" and other movies between comedies and dramas, "Asking for directions", he even felt that "No Thief under the World" can not be regarded as a comedy in the strict sense, but a drama film, as the box office is getting higher and higher, Feng Xiaogang feels that the trust between himself and the audience is getting better and better, so this time shooting "Night Feast" It was a relatively big step of "running away from home".
In an interview with the Southern Metropolis Daily, Feng Xiaogang made it clear:
"'The Night Feast' is a costume play, and I'm certainly not stupid enough to use the original comedy method to get it, so you certainly won't see the shadow of the past comedies, but it will also give the audience a new surprise." 」
Feng Xiaogang is also full of sincerity, since the start of "Night Feast", he led the team to shoot for four months before finally shutting down, during which the crew went to Arshan, Mordauga, Anji and other places to shoot locations.
Although Tan Dun spent two months composing the ancient song "Yue Ren Song" for the film, Ye Jintian produced 20 scenes with unified styles and characteristics for the film, each of which is a big deal, and only the final "Night Banquet" scene built a super-large-scale palace interior of 12,000 square meters, and Yuan Heping and Yuan Jiaban painstakingly designed action scenes that matched the style of the film for the film. But in the end, the results presented by "The Night Feast" surprised many people.
If nothing else, Zhang Ziyi and Ge You's question and answer alone: "Can uncle let the prince go?" "Can my sister-in-law let go of her hand?" Just thunder and pour out all sentient beings.
Feng Xiaogang and Ge You
Emperor Li, played by Ge You, was originally a sinister and vicious person, working in the city government, and doing everything to the extreme, but because Ge You acted in a lot of comedies by Feng Xiaogang, he couldn't help but laugh as soon as he appeared in the audience, plus Emperor Li's lines were what "with a sister-in-law, what do you want to do in Jiangshan", "You are an empress, the mother is the world, you are still pedaling the quilt in the middle of the night, cold it", "Before seeing you, I am not confused, but after seeing you, I am confused", "I am a big country, based on integrity". It was the desire for revenge that led him through the Valley of Death", etc., making this character extremely awkward and the image is not different.
Then there is the extremely poor logic of the film, not only does it not achieve the purpose of Feng Xiaogang's "big production of large articles", the plot ups and downs, the characters are complex and tangled, and the style is unique, but it is everywhere rigid, the lines are pale and weak, the interweaving of literary language and Western-style modern language is even more funny, and the details such as character settings and character personalities are unreasonable, which is ridiculous.
Zhang Ziyi
On Douban, the score of "Night Feast" is only 5.9 points, and the film critic Wei Junzi once said in one sentence:
"The filming of "Night Feast" tries to reproduce the elegance of ancient China and regain the long-lost ancient charm. Narrative has always been the strength of director Feng Xiaogang, and "Night Feast" should not disappoint in story like "Wuji". But the unexpected happened precisely at this point. ”
In addition, "Night Banquet" also exposed the "nude incident", in the movie Zhang Ziyi's stand-in Shao Xiaoshan and Huayi Brothers Company on the "nude photo incident" (the issue of authorship) stalemate, Shao Xiaoshan said that no matter how Huayi Brothers reacted, she has achieved the purpose of publicity: "Now the world knows that the back is mine, which is very good." ”
The purpose of "Night Feast" is very clear, that is, like "Hero" and "Wuji", it will become a "best foreign language film" that has won the favor of Western judges, so the film wants to show the Chinese style and concoct some extremely "Shakespearean" lines such as "dirty deals" for the sake of Western audiences. The result can be imagined.
Zhou Xun
"Night Feast" finally achieved a box office of 130 million, but Feng Xiaogang has never shot a movie of the same genre since then.