"The movie can be played"!
"There's always a movie that you'll remember for a lifetime, and maybe it's not just the movie itself, but the hope and longing to look up at the stars." When "One Second" was finalized, Zhang Yimou wrote a handwritten letter of affectionate style, warm and touching.
Today, the lights are dimmed, the curtain is slowly opening, and a movie about playing a movie is officially launched.
Labor reform prisoner Zhang Jiusheng (Zhang Yi), who escaped from the labor reform farm and crossed the desert just to watch a movie, Liu Girl (Liu Haocun) wanted to steal a box of film to go home to make a "film lampshade", the two met with the projectionist Fan Film (Fan Wei) and formed an indissoluble relationship.
Simple story, full of an old director's love for film and nostalgia for the film era.
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In the yellow sand-filled northwest town, the bi-monthly film screening is like the New Year.
Before the film starts to be screened, people start to tell each other that the film projectionist will receive special treatment from the public. When night fell, the screen lit up, and the whole town boiled over. In the great hall, adults and children are crowded together, and even the windows are full of people.
When the machine was running and the film was turning, everyone was immediately silent, staring intently at the screen, afraid of missing a shot. The well-known songs in the movie, everyone will sing together, as if it is a collective carnival.
"One Second" is a few strokes, which brings the audience back to the era of extreme desire for movies.
In the moment, it may be hard to imagine the extreme fanaticism of people for a movie. It should be remembered that in the 70s of the last century, spiritual life was extremely scarce, and the small group entertainment of people was a bi-monthly film screening. In those days, movies were an absolute luxury. Because of its rarity, it comes with a sense of ritual. The film restoration in the film further promotes this sense of ceremony.
Under the guidance of the projectionist, the film film film, which was mixed up due to accidents, was finally rescued through a series of processes such as bed sheet consignment, chopstick picking, distilled water flushing, and slow blowing and drying of fans. Finally, Fan Jing stood on the stage and shouted: "The rescue work is successful!" The movie can be played! In exchange for the applause and cheers of the whole hall, it constituted the most brilliant chapter of the film.
This is the charm and collective memory of the films of that era, and careful observation will find that the entire film is a love letter written by Zhang Yimou to the film based on his past experience.
The windswept northwest town resembles Zhang Yimou's homeland, the lamb steamed bun in people's mouths is the delicacy he looked forward to in his childhood, and the children sitting in the auditorium watching movies look like himself. However, film on film is not only a precious collective memory for Zhang Yimou, but also inadvertently changes the trajectory of his life.
In 1978, Zhang Yimou was obsessed with video and applied for the Beijing Film Academy. In 1987, he directed the first film "Red Sorghum", and the slightly rough film images showed the most primitive and exuberant vitality, showing the simplicity and wildness of the people in the Yellow Land, and the three words "Zhang Yimou" began to be well known by more people and appeared in the vision of international filmmakers. Then, Zhang Yimou has directed films such as "The Red Lantern Hangs High", "Ju Dou", "Qiu Ju Fights a Lawsuit", "My Father and Mother" and other films, and film films have run through most of his creative career.
Stills from the movie "Red Sorghum"
Zhang Yimou loves all kinds of film films, and to him, the sound emitted by the projector is almost the most beautiful music. "The sound of the film rattling and turning brings out a long-lost taste and emotion, which makes people move." The idea of making a "film film" theme has been haunting me for more than a decade.
In 2016, the last film production line in China was closed, officially announcing the end of the film era, and Zhang Yimou had a strong creative impulse. As a result, his love and ecstasy for film are engraved in the image of "One Second".
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Running love
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"One Second" is Zhang Yimou's return to the realistic theme of the work after many years, the film abandons Zhang Yimou's previous heavy photography style, neat and uniform big scenes, no longer pursues gorgeous lens language, desolate desert, dilapidated auditorium, shabby dress... Images of barrenness and depression are all trying to get closer to the time in which the story takes place.
The rudiments of the story come from a fragment of the novel "Lu Gang Yan Zhi": Lu Yan Zhi escaped from the labor camp in order to see his daughter on the screen. The same desperate bet and stubbornness continued to Zhang Jiusheng, who risked more serious punishment to cross the desert just to see his daughter who appeared in the movie for "one second", but in the process, Zhang Jiusheng met Liu Jiusheng, who wanted to steal film to make a lampshade.
One wants to steal, one wants to protect, and two people come with different purposes, because "fighting each other" has created a deep bond.
It turned out that Liu's daughter's mother died early, was abandoned by her biological father, and relied on her younger brother for her life, and painstakingly wanted a film lampshade to protect her brother from being bullied by others. An adult who loves his daughter but has nowhere to express it, a little girl who has been abandoned and hurt by her father but still longs to be loved, they meet, know each other, and pity each other through film and film.
In the eloquent plot, the film is the medium of emotional communication between the two people, and emotion is the perpetual motion machine of the story. Those warmth, love, and redemption are hidden in the details of the film, and the most enthusiastic is running.
At the beginning of the film, Zhang Jiusheng trotted all the way through the yellow sand, and the thought of his daughter drove him all the way forward.
When it was dark, Liu's daughter stole film from a branch factory and ran away, so that her young brother would not be bullied.
After that, the two people who met in the narrow road ran one and the other followed in the desert, which was the same emotional drive.
Until the end, the two did not fight and did not know each other, established a similar feeling of father and daughter, Liu Girl ran in the vast desert to send each other, is to leave an image of her daughter for Zhang Jiusheng.
All along, Zhang Yimou likes to shoot the protagonist's running, he believes that running in the sea of people to meet each other, is a very romantic scene, which contains simple, accumulated, warm emotions, with long-term expectations and poetry of pursuit.
"My grandmother" in "Red Sorghum" runs wildly in the sorghum field, Yang Tianbai runs through the alleys in "Ju Dou" to chase after the people who gossip about his mother, Qiu Ju chases the police car that roars away in "Qiu Ju Fights a Lawsuit", the aquatic desperate run to save Xiao Jinbao in "Shake, Shake, Shake to Grandma Bridge", Wei Minzhi's run to recover the special girl in "No One Can Be Less", and the loveless run on the hillside in "My Father and Mother"... Countless classic scenes are engraved in people's memories.
From top to bottom, there are stills from the movies "My Father and Mother", "Qiu Ju Fights a Lawsuit", and "No One Can Be Less"
The last scene of "One Second", the shape of Liu Girl, the posture of the last running, and the scene of wrestling, have the taste of the director's self-tribute. A girl in red running in the mountains has the most simple and sincere emotions in the world, after many years, Zhang Yimou has come to look back with deep feelings, returning to the purity of art, and fixing the love of her life in the story of light and shadow and the emotional bondage of people.
Up: "One Second" Liu Girl, Part 2: "My Father and Mother" Beckoning
Unfortunately, "one second" is too short and life is very long.
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Editor-in-Chief: Yi Wu
Author: Yi Qiu
Edit: Garden
(Some of the pictures come from the Internet)