Cinema - the art of light and shadow .
Around 1860, silent film technology was born.
People saw their real life scenes on the screen for the first time, and then gradually evolved into simple storytelling, but most of them were easy to understand.
As far as the picture is concerned, pure black and white can no longer meet people's viewing needs after just a few years, including the filmmakers themselves.
They gradually began to have more pursuits.
It is not only to clearly express the relationship between the image of things and each other, but more importantly, to pursue the improvement of aesthetics.
So in 1935, the world's first color film "Flying Family" was successfully filmed.
This marked the advent of color film, and since then, film has three elements: picture, sound and color .
In the movie screen, in addition to the character relationship and environmental atmosphere shown by the actors, the filmmakers began to pursue how to use other elements to make the feelings to be conveyed more full .
And in this, color plays a crucial role.
There have been many masters of color aesthetics in the film industry.
Poland's national treasure director - Krzysztof Kieslowski's " Blue , White, and Red Trilogy" is world-renowned. fourteen awards.
French director Cyril Corral 's 1992 film "Crazy Night" is shrouded in bright red. Extreme, enthusiastic performance scenes make people excited.
In the end, at the 18th French Film César Awards , "Crazy Night" was the biggest winner out of seven out of seven .
Also in China, there is also a world-class director with extremely bold and artistic presentations.
"National Teacher" - Zhang Yimou.
Most of Zhang Yimou's films are full of colors, warm emotions, and the overall tone shows high contrast, especially in his early works.
In 1988, the debut work "Red Sorghum" has a lot of color rendering.
The whole film uses red as the keynote, and the emotional excitement is added more intensely, which fully shows the strong life atmosphere of North China and the most primitive wildness of human beings.
1991's "Big Red Lanterns Hanging High" continued this style.
A medium shot perfectly conveys the chilling atmosphere in the strict family and penetrates into the bone marrow.
Blue filled the picture, and depression enveloped the Chen residence.
Most of the subsequent works also maintain the distinctive Zhang Yimou film style, with bold use of colors, pictures with strong visual sense, extreme realism, and easy and natural freehand brushwork.
Including the period "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit" and "My Father and Mother" , a lot of space was used to express the practicality of using color to promote the development of character behavior and story.
However, compared to before, it is far away from artistic expression and closer to realism.
During this period, everyone's acceptance of Zhang Yimou's films also showed a good trend. On the one hand, he has his own clear film style, and the pictures are more beautiful to enjoy. On the other hand, he has indeed achieved remarkable results in international film festivals.
But all this praise was shaken greatly in 2002, because that year, "Heroes" was released.
This is the first time that Zhang Yimou has used a specific color as the base color to present the entire film , but this bold artistic attempt has attracted a lot of scolding.
Some people say that he only plays with colors, so he is not worthy of a director; some people say that what he does is not a movie, but a stage play.
Doubts rise one after another, and more and more people criticize.
However, when "Hero" was released in the United States two years later, these doubts gradually subsided, and then "Hero" was ranked first in the annual top ten movies selected by "Time" in the United States.
Now it seems that "Hero" is indeed Zhang Yimou's most underrated work.
Re-examining the coloring style of the entire film will give a more profound taste.
Light cyan - the overall base color throughout the film
In color science, light blue has the meaning of stability and peace .
The main theme of "Hero" is peace.
At the end of the Warring States Period, the Seven Heroes fought for years, and in order to pacify the world, the King of Qin began to send troops to conquer.
Zhao's three assassins , "Changkong", "Canjian", and "Feixue", will try their best to assassinate the king of Qin because of the mistakes he made to Zhao.
"Wuming" , who is also a Zhao person, was adopted by Qin people since he was a child. After learning the truth ten years ago, he began to practice the stunt "one kill in ten steps" , hoping to one day be able to ascend the hall of the Qin Palace and assassinate the King of Qin.
From their respective perspectives, the relationship between the King of Qin and the assassins is naturally antagonistic, with one side being a tyrant and the other being a person in a narrow sense.
But from a macro perspective, whether it is the three assassins "Changkong", "Canceled Sword" and "Flying Snow", or the nameless who was entrusted with the important task, or the cruel and violent King Qin in the eyes of the common people.
Different ways of doing things eventually lead to the same goal. Four words - peace in the world! !
Just as at the end of the film, King Qin realized the profound meaning of swordsmanship from the word "sword" written by Can Jian:
The first realm: "Man and sword are one, the sword is the man, the man is the sword, and an inch of grass in the hand is also a sharp weapon." The second realm: "There is no sword in the hand, but the sword is in the heart. A hundred paces away." The highest state: "Without a sword in your hand and without a sword in your heart, if you embrace everything with a big heart, that is "no killing" , that is "peace" ."
To embellish the whole film with the color of "peace" is a resolute implementation of the main idea. No matter what stage of the story or the situation of the characters, "peace" will never change.
Red - a love-hate battle
Wuming told the King of Qin his way to victory.
He took advantage of the love-hate relationship between Changkong, Feixue, and Canjian, and resorted to a "difference plan" to disintegrate their power and defeat each of them, thus winning.
In this story, Canjian Feixue's feelings were shaken by Changkong's intervention. Later, Canjian was angry and had a one-night stand with his maid Ruyue, which made the emotions gather to a high point. Finally, Feixue, who witnessed the whole affair, lost her mind and changed her mind. Remnant sword kills.
Red is passionate, sexual, anger, restless, and can extend impulse and sacrifice.
Feixue Canjian's feelings are brittle and fiery, Cannjian's lingering like the moon touches people's hearts, and Ruyue Feixue's strong confrontation is sharp and fierce.
These three relationships all express the meaning of red.
Especially after the forest war. Feixue felt ashamed, and Kisaragi's anger level rose to full.
The red clothes and red leaves reflect Ruyue's deep hatred for Feixue , and the intense emotional conflict was rendered to the climax by the picture.
At the moment Ruyue fell, the leaves turned from red to yellow, life stopped, and the fierce conflict turned into a moment of peace.
Blue - the grandeur of heroic death
At the end of Wuming's story, the plot took a sharp turn, and King Qin judged that Wuming's words were untrue based on his previous experience with Canjian Feixue.
Can Jian Feixue and the two have the bigger picture, how could they be narrow-minded people?
The real situation was revealed by the King of Qin:
Wuming and Changkong have known each other for a long time, and have their support. With the help of Canjian Feixue, they can go to the palace within ten steps of King Qin and complete the "ten steps and one kill".
Canjian Feixue and Canjian strongly agreed with this plan, and both were willing to become victims.
At this time, the background color is blue, and the broad state of mind overflows, abandoning the small self for the big self, this is the choice made by the two assassins to realize the great cause.
In the Qin army tent, Feixue was wearing a long blue coat, and she was unafraid of the nameless sword. She knew it was time to do something, even in the form of sacrifice.
At the foot of the rolling hills, in the vast world, she made the last effort for the ideal.
Although he lives in darkness as an assassin, his pursuit of the desired result is immortal . Facing difficult choices, he chooses to sacrifice himself. Such a mind is admirable.
After Feixue left, Can Jian died to death , and on the lake, he staged a classic battle with Wuming. The level of aesthetics of the picture, from the perspective of the history of martial arts movies, is difficult to rival.
White - the last truth
King Qin said eight out of ten, but Wuming still pointed out that King Qin had a slightly biased view on Can Jian.
Can Jian is not only not a narrow-minded person, but also a great talent with a mind that embraces the world.
For Wuming's assassination plan, Can Jian did not give praise or criticism. He first tried to prevent Wuming's assassination by questioning the accuracy of Wuming's swordsmanship, but failed.
On the Gobi Desert, there is not much language, a person who is about to embark on a journey and an assassin who has fought his last battle.
They all took assassinating Qin as their lifelong mission at a certain time, and the gap in the current pattern makes them disagree.
In the vast desert, the conflict over whether to assassinate Qin is as tangled as a tangled yarn.
"To kill" or "not to kill", when Can Jian wrote the word "world", the two already had the answer in their hearts.
This is the profound meaning of swordsmanship that Can Jian has been pursuing for ten years.
In the telling of this story, the main color of the camera is all white.
Wuming's sincerity in begging Canjian Feixue to help him, Feixue Ruyue's original intention not to change, and Canjian's broad-mindedness of caring about the common people are all perfectly displayed at this time.
Assassins' thirst for peace is no less than that of ordinary people, but they have chosen a more difficult path.
Under the pursuit of King Qin, it was white that reflected the magnanimous heart of the assassin, and the head was bright.
This is the pure color, the final truth of the story.
Green - The Good Memories of Heroes
After blocking Wuming's way, Can Jian talked about his experience of assassinating Qin.
He met Feixue ten years ago, and soon fell in love, practicing calligraphy and swords together.
He remembered that day when the two of them joined forces to enter the Qin Palace hall, in the green screen, swords, lights and swords shadowed.
He and Feixue once depended on each other, and all the beauty of fighting side by side for the ideal came to an abrupt end the moment he made the choice.
You ask him why, he used to be an assassin who wanted to kill the King of Qin, but compared to revenge, he realized a far-reaching realm.
So the curtain fell and the battle was over, the King of Qin was safe, the sword was withdrawn, and the whole body retreated.
Green is hope, the color of life. Before the assassination of Qin, Canjian Feixue was in high spirits. He had love in the mountains and running water, and spent the days of doing his best for his ideals.
Now, when facing the king of Qin who is enough to rule the world, he is eclipsed.
The green screen fell in the fight between Can Jian and the King of Qin, and the righteousness of giving up assassinating Qin for the sake of "the world" was already rising.
Throughout the film, there are four stories and four main colors: red is warm, blue is cool, white is bright, and green is natural.
Zhang Yimou used his best way to tell a story about the world as the most important thing in the face of personal hatred.
The use of color in the movie is not the ceiling of Chinese movies, but at least it is a milestone and outstanding creation.
After many years, I read "Hero" again, only to find that people misunderstood this film too much.
In terms of psychology, color is the subconscious element in the film, it has a strong emotionality, and it appeals not to consciousness and intelligence, but to expressiveness and atmosphere.
From this point of view, perhaps those "righteous people" who were mad about "Heroes" will change a little because of this. After all, the color of "Heroes" plays an extremely important role in the progress of the story and reflecting the psychological fluctuations of the characters.
From 2002 to 2020 , eighteen years have passed, and there are fewer and fewer Chinese films that can shine internationally. The trend from the 1990s to the beginning of the new century has made us see infinite possibilities.
For the sake of Chinese films, the filmmakers have indeed paid a lot, but they must continue to forge ahead.
Domestic blockbusters have a long way to go.
If you think it's well written, you can pay attention to the author's WeChat public account "Yu Renjiang". The new film is on the thunder, and the masterpieces are appreciated. You can find everything, scan the code and follow it! !
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