Which one is the real Stephen Chow? Because of this article, I changed it to 5 stars.

Brandon 2022-01-20 08:02:17

"Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons": Which one is the real Stephen Chow?

Netease Entertainment reported on February 16 (by Zhang Yi)


"Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" as a commercial giant is really sensual and interesting and earth-shattering; the air line is freely retractable and hearty, it is beautiful and enjoyable to watch. But when the theater’s cold wind blew on my face, I suddenly felt a bit "pathetic" Zhou Xingchi-he is really a very talented person, with "seventy-two changes", but his mental pain is much higher than that. Those of us with mediocre aptitudes watched him constantly smashing himself into pieces, smashing, stomping, stomping, kicking in the film... but he still couldn’t get rid of, abandoned, touched. No. Apart from laughing and tearing, we viewers also felt a little "sorrowful" for him.

His films only portray himself.

Many successful directors are good at observing sentient beings and then record their emotions and destiny through image changes, but Zhou Xingchi is not. He is very singular in this respect. All his films directed by him portray his own pain and love, strong and weak, thinking and worrying. He is the only God in his films.

If you change the individual, this style must be "limited", but he is a Zhou Xingchi who cannot be copied. Zhou Xingchi is a talented actor. From this perspective, he and the Monkey King he plays do have many similarities. They both have "72 changes", but Monkey King has "Fighting Curse" outside and "Dinghai Shenzhen" inside, so in the end Can never leave its origins. But Zhou Xingchi does not have these two gods. He has always had countless "self" in his heart. He is a male and a female; he is an emperor and a minister; he is old and young; he is a demon and a holy... His actor, whose image can be ever-changing, and his thoughts are always intricate, but what he cannot and cannot be is a single entity. Because it is too rich, all his creative sources mirror himself. Also because of being too rich, all his pain and loneliness came from not being able to recognize which one is the real self.

He has only two ages in his heart

Stephen Chow's movies will always have some details that are so naive and innocent that you can't think of, but make people smile. For example, "Lollipop" in "Kung Fu", "Three Hundred Children's Songs" in "Journey to the West". This kind of young stuff always gets the most solemn respect and admiration from Zhou Xingchi. But what can these "pediatrics" things do? The return to innocence seems to be just a kind of "speaking" like a textbook. However, just when this kind of "extreme presentation" was subconsciously "scorned" by the audience, a strange "sense of joy" was born. At the end of the film, Stephen Chow reversed this "contempt" - "Bang "Lollipop" has really become the key to redeeming the protagonist. "Three Hundred Children's Songs" has been spelled into "The Great Day Tathagata Truth", which has become the supreme weapon for conquering demons.

This bizarre difference in utility is an important sign of Xingye movies. It is difficult for others to "play" well with this technique. Because this extremely weak and extremely strong is exactly Zhou Xingchi's own natural personality. He is a very extreme person, strong and firm as a rock, immobile, and soft and weak so that he can easily be subdued by something so young that you can't imagine it. Sometimes his desires are so huge that he wants to fill the entire universe, and sometimes they are so simple that only one candy can satisfy him for life. Only in this kind of strong contrast can Xingye find his balance. There are only two age groups where he is most comfortable and comfortable in his heart: one is a 5-year-old boy and the other is a 100-year-old immortal. For other young, middle-aged, and middle-aged people, he is unwilling to play more in his heart, and even less disdain to play. Therefore, Zhou Xingchi's movies have a kind of perverse urchin temperament.

He used extreme "evil" for good

Zhou Xingchi's extremes are also shown in his film using "extremely evil" to mock the "good", the scale is completely beyond the norm, the movements and emotions are wide open, full of sublime and strong drama. At the beginning of "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons", the cute little girl was captured by the water monster. Everyone tried to save her. The soft-hearted audience wanted to "leave her alive". However, the flashes of hope were ruthlessly extinguished, and the star did not leave anything. There is room for her mother to "swallow things". The plot that shocked the audience even more is that Monkey King is wild and brutal. He cuts all the exorcists to the roots, and even more viciously blows Miss Duan who had a conversation with him into ashes. "Don't stay"-Master Xing, ruthlessly and completely destroyed everyone's benevolent imagination of "evil". At the same time, "Exorcist" Miss Duan's "fierceness" towards monsters and ghosts was also stunned. Not only did she beat and kick the monsters viciously, she also removed the monsters with arms and heads, and dismembered them into a "stream of sand"-this behavior seemed to itself. It also has a "cruel" taste.

Good and evil are originally one, one ebbs and the other grows, the other grows and ebbs, and it regenerates endlessly. This is the "cultivation level" of the world. But why does Stephen Chow want to show the "evil" part so heartily? I think this is the genius actor Zhou Xingchi fighting against himself in the extreme. If you take "Journey to the West: Conquering Demons" as an example, Zhou Xingchi's character may also be a combination of all demons. He is not only a cruel and cunning Sun Wukong who challenges authority and is unwilling to be tamed; he is also a monster fish with an innocent face on the water that cannibals without blinking; he is still a pig with a face like Pan An and murderous like hemp. But at the same time he was a fearless Xuanzang, a wise master, and even a helpless baby. A person, if there are many "complex" aspects of good and evil in one's talents, wantonly "evil" is "for good", and expressing such extreme "evil" is even more a kind of "promoting good." Zhou Xingchi used this joyful sway to let the audience get rid of the waste gas and hostility, and on the other hand, he was also dissipating his own "karma".

He was very passionate and extremely unsentimental.

Whether it was Karen Mok, Zhu Yin, or Yu Wenfeng, the "end" of his relationship with Stephen Chow seemed a bit miserable, except that Karen Mok, who was deeply educated in the West, did not verbally verbalize the star afterwards. Both openly criticized his "character", and the last girlfriend took him to court. In fact, Zhou Xingchi's movies have long revealed his view of love, or the view of emotion between people. He is a particularly passionate, but extremely unsympathetic person.

In "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons", Miss Duan who is brave to love is Zhou Xingchi, and Xuanzang who reluctantly admits it is also him. Because of his high emotional intelligence, Zhou Xingchi does not doubt love itself, but Zhou Xingchi doubts which one of his love is true. Zhou Xingchi is an extremely contradictory person emotionally. All of this is due to his destiny-he is a born emotional actor, but sometimes the feelings of actors are not distinguished by "true and false", but by "whether or not". "Play" to distinguish. When he is playing a role, false is true, and true can be false. However, there are countless characters in Zhou Xingchi's body. Therefore, when the love and affection of certain characters appear, other characters will imitate, examine, question, and ridicule. Every character is himself, but not all himself. The star sees mountains as mountains, sees water as water, but cannot be "locked" in a role or fixed in a "reality". This kind of "impermanence" and "rootlessness" created the deepest pain and loneliness in Zhou Xingchi's life, which is also the essence of his "unfeeling".

In "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons," there is a wonderful dance between Monkey King and Miss Duan. It is a flirting scene full of modern eroticism between men and women. For Xuanzang, it is affectionate and open-minded. At the end of the film, when the master asked Xuanzang, "What do you think of the love of men and women now?" Xuanzang replied, "I practice for great love, and love between men and women is also a type of great love." Hearing this, Zhu Yin and Wang Jing might have laughed. Compared with Zhou Xingchi's actions in reality, these words sound particularly hypocritical. Of course Stephen Chow understands this. He has always been in and outside the play. Not only did he use "humor" to mock "Zhuang", he also mocked "Zhuang" with such a "Zhuang"-he had the same bit of taunting himself. No mercy. However, outside audiences like me, when they hear these words, they feel particularly distressed, cherish, and love him—because Zhou Xingchi’s sincere affection and spiritual height lies in these true and false, false and true, and playful Between playing around, laughing and crying.

He destroys but also redeems.

Many people say that genius and lunatic are equivalent in a sense. However, the two are only similar in behavior, but one of them is conscious in thinking and the other is unconscious. The reason why "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" is so good is that the madness actually comes from the freedom and laughter of genius. Harmonious, not frivolous; Zhuang, not pretentious; playful, wise; true, faithful.

The talented Zhou Xingchi is also too "conscious", and he is destined to have a role as a "empty son" with a cold face. Some people say that the "Empty" and "Kidney Deficiency" of the "Four Beauties" like the tongue twisters of "Empty Son" is a bit redundant or strange. In fact, this may not be an idle time for Stephen Chow, the narcissism of "Empty Son" His "comic" role can be regarded as an "alternative interpretation" of Star Master to outside public opinion or to himself. Everyone who criticizes and criticizes outsiders is himself, and it is himself who praises and sings. who is he? Is it "emptiness" or "kidney deficiency", this is his lifelong trouble.

72 changes, every vellus hair can become a physical body, endless for ten thousand years. "Only when you have been painful can you know the real pain; once you have been attached, you can let go of your attachment; once you have been concerned, you can no longer be concerned." ... When he explored the deepest part of the universe of heart, Zhou Xingchi did not find that self." The core" left him only a black hole-like "emptiness"-"Ten thousand years is too long, I just want to love now". Fortunately, Stephen Chow's fate belongs to the movie. He can fabricate himself with mud in the movie over and over again, make it again and again, crush it again, crush it again, destroy himself and redeem himself at the same time.

In addition:

I don’t remember where I saw this passage about "Journey to the West". It said that after the Monkey King and the six-eared macaques fought fiercely because it is difficult to tell whether they are true or false, the Lord Buddha said a verbal remark about "true". , "The heart that saves the heart is also the heart outside the heart. The heart outside the heart is the illusion, how to save the true heart? The one who confuses the lover, the heart has been arrogant; the true heart understands itself, and the one who saves the illusion is the true heart. "-This passage seems to be given to Mr. Zhou Xingchi, because after this battle, Monkey King finally cultivated into "Fighting and Conquering Buddha."

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Extended Reading
  • Dusty 2022-03-18 09:01:07

    My parents are all asleep! The Drifting Monk is "Han River Monster", the Fighting of Bajie is "New Dragon Inn", Wukong is a Gollum in person, and his real body is a black bear spirit, and he transforms into a King Kong. Except for the special effects of a few monsters and beasts, the other CGs are as bad as they are. I am afraid that Xingye's nonsensical comedy can only belong to the product of a specific era, and the premise is his self-cultivation as an actor. 【Xiantao Yinxing】

  • Gracie 2022-03-16 09:01:07

    Thought, state, sincerity