I had high hopes for this movie. In other words, I had high hopes for Feng Xiaogang. Because almost no one tells stories as seriously as he does now. You can see what Jia Zhangke is doing. He uses a 90-minute movie to play with a few concepts, and when he has no time to make a documentary, he invites celebrities to play fake documentaries. His ideas are good, and his concepts are sharp, but he is impatient and feels that there is no need to tell a sufficiently complicated story. Feng Xiaogang has always been fine. "Mobile", "Assembly", and "If You Are the One" are all very good and comfortable. Especially "Assembly", the scene in front of the grave is too powerful. I think a person can work so hard in a commercial film, so heartfelt. If he uses this attitude to do one after another, it will definitely be a very good work.
In "The Great Earthquake", Feng Xiaogang also tried his best, but unfortunately there was no scene that could carry his strength. He is an empathetic contractor, and he is able to represent the works of several writers as closely as possible. He is almost a man with few independent opinions, and what he can accept is rarely monotonous - equally narrow in frequency. And, as his career progressed, he became more and more confident in his choice. Those things that he didn't think were worth caring about were no longer caring.
The sad thing about us is that we even only have one Feng Xiaogang.
We have to have high hopes for such a man. When he let us down, he couldn't turn his emotions away. So I can only scold him to death.
Thirty minutes before "The Great Earthquake", the earthquake scene is about ten minutes. After the earthquake, Fang Deng was adopted by Chen Daoming and his wife until Mao's death about fifteen minutes. There are only about five minutes left to explain the relationship between Xu Fan's family. All we remember is blowing a fan and eating a tomato. This is really not enough! Even if relatives are always relatives, the audience in the movie needs to stitch these people together in their hearts. On a deeper level, the audience also needs to project themselves on the screen, making themselves a member of that family. How about five minutes? Therefore, the family relationship of Li Yuanni's family has not really been established at all, so the bitter family drama in the next few decades can only be fanned by force.
The earthquake scene is less than ten minutes, except for the flashing of purple light in the sky before the earthquake, etc., the real earthquake scene is only about four minutes. how the earthquake behaves. For example, Zhang Jingchu, in a limited space, how to express the rubble in her heart that can never be swept away? This movie is really not suitable for presentation in a sequential time manner. Chen Guofu once suggested that a lot of flashbacks and interludes should be used, but Feng Xiaogang refused. Also, Feng Xiaogang's films always follow the timeline honestly from beginning to end. Again, the frequency is narrow.
But to be fair, the big earthquake aside, Director Feng is really good!
In fact, I don't want to make too harsh demands on Director Feng's films. We can only blame so few directors we can hope for. Some of them can be directly classified into the scope of "drama director", and the drama is not very elegant.
Maybe it's time for them to turn it over.
Li Hongzhang said yes, one generation will do the same thing.
Retire when you're done. If you drag it further, you won't be able to find any tricks. Why bother, so tired.
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