The advance screening of "The Good Man in the Three Gorges" was selected in the centenary lecture hall of Peking University. Jia Zhangke and his "The Good Man in the Three Gorges" appeared on the stage together. This day is December 4th, 10 days before the theatrical premiere of "The Three Gorges" -- also the same day as the domestic premiere of the world-renowned "Golden Armor".
"It's not the same kind of movie at all, it's impossible to win the box office... Maybe the time of "The Three Gorges Good Man" is only from the 4th to the 14th." Jia Zhangke's words were helpless, but still tenacious, "I am using "The Three Gorges Good Man" "The box office sacrificed for love, I just want to see, in this era of money first, who cares about good people!"
Forgotten / Record
"I originally wanted to go back to the backstage after watching it for ten minutes, but I ended up sitting in the backstage. After watching "The Three Gorges Good Man" in the audience, I felt very strange. In May, I was still filming in Fengjie, but now, many scenes and pictures have become unfamiliar. Humans are really a group that is good at forgetting..."
——Jia Zhangke
Forgetting is a kind of nature, and it is inevitable, but people still try to speed up this kind of forgetting. The old city of Fengjie was demolished at a rate of one building in seven days. Jia Zhangke's filming team was racing against time. The large "demolition" on the wall marked the time scale, and it kept moving forward. The camera peeks out from the broken wall that was opened by the house demolition worker's axe. Outside is a brand new Fengjie, which looks the same as most cities today...
A half-demolition house with the inner wall exposed, with the words "Work hard." "The calligraphy and painting are displayed in the wind, admiring the rhythm of the workers swinging the axe; in the suspended workshop, a pair of iron anchors stood in place, surrounded by bushes of wild grass... The English translation of "The Good Man of the Three Gorges" is "Still". "Life", still life does not speak, but is full of the texture of life, which is far richer than the dull appearance. People who want to actually move forward with visible history take great pains to preserve those material cultural heritages, those buildings, and that's all they want. The role of video is also to record, but some people arrange various scenes to design a process, while some people only record the real scene they see, and there is a choice.
Everything is different, it's just a different way of recording.
Search/Choose
"What I was going to write was a search story, but after I wrote it, I found out that it was actually a story about choice"
——Jia
Zhangke The hero, looking for his wife and daughter who have been separated for 16 years, and see how they live Good or bad; the heroine, looking for her husband who has not been home for two years, in order to divorce him. There is no relationship between the protagonists, except that they are all looking for the same place, Fengjie - this small city that is about to be submerged forever.
Jia Zhangke's camera has always been aimed at some small people. When explaining "why my camera is always reluctant to leave those faces", he talked about the perseverance of those people, the optimism of those people, and the wisdom of those people. They didn't search for it unconsciously, they had their own choices: from demolishing buildings in the Three Gorges to digging coal in Shanxi, they did not deny that they were "seeking a way out", but they lived so tenaciously.
When I first watched the movie, I felt that the actions and rhythm of the hero Han Sanming's words seemed out of tune. He always waited for half a beat, and reminisced carefully. That is exactly the rhythm of Han Sanming's approach to life. The whole era around him is busy. But with a unique rhythm to deal with the rushing crowd.
Life/Art
"When I first arrived in Fengjie, I looked at the immigrant monument by the river. I felt that it was very incompatible with everything around it, and I wanted to make it fly away. Therefore, in the movie, it was like an alien. The spaceship flew away like that."
- Jia Zhangke
More than one place, there are surreal insertions in the realistic "Three Gorges". In addition to the monument turning into a spaceship and flying away, there are also UFOs, and characters with Peking Opera masks on their mobile phones... Jia Zhangke's explanation of these is surprisingly simple, like a fantasy child scribbling on a canvas at will. But who hasn't had a dream like that? Who hasn't felt an astonishingly surreal existence in a very real reality.
Life itself is all-encompassing, and, if you pay attention, there is always a touch of color. Just like the innocent boy in the film who was always intoxicated and sang "Dear, you fly slowly..." - this true actor discovered by Jia Zhangke on the streets of Fengjie. On that day, he stopped Jia Zhangke and asked, "Do you live in a restaurant?"..."Do you want a car?"..."Are you going to eat?"... When Jia Zhangke was curious and asked, "What business is your family doing?" , the boy sang Pang Long's song and left with a smile. He is the bright one in the movie, in the middle of a group of "rough people" who live by physical strength.
Art is not nobler than life. Perhaps it is those ordinary people who do not show the slightest comfort in front of the camera, and who smoke in a natural way. They know the value of life and the status of art the most.
There is always a tension that compels people to keep exploring. If you follow your inner wishes and follow the guidance of life, you will not stop in your pursuit of dreams. The glory of the Golden Lion and the inevitable box-office tragedy of "The Good Man in Three Gorges" are the scenery of Jia Zhangke's dream journey.
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