Xie Mingsong 2019.03.25.
Wang Xiaoshuai's "Long Time" won the Best Actor and Actress awards at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival , while Wang Xiaoshuai did not win the Best Director Award. The fire in the second theater was suspended, and the third one saw the wrong time) before watching "Long Time", this is a movie with a super sense of time and substitution. It's a pity, but it didn't get the best director award, I think This film mainly loses in the lens language, and there are some problems with character scheduling, location restoration, makeup modeling, and casting.
Sorry, the article talks about the disadvantages first, then the advantages. The biggest problem with this film is the lens and lighting. As a film made by a well-known domestic director of literary and artistic films, and as a literary and artistic film, the lens should be more particular. You must know that European films are extremely particular about this aspect. I know that "Long Time" hopes to use the most natural light to restore and shoot, without deliberate lighting, but do you know? Restoring is a very difficult technical task, that is, using a machine to restore the real feeling of the human eye. For example, backlit shots often only have outlines and cannot see faces. In this case, you can try it with a mobile phone. This is very different from the real situation seen by the human eye, and technical processing should be done. For example, in the movie, Liu Yaojun and Shen Moli are dating, Liu Yaojun is sitting in the corner, a dead black light (I don't know if it has other intentions), I think there is a problem, the correct restoration is to fill in the light. For another example, the instability of the shot (not an intentional expression of emotions, but a mistake) often occurs, and some are unreasonable with the shooting, and so on. You must know that the handling of art films is very rigorous. In a word, it is short of an awesome photography director.
Let’s talk about character scheduling. It’s very difficult to schedule a scene with many characters, and there are often very orderly problems, which seem unreal. The real situation is chaos and order. , it is often a play with only the dialogue person, and there is no other person's play. Others just watch it quietly, which is very rigid, which is neither natural nor realistic. The normal treatment is that each has different performances, and even has "grab" words. desire. Of course, the director is much more difficult, this is a scheduling problem.
Regarding the editing of "Long Time" or the arrangement of the scenes, I think it was done reasonably at the beginning, but there was a problem with the rhythm later, and it was a little delayed. A movie of more than two hours in total, can be shorter in the later stages. The "Elephant Sitting on the Floor" directed by Wang Xiaoshuai lasted 4 hours. At that time, Wang Xiaoshuai did not agree to make it so long, but he won several awards. I don’t know if it has anything to do with this. The longer the film is, the better it is for the film itself. Of course, the quality must be good enough. Many people like to watch the director’s version, which is not limited by the time limit of the theater. The longer it is, the more engaged it is. However, "Long Time" does not need this length of time.
The art of "Long Time" does a good job in indoor scenery and prop production (note that it is indoor scenery), but there are many problems outdoors, where the accident occurred in the reservoir, the cars on the highway can be completely processed in post-processing, and Decades later, the scene of sweeping graves is almost repeated, and it looks the same (but the city handled it well). During the Cultural Revolution, the exterior of the factory was also somewhat modern. Some of the certificates and calendars were not in line with the era of the story, and some of the details were not handled well enough.
The film that spanned 40 years has been tested in terms of directing skills. This is the biggest success of this film, and it also shows that Wang Xiaoshuai has a good control ability in the arrangement of the scenes and the shaping of characters. The success lies in the use of flashbacks, not full sequence. Last year's film "The Photographer" in Shenzhen also had a story spanning 40 years and was told in chronological order, which would make people feel trivial, because the length of time was limited and the story could not be told. The beginning of "Long Time" was about the beginning of the 1990s. The previous stories were told in flashbacks, which would make the audience feel less trivial, because flashbacks can be long or short, which is quite clever. In addition, the time span of one person's role is too large, which is very difficult in terms of modeling. The middle-aged and elderly characters in the film have good makeup because the actors themselves are older. If you put more effort into the youth's styling, it should be even better.
The literary film is a quiet reversal, and it does a good job in "Long Time". For example, did Liu Xing die after drowning. Several reversals were made in the film, and it was natural and unpredictable. It was a success. place. However, there are also some scenarios that are easy to predict. For example, as soon as the phone rings, you can know who is who and what is going on, and these are generally handled. There are also some things in this film that are similar to "The Intruder", such as the influence of the Cultural Revolution on the next generation, and the characters' entanglement of events, which also seems a bit hypocritical.
Now the subject of the Cultural Revolution is very strictly controlled. Although there are some deletions, I think the Cultural Revolution can be mentioned in a positive way, and even has a certain degree of exposure. The black lamp dance will lead to imprisonment, family planning touches human nature, etc., all of which are positively discussed in the film. It is a very difficult and painful thing to be accurate under strict policy control. Perhaps only directors with certain influence can pass the trial, which is very difficult.
The ending of the movie, I think is quite good, there are both reversals, reflections, and explanations of events, showing hope and vitality. This is a rare ending.
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