New martial arts founder Hu Jinquan The masterpiece that was paid attention to and recognized by the world film industry is "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" in 1970.
But it has gone through the process of spreading outside Shanghai, which is purely helpless. In 1970 and 1971, "The Legend of the Goddess", which cost NT$20 million and was filmed for four years, was split into two films and released, but it suffered a commercial failure.
In order to save box office losses, in 1974, with the financial support of French film critic Hubert Niogret, Hu Jinquan purchased the European and American copyright of "The Legend of the Goddess" from the Federal Film Company and re-edited it, compiling the two upper and lower films into three-hour single films.
After that, the martial arts blockbuster "The Heroes" (English name A Touch of Zen, translated as "A Thunder Zen Machine") entered the list of competition works at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, and finally won the "Higher Technical Committee Award", which attracted widespread attention from the world film industry.
In 1978, the British "International Film Guide" listed Hu Jinquan as one of the "Five Directors in the World". In 1987, Hu Jinquan was named one of the "Fifty Most Outstanding Film Directors in the World" by Time.
And the source of all this is "The Legend of the Condor Heroes".
However, whether it was back then or now, for ordinary audiences who do not understand the cultural background of the story, the threshold for appreciation and understanding of " Heroes " is not low in terms of plot and ethics.
Why does the male lead Gu Shengzhai seem so weak? Why does the hero Yang Huizhen keep her face paralyzed? Why did they play wild together after being caught off guard? Master Huiyuan is so powerful, why don’t he help directly? What is the meaning behind Hu Jinquan's various sets? What role positions do the three of Confucians, chivalrous women, and Buddhists have in terms of the story pattern constructed by this film?
年年年 +Ming Shi
The story framework of "The Heroes" is adapted from "年年年年年年年 未分 ".
What is different from most viewers’ understanding is that in the Stories from a Chinese Studio, there are not only stories about monsters and monsters singing the protagonist, but also many legends of chivalrous things on earth. "The Heroes" is one of them.
In the original work, the heroic father is in charge of Sima, but was later framed by his enemy and his family was scouted. The hero escaped with his old mother and hid his identity. Because Gu Sheng was kind to her, she silently gave birth to a son for Gu, quietly completed revenge, and then entrusted the child to the Gu family, and disappeared like a god.
Pu Songling 's worship of chivalrous is obvious. In "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio", no matter who is a human, ghost, god, demon, immortal, and monster, they will focus on their chivalrous sentiment of sacrifice for justice.
Therefore, this kind of story with a sense of storyline and curiosity and contains chivalrous connotation has become an excellent film story material.
Hu Jinquan's "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" has been adapted from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, but the plot has been greatly reshaped. injects the characters in the play with their own identities and historical backgrounds, so that each character in the film has a clearer historical and image coordinates .
The historical background of the story is still frozen in the Ming Dynasty, which director Hu Jinquan is most passionate about. During the Tianqi period, Yang Huizhen (played by Xu Feng), the daughter of the left deputy censor, who was killed by impeachment of the eunuch Wei Zhongxian, lived in the rumored haunted Jinglu Tun Fort. Next door is the scholar Gu Shengzhai (played by Shi Jun) and his old mother live. Gu Sheng made a living by selling calligraphy and paintings, refused to be famous for his fame and fortune, and expressed his own ambitions with Zhuge Liang's "living his life in troubled times, not seeking to be heard from the princes."
In order to kill everyone, Dongchang searched for Ms. Yang and her colleagues everywhere. After Gu Shengzhai and Yang Huizhen had a night-long feast, Gu Sheng used his intelligence and rumors of ghosts and gods to help Yang defeat the Dongchang people who were attacking at night.
The next day, Gu Sheng saw corpses everywhere, and Yang Huizhen had left him. Gu Sheng followed the traces of love, and Ms. Yang avoided the view and asked the monk to deliver a son, indicating that he had determined to become a monk.
Master Huiyuan (played by Qiao Hong) asked his colleague General Shi Wenqiao (played by Shi Ying) to go down the mountain to rescue Gu Sheng and his son, and confront the East Factory Killer. When the fight was about to fall, Huiyuan arrived, and the evil man was killed and died as a saint.Among the whole film of
, the fierce battle between four people including Xu Feng and Bai Ying is the most classic.
According to Hu Jinquan, when editing the video, he pioneered the method of deducing the plot with the rapid connection of short shots, creating a shocking vision and sense of presence that leaps in the spiral space.
also won the Cannes "Higher Technical Committee Award" because of this scene.
triple narrative, with emotion in the scene
In the article "Form and Structure of Hu Jinquan's Movie", British film critic Tony Renn divided the nearly three-hour "The Heroes" into three parts, and described it in the order of "historical social realism", "political thrillers and ghost stories", and "metaphysical struggle".
From realistic exploration, to party struggles, and then to Zen extradition, it corresponds to the three main characters, Confucianism, heroism and Buddhism, and completes the process of connecting the virtual and real from this shore to the other shore, from individuals to politics to religion.
The movie started with a Confucian perspective with Gu Sheng as the core. The Confucian way of dealing with the world that Gu Shengzhai believes is "If the country has the way, the country will be in power, and if the country has no way, the country will be invisible."
Therefore, no matter how poor the family is or how much his old mother scolds him, he always says, "I will live a life in troubled times, and I will not seek to be heard and gain a reputation among the princes." Even the plaque on his house is written "Indifferent and clear ambitions, tranquility and far-reaching."
Gu Sheng took Zhuge Liang as the benchmark and was meaningful. In media interviews, Hu Jinquan also said:
"This character is hung in Zhuge Liang's thatched cottage where Zhuge Liang lives in seclusion. After Liu Bei saw this character, he was sure that Zhuge Liang was a lying dragon, that is, a big man hidden in the mountains and fields."
Therefore, not taking the imperial examination at does not mean that Gu Sheng, as a Confucian intellectual, really has no ambitions. This also laid the groundwork for Gu Sheng to use military strategy to help Yang Huizhen defeat the people in the East Factory later.
As a chivalrous woman, Yang's positioning is actually a link that connects the worldly entry of Confucianism and the birth of Buddhism. As a loyal and kind-hearted person, Yang Huizhen is straightforward and cold in character. She has not avenged her great revenge and has no intention of having sex with her, so she has always been paralyzed to others. But where the moral grace lies, she cannot help but repay the kindness of Gu’s family.
Because Gu's mother always hopes that her son will marry and have children to continue the incense, Yang Huizhen weighs the pros and cons and decides to repay her kindness for Gu's childbirth, which leads to the private meeting that caught all the audience off guard in the film.
In traditional Chinese aesthetics, it is very common to describe the beauty symbolically and express emotions in the scenery and the romance of the scenery. The letters of wild geese, the sorrow of lilacs, the noble plum blossoms, the tough green bamboos, the iron horse, the autumn wind, the apricot flowers and spring rain... are all the sustenance and metaphor of the ancients for beauty.
To create artistic conception, filming the scene of Gu Sheng and the Heroine's private meeting in the courtyard. It is said that Hu Jinquan started filming when the reeds grew taller.
"The reeds are green, and the white dew turns into frost. The so-called beauty is on the side of the water." Reeds are reeds. On a full moon night, the reeds are hidden, the hero is singing Li Bai's "Hot Drinking Alone Under March" .
"When you wake up, you will have fun, and when you get drunk, you will be scattered. You will always be merciless and travel together, and you will meet each other in the distant world."
's implication is: "I want to sleep with you, I want to have a baby for you, and then we will go our separate ways, and we don't need to love each other."
Then thunderstorms are bursting, which means the love of clouds and rain; water lilies after the rain mean the knot. Use the most traditional metaphor to express the plot gracefully and freely without any trace.
For Gu Shengzhai, although there is a relationship between men and women, is actually a way to realize his or her ambitions after he or she is loyal. As a result, the literati were involved in the whirlpool of party struggles in the court, and the folk righteous men and eunuchs fought fiercely.
After helping Yang Huizhen complete the bloody revenge of Jinglutun Castle, the movie was absurd and exaggerated and filmed a long film of Gu Sheng running and laughing wildly in a dilapidated landscape. Then, seeing corpses everywhere, the smiling eyes instantly turned into fear, and turned to panic and searching for the scene of the hero.
It can be seen that this incident is actually of great significance to Gu Sheng's ambitions as a Confucian. The flesh and blood price brought by the implementation of ambitions was unexpectedly unexpected by this weak scholar.
From this shore to the other shore, the classic oriental aesthetic construction
Then the introduction of religious and philosophical thinking in the next hour is the most difficult for ordinary audiences. But this is actually Hu Jinquan's biggest ambition for this film.
Buddhist believe in the birth of the world, and most of the time they play bystanders of secular conflicts. So no matter how people fight, they will only appear after the blood flows into a river and converge to the level of salvation. Although Master Huiyuan is skilled in martial arts, he refuses to join the world to help Yang Huizhen. He only protects him from behind, teaches him martial arts, and advises him to let go and convert to Buddhism.
But not involved in the world does not mean that there is no force at all. On the contrary, the last part of the movie, the stern strait of martial arts may also be the reason why Master Huiyuan finally achieved enlightenment and passed away into a saint and became a Buddha immediately.
For the description and setting off Zen, Hu Jinquan used more light and shadow to create an atmosphere. In the film, the drama of the Empress Huiyuan monk who shed golden blood and brought his own "Buddha Light" after shedding golden blood. Hu Jinquan waited for 7 days before finally waiting until the sun happened to set behind the actor.
Against the backdrop of the Buddha's light, the master sat cross-legged on the mountain like a god and a Buddha, pointing to the west with one hand, as if guiding the direction for the Yang family - Although chivalrous in the world is rare, Buddhism can transcend life and death and save the world and move to the ultimate world on the other side.
Hu Jinquan incorporated the Confucian, Buddhism and Taoism in traditional Chinese culture into the film, and constructed a unique classic work of oriental aesthetics. It can be said that today, when talking about the so-called "cultural confidence", we are already a thousand miles apart from these film works half a century ago.
Hu Jinquan's martial arts combines multiple ethnic cultural elements such as traditional Chinese philosophy, history, drama, painting, and dance. Under the general logic of traditional cultural background, many elements are integrated to build a unique oriental aesthetic model.
Unfortunately, this rare oriental aesthetic and this rich classical imprint may be too difficult for most ordinary audiences to understand.
- THE END -
