Director Xu Anhua did not choose to capture Xiao Hong as an individual. Instead, the camera is surrounded by Xiao Hong, moving from a changing perspective and crossing the complex time dimension. In the tearing and splicing of the images from time to time, he outlined the outline of Xiao Hong's life in that period and touched the strong burning feeling in that golden age.
The film "Golden Age" is unique in that it is different from the traditional narrative way of China's biographical films. It eliminates the audience's dependence on movie illusion by means of alienation, restores the authenticity and complexity of life through multiple perspectives, and objectively and clearly constructs the fiery and rampant period when people are addicted to physical and mental pursuit.
"Separation technique" is also called defamiliarization effect. It means to defamiliarize what people are familiar with and then get familiar with it again. The effect is to guide the audience to actively participate in the dynamic thinking of the plot, ask questions, and then find answers.
The film goes back and forth between reality and fiction for nearly forty times, and the audience is also in the endless cycle of "entering the play" and "leaving the play". They are no longer just immersed in the relationship between movie characters, but are free to feel Xiao Hong and that golden age.
Separation between roles: The screen of the characters and narrators who are replaced from time to time slowly lights up in black and white. That's Xiao Hong of 1936, in the photo taken in Japan. Portrait of Xiao Hong told the audience to the camera:
"My name is Xiao Hong, formerly known as Naiying Zhang. 1 911June1Lunar Dragon Boat Festival, born in a landlord's family in Hulan County, Heilongjiang Province+094211passed away in Hong Kong at noon on October 22nd. 3 1 year. "
At the beginning of the film, Tang Wei, the actor of Xiao Hong, abandoned the transparent "fourth wall" of the film by monologuing in front of the mirror and firmly faced the audience.
The golden age is not the first way to speak in front of a mirror. It was presented as early as 1977 in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. However, regarding the biographical film of China market, the aura of Golden Age seems to be different from its protagonist Xiao Hong, heroic but not unreasonable, complex but not turbid.
At the beginning of the film, Xiao Hong gave herself and the audience a "notice of the protagonist's death", which is a thread worn by the image of Xiao Hong made up of many fragments. This line pulls out the audience who are ready to immerse themselves in the virtual story, leads to a context of "playing history" and refuses to be disturbed, just as Xiao Hong insists on being ordinary to the audience in the air and the audience is awake to Xiao Hong in the air.
In the big garden of Hulan River in the movie, Xiao Xiaohong is poking a bird's nest with branches on the tree, with dust on his face and holes in his clothes. The bird's nest was thrown into the air, and 8-year-old Xiaohong looked at the camera.
Xiao Xiaohong's eye contact with the camera broke the way of playing wholeheartedly in "narrative drama" and eliminated the audience's illusion of a beautiful image. The role jumped out of the context of playing and communicated with the audience.
Drama can be divided into two categories, one is "dramatic drama" advocated by Aristotle and the other is "narrative drama" advocated by Brecht.
"Dramatic drama" emphasizes resonance and confusion, while "narrative drama" strengthens the separation of actors and roles, giving the audience a sense of anti-confusion and anti-resonance.
We must abandon the imagination of the "fourth wall", which separates the stage from the audience.
In order to create an illusion, it seems that the stage event did not happen in the audience's ideal. In the case of abandoning the fourth wall, actors are allowed to face the audience directly.
Traditional biographical films adopt a fixed perspective, and the narrator participates in the plot or a role in the play, presenting the unfolding of the plot from his perspective.
"Golden Age" subverts the narrative mode of biographical films, emphasizes the use of narrative symbols, adopts a unified perspective, invites words from multiple narrators, stops the complementarity of perspectives, and jointly promotes the story.
So we saw the excerpts from the beginning and end of Hulan River Biography. Xu Anhua created Xiao Hong's rich and pure inner world with dreamlike romantic and beautiful images.
The splendid love between Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun in Europa Hotel is also described in Xiao Hong's Regret for the Past.
The details of Xiao Hong's meeting with her younger brother Zhang Xiuke come from Xiao Hong's essay The First Snow.
Xiao Hong's panic when she gave birth to her first child was described several times in Xiao Hong's novel "Abandoned Children"-these are all Xiao Hong's perspectives.
The film "Golden Age" is based on Xiao Hong's literary works, and also touches on the narratives of literary works like Xiao Jun's For Love, Xu Guangping's Remember Xiao Hong, Ding Ling's Remember Xiao Hong in the Storm, Nie Gannu's In Peace and Luo's Biography of Xiao Hong.
In the movie, Mr. and Mrs. Bai Lang, who are in their twenties, and Mr. Luo Feng, dressed in old suits, sit side by side in front of the camera and meet the audience quietly. "I haven't heard from Wang Enjia since I left the hotel this summer night ...";
Zhang Xiuke and Xiaohong meet in the snow. Zhang stepped back and looked at the camera with tears in his eyes: "After my sister ran away, our family was ruined ..."
This role was suddenly replaced by the narrator's scene, which was presented 35 times in the film, and touched many people around Xiao Hong before his death, such as Zhang Meilin, Shu Qun, Nie Gannu, Hu Feng and Mei Zhi. This is the perspective of people around Xiao Hong.
Many mirror images reflect not Xiao Hong who has reached a conclusion, but all the sentient beings who pursued freedom in that great era.
In movies, there are often scenes that the narrator doesn't know, such as how Xiao Hong escaped from Harbin, and no one knows. Jiang Xijin couldn't explain why Duanmu left first, but Xiao Hong stayed. This is Jiang Xijin's presentation of the narrative of separation between man and role. The narrator once jumped out of the role and separated from the identity of the role.
Director Xu Anhua wants to tell the audience that no narrator is omniscient and omnipotent, but only completes his narrative in a limited field of vision, and the film has also completed a real Xiao Hong in material selection, without too much exaggeration.
This is another kind of dialectics. On the one hand, the film uses the separation of roles and actors and the separation of various narrators to dispel the illusion of the real image of the audience and remind the audience at all times. This is acting.
On the other hand, it leaves an unknown imagination space, and the illusion mechanism in art is also produced by "providing the audience with a screen-a blank or uncertain area-to let him project the image of waiting on it".
Xiao Hong, who is beyond the vision or understanding of many narrators in the film "Golden Age", is a blank area that attracts the audience to speculate.
Separation of time and space: describe the sudden change of time and space cycle. After Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun broke up, Nie Gannu stood up from the stone where the Eighth Route Army Office in Xi 'an Qixianzhuang was located, patted the dust on his body, and said to the camera, "I haven't seen each other since the breakup of Erxiao ...", and then left;
Or after Zhang Xiuke said goodbye to her sister, she took a few steps in the snow and looked back at the camera: "After my sister ran away, my family was ruined ... My sister and dad never met again until my sister died ..."
From the moment Nie Gannu and Zhang Xiuke face the camera, they don't belong to the time and space facing the camera, not only the transformation of roles and narrators, but also the sudden change of image time and space. At this time, Nie Gannu or Zhang Xiuke or others who suddenly faced the camera in the film "Golden Age" were once in the future time and space, and the narrative tense suddenly became the past tense.
The narrator is both the hero and another person; Views may have changed, but the mood that night or the next day is complete.
Although they were characters in the movie a second ago, they were still in the scene just now, and they were still wearing their clothes at that time, but their expressions and emotions at this time used to belong to normal times.
Characters in history tell about future events, and actors who stop tell about past events. When the historical time and space are combined with the ideal time and space, the sense of surprise brought by the separation of time and space in the film "Golden Age" will come to my face.
The film "Golden Age" interweaves historical time with ideal time, and the director or screenwriter intentionally eliminates the concept of time, subverts the logic of time and dispels the certainty of time and space.
The sudden shift of time can dispel the audience's resonance and empathy for the movie plot, and at the same time, it can also create a perfect outline of Hong.
Inserting the usual time and space into the historical time and space has produced a very special alienation effect. Time and space travel, relaxation, but also to some extent, eliminate the illusion of the audience.
In this way, the objective world in "Golden Age" no longer exists, and each narrator participates in creating an image world with what he sees and hears, and promotes the development of the plot with what he sees and hears, presenting a "Rashomon" of the Republic of China.
There is also an interesting ridicule in the film "Golden Age". The different perspectives of the narrator constitute the different narrative processes and details.
Second, the details of Xiao's breakup, the film clip collages old Xiao Jun and old Duanmu, and old Xiao Jun seems to simplify the process of his breakup with Xiao Hong, and his breakup with Xiao Hong appears quiet and harmonious in his narrative.
The old Duanmu's statement is quite different, including Xiao Jun's "unreasonable"-rushing into the room like a gust of wind and pressing the accordion at random and saying, "Xiao Hong, I will marry Ding Ling, and you will marry Duanmu"; And Xiao Hong flew into a rage-pushing Xiao Jun out of the door; And Duanmu said angrily to Xiao Jun, "You are too arrogant. Who do you take us for? "
Compared with the tranquility recalled by old Xiao Jun, Duanmu Hongliang recalled another situation of the same thing, and it is not difficult to see that the narrator has different senses due to personal differences.
These two memories were told by Nie Gannu when he was sitting on a stone while breaking up with the second primary school. At this time, Nie Gannu has completed the transformation from history to ideal time and space, and no longer expounds the breakup of Erxiao from the perspective of a latecomer. At the same time, in the process of explanation, it replaces the double separation of Xiao Jun and Duanmu, which constitutes the layered structure of the film, and the layered feeling of the film is slowly laid out in front of the audience.
There are many narrators wandering in time and space in the film Golden Age, and they are also members of the torrent of time. Their greatest function is to make the film shuttle back and forth in time and space, thus forming a sense of separation between time and space. It is emphasized that this is about a fragmented history, and Xiao Hong's visual representation in history makes the audience stop the generation and resolution of separation from time to time.
Identity is the narrative skill of mainstream films, but the audience has experienced the interweaving process of identity and alienation from time to time in the film Golden Age, which also urges the audience to try to construct a perfect image of Xiao Hong in their hearts.
The division between characters: the duality of Xiao Hong's image should be considered when creating heroes, and heroes sometimes make unexpected non-heroic behaviors. When creating the ghost of fear, we should also take into account that he is sometimes heroic. It is risky to generalize a character by saying that he is a hero or afraid of ghosts.
Xiao Hong in the film "Golden Age" is a complex body, and her duality is very noticeable.
Xiao Hong's duality in love is not only a devoted slave, but also a romantic gossip protagonist.
Xiao Hong once asked Luo ... Luo in the hospital bed of "Golden Age". Before you met me, did you regard me as a writer with a romantic private life? "
Luo's answer was convergent and objective: "I'm afraid everyone has heard about you and Xiao Jun and Duanmu."
Judging from Xiao Hong's several emotional experiences, this kind of "scandal" forced her to become the center of the scandal, which destroyed the traditional female imagination of "three obedience and four virtues" and "lifelong loyalty" and became an alternative woman in the society at that time.
But in the movie "Golden Age", Xiao Hong has a persistent slave in her heart, just like Duanmu said to Xiao Hong on the train, "You love him too much."
Xiao Hong endured Xiao Jun's infidelity again and again, so that she covered up the fact of beating herself for him. They also had a romantic love in the Europa Hotel. The fundamental reason why she didn't go to Yan 'an was that she loved Xiao Jun, and she still loves it.
In the film Golden Age, the duality of love enriches her emotional world.
Xiao Hong's duality in literary creation, one is a brilliant literary creator, and the other is a reverse writer divorced from the times.
Lu Xun once called Xiao Hong's Field of Life and Death "the northern people's faithfulness to life, a picture of the struggle about death". Xiao Hong occupies an important position in the literary world at that time by virtue of her talented literary creation.
The film also admits that when Xiao Hong wrote "Biography of Hulan River" at 194 1, many critics thought that her creation was divorced from that period and blindly described her loneliness.
Her reverse self-choice in writing also reflects her romantic personality of pursuing freedom and liberation from time to time.
Xiao Hong's duality in social role is not only a grand female writer of the Republic of China, but also a bleak life incompetent.
Xiao Hong is the author of Field of Life and Death and Street of Sorrow for the Past, and she has her own lofty literary status.
However, Xiao Hong has the title of excellent female writer, but at the same time, she is an out-and-out incompetent. She fell ill and lost the gift of happiness. Her feelings are circuitous and hopeless, lacking stable and romantic love; She was pregnant twice, her child was given away once and she died once. She is not a good mother and has not shouldered the responsibilities of a mother. She ran away from home and lost her family obligations as a daughter.
When she was in Japan, she was not hungry and cold, and she had time and space to write with peace of mind, but her feelings were the most empty. She told Xiaojun that this was her "golden age" and she used to live in a cage.
Xiao Hong's "Golden Age" is also very ironic.
The construction of characters is a very important aspect of the audience's illusion mechanism and cognition. Therefore, if we use the traditional text construction method, that is, a single construction method, it is impossible to separate a broad extension space.
Xiao Hong is a complex of contradictions. The description and choice of Xiao Hong's duality and complexity in the film "Golden Age" further increases Xiao Hong's uncertainty, which is the key to arouse the audience's thinking.