How do you evaluate the movie “Man Jianghong”‘s fusion of three different types of costumes, suspense, and comedy?

Chen Yu, author and screenwriter of the original script of “Man Jianghong”

Thank you.

In the promotion and evaluation of “Man Jianghong”, the tags used mentioned the three words ancient costume, suspense, and comedy. These three characteristic films have all. In the field of public opinion, these words can be used to describe this movie. .

But in the eyes of me, who is conceptually obsessive-compulsive and engages in art theory with male thinking in science and engineering, it is said that movies are a fusion of these three types. As the author and screenwriter of the original script, I don’t quite agree with this formulation.

Because in my mind these three words are not concepts at the same level.

Some concepts and words that we are familiar with in daily life actually have narrow interpretations in professional and academic fields.

I personally call these conceptual vocabulary “new words”.

Let me talk about ancient costumes first.

At first, ancient costumes only defined the age of the film in terms of time. There are only four types: costume films (all before the Republic of China), period dramas (the Republic of China), modern dramas (after the founding of the People’s Republic of China), and contemporary dramas (current). It is mainly to give a concept of clothing and art, so the term ancient costume is used.

Later, the concept of ancient costume was extended. It describes the subject matter of a movie, and the subject matter refers to what the content of a movie is about, expressing the movie about something. About sports, sports themes; about business competition, business war themes; about ancient life, costume movies.

Let alone suspense.

In film theory, suspense film is a genre concept, referring to a specific film.

In the creation of mainstream commercial films, genre is the most important concept for me, because it directly points to the question of the audience paying the bill.

The genre is different from the subject matter. It is a product classification obtained by trial and error of countless early film practitioners and investors.

What kind of movie will be popular, and which elements will be put together to make a movie will be popular, who knows?

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know, the bosses are experimenting.

The desert, the early rule of law society, cowboys, gunfights, enemies (Indians or robbers), the movies made together became popular, so they were shot repeatedly and became a type of product, named Western.

Outlaws, brotherhood, the spectacle of a life-and-death struggle, breaking through the social order, and a special hierarchy, the film became popular and became a genre, named gangster film.

The protagonist on the edge of good and evil, bizarre cases, the loneliness of urban modern people, night, overlapping shadows, femme fatales, the film became popular, and it was named the film noir genre.

Each type is summed up through trial and error in this way, and it corresponds to satisfying a certain psychological need of the audience.

I have always said that types are not about something, but provide something. Genre provides a certain psychological satisfaction to the audience.

Horror films stimulate the feeling of adrenaline secretion to the audience, romance films provide a certain feeling of love and warmth, and science fiction films provide the satisfaction of imagination and spectacle.

Suspense film, to satisfy the audience’s curiosity (what is going on), gentle thinking games (the ring on the protagonist’s hand seems to be a pair with the woman just now), mystery (whether he What is the origin), surprise (I reversed him to be the mastermind).

Classic suspense films include “Shutter Island”, “The Prestige”, “Fight Club”, etc., as well as most of the Hitchcock films.

There are many overlaps between suspense films and detective films, mystery films, thrillers, crime films, spy films, and police films, but in fact there are subtle differences between these seven genres, as well as major genres and subgenres and subgenres. , the entire pedigree is very complex.

I can say responsibly that the current genre film theory is very messy and the concept is not accurate. It is full of “new words”. I haven’t seen anyone make the pedigree of these seven genres clear.

If it is not clear, it is not clear, and it will not delay us in general using the law of types to establish the elements of types.

To sum up, “Man Jianghong” is a clear and sure type of suspense film in my mind. In my opinion, the construction of mainstream commercial film genres with large investments must be clear and accurate.

The author is always restless, and wants to make some breakthroughs, which is innovation, which is essentially to make changes.

To make variables, yes. three methods:

1. Miscellaneous other types. For example, “Titanic”, although it is “about” the shipwreck in terms of subject matter, its basic genre is a romance film mixed with a disaster film. Because it mainly meets the psychological needs of romance films, and the narrative mode is also for romance films.

Second, make a breakthrough in the local type elements. For example, in Agatha Christie’s “Roger Mystery”, the final murderer reveals that the card is not played according to common sense, and the narrator (viewpoint) is the murderer.

Third, the introduction of other types of elements.

This introduces the third label of “Manjianghong”, comedy.

Here, comedy is not a genre concept. “Man Jianghong” is not a fusion of suspense films and comedy films, but introduces comedy elements into suspense films.

Comedy itself is a genre, it has its specific elements, and has its own characteristics in the setting of characters and the way of telling stories. For example: From a macro narrative perspective, there is a large special situation established (“The Old Woman Returns Home”); from a micro perspective, it is necessary to construct a local comedy situation (such as misidentifying the other party’s identity). In terms of character design, I often like to use the dislocation of identity (“Imperial Envoy”), the opposition between social attributes and internal attributes (“Shameful Iron Fist”), etc.

“Man Jianghong” does not have the combination of basic elements of these comedies, but only adds comedy elements.

The effect is:

1. Enrich the audience’s emotional experience in watching movies. During the Spring Festival, family carnival, if you only feel pure cruelty and coldness in watching movies, and only satisfy the sense of suspense, sublime or beauty, if it is too single, its appreciation will not be as good as the current films.

2. Use the emotional effects caused by comedy elements to more accurately influence the audience. People’s emotions are wonderful. If you try to be emotional, he won’t cry, but if you make him laugh first, and then give him a little emotion, he will be moved. When Shen Teng saw Yaoqin, he first scolded her as a “stinky mother-in-law” angrily, and the two quarreled with each other, and Yaoqin also jokingly said: “Okay, I won’t blame you at Lord Hell’s place anymore.” , and the music, and the farewell embrace of the actors at the last moment, the audience will be touched.

Above all, thank you for your attention and discussion on “Manjianghong”.

Source: Zhihu www.zhihu.com

Author: Chen Yu

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