Filmmaking and Red Sorghum: A Discussion on Chinese Cinema and Passion for Life, Appunti di Filologia

Scarica Filmmaking and Red Sorghum: A Discussion on Chinese Cinema and Passion for Life e più Appunti in PDF di Filologia solo su Docsity! ZHANG YIMOU INTERVIEWS EDITED BY FRANCES GATEWARD Discussing Red Sorghum JIAO XIONGPING/1988 Winning Winning Credit for My Grandpa Could you discuss how you chose the novel for Red Sorghum? I didn't know Mo Yan; I first read his novel, Red Sorghum, really liked it, and then gave him a phone call. Mo Yan suggested that we meet once. It was April and I was still filming Old Well, but I rushed to Shandong-I was tanned very dark then and went just wearing tattered clothes. I entered the courtyard early in the morning and shouted at the top of my voice, "Mo Yan! Mo Yan!" A door on the second floor suddenly opened and a head peered out: "Zhang Yimou?" I was dark then, having just come back from living in the countryside; Mo Yan took one look at me and immediately liked me-people have told me that he said Yimou wasn't too bad, that I was just like the work unit leader in his village. I later found out that this is his highest standard for judging people-when he says someone isn't too bad, that someone is just like this village work unit leader. Mo Yan's fiction exudes a supernatural quality "cobblestones are ice-cold, the air reeks of blood, and my grandma's voice reverberates over the sorghum fields." How was I to film this? There was no way I could shoot empty scenes of the sorghum fields, right? I said to Mo Yan, we can't skip any steps, so why don't you and Chen Jianyu first write a literary script. At that time, I was busy filming Old Well and didn't have the time to worry about it; I also hoped Mo Yan could make a little profit for his writing. Later on would come the film script, and after that he wouldn't have to worry about it. Film, you know, must always be made filmic. Later on, Mo Yan wrote a letter to someone else, who passed it on to me to read. I was really touched. He said he didn't care how the director shot the film at all. Some writers are no good; they'll hold up their books and question how you could have neglected to film this sentence-this sentence is so profound, so important! I really applauded Mo Yan when I read his letter. He really understands that film is film. After he'd seen it, he even told me that the film was a bit better and also said that from then on I only had to say the word, and he'd let me film his fiction. The overall form of Red Sorghum seems to have avoided the detachment of Fifth Generation directors and also preserved characteristics of traditional popular drama. I think this is true. I've been conscious of this throughout my creation of the film. I myself thought of it in terms of form and didn't actually consider the box office too much. But I do feel that every director hopes that more people will enjoy seeing a film. Regardless of whether you make an argument, talk of an idea, or communicate a thought, you hope more people will accept it, yet be imperceptibly influenced by it-you don't want to put everything on the surface. Red Sorghum really hopes to link these two aspects of film. On the whole, I think that Yellow Earth, Horse Thief, and King of the Children have already displayed this kind of film, with a reduced sense of theatricality, a striking expression of ideas and feelings-their plots are rather "thin"-and of antitraditionalist construction. I think that over the past three to five years, there's been no lack of this kind of work domestically and I didn't want to repeat this pattern. But the other, theatrical kinds of films don't take notice of film's means of expression. They don't fully utilize the creativity of sight and sound and just continuously knead things like dramatic conflict, theatrical principles, and the climax. There are many films like this; they have flooded the market. So I considered this in terms of form, blending and synthesizing the two together. It has a good story framework that's easy to follow, yet we were also able to maintain our strengths as young filmmakers, bringing the characteristics of film language into full play and using our own methods to tell a story. Also, we wanted to reveal our thoughts and ideas in a natural and relaxed manner. There are many truths in this world. And actually, film is an artistic process. I've always felt that there's no need to use the screen to display profound truths-let philosophers deal with that. The most profound truths of the world are perhaps the simplest-finished in a sentence. Red Sorghum of course wants to discuss some truths and ideas but hopes that they'll be accepted easily and be more appealing. What the audience comes to understand in this process is story are all full of a vitality of life; the sound, action, and events are all intense. The modern narrator simply doesn't have this much passion. When this performer dubbed the film, we didn't show him the picture, had him read in a dark room, and didn't let him memorize his lines. If he'd said it from memory, then it would have carried the smell of performance. We wanted it to be like reading a book aloud. Is this to illustrate that modern people don't have as much vitality o f life as those before? It's to suggest that Chinese people today have lost some of this passion for life. Living and spiritual conditions no longer have that earlier kind of rich vitality. To take it a step further, if a nation wants to develop toward the future, if it wants to be powerful and prosperous or influential, it simply has to have a vitality and burning passion toward life. No matter how much you suffer and no matter how tragic your fate, you need courage to live. This courage can't be worn away; otherwise, humanity would have no way of moving forward or developing toward the future. I think that several thousand years of humanity have also relied upon this kind of courage-an unceasing desire and vitality toward controlling one's own destiny. Every person hopes that his or her life will get better and better; this idea underlies everything. This is a critique of the modern mentality of Chinese people. Even though a country may be poor-its people poverty-stricken with all kinds of problems and much suffering-if people want to live, they should live to their hearts content, and they should have spiritual passion. So we used the counterpoint of the aside to convey a veiled meaning. We didn't want to be too obvious. It was enough if we conveyed this meaning. Also, I feel it's really quite interesting when the grandson talks about his grandpa. On the mainland, when someone is called "grandson," it means that he's a coward or weak in character. The grandson talks about his grandpa, but doesn't do it well. If you live like this then you're the grandson, and you'll never be the grandpa. It's pretty interesting. In Mo Yan's novel, the measure of the female protagonist's morality ... That she didn't sleep with only one person? You changed it so that she only has one lover. Does this have anything to do with the issue of morality? No. Whether the novel reads that "my grandpa" did or didn't "enter into my grandma's kang [bed]," I'm not sure even if he did, what would be the difference? My grandma dared to do anything, as long as she willed it. Mo Yan describes my grandma as sexually unconventional, yet there's no incident of this in the novel. But he always writes.... Once we'd pulled together the structure, we'd already decided how the characters had to be, and the events were already simplified. Other than the fighting of nine years later, the section about nine years earlier occupies two thirds of the film's length, which was concentrated into events completed in six or seven days-the time around the marriage ceremony, returning home after three days, being kidnapped by bandits, after which they made wine, and it was finished! The original novel depicts many events over a certain number of years, and it's very easy to fall in love with many different men over this time. It was hard for us to imagine that over the length of several days, a woman would be able to sleep with other men after ardently loving one man this much. I don't think this is a question of unconventionality; rather, her falling in love with several men would cause her passionate love to become suspect. Over these few days, her love with this man should be the top priority. It would definitely be interesting if I were to revise the time structure and depict the events of three years in the sorghum fields. While this woman is loose-and this looseness is great-I feel that there's no need to think of this in terms of traditional morality. Characters have to go along with the structure of the film. You can't force an unsuitable structure just to depict how anti-traditional, unconventional, and unrestrained she might be. Otherwise, your ideas will be too obvious and could cause people to feel uncomfortable. You can imagine the flaming passion of a man and woman over five or six days; they'd probably have no time to even think about the possibility of sleeping with someone else! The structure of the novel is extremely complicated, with juxtapositions of time and space. The film also simplified them. The flashbacks in the film don't follow the events of the novel that closely. I felt that this method wouldn't be new and worried that it would be too formalistic. I wasn't very interested in this. If the methodology is too strong, the imagery too distinctive, or ideas laid bare too obviously, then you've produced nothing more than counterpoint and contrast, which will cause your film and what you've said to seem artificial and affected. We told it in a simple, straightforward way, with the overall structure maintaining a kind of naturalness and easy sense of narration. According to Tian Zhuangzhuang, you all were influenced by Neo-Realism and the French New Wave in the course o f your studies. Good films have had influence on us. To say that they haven't is to talk nonsense. No one lives in a vacuum. I believe that the world's great masters, geniuses, and super-genius have always been the products of their times, that they've been influenced by the overall creative atmosphere of their times. Regardless of whether they want to be like other people or not, they've all been influenced. But as we conceived Red Sorghum, we didn't refer to any other films, but much rather hoped to make it according to our own ideas and not think about other films as much as possible. In this way we could avoid directly making reference to other films. The quality of a film should lie in its internal and inner influences as opposed to its external form, and its structure should unconsciously rely on these internal things. No one is so stupid as to directly imitate a film and directly copy someone else's success. This tells everyone that you have no creative ability, that you're an idiot. Even if you succeed, you're still an idiot. The essence of art is creativity. The influence from foreign films is in terms of thought, in terms of ways of thinking. Directors like Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michelangelo Anto nioni have helped us to understand that it doesn't actually matter how a film is filmed, so long as you convey your own ideas. Yet I don't want to be like Chinese films of the past, invariable and frozen, with only one kind of fixed pattern of thinking. When you were at the film academy did you often discuss film with your classmates? Public discussions were never very interesting. Everyone spoke extremely politely, and everyone was afraid of making public fools of themselves. Everything said in public was well thought out. It was more interesting in private, since people were a bit more open and would comment a lot. If a film was good, they'd say it was good, and if it was bad, they'd criticize it. We were full of rebelliousness then, wanting to make films in the future that were different from others. When we filmed One and Eight, the four of usincluding Zhang Junzhao and me-made a pact, spelling out what we would do if we didn't make it well. When Red Sorghum was filmed, I also gave Wu Tianming three guarantees-no trouble from the government, artistic quality, and commercial box-office success. So is Red Sorghum drawing large audiences? It is really making money. In the first round of showings in Beijing, Shandong, and Fuzhou, tickets were all completely sold out and scalped tickets were going for five to ten ygan each-normally one ticket costs three mao. I think it's great that this many people like to see it. How have older film circles regarded Red Sorghum? . These elders of the film world haven't liked it. Yellow Earth, Old Well, and Red Sorghum have won awards overseas, yet some people ask why we should want to go to capitalist countries to attend film exhibitions. Some people wrote letters criticizing Wu Tianming's Old Well as having "sold out our own mothers"-that it exposed our negative aspects, our poverty and ignorance, and that foreigners only liked it for its novelty. So I'm very grateful to Wu Tianming; he's allowed me to film without any apprehensions. When these people criticize us, it's caused us to feel even more rebellious. We simply have to show them. In school in the past we often said that someday when we made a film, we wouldn't be like others. Chinese people are too inhibited; everything in this society is about politics and society. People aren't people; they're stature is already small, and then they shrink back even further. So we definitely wanted to restore human feelings and relationships. China's five thousand years of history and three thousand years of feudalism are a very heavy burden. So I wanted to make Red Sorghum. I believe that Chinese people have already changed a lot. The stifling of politics has been around for too long, and they'll surely want to rise up. I'm not interested in politics. Art dies because of freedom and lives because of oppression. So China is now boiling over and is really seething with excitement. Deng Xiaoping opened the door, and people poked their heads out to look-oh, so this is what the world is like. Once you've opened the door, you can't go back. Although there have been political movements-anti-capitalist liberalism, anti-spiritual pollution-they're all transitory. In the future, China will definitely produce even better directors and works. A Donkey, a PropeRer, and Young Sorghum At the end of April, while I was still filming Old Well, I pooled some money together and first went to Shandong to look and find out where the sorghum might be in Shandong nowadays. Peasants have all switched to growing other, more valuable cash crops-things