Chapter 308: Premiere

The movie begins in a Jiangnan water town.

The first shot is the gloomy sky that won't disperse, and the continuous rain.

This movie is about three young people going to find treasure, but encountering many bizarre things on the way to find treasure, and finally encountering misfortune and dying strangely.

From the ending of the story, this is a tragedy. But this movie is not the kind of story-driven movie.

From the first third of the movie, the shell of this movie is three young people living in hunger and cold, because they accidentally got news of a treasure, and in order to find the treasure, they embarked on a treasure hunt. The story background is in an era of war and ghosts, the journey is arduous, at first they are full of ambition, but after experiencing various dangers and hardships in the middle, disputes, contradictions, and conflicts occurred between the three, and their temperaments changed greatly.

More and more bizarre things happened to them.

There was also a blind old

The conflict between them grew increasingly intense; some wanted to leave and go home. At this moment, one night, a heavy rain suddenly began to fall. They hurried through the mountain forest in search of shelter, and then, from afar, they saw a temple glowing with a faint light.

……

The temple in the frame was eerie and gloomy, sitting in the vast mountain forest like a single bean of flame, shrouded and obscured by the dark rain that covered the sky and earth, ready to be extinguished at any moment.

This sudden shot appeared abruptly before the audience, accompanied by a cold whistle that sounded like the wailing of a female ghost.

Then, the camera slowly pushed in, moving to the temple entrance, where a silhouette inside the temple appeared before their eyes.

The temple was very ordinary and small; it was dusty inside, with nothing in it, and the walls had cracked wrinkles.

A person sat inside the temple with a fire burning in front of him. The firelight illuminated his face—a very young face.

This face was somewhat handsome, yet in the flickering firelight, it seemed as if his soul had been drained away. His eyes were vacant, his expression numb, as if in a state of withered silence, as if even the firelight could not awaken a single spark of light in his eyes.

"It's here!" Lu Yan He exclaimed inwardly, while at the same time, he was startled by this shot of himself.

He almost didn't recognize himself.

Wang Zhong seemed to have intentionally made it difficult for everyone to recognize him easily; the makeup, the filming angles, and the post-production color grading and lighting had all been treated to make him in the film slightly different from the real him.

Of course, the most important thing was that the spirit and temperament he carried were completely different.

Zebby Doyle had already seen this film during the screening before the premiere today.

At the time, while watching the film, he had been deeply impressed by this young actor who only appeared on screen for ten minutes.

A fresh face that bursts with astonishing brilliance is always a surprise.

The film industry is like this; people are always looking forward to fresh faces.

Therefore, after finishing the film, Zebby Doyle specifically went to investigate this young actor.

For a film festival, its status in the film circle depends on how many directors it can discover and how many films it can promote that will go down in film history. This kind of influence has no concrete standard of data; it all lies in everyone's hearts.

And for the film circle, where an outstanding actor is first recognized also influences the impact of that film festival.

This kind of thing is hard to explain or define; it only exists in the heart of every filmmaker.

Before Lu Yan He transmigrated, although the three major European film festivals had great influence and high status, in terms of international impact, no matter how you put it, they were actually inferior to the American Academy Awards. Regardless of what angle or argument one uses to say that the "Academy Awards" rules of the game are just America's own awards and that it doesn't mean it's superior to other film awards—the fact is, in every aspect, the American Academy Awards are the most influential honor that everyone in the film circle wants to obtain. There is no why; it is simply because it is the top award in this field.

However, in the world after Lu Yan He transmigrated, although the Academy Awards still hold a pivotal position, they are not the only one of their kind; the four major international film festivals are able to rival them in international influence.

And in order to compete with the four major international film festivals, the scope of the Academy Awards' selection has become increasingly broad—in recent years, Asian films have been nominated, and its membership has grown, becoming more international in flavor, attempting to recruit the top film talent from all over the world to create an award voted on by the world's top industry professionals. This point is actually similar to the idea behind the Academy Awards in the original world.

Zebby Doyle thought highly of this young man, Lu Yan He, so he paid a little more attention to him and sincerely hoped that he would be able to make better films later and bring more works to the Xitu'er Film Festival.

The entire cinema was silent.

Almost all the audience members were captivated by this young fortune teller who had suddenly appeared on the screen.

A fortune teller is not a cultural figure unique to China; abroad, there are also existences like psychics, wizards, and prophets, so foreign audiences did not find the existence of a fortune teller difficult to understand.

Following Lu Yan He's changes in expression—which seemed as if he were possessed, both real and fake, dreamlike and illusory—many film critics from film magazines had their attention seized by this type of character and state they had almost never seen before. They watched the screen intently, forgetting to write with the pens in their hands.

Professional film critics often watch movies with notebooks and pens, taking notes as they watch to avoid forgetting details.

At this moment, this young, handsome, yet somewhat disheveled man on the screen seemed to have emerged from nowhere, suddenly popping up and catching their attention off guard.

As the chief film critic for the French magazine *Cinema*, Louis Delluc had always been a very harsh critic.

Especially with directors who had been famous for a long time like Wang Zhong, his evaluations would be even harsher. However, because his reviews were often substantive, able to pinpoint the true flaws in a film, and able to stand from the perspective of film history to give an unambiguous positioning to the new masterpieces that emerged each year, he was one of the few critics who dared to speak, was sharp, and could earn the respect of many filmmakers.

Abroad, especially in Europe and America, the influence of film critics' evaluations on a film is far greater than it is domestically.

This is because the development of European and American cinema had a very long period that accompanied the promotion of traditional media. The review columns of film critics have a crucial role in whether audiences walk into a cinema to watch a film. Domestically, because the film industry developed relatively late, by the time it entered a period of market prosperity, traditional media—especially the part about film criticism—had already become outdated with the development of the era and basically no longer constituted an important link in a film's promotion—this has resulted in film criticism having almost no impact on domestic film box office; instead, online marketing, scores on rating platforms, and topic operations have a greater impact on a film's box office.

Although the promotion of European and American films is now increasingly influenced by the internet, with many changes occurring, the evaluations and ratings of film critics remain one of the most important influencing factors for a film before and during its initial release.

At film festivals, their existence is even more prominent.

After all, the number of people who can personally come to a film festival and buy tickets to watch these films is very small; most film fans around the world pay attention to these films at film festivals through trade publication ratings, media word-of-mouth, etc. This means that the media's evaluations are the first impression that films having their world premiere at the festival make to the whole world.

The role and influence of film critics are infinitely magnified under the special mechanism of a film festival.

The attitude of a top film critic like Louis Delluc appears even more important.

Louis Delluc's expression remained very serious while watching the film *The Summit*.

This is because he was not used to letting others see any information on his face.

When the film began, Louis Delluc earnestly immersed himself in Wang Zhong's film.

He had basically seen all the works of this Chinese director. He had to admit that he did not like Wang Zhong's works very much. Because Wang Zhong's films always gave people a feeling of being pretentious. In Wang Zhong's films, they were filled with all kinds of imagery that seemed to contain some deep meaning, but upon closer inspection, one could not get anything concrete.

There are many directors who like to play with imagery; Wang Zhong's advantage is that he plays it to the extreme. Those elements in traditional Chinese culture are rearranged in his films, giving people a feeling they have never experienced before.

Just like the film *The Summit*, the tone of the entire film was written with the big words "supernatural," and between the lines of every segment, it revealed a sense of "using the past to satirize the present."

Wanting to hide something, but hiding it too blatantly, actually means not knowing how to hide.

This had always been Louis Delluc's evaluation of Wang Zhong's films, and in the film *The Summit*, it still gave him that feeling.

Of course, the technique of this film was more mature, and compared to Wang Zhong's previous films that were more obscure and difficult to understand, *The Summit* was at least a story that an ordinary audience would be drawn into, not making people feel sleepy while watching.

Louis Delluc had already almost formed an evaluation of *The Summit* in his heart, until the scene where the mountain temple suddenly appeared.

Starting from that whistle that sounded like the wailing of a female ghost, it felt as if someone had blown a breath of wind onto his crown.

Louis Delluc's slightly relaxed mind perked up again.

For film critics, they certainly pay attention to the actors' performances—the actors' performances are the most important carrier of expression in a film. However, for a film critic like Louis Delluc, he actually values the director's methodology and attitude more than the actors. He also did not expect to be suddenly attracted by this character who appeared in the middle.

Wang Zhong is actually not a director who knows how to film actors. His film style also determines that actors in his films rarely have outstanding performances. Because the characters in his films are covered by the atmosphere of the film itself, just like these three young people in *The Summit*; they certainly acted well, but it was very superficial, or rather, the characters themselves were superficial, and the film did not attempt to dig into the complex sides of these characters, all being pushed by the story and the environment, like puppets.

The fortune teller who appeared in the film, however, had a qualitative difference from these three protagonists.

Perhaps many ordinary audience members could only feel that this character was a bit different the moment he appeared, and they couldn't clearly say where the difference was, but a veteran film critic like Louis Delluc could see the difference at a glance.

The difference is that this fortune teller is alive; he is like a living person in the film. When you see him, it's like seeing him in reality—you don't feel that it's a character who is acting, but rather like a real existence. He has the heavy experiences of his past life, and a sense of story emanates from his vacant pupils, expressionless face, and silent posture in a light, understated way that doesn't need to be deliberately declared to the public.

Young actor.

Like an old monk in meditation.

As the three young people entered the temple, they cautiously made contact with him.

The drumbeat sounded from time to time at the end of a sentence spoken by one of them.

It was like a scene on a stage.

It was also like some kind of storytelling.

Louis Delluc hadn't noticed it at first, but as this young fortune teller suddenly seemed to return to his senses, his eyes filled and burst with radiance, revealing his madman posture—whether depressed or manic—the rhythm of the drumbeats seemed to speed up bit by bit.

The drumbeats seemed to be coordinating with the fortune teller's speaking rhythm and movements.

"I'm talking nonsense?!"

"I never talk nonsense!"

"If you few don't ask me to cast a fortune for you and find you a way to break the curse, every one of you will die an unnatural death!"

His long string of words popped out one after another, suddenly accompanied by a close-up shot of him lunging toward someone, forming a visual stimulus, coupled with his increasingly urgent tone and the eager expression of someone seemingly trapped in his own self-talk.

The fortune teller suddenly remembered something and looked up.

The drum beat sharply.

The camera focused on his suddenly frozen face, those eyes that had suddenly gone rigid; if it weren't for the shadow of the flame still flickering on his face, that momentary stagnation would have seemed to freeze time itself.

Then, an incredible look of terror surged from his eyes.

He stared fixedly at the three of them, as if he saw something incredible and indescribable in them.

The camera slowly pulled away from his face, pulling back.

In front of him, the three young people were also looking terrified, while also being at a loss; their whole bodies seemed to have frozen, with only their eyes looking at each other with fear and caution.

The shot in front of them revealed the entire interior of the mountain temple.

There was nothing.

No so-called ghosts, nor any sudden horror.

But in this nearly solidified, confrontational scene, a feeling of hair-raising horror emerged in the hearts of many audience members.

He suddenly screamed as if he had broken down, then scrambled to his feet, turned around, and ran out of the mountain temple, not saying another word, as if possessed by an evil spirit, disappearing into the pitch-black rain curtain outside the door.

The camera cut sharply.

The half-meter-tall porcelain statue in the mountain temple, whose god or Buddha was unrecognizable, had a layer of dust on its smiling, flower-pinching exterior.

Under the flickering light and shadow of the flame, the shadow of the statue's smiling lips seemed frozen.

Seemed?

……

After this night, the three people seemed to have suffered a serious illness, one by one becoming dejected.

Someone chose to stop and no longer look for the illusory treasure.

The other two continued forward.

Greed, hatred, and ignorance; life and death are but dreams and illusions.

After this night ended, the audience watching the film also seemed to have had their spirit drained, suddenly becoming listless.

Louis Delluc thought to himself that this was the unavoidable exhaustion after experiencing an extreme emotional release.

When the film reached the final part, the three young people died unnatural deaths one after another, including the one who chose to stop and not move forward.

The last scene of the film was the burial of the young man who had stopped and not moved forward. A few people buried him and erected a grave mound; the green mountains were distant, the figures dispersed, and in the empty, deserted field, only this lonely grave stood.

Louis Delluc's mind suddenly recalled the back of the fortune teller running away.

Louis Delluc found it hard to describe his mood at this moment. It was rare for him to encounter a film where he couldn't immediately organize his language or writing to express his evaluation of it. He felt as if he had been immersed in an inexplicable emotion; the world in this film was a world he had never entered, yet he felt like he had had a nightmare, woken up in a fright, discovered he was still in the dream, and then woken up again, but didn't know if he was really awake—what was true, and what was false.

The film screening ended.

The screening hall was silent.

After about three to five seconds, some scattered applause began to ring out, and then the applause slowly grew, finally converging into a loud sound like a tidal wave.

Wang Zhong stood up with several actors, faced the audience, and bowed to everyone.

The filmmakers sitting next to them who had been invited to watch the film spoke words of congratulation one after another.

Lu Yan He still hadn't quite come back to his senses; he didn't know what to say—he actually hadn't quite understood it.

Of course, his lack of understanding was that although he didn't understand it, he was greatly shocked.

A film could be shot like this.

Almost everyone was sincerely congratulating them on making an excellent film.

The applause at the scene lasted for about three or four minutes.

Jia Long gripped Lu Yan He's hand tightly, shaking it, and there was even a hint of admiration in his tone that he didn't know if it was an illusion.

"This will be one of your best performances," Jia Long said. "Yan He, you will definitely bring out many good performances in the future, but I dare say, there will definitely not be another performance that can surpass your performance in this film. It made me hair-raisingly terrified, my heartbeat accelerated; you're awesome."

Lu Yan He laughed blankly.

He scratched his head.

That exaggerated?

People came one after another to express to him that they were shocked by him, and Lu Yan He slowly began to accept everyone's evaluation in his heart.

After the premiere ended, they immediately changed venues.

They had to cooperate with the media and photographers to take pictures and complete the relevant promotional work.

Afterward, it was the interview and Q&A session.

The moment they walked into the venue, applause suddenly erupted at the scene.

Reporters from all over the world still had the excitement of having just finished watching the film on their faces, looking at them with enthusiasm and anticipation, as if they couldn't wait to ask them questions.