Chapter 479

The first scene of the film attracted the audience on the spot with pictures, music, and excellent performances. This point must be praised for Teacher Wei Xi, but he is currently running naked on Mount Changbai.

In this regard, Wei Ming didn't specifically take care of foreigners and didn't meticulously use text or voice-over to introduce the historical background. They only knew that the elegant middle-aged man was a university music teacher, and he was now forced to take over a problem primary school.

Because teacher resources were scarce, this primary school was a mix of students from several grades learning together.

Wei Ming's animal series has been translated and published abroad one after another, but compared to other commercial creations, there is still a huge gap, and the influence is limited to the circle of literature lovers.

On the spot, there was a British college student who had read the original *Spring of the Sheep-Herding Class* and whispered to his girlfriend to explain why the male lead looked so embarrassed and what he had experienced before.

This kind of behavior is generally despised in the cinema, but in the seats in front of them, David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto both pricked up their ears to listen to the college student's explanation, fearing they wouldn't understand a foreign film.

David Bowie was out of respect for the work. John Lennon was also his friend, who created the first single *Fame* that topped the US Billboard for him, and he was also thinking about whether there was a chance to cooperate with him. He envied Phil Collins and Elton John, these two guys.

And Ryuichi Sakamoto also had a good impression and interest in China. He had watched some Chinese films, but the temperament presented in this film by Wei Ming was completely different.

Cooperating with the college student's explanation and English subtitles, Ryuichi Sakamoto easily understood the context of the story. This was not a film that made people feel obscure.

And the music was really so good that it made people feel amazing. Teacher Zhong, who had just taken over this primary school, was experiencing a heavy rain, but he miraculously used containers to create a very good-sounding melody.

In this scene, Wei Ming inserted a segment of Li Baotian playing the piano and Pan Hong playing the violin. This was Teacher Zhong's imagination, and what they played was exactly *Listening to the Rain*, which Teacher Zhong created after this rain. The English name can be called *The Rain*.

Not only was Ryuichi Sakamoto conquered by this piece of music, even Takeshi Kitano, a rough guy, nodded in agreement.

It's hard not to agree. This was composed by Joe Hisaishi for his *Kikujiro* many years later.

Listening to this piece of music, Zhou Huimin narrowed her eyes comfortably, feeling it was from A-Ming's hand. It was good to listen to and good to watch. If she went to the mainland, she must go to see this village.

Compared to most international film festival competition films, *Spring of the Sheep-Herding Class* has no threshold in terms of plot. Except for Teacher Zhong's wife often popping out as an imaginary character, everything else is easy to understand, as long as one can read the English subtitles in time.

After a heavy rain, Teacher Zhong attracted the students back one after another and showed high musical literacy, even whistling a very good-sounding rhythm.

Now there are only three people left on the list who haven't returned to the classroom. Led by the principal's grandson, the village head's son, and the class monitor Wang Shitou, Teacher Zhong finds them one by one and brings them back to the classroom. This is the main plot.

And in this process, the natural landscape of the rural area in Ya'an, Sichuan, and the music that makes people's hearts calm or turbulent make this process of clearing levels and collecting cards appear not boring at all.

As a proper music major, Ryuichi Sakamoto was moved time and again by the background music used in the film. It is hard to imagine that so many excellent works appeared in one film work.

Although he doesn't know who created it yet, thank you, Wei Ming!

Wei Ming: Also thank the Japanese musicians.

The music in this film can be roughly divided into two series: one is played by new instruments, and one is generated by Chinese traditional instruments.

Hu Weili is mainly responsible for traditional instruments, basically all works he created for this film, using chimes, erhu, various drums, guzheng, pipa, flute, and various sound sources in rural life. Wei Ming believes it is completely not inferior to the martial arts film BGM he made later.

And Wei Ming mostly "borrowed" many well-known background music from later generations, such as the exclusive BGM *Grand Reunion* for period film commentary, the atmospheric and majestic *Distant Journey*, the melodious and ethereal *Crossing Time and Space*, and that piece of *Hometown's Original Scenery* played by ocarina.

In addition, he wrote a piece of *Wind Dwelling Street* played by erhu and piano, which was played by Hu Weili on the erhu.

And these background music basically came from the hands of Japanese musicians. Because they are very popular on short video platforms, many people even thought they were domestic works.

Good melodies need someone to be able to play them. In order to make the dozen or so background music for this film, musicians from the Central Song and Dance Troupe and the Oriental Song and Dance Troupe cooperated fully, which led to the ultimate auditory enjoyment in the film today.

Of course, most of the post-production funds were spent on this.

Generally, it's not bad for a film to have one or two catchy background music, but *Spring of the Sheep-Herding Class* has classic songs one after another.

Fortunately, this is a work about music, and music and plot are closely related, and Wei Ming arranged it properly, so it didn't feel particularly overwhelming.

David Bowie felt he loved this film to death. Not only was the story moving—he understood it—but the music was amazing. He even wanted to recommend the original soundtrack of this film to his company, EMI.

However, as a quasi-master figure in film, Martin Scorsese was very worried for Wei Ming.

Because the previous background music was too outstanding, if the plot behind it still had a big emotional explosion point, he was afraid that the final background music wouldn't be able to suppress the previous excellent songs, and there would be a feeling of being powerless and painless.

And according to his deduction, the male lead fantasized about his wife many times, showing the depth of their feelings and the resonance of their souls. There must be a big emotional venting point behind it.

Sure enough, the arrival of a letter informed Zhong that his wife had committed suicide long ago.

Accompanied by the screen of Pan Hong writing a suicide note and walking toward the lake, Wei Ming used an erhu piece *Missing You Sadly*, which was also handled by Wei Ming.

This song is too sad, especially with the screen of Pan Hong committing suicide and superimposing the screen of Teacher Zhong holding back his grief to teach the students.

The lethality is not weaker than Qiao Feng holding A'Zhu's corpse.

Martin frequently came into contact with the oriental erhu in this film. This piece of music is indeed very powerful, but he felt it was still not enough. This bottom was still a bit weak.

He glanced at his watch. It had been 110 minutes. This film seems to be two hours long?

To be precise, it is 123 minutes.

In the last ten minutes, all the audience were worried for Teacher Zhong. They suddenly realized that this still seems to be a romance film.

Although the "teacher's wife" didn't officially appear in the front, she only existed in Teacher Zhong's oral narration and imagination screen, but the firmness of their feelings had long since needed no doubt.

Now the beloved has left, and Teacher Zhong seems to have become a shell with his soul drawn away. When the county head personally sent him the document and told him, "You can go home," he didn't have much emotional fluctuation. At this time, the audience who often committed suicide knew that it was going to be bad!

Actually, Martin's worry was also what Wei Ming focused on when creating. Too many golden background music were inserted in the front. In the end, there must be a piece of background music that can suppress all, pushing the plot and the audience's emotions to the peak, stopping abruptly at the peak, with lingering charm.

Wei Ming handed this creation task to Hu Weili and made a suggestion: use suona.

This proposition seemed very interesting to Hu Weili. Suona is usually used to send people away, but here it is welcoming the rebirth of Zhong Wei and Pipi.

In the end, he didn't let Wei Ming down and completed this suona piece named *Reignite*.

When the film reached the end, when the background music suddenly disappeared, and even the male lead left the screen, the whole venue fell into silence. A-Min even held her breath waiting for a miracle to happen.

Then she waited for Teacher Zhong Wei to hold Chen Pipi like a melon thief and get on the tractor. The tractor started, and *Reignite* sounded. The suona, which can be called a musical instrument hooligan, exploded in the brains of the whole audience with extremely aggressive and penetrating notes.

Even the most decadent youth seemed to have experienced a rebirth at this moment and was injected with stimulants. Next, they just wanted to live well and then do a big job.

Some people burst into tears on the spot. They gained energy from this film, which was not possessed by the films they watched before.

This *Reignite* was written by Hu Weili, and it was played by Teacher Zhao Chunting of the China Conservatory of Music, and it was completed at the age of 71. The suona sound contained his life insights.

And Wei Ming's contribution was to propose and assist Old Zhao to invent the "suona live core," assisting traditional suona to play semitones and the twelve-tone system through a retractable copper core structure, solving the problems of pitch stability and transposition, and broadening the suona's artistic expression space.

*Reignite* can have such an amazing effect at this moment, and this small device also contributed significantly.

In the high-pitched suona sound, *Spring of the Sheep-Herding Class* ended. When the screen went out and the lights came on, the whole venue burst into violent applause, and even most of the audience stood up to applaud and even shout.

Ryuichi Sakamoto kept sighing to Takeshi Kitano and David Bowie next to him: "I must know the background music master of this film. He is a genius!"

Martin Scorsese pushed his glasses and suddenly felt whether he was old. He is only twenty-something. When he was at his age, he had just started to come into contact with New Wave films.

He is worthy of being the genius who filmed the short film *The Witness*. This feature film can be so complete, so moving, and so shocking, and already has his own style.

Jury Chairman William Styron felt in his heart that this year's Asian films are too strong. The two Japanese films and this one from China are all indisputable masterpieces. Oh, and there is that one from the Soviet Union. This year is really a surprising session.

The premiere ended. Wei Ming, as the director and screenwriter, went on stage and said two sentences, thanking the audience for being able to sit quietly for more than two hours to listen to him tell a story.

Then the audience left. Zhou Huimin was about to pass through the crowd to greet Wei Ming, and then she saw a fiery red Melinda walk to Wei Ming's side and stand side by side with him to deal with the exchanges of peers in the film industry.

A-Min's clear eyes dimmed instantly at this moment.

So it turns out he was never lonely in the days when she wasn't by his side.

*Ming Pao* reporter Luo Axiu finally waited for the movie to end and started to see the audience leave one after another.

Later, he could still find a chance to see the movie. Now he is holding recording equipment to catch the audience for interviews.

"May I ask you... oh, don't understand English, sorry, sorry."

"May I ask what you think of the movie you just watched?" He caught an old white man.

"The picture is beautiful, the music is great, the key is that I actually understood it. The Chinese films I watched before were always half-understood. This time I feel I understood it completely. A very, very surprising viewing experience. I even want to go to China for a vacation."

Next, Luo Axiu interviewed some men, women, old, and young. There were bad reviews, such as feeling that the film was too beautified for China, and some said they only cared about listening to the music and watching the beautiful scenery and didn't notice what was being acted at all.

But the vast majority were good reviews, and they all felt it was better than expected. Among them, more than one expressed that this is the best film seen so far at this Cannes Film Festival.