Chapter 335: Smart Director

In the few days before the opening of the film festival, Cao Yang first made a ranking for the 22 films and watched the few films ranked at the front first.

The basis for the ranking was nothing special. Except for Depp, Theron, and Ning Ying, Cao Yang could also roughly infer Berlin's ideas from the lists given by the remaining five people.

Dieter Kosslick had said that Cao Yang could decide the awards other than the Jin Xiong Award, but this didn't mean he didn't do anything.

As long as one or two of the lists of these five people were adopted by Cao Yang, wouldn't it be "earned"? It's better than doing nothing.

However, from this list, it could still be seen that Dieter Kosslick hadn't made up his mind about the ownership of the Jin Xiong, or was still hesitating.

In these few days, Cao Yang watched "Beaufort," "The Good Shepherd," "Yella," "Hallam Foe," "The Good German," "The Counterfeiters," "In the Jungle," "Angel," and "Tuya's Marriage" respectively.

Five people, each with five lists, but there were only nine films in total.

You could say their aesthetics were similar, so five people only selected nine films.

However, art is a very subjective thing.

Unless it's the kind of film where the actor's acting is particularly good and can be seen at a glance, or the film has something special and interesting.

Otherwise, it's a bit too coincidental that five people can reach a consensus in a few days and only select nine films.

"Beaufort" tells the story of an Israeli outpost commander and his army before withdrawing from Lebanon.

In this film, the enemy didn't appear, only an invisible organization threw bombs from the air, and the soldiers had to find a way on the mountaintop to complete their mission...

Four judges recommended this film, and the evaluation of this film was also very good.

The general idea was, "Because Israel is a small country, it lacks necessary international understanding and support on the issue of how to treat war...

The highlight of this film is that it didn't take a clear position to state how to do it, just hoping that both sides could unite, but hoping that victory would eventually be achieved."

Israel, a small country?

Lacks international understanding and support?

Didn't take a clear position?

Do you know what you are talking about? Israel has become a victim?

If it was authorized by the Berlin Film Festival, it could only be said that the Germans were indeed "kneeling" very thoroughly. As long as it was a film about World War II or Jews, it was particularly easy to win awards.

This belongs to European and American political correctness.

But it doesn't belong to Cao Yang's political correctness.

"The Good Shepherd" tells the life journey of Edward Wilson, one of the founders of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

Unsurprisingly, for the sake of the country, Wilson not only sacrificed his personal ideals, but the conflict with his wife Margaret also deepened, their marriage existed in name only, and even his family and kinship fell into desperation due to his transformation.

This is a "main melody" film unique to the old Americans.

And this film is also very routine.

In Cao Yang's view, such a film, even at the Oscars, would be very difficult to win an award. Berlin instead wanted to give an award, really couldn't understand what the Germans were thinking.

"Yella" has some innovation, weaving an existential allegory with a circular narrative of "car accident-rebirth-death."

Death is rebirth, and rebirth points to death. The car accident at the beginning is both the starting point and the beginning. Yella's psychic nature is a collage of the near-death brain's unfinished obsession, trying to confirm and redeem self-worth in hallucinations.

Presenting the contemporary national conditions and contradictions of Germany with the story of the relationship between the two sexes, every individual's choice contains the powerlessness of history.

This is a conceptual film, and it can also be considered an experimental film.

Cao Yang felt that this film was very interesting, a bit like "Run Lola Run," but more restrained and kneaded with too many allegories.

The content is very simple. A woman who lost her husband encountered a car accident. The film tries to give her a new life, allowing her to live again in the narrative time of more than an hour.

And when the curtain finally falls, she and the husband who entangled her actually died at the beginning.

The film first presented the woman's life after the disaster in a flat tone. When the answer was revealed, it told us that these were all small tricks, and the end of Yella's near-collapse life was actually death.

Such a structure was told in a minimalist German style, appearing calm and almost cruel.

Experimental films, if they win awards, have only benefits for Cao Yang, because most of his films are under the guise of experimental films.

"Hallam Foe," this film, finally gave Cao Yang a little shock.

The male lead is a sensitive, rebellious youth in adolescence. His favorite thing to do is to hide in a treehouse and peek at others with binoculars.

He saw in the binoculars his little partner and his girlfriend exploring the mysteries of the human body in the woods.

He saw in the binoculars some indescribable things done by his father and stepmother, and the process was very intense.

He also wrote the content of peeking in his diary, and also liked to apply various colors of lipstick on his face and wear women's clothing.

He also self-abused.

As the plot unfolded, the British director came with a big reversal. It turned out that the male lead did this for a reason—his mother died suddenly before, but his father immediately married another woman, which was his stepmother.

The male lead believed that this woman was not only a mistress but also the murderer who killed his mother, so he often used binoculars to peek, in order to find evidence of the mistress killing his mother and help his mother take revenge.

This reversal was a bit far-fetched and deliberate.

Even if his mother died, even if he had a series of suspicions, this was not an excuse for him to peek at others, wear makeup, and self-abuse, right?

Just when Cao Yang thought so, the plot changed its style again.

The male lead never gave the stepmother a good face, and when he caught the opportunity, he would mock her, comparing her to a prostitute without regard for his father's face on their wedding anniversary.

Unable to bear the male lead's long-term cold mockery, the stepmother and father discussed sending the male lead to London to experience life.

Of course, the male lead wouldn't go; he still had to continue peeking... no, he still had to continue looking for evidence.

Then the male lead's stepmother released a big move: seduction!

And it succeeded, and the two did shameful things.

Cao Yang could only say that it was worthy of being a European art-house film; there was nothing you couldn't think of, and nothing they didn't dare to film.

He thought it would be like this, but the development of the film plot once again exceeded Cao Yang's expectations.

The male lead's stepmother had the male lead's handle in her hand, so the male lead had to yield and was forced to go far away.

In a strange city, the male lead met a woman.

And this woman looked exactly like the male lead's mother, or rather, exactly the same.

From then on, there was only this big sister in the male lead's life. He peeked at her through the window on the roof, watched her boxing, laughing with people in the bar, and doing indescribable things with a married man.

Hmm, anyway, after a series of things, this knowledgeable big sister helped the male lead say goodbye to his former self, and next was a large section of passionate scenes, and the two lived a life without shame.

Even if he knew that Europeans didn't dare to film anything, this plot still had some impact on Cao Yang's three views.

He thought it would end here, but it wasn't over yet!

The male lead's happy life didn't last for a few days before his stepmother came. The stepmother looked a bit jealous and said to the male lead: "When you are intimate with that woman, is it like you are doing your xx?"

Damn, the British director is really awesome. Borrowing the stepmother's mouth, he still poked this matter and said this sentence.

It can only be said that it is worthy of being a European art-house film. Dirty jokes and some scenes that make people spray nosebleeds are not missing!

The remaining few films have nothing to say. They are either biographical films or films about World War II, all of which belong to films that are easier to win awards.

Cao Yang focused on "Tuya's Marriage."

This film won the Jin Xiong Award at this film festival in the original history.

Cao Yang was very curious, was the operation component of this film greater or was the political correctness component greater?

Don't talk about artistry. Still, in thousands of participating films every year, there are definitely quite a few above the standard. Sometimes giving the highest award to whom needs to be considered comprehensively, and many factors need to be calculated.

Cao Yang carefully and seriously watched "Tuya's Marriage." How should he put it? Overall, it is different from the fifth-generation directors.

This film cannot be considered a film labeled with rural, folk customs, original ecology, news events, and mass actors.

Nor is it a pseudo-folk film, nor is it an "underground" "exposing the dark" film labeled with "underground."

There are some flashes in it, making people see the difference from the fifth-generation and even some sixth-generation directors in the past.

In terms of plot, the film comprehensively draws on several folk stories of "marrying a husband and raising a husband." This kind of story of marrying a husband and raising a husband itself has strong drama, and the corresponding watchability is naturally very strong.

The director always grasps the main line of marriage in the film and unfolds around it, first explaining the inevitability of marrying a husband, then Tuya's choice, and finally getting married.

With such a single story main line, clear and concise, the plot is very compact, abandoning the problems of loose plots and too many branches in the past.

Compared with the condescending compassion of "Still Life" before, "Tuya's Marriage" is more of a horizontal view of family chores.

At the same time, placing the occurrence in Mongolia also predicts that the style of the film will be different from the implicit and repressed past.

The wind and sand outside the Great Wall make the style of the film more bold, and in the handling of emotions, the constraints of Eastern ethics are also placed in the secondary position, more of a longing for survival and primitive emotions.

These are the advantages.

As a sixth-generation director who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy, even if Wang Quanan studied acting, he still inherited the "advantages" of the Beijing Film Academy directors and specially set a big background for this story.

The grassland in the film is not the grassland of the past in people's minds, "blue sky, green lake, galloping horses...", but a grassland that is seriously short of water and desertified due to industrialization.

The herdsmen in the film are not the herdsmen who sang and danced in the past, but herdsmen who are struggling to survive after failing to dig wells. In the case of water shortage, the lives of herdsmen are difficult to continue...

To put it bluntly, it is still revealing, it is still compassionate, but the angle is more clever, more "reasonable."

Moreover, for fear that the Berlin Film Festival and Westerners would not understand his implicitness, he also specially accepted an interview.

He said: "The shooting location of the film caused serious desertification of the grassland due to rough industrial development. When the government ordered the local Mongolian herdsmen to move away from the pastoral area, I decided to film a movie to record all this before everything disappeared."

"And this unique marriage story of Tuya is also from a real event in the local area."

"I hope to film this movie beautifully and full of power. The main shooting venue of the film was chosen in the last Mongolian herdsman's house that had not moved away, and the actors were basically local Mongolian herdsmen."

"When the film was finished, those houses and those people in the film also disappeared."

"They are no longer proud Mongolians riding on horseback

These words, combined with the story in the film—digging a well, the need for water—are the root cause of all the suffering.

This absolutely belongs to the kind of film story that Westerners love to see, and it also conforms more to their political correctness; it is absolute political correctness.

You must know that Western countries took the lead in launching environmental protection initiatives from the 1990s to the early 21st century. Why?

Because compared to developing countries, they were already industrialized, while developing countries that want to industrialize and develop must inevitably sacrifice the environment as the price for a time.

After entering the 21st century, environmental issues heated up further, and Western countries further strengthened energy conservation and emission reduction by promoting carbon emission agreements, carbon taxes, and other policies.

In the eyes of the West, these tricks happen to be a stranglehold on the developing countries' industrialization—let's see how you continue to develop industrialization!

In later generations, after some failures and lessons, China changed its thinking and, under the tight spell of environmental protection, eventually became the world's largest industrial nation.

Looking back at Germany, which responded actively, from shouting about Industry 4.0, after a series of internal friction and compromises, it finally turned into Industry 0.4...

They even blew up the Moorburg Power Station, which cost 3 billion euros to build and had only been in use for 6 years, just like that. You have to know that was Germany's most advanced power station.

This explosion probably blew away the last bit of residual desire Germany had to struggle again.

Environmental protection, extreme environmental protection—Germany, which responded actively, ended up lifting a rock only to drop it on its own feet.

I've digressed a bit. In short, the current environmental issue, especially environmental protection targeting China, is absolutely the greatest political correctness, even more correct than the "scar" series that reflects the underclass.

Wang Quan'an is indeed a very clever director. He not only knows how to be flexible—just looking at the film, there is nothing prohibited, and it is very easy to pass censorship.

Moreover, his vision is very sharp—almost most directors in the country haven't realized yet that the environmental issue is also one of the greatest political correctnesses.

Cao Yang also realized at this moment that as long as this film is "pushed" a little, it should be able to win the Jin Xiong.

But is such a Jin Xiong worth it?

If this film didn't have that grand background, and if it didn't have those words Wang Quan'an said when accepting interviews, Cao Yang would absolutely support him in winning the Jin Xiong.

(End of chapter)