Please introduce Hou Hsiao-hsien's film "A Dream of Life"?

"In the Hands of a Puppet Maste"

Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien

Main actors: Cai Zhennan, Hong Liu, Huang Qianru, Li Tianlu, Lin Qiang , Wei Xiaohui, Yang Liyin

Award record: Jury Prize at the 46th Cannes Film Festival

Year of production: 1993

Probably the most ugly movie in contemporary China Hou Hsiao-hsien's "The Play of Dreams".

A mainstream Hollywood film has 500 to 1,000 shots in 90 minutes. There are many changes in pushing, pulling, panning, and moving. Full, far, medium, near, and close-up scenes are intertwined. There are a lot of scenes. The short shots are switched quickly to form strong visual stimulation, so it is "good-looking". The 150-minute long movie "Dream Life" only has 100 scenes. The entire film has only one close-up, five pans, most of them are still panoramic and medium shots, uncontrolled long shots, long shots, and there is no complete storyline throughout the film. Therefore, some people say that "Dream Life" is a "hypnotic movie".

However, it was this "sleep-inducing" work that ultimately established Hou Hsiao-hsien's status as a master director.

"Dream Life" is about the experience of Taiwanese puppet show master Li Tianlu. His own oral memories account for one-third of the film. He recounted fragments of his life to the camera: the disagreement between his grandfather and his father, the death of his mother, the cruelty of his stepmother, learning skills from his father, the death of his grandfather, leaving home after falling out with his father and stepmother, traveling around with a puppet troupe, and getting married. Becoming a "son-in-law", inheriting the family business after his father's death, falling in love with a prostitute, joining a Japanese theater troupe, his family becoming seriously ill, his son dying, and witnessing Japan's surrender... Such a dramatic life experience of the protagonist was captured in such a plain and casual way , no dramatic effect at all. What’s even more confusing is that in such a biographical work, the protagonist Li Tianlu only leaves us with a vague impression. We can’t even remember his face. His figure almost disappears into the busy past of his family and neighbors. . So, as a movie, what is the significance and value of "Dream Life"?

Hou Hsiao-hsien's originality does not lie in his paranoid rebellion against the mainstream film model, but in the creation of a new "biopic" narrative with local basis in his "Dream Life".

In any culture, people "tell themselves." Sartre once said that people are always the narrator of stories, living in their own and other people's stories, viewing their own experiences based on these stories, and tending to live their lives in a way that simplifies stories ("Words"). However, narrative styles are culturally acquired and vary across cultures. To be more arbitrary, there is almost no so-called "autobiographical" literary tradition in China's local culture. There is no self-centered individual who reflects on the world from the inside out from a subjective perspective, as represented by Augustine, Rousseau, Musset, and Rolland. narrative style. French historian Gusdorf asserted that "autobiography is possible only under certain metaphysical premises" ("Conditions and Limitations of Autobiography"). Compared with Western culture, the concept of individual-oriented subjectivity in China's traditional dominant ideology has never been fully developed historically. The concept of the individual is relational, embedded in relationships with family, community, country, and nature. Due to the lack of specific "metaphysical premises", autobiography has not become a paradigmatic narrative method.

Li Tianlu is a puppet theater master deeply rooted in local culture. In order to accurately present his life experience in the first half of his life, Hou Hsiao-hsien created an anti-dramatic, non-perspective "naive" film. style. He uses fixed camera positions, static long shots, and abandons close-up effects in order to avoid montage's deliberate manipulation of the audience's perspective, and instead attempts to push the audience outside any specific perspective and isolate the audience from the inner world of the characters. , capturing non-dramatic fragments of daily activities with a calm and contemplative attitude. In Hou Hsiao-hsien's view, this is a person's history.

This "biopic" of Li Tianlu is not centered on himself but on his family. The film begins on Li Tianlu's first birthday and ends on the day when Japan surrendered when he was forty years old. There is only one main thread that runs through it, and that is the changes in his family structure. In Hou Hsiao-hsien's "simple" narrative, what this change conveys to us is not the so-called "plot", not the analyzable dramatic chain driven by causal logic, but the mystery and impermanence of life and the irresistible force of fate. , is "Tao".

Hou Hsiao-hsien asked his editor to edit in a "cloud" manner. Because every fragment of Li Tianlu's life is like a cloud, and the fragments overlap like clouds, forming his history. At the end of the film, we see wisps of smoke rising, floating into the sky and joining the clouds, just like a life blending into nature.

Everyone understands today that failing to capture the audience is tantamount to committing suicide. In the last month before leaving Shanghai, I was confined in a guest house and worked on a script with a new director. The recurring topic is always how to make the "play" look good. But in my spare time, I talk about the masters and immortal masterpieces I admire, and I still have respect for some "ugly" movies.