"The Eleventh Chapter" failed at the box office. Is it because the audience is not good enough, or is there something wrong with this film?

A movie "The Eleventh Chapter" released around the Qingming Festival was once very promising, but the result was unsatisfactory, causing director Chen Jianbin to complain. Faced with the bleak box office performance, it has attracted a lot of discussion. Is this show's low box office performance due to the audience's inability to appreciate it, or is it a problem with the film itself?

I think this is the problem with the film. Although everyone has high expectations for "The Eleventh Chapter", after watching this film, I feel that it is more of a niche art. movie, and the low box office of this movie is also a reminder to later movie makers that they should not just keep their own ideas, but also take into account the audience's ideas and make a movie that everyone can accept, so that they can have The strength to accept the test of the market. Chapter 11

There are very few shooting scenes in the movie. They are basically concentrated in homes and theaters, with a few scenes in cars and outdoors. So what does it mean to have fewer photography scenes? The shooting space is small, and the value of the film depends on the actors' performances and the advancement of the plot, which tests the skills of the film script and actors. Movies have a long history of flooding audiences with information. Just imagine, it would be a disaster if the acting and plot weren't engaging.

In the relatively small space of the shooting scene, the director brought the role of the plot and actors in film expression to a high point, by showing Ma Fuli's second wedding day, personal history of criminal cases and prison cells in the real world. The days and so on go back and forth between reality and illusion, memories and dreams, belief and self. In this process, simple scenes do not limit the plot and movie effects.

Not only that, the stage of the Municipal Repertory Theater, the main scene in the film, shows that Chen Jianbin is declaring a personal film style and focusing on his own film language. Through stage, lighting, color and many other methods, Blurs the boundary between a play and a movie. In the first ten minutes of the movie, the screen is full of close-ups that make people breathless. Students who have some basic knowledge of film and television or photography will know that in film and television scenes, sometimes the camera scenes are the same, and you need to change the scene. Please tell me narrative.

In the scene of "Chapter 11", in the scene depicting Ma Fuli and his wife and children, the close-up of more than ten minutes breaks through the barrier of audio-visual language rules and creates the tone of the entire film's absurd effect. . During the narrative process of the movie, the title of the chapter novel was inserted. This design affected the audience who are used to watching "normal movies". This kind of announcement-style special performance is simply reminiscent of the dramas of the past.

The film continues the absurd style and black humor of director Chen Jianbin's debut film "A Spoon". But compared with "A Spoon", which was a small trial, director Chen Jianbin's second work is obviously iteratively upgraded to 2.0 in all aspects. Whether it is the cast, camera language, art scenes, sound soundtrack, or the stylized photography, the visual pleasure brought by colors, and the unconventional narrative structure, they all show a new director's strong desire for expression. Box Office Effect

The film was screened at the 33rd China Golden Rooster Awards on November 26, 2020. After the film was screened, it received full applause and rave reviews, and the film has the highest Douban score It reached a score of 8.2 and was well received by fans of literary and artistic films. However, the box office effect was really not ideal. On the first day of release, with a 20.4% share of the film schedule, it only received a first-day box office of 12.96 million yuan, accounting for only 8.3% of the overall box office share.

Since then, "The Eleventh Chapter" has continued to decline in the single-day box office during the three-day Qingming Festival holiday, and the film schedule has also dropped again and again. The current box office is less than 50 million, and relevant organizations predict that the final box office will be less than 65 million. The box office effect is relatively dismal. The production cost of "The Eleventh Chapter" is as high as 70 million. To recover the film cost, the film must achieve a box office effect of at least 200 million. Director Chen Jianbin has repeatedly complained on social media, saying that the audience's level of movie viewing is too low and they do not understand the core of the movie. He complained that mainland theaters despise domestic literary and artistic films and always focus on commercial films with high box office.

One of the reasons why many viewers say this movie is not good to watch is that the movie itself does not belong to the genre that can be often seen in our theaters today. There are many plots and techniques in the movie. It's not profound and elegant, but it also contains many metaphors and private goods, which ordinary viewers need to understand slowly. The other thing is that most viewers still need to cultivate their film viewing and film culture interpretation abilities. Conclusion

The failure of a movie like "The Eleventh Chapter" was something that director Chen Jianbin did not expect. It is this gap in views on the movie that has caused the embarrassing scene today. How to achieve a balance , is what the director should think about. After all, you can't eat a big fat man in one bite. This kind of film is not bad, it just takes a certain amount of time for us to adapt to it.