Does anyone know Guan Hu’s directorial style? It is best to combine it with work analysis. Thank you~

Guan Hu said that film is the process of relationship between an individual and the world. From "Messy Hair" in 1994 to "Killing" in 2012, Guan Hu has made 8 movies, including two TV movies "Get in the Car, Let's Go" and "Who Touched My Happiness" 》. In the process of continuous filming, the director himself continues to grow. After being tempered by making TV series, the films he makes also become increasingly mature as the director grows. From the initial emotional impulse when making a movie, it gradually turned into a rational one. So there were two works "Bullfighting" and "Killing" that were the crystallization of the director's experience. The two works have similarities in narrative form and stylistic factors, and it is these similarities that confirm the director's film style.

1 Reverse suspense storytelling

All movies are essentially telling stories, the only difference is in the way they are told. As directors, different directors also have their own unique ways of telling stories. Some prefer straightforward narratives, while others prefer to be meticulous and intertwined. Judging from "Bullfighting" and "Killing Life", Guan Hu also has his own way of telling stories.

Both "Bullfighting" and "Killing" adopt a flashback narrative method. In addition to the general use of flashbacks, the narrative modes of the two are more similar in rhythm. The ending of the story is given at the beginning, and then the sequence is intertwined with flashbacks. "Bullfighting" gives the ending of the story at the beginning, that is, everyone in the village is dead, including Jiu'er, whom Niu Er likes. Later in the narrative they are intertwined. Taking Niu Er's return to the village and finding the cow as the node, the flashback part is the storyline before the cow was found, and the sequential part is the story of Niu Er and the cow after that. In the process of Niu Er's search for the answer, it gives us a sense of suspense. It seems that we are also looking for the answer to the story with Niu Er. The audience and Niu Er have the same point of view, and the content they know is synchronized with Niu Er. In the whole story, "cow" is the key factor to solve all the doubts, and it is also an important factor throughout. Similarly, "Killing" also shows the cow being tied up and thrown down the mountain at the beginning of the film. All the audience's doubts are established from here. Then a bigger suspicion emerged. Niu Jiejie was lying dying in a coffin on the mountain. He happened to be seen by the doctor who rushed to Changshou Town. The doctor brought Niu Jiejiu back to the village, and then met a child who was locked in the house. The real story began to be told through the child's memories. After the scene of getting the holy water, echoing the beginning of the film, Niu Er is driven out of the town according to the instructions of his ancestors. All the plots after this revolve around how Niu Jiejie died. The doctor searched for the cause of death through the child's search for the cow and objectively recalled the scene at that time. Two clues were carried out at the same time. The doctor in "Killing" is the key factor to solve all the doubts. Like the "bull" in "Bullfighting", it is also an important factor throughout.

Bordwell believes that all events in a narrative—both those directly revealed and those deduced by the audience—are combined into a story. In other words, the story told in the movie is completed jointly by the director and the audience, and the audience's participation is also very important. In "Bullfighting", the storyline deduced by the audience should be the cause of death of the villagers and Jiuer. In "Killing Life", the audience has to deduce the cause of Niu Jiejie's death. From this point, it is not difficult to see the continuity of certain factors reflected by a director in controlling his different works.

2 Inheritance of Impressionist style

In the process of film development, film aesthetic concepts are constantly updated. From this updating process, it can be seen that the attitude towards movies is nothing more than two major tendencies: realism or surrealism. Both creative concepts have played a role in promoting the development of movies. Just like the "negation of negation" explained by dialectical materialism, things need to negate the previous theory, establish their own theory, and finally be negated before they can continue to develop. and progress. The later theories must be based on the theoretical foundation laid by predecessors. Therefore, future generations of film workers will inevitably learn from the experiences of their predecessors in their own film practices. Guan Hu's films are obviously impressionistic.

The Impressionism movement also got its name from its cinematic style. Directors experimented with a variety of new photography and editing techniques in their films to depict the characters' psychological states. In Guan Hu's "Bullfighting" and "Killing", this Impressionist technique was also used to express the psychological state of the characters. For example, in "Bullfighting", at the beginning, the cow's panic after returning to the village for the second time is shown using a 360-degree panning shot. In addition, jump cuts from the same shot are used to express the tension of the characters: from 1 minute 23 seconds to 1 minute 40 seconds in "Bullfighting", a shot with the same content and the same scene is changed every two seconds. In the picture, the two cows are facing each other. The camera shouts: "Where are the people? Where are the people?" This use of the camera makes people feel that the characters' nervous psychological emotions are constantly progressing. Another common photography method used by Guan Hu is that the camera moves in an arc with the character as the axis, accompanied by slight vibrations. For example, at the end of "Bullfighting", when Niu Er was carrying a bomb and preparing to die with the "enemy", the director used this photography method to show the characters' extreme psychological confusion and final fight through the lens.

The psychological state of the characters is an important aspect to be shown in the movie, but in "Bullfighting", in addition to Niu Er, Niu is also a protagonist of the movie, and his psychological state is also very important.

Therefore, the director uses a slightly deformed lens to express the perspective of the cow looking at people. For example, in "Bullfighting", the first shot after the title is released is a deformed shot, where the women are talking about the cow. The second time such a scene appeared was when Niu Er carried a bomb and decided to die with the enemy. After being knocked unconscious, Niu Er's deformed body was seen in Niu Er's eyes. This way of expression is qualitatively equivalent to what we often call anthropomorphism.

Impressionist films also experimented with using the rhythm of editing to express the characters’ feelings about a certain impression. For scenes of violent conflict or intense emotions, the editing speed was accelerated, and the length of the shots became shorter and shorter, gradually creating a scene with The climax of the explosion, the shots are sometimes even as short as a few frames in length. In "Killing Life", there are several clips that use rapid editing methods to show conflict and chase scenes. After the death of the grandfather, the scene where Niu Jiejiao escapes is a quick edit. Each shot in this section is very short, some shots are as short as less than 1 second, and the shots are somewhat shaken. The inner tension of the characters is completely expressed through the movement of the camera; Niu Jiejiu rescued Widow Ma, and when he went to find her the next day, he was followed by a woman in the village, and an anesthetic tube was inserted into his butt. Start running solidly. The director also uses stylized shots here, with short camera shakes. Almost every shot flashes by on the screen, creating breathless tension; the same technique is used later in the sequence when Ushio rides a bicycle before being suspected of being ill. Obviously this is the director's preferred method of camera presentation.