From ＂A Xiao Gu＂ to ＂Leading Brother＂： Hou Xiaoxian you don’t know
Special feature of 1905 film network After eight years of sharpening the sword, The Assassin Nie Yinniang directed by Hou Xiaoxian has kept fans waiting for too long. Many people went to see Nie Yinniang for the fascination of "seeing Hou Xiaoxian on the big screen". Once again, he has appeared intensively in front of the media. He is 68 years old this year, and his face even shows the kindness of the elderly. However, his tone of speaking is still like taking the lead, and his tone is humble and peaceful but reveals sharp and heroic.
Back in 1997, the French director olivier assayas shot The Portrait of Hou Xiaoxian. Fifty-year-old Hou Xiaoxian, with clashing hair and a slight camel on his back, chewed betel nuts and smoked cigarettes. He talked with his neighbors and made tea, sometimes as cute as an urchin, sometimes full of piqueness, and sometimes talked about his inner loneliness and lamented his loss. As the leader of Taiwanese new films, Yang Dechang has long since passed away, and now only Hou Hsiao-hsien still inherits the mantle of China traditional culture as a mainstay.
What influenced his film style?
Tsui Hark once teased Hou Xiaoxian at the Hong Kong Film Festival held in Beijing recently: He talked about shooting martial arts for many years, and it was in the 1980s that he finally made his first film, which is also amazing. "Yes, Hou Xiaoxian wanted to shoot martial arts for 30 years, and for 8 years, the film was so full of classical Chinese and special amorous feelings of restoring history. In fact, this has something to do with his film style and obedience to classical legends. In the final analysis, Hou Xiaoxian loves reading too much.
I remember that when Zhu Tianwen, Hou Dao’s good partner, recalled seeing him for the first time, he said that he especially liked Kuniko Mukoda’s prose, and he was surprised. "The film industry can also read books!" Director Hou Hsiao-hsien, who has a rebellious spirit in the Jianghu, believes that he is a scum, but he has been fond of reading since childhood, and he reads what he catches, and the amount of reading is amazing. Since the fifth grade of primary school, Hou Xiaoxian has been fascinated by the world of martial arts novels, loved Jin Yong’s works most, rented all the bookshops near his school and home, and read all the martial arts rentals. It’s really a voracious reading. When he was in middle school, he began to read Japanese martial arts. When there was nothing to see after reading books and Hong Kong Kung Fu martial arts films, he had to plunge into the legend of the Tang Dynasty and continue to look for the ideal romantic excitement in the world of chivalrous men and recluses.
From Shen Congwen to Nie Yinniang, the legend of the Tang Dynasty has been brewing for 30 years
Hou Hsiao-hsien once mentioned Shen Congwen again and again in interviews, because he finally knew clearly how to make a film after reading Autobiography of Congwen recommended by Zhu Tianwen, which confirmed the changes he made in The Man from the Wind Cabin, and this film touched Jia Zhangke, a young man in the town, and made Xiaowu and Platform many years later. Driven by writing, Hou Hsiao-hsien maintained the mode of co-creation with literati for decades, and his partner with Zhu Tianwen became a beautiful talk in the circle. Later Acheng and now Haimeng Xie joined in, which shows Hou Hsiao-hsien’s respect for literature.
According to Hou Hsiao-hsien’s experience, it seems natural to shoot Nie Yinniang the Assassin. In 1975, Hou Hsiao-hsien wrote the first play "The Peach Blossom Woman Fighting the Duke of Zhou", which was adapted from Yuan Zaju, and the second play "The Engagement Hall" came from the novels of the Tang Dynasty. He loved China’s folk art so much that he turned Taiwan Province’s puppet show into the legendary "Dream of Life" and put Zhang Ailing’s annotation and translation of the Qing novel "Flowers on the Sea" on the big screen, which made people fascinated by the exquisite tea, soup and hairpin in that lost time.
"Assassin Nie Yinniang" comes from the Tang Dynasty legend "Tai Ping Guang Ji". The original text is only a thousand words. As early as the 1980s, Hou Xiaoxian wanted to shoot Nie Yinniang. This name has been brewing in his mind for nearly 30 years. Wen-Ying Huang, his imperial art director, said: "Hou Dao first closed himself for a year, studied the history of the Tang Dynasty, and joined the screenwriter work in Zhu Tianwen and Haimeng Xie in the summer of 2009." . After years of polishing by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhu Tianwen, Acheng and Haimeng Xie, the script "Nie Yinniang the Assassin" with only 35 scenes and 8,000 words was finally formed.
Hou Xiaoxian’s Unique Martial Arts: Just for "Waiting for the Cloud to Arrive"
The immersion of Tang legends and martial arts novels not only endows Hou Xiaoxian with a natural chivalrous spirit, but also allows him to create a unique and Chinese chivalrous world. Shu Qi said that the director always waits when filming, and the long wait is only for the rising of a mountain fog. Hou Xiaoxian should not rely on the special effects in the later period, but want the emotional atmosphere in real time and space to diffuse naturally.
This way of filming continues the spirit of his idol Akira Kurosawa’s "waiting for the clouds to arrive", which is rare in today’s hurried world, so it stretches out the beautiful pictures of there seems to be no one on the empty mountain and and yet I think I hear a voice. In his swordsmen’s imagination, it’s not the satisfaction of the sword, but the absolute loneliness without the same kind, so don’t expect to see the complicated moves in traditional swordsmen’s films in Nie Yinniang, but kill yourself with one knife after a long wait, and compress time into zero degree space in an instant.
(text/cacao (tree)42）