As an art form, film has experienced more than 100 years of development and formed a unique landscape today. It integrates various art forms to show its charm in time and space. However, with the development of the French New Wave in the late 1960s, the "author theory" proposed by many editors of "Cinebook" emphasized the important role the director played in the formation of art in film creation, and the style, form and thematic connotation of the film became more and more important. Linked to the authorship of the director, the professional attribute of the director has the characteristics of an artist, not just a simple practitioner in the film industry. When the director has a high grasp of his work, or can form a certain balance between the contradiction between personal creation and the producer's requirements, then he can infuse his work with his personal style and express his inner thoughts and humanistic care. In addition, according to the director's personal experience and the social background in which he is located, his film works are bound to present various internalities related to their surrounding environment, geopolitics, and social history.
However, since the 1980s, the world film has become more and more industrialized, and the rise of New Hollywood has made the United States quickly establish its position as the world film center. The artistic value of the works of Thomas, Coppola, Altman, etc. has also been recognized internationally, laying the foundation for the development of independent films in the Hollywood industrial environment. Although in commercial film, cultural colonialism and internationalization have rendered film development a monotonous and stagnant situation. But for those film directors who have the ability to present their personal style, not only can international financing methods break through the limitations of the domestic film system, but also the frequent international exchanges make culture diversified. Therefore, since the mid-to-late 1990s, world cinema has presented a new pattern: in a modern society dominated by information and media, the avant-garde and tradition, art and commerce have quietly merged, resulting in the shape and built-in Cultural characteristics that are more inclined to humanism have occurred, and this tendency to eliminate the binary opposition between business and art is subtly and profoundly changing the perceptions of moviegoers and creators about movies.
swaggering american movies
The global market coverage of American films accounts for 70%. In some countries and regions, it accounts for 90%. Through the goal of globalization, multicultural tradition, simple value and entertaining expression, it has achieved a huge proportion of its share in the global film industry. However, there are always independent directors who insist on their own personal style on the territory of Hollywood, and they maintain a relatively large space in film production to carry out free personal creation. Scorsese, Coppola and others won great artistic achievements for American films in the 1970s and 80s. It presents the unique characteristics of American noir films, and deeply reflects and criticizes the traditional values of the United States. Subsequent directors such as David Lynch, the Coen Brothers, and Jim Jarmusch have infused films with a peculiar American landscape into films with a strong personal style, which have earned them numerous accolades at international film festivals. In the works of these authors with a strong independent spirit, characters, characters, stories, these crucial elements of Hollywood have lost their original meanings, and become weights to describe the environment and history through deconstruction and irony. This magical black style, a completely different narrative technique from Hollywood entertainment films, and exaggerated and deformed characters have created one after another unique and charming personal image world.
Among the many cutting-edge directors in the new century, Gus van Sant should be the first to debut. At the end of the 1980s, he collaborated with Todd Haynes, Tim Burton and others to set off in New York. A "new queer movie" boom, but after nearly a decade or so of hiatus in the '90s, three films in the new century ("Jerry," "The Elephant," and "The Last Days") have taken off in Europe. Huge achievements, with its minimalist style, profound philosophical concepts and long-shot aesthetics full of lag, have won praise from European filmmakers. Director Alexander Payne's film has a profound European humanistic tradition. He graduated from Stanford University with a strong intellectual atmosphere, and his works also have a strong literary inclination. In the latest two films "About Schmidt" and "Life with a Glass of Wine", Payne shows strong literary skills, and his works have the style of French director Rohmer, by miniaturizing events, using the simplest, most The plain and most common way to reflect on society. For director Wes Anderson, who also has strong European tendencies, he has shown amazing film skills and a unique concept of Jiang Xue in just four films. In "Life at Sea", which was nominated for the Berlin Film Festival last year, Anderson's grim humor is brought to a high level with its grotesque and dazzling visual effects. The film's sloppy structure, languid rhythm and Zoran's sense of humor are Anderson's consistent style.
Different from the previous European-style directors, the new generation of directors in the United States are more obsessed with film skills. Such as Brian Singer and Spike Jones. And Christopher Nolan, who filmed Memento, is very keen on the film's structure and suspense setting. His use of flashbacks and editing is simply magical, and the hint of psychological uncertainty is better than David Lynch's. Movies also value experimentation. "Insomnia" and "Deadly Magic", which were filmed after joining the mainstream Hollywood movies, still have a strong personal style, incorporating their creative characteristics of psychological description through lens editing. Obsessed with photographic technique and lens movement, Darren Arnolovsky's work has a strong and sharp impact. Whether it is "π" or "Requiem for a Dream", its decadent and subversive image style has conquered many audiences. A large number of montage editing, split screen, variable lens fast playback and many other visual languages are the essence of his thoughts. covered. Among the many skilled and cutting-edge directors, Paul Thomas Anderson is undoubtedly the most gifted, and he successfully combines serious film connotations with film skills. Anderson is deeply influenced by Altman and Sykesese, and he can play well whether it is the cross-cutting of many characters and events or the deep digging of the characters. Magnolia, which won Berlin's Golden Bear in 2000, is the most creative and controlling of the multi-threaded melodramas, compared to the 2005 Oscar-winning Crash and Altman's. The masterpiece "Short Film Collection", this work has rare elegance and surprising imagination.
With many Latin American directors defecting to Hollywood to seek development, American films in the new century have opened up a Latin American school with tropical flavors. New Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inaritu successfully filmed "Love is a bitch" in 2000, and then came to the United States to film "21 Grams" and "Babel". The director uses broken and meticulous editing skills to break the constraints of linear time, and intersects events that occur in different time and space, making the film have the characteristics of a certain Colami's magical realism. Director Alfonso Cuvallon, also from Mexico, has inherited the essence of Mexican sex comedy in the 1970s and 1980s and injected it into the context of modern people, accurately capturing the mental state and way of life of the Mexicans. In his new Hollywood film "Children of Man", in a unique environment, Alfonso continued his gloomy and dark visual style of cold violence, showing a dilapidated, claustrophobic and conflict-ridden future world. After the great success of "City of God", Brazilian director Fernando Merrills came to Hollywood to shoot "The Immortal Gardener", which also caused great influence. The film not only has a strong Latin American style, but also starred by Hollywood stars, so It was a huge success both commercially and artistically. The director's narration is compact, powerful and methodical, so he maintains a strong control in the grand narrative system, and his style has a fiery tropical style based on the warm-toned photography.
Looking forward to innovative European films
European films have a strong humanistic atmosphere
This is closely related to the innate elite consciousness of European directors. The creators have long been in the context of pursuing artistic value rather than commercial interests, which makes most of them maintain the sensitivity of artists and the social conscience of intellectuals. Under the leadership of Italian Neorealism and French New Wave Movement, European films developed rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, and a large number of master directors and outstanding humanistic works were born in the European film industry. However, this trend of film thought continued to thin out in the mid-1980s. With the successive deaths of many masters such as Buñuel, Fassbender, Truffaut, and Fellini, Bergman quit the film industry, Antonioni Paralyzed, European films showed a sluggish situation in the 1990s, falling into the embarrassing situation of "the master is no longer".
In these years of the new century, the veterans shot several excellent works in high spirits, such as Rohmer's "The Dame and the Duke", Rivett's "To Know", Bergman's "Sarabond" and Alain Resnais' "The Belonging of the Heart", but due to age, they could not maintain a continuous state of creation. While Bernardo Bertolucci, Wim Wenders, Emile Kusturica and other excellent directors with international reputation still insist on personal creation, but the creative level is not as good as before. At the same time, many second-tier directors, such as Claire Dennis, Philip Garrel, Nanny Moretti, etc., although they adhere to the elite culture and shoot many excellent works, have not achieved widespread international recognition. On the contrary, Pedro Almodóvar, an excellent director who has achieved a balance between art and commerce, has now become synonymous with European films. His works take into account both artistic connotation and commercial elements, and have made great achievements internationally. Therefore, young directors who can successfully graft commercial appeal in artistic quality will become a new hope for European films, leading European films to a more successful market environment and humanistic environment. However, we still expect more filmmakers with strong personal style and intellectual connotation for the European continent where human spiritual civilization is gathered.
With Almodóvar's great success, Spanish cinema has gained international recognition both commercially and artistically for its eccentricism and fiery style. Known as Almodovar's successor, Julio Mittan is deeply rooted in the vast Spanish history, with a strong magical atmosphere and surreal atmosphere. In many excellent works such as "Cow", "Insects in the World", "Lucia's Lover", the director uses the interweaving technique of reality and imagination, through the narrative method of "stream of consciousness", to explore the accidental and The intimate inner world of the characters is under the inevitable coincidence. The multi-talented Alessandro Amamba is the most talented filmmaker of the new Spanish generation. In the film "Open Your Eyes", the director explores the relationship between dreams and hallucinations, reality and the illusory nature of consciousness. In "Frightening Island", he subverted the traditional movie viewing logic through the replacement of the relationship between human and ghost, and achieved great success. However, just when film critics criticized Amamba for winning results only through suspense and structure, the director filmed "Eternal Sleep", which conquered the judges of the Venice Film Festival with its profound humanistic atmosphere and philosophical thinking about life and death. The female director Juanma Bach Ulloa lacks the unrestrained and magical style of Spain, and the work "The Wings of the Butterfly" has a cold and simple style. More feminine touch. In his most famous work "Killer·Butterfly·Dream", the director brought his tough, cold and clear image style into full play. Through the delicate portrayal of the characters, he handled a somewhat perverted story just right.
French film still adheres to its own excellent heritage and characteristics in the humanistic tradition. The good cultural education of the French and the broad audience of literary films have guaranteed the development of French high-quality films to a certain extent. French director Bruno Dumont, who was born in philosophy, has only made four works, but twice won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. His works are slow-paced, oppressive and gloomy, and filled with a lot of eroticism and violence, alluding to the alienation of the human heart and the distortion of human nature. The controversial work "29 Palm Leaves" in 2004 showed that a man is slowly going crazy under the oppression of a lonely and hopeless force, and love is also going to rupture and separate. Olivier Assayas, the former editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, has consistently adhered to the French New Wave's "personal narrative" style of films. The movie "Blurry" has a strong new wave style, similar to Truffaut's famous work "Night and Night". In 2004, "Clean", directed by Assayas and starring Maggie Cheung, once again proved to the world the fine tradition of French cinema with its delicate characterization, cool and unpretentious style skills and powerful film connotation. And today's most internationally renowned French director, François Ozon, has a strong sense of formality against the traditional characteristics of traditional French film realism. From the early "Drywood and Fire", to the rounded "Under the Sand", and then to the recent "Lady Days", we have seen a combination of various movie styles, including Fassbender's dramatic sense, Polanski's thriller The sense of suspense, Hitchcock's suspense, and Buñuel's surreal character. Au Rong not only guaranteed the artistic taste of the works, but also did not lose the entertainment attributes of the films, winning a territory for French films internationally.
The Dogma95 Manifesto was the last movement to revolutionize film aesthetics so far, requiring camera techniques such as hand-held photography, simultaneous recording, and the prohibition of optical equipment in order to ensure the true character of the film's location. The most prominent director of the movement, Lars von Trier, has made many excellent films. Although not every film adheres to the Dogma95 creed, the strong moral critical attitude in his works has made him one of the most outstanding contemporary European filmmakers. A person with the appearance of a master. Whether it is the previous "Golden Heart Trilogy" or the "American Trilogy" that is being filmed, the director's cold and mean moral attitude and the exploration of film performance techniques remind people of the famous director Kubrick who has passed away. British film echoes the polarities of classical aesthetics and avant-garde experimentation. Not only a group of directors with excellent traditional culture have appeared, such as James Ivory who filmed "Howard Manor" and "Scars of the Day", but also There are directors with strong avant-garde qualities such as Peter Greenaway and Deluc Jarman. Different from the postmodern tendencies of Guy Ritchie and Danny Paul, the British upstart Stephen Dedley is good at dealing with the ups and downs of the characters' inner emotions, and the film reveals a combination of reality and poetry. The director's 2002 work "The Years Are Like a Song" expresses the relationship between a novel and the fate of three women in a very short space, Virginia's speculation, Laura Brown's hesitation, Clarissa's Pain, intertwined and played a movement about women's yearning, pursuit and care for freedom, independence, strength, love.
The silent rise of Asian films
Asian films are different from the dramatic programs of Western films with their unique cultural traditions and thinking patterns, thus forming a unique oriental aesthetic system and worldview. In the 1950s, Japanese master directors Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi gained a huge influence on Asian films. Later, with the changes in the world's film culture trend, a "New Wave" movement emerged in Japan, in which the four main leaders, Oshima Nagisa, Masamura Zoho, Terayama Shuji, Imamura Shohei, and Ozu Yasujiro and other seniors created the oriental landscape. , presented to the world a post-war dilapidated and sinful Japan. Their outstanding accomplishments ensured the leading position of Japanese films in Asia and even the world. It was not until the 1980s that the phenomenon of Japanese films thriving was broken by the international fame of Chinese directors. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Yang Dechang, Zhang Yimou and others presented Chinese traditions to the world. The transformation of aesthetics in the new era. After entering the 1990s, with the rapid development of the Asian economy and the acceleration of the internationalization process, Asian films have shown a thriving and blooming situation. Vietnamese director Chen Yingxiong, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, South Korean director Lim Hanze, and Japanese director Takeshi Kitano have all made great achievements internationally. However, while adhering to the national identity of their country, they
The connotation of the film integrates Western philosophical thoughts, thereby deepening the thinking on society and history.
Although Japanese films in the 1990s were unsuccessful in commercial production, many independent directors emerged and achieved great international success with their unique aesthetic tendencies. As a leading figure in the new generation of Japanese independent films, Shinji Aoyama has an unusual desire to express violence. However, unlike Takashi Miike's perverted display of violence and black sarcasm, Shinji Aoyama emphasizes the potential of violence in politics and history. great influence. The three-and-a-half-hour masterpiece "Artificial Paradise" reveals the intricate contradictions and conflicts between people and people, between people and nature, and between people and society in a cold and pathetic recording style and a mirror language method. The expression space that transcends times and individuals provides an allegorical connotation. Another director obsessed with violence, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is different from Takeshi Kitano's suddenness. He extends the time and intensity of violence, and injects viscous black violence into the calm and restrained scenes of life, making the film. presents a unique charm. The films "X Sacred Rule" and "Sacred Tree" both reflect Kurosawa Kiyoshi's usual gloomy and gloomy style and his fascination with the disintegration of the characters' spiritual world. The new generation of director Hirokazu Kore-eda's film style is closer to the realism characteristics of the older generation of Japanese films. The directorial debut "Light of Magic" has aroused great repercussions at home and abroad, and is considered to be the best and most delicate film in the 1990s. In the new work "Nobody Knows" in 2005, the director used a semi-documentary style to show the life and inner world of the four abandoned children with cold and cruel images for nearly a year.
Under the strong support of the government, Korean films have developed tremendously in the new century and become a focal core area of today's Asian film development. Although Korean films are full of imitations of Japanese and Hollywood commercial films, under a favorable market environment, a group of individual filmmakers have emerged and won many worldwide honors for Korean films. Director Kim Ki-duk is undoubtedly the hottest author in today's Korean films. Whether it is the feminist tendencies presented in "The Drift Bathroom", or the mysticism shown in "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Another Spring" and "Bow", they all have a kind of The orientation of the allegorical nature, so the film itself is separated from reality and has a certain ethereal "Zen" quality. Not only that, his new work "Time" criticizes today's cosmetic surgery trend in South Korea with a grim realism perspective. Director Hong Sang-soo, who debuted at the same time, did not have such a strong reputation as Kim Ki-duk, but he gained considerable recognition among the Korean intellectual class. Whether it's the five-stage style of "The Virgin's Heart Sutra" or the play-in-play in "Before the Theater", it all reflects Hong Sang-soo's fascination with film structure. The psychological state of the protagonist, and in the process of self-reconstruction of the art media, weakens the difference between reality and film, thus embodying the "affectionate falsity" expected by the director in the film. The writer-director Park Chan-wook, who has obvious Cult tendencies, not only maintained his own unique style, but also guaranteed the film's box office revenue. Its "Revenge Trilogy" was a critical and commercial success. "I Want Revenge", "Old Boy" and "Kind Gold" present a unique pattern of "group drama, rival drama, one-man drama", and the original explosive force of the plot and the strong sense of oppression of the image push the despair of the film to vertex.
Chinese films have developed rapidly in recent years. In particular, the works of Taiwanese directors Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang are well-known in Europe. Hong Kong films are looking for a balance between business and art, while mainland films have enjoyed a good reputation in several generations of films. People continue to seek new ways in the process of continuous innovation. The sixth-generation director Jia Zhangke's new work "The Three Gorges" won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival in 2006, indicating that the sixth-generation directors have broken the artistic pattern of the fifth-generation directors and won international popularity. "The Three Gorges Good Man" is divided into four parts, "tobacco, wine, tea, and sugar", but it tells two stories. Among them, "Tobacco, Alcohol, Sugar" tells about the living conditions of the people at the bottom, while the "Tea" part focuses on the life of the middle class. Through the comparison between "bottom" and "middle class", it shows the common social immigration problem in Chinese society. . Wang Chao's film "Summer in River City", also a sixth-generation director, won the best film in the "Un Certain Regard" section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. The film, like the sixth-generation directors' attention to marginal characters or the lower class, is rigid and rigid. Although the stagnant video style has been praised by many critics, it has also distanced itself from ordinary audiences. Zhang Yuan's 2006 new work "Looking Beautiful", once the leader of the sixth generation of directors, was adapted from Wang Shuo's novel and won honors at the Berlin Film Festival. In the new year, with the continuous development of world films, we expect Chinese films to make greater progress.
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