Special feature of 1905 film network In this "Monday file" where the market is as bleak as the weather, a mainland independent art film is quietly released.
It won three awards at the just-concluded 54th Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, namely, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Fabrizi International Film Critics Award. It also made its mark at the Asian Future Unit of Tokyo Film Festival and the FIRST Youth Film Festival.
It is, and it is also the big-screen debut of director Zhou Ziyang.
Old Beast won three awards at the 54th Golden Horse Awards.
Like many art film directors, his first work chose to return to his most familiar hometown, Ordos, to reproduce the distortion of human nature and the collapse of intergenerational relations under the background of rapid economic expansion.
The movie "The Old Beast" tells a seemingly absurd story: Lao Yang, whose investment failed and went bankrupt, idled all day, and was kidnapped by angry children because of the life-saving money misappropriated for his paralyzed wife’s operation. In a rage, he took them to court, and the family relationship between the two generations fell apart, and Lao Yang, who was "homeless", was pushed into a desperate situation step by step.
The old beast is an absurd and realistic family farce.
In the publicity, The Old Beast was packaged as "mr. six" in Inner Mongolia, but the director was more inclined to the narrative style of Fahati and Mengji, and used cold brushwork to "accurately describe the times", as Zhou Ziyang said.
At the Zhejiang Youth Film Festival held not long ago, we had the privilege of interviewing Zhou Ziyang, the director of The Old Beast, and chatted with him about the animal nature of the Old Beast and the creation story of the first feature film.
[Talking about the original intention]
The craziest years in Ordos
The closest relationship has been completely torn apart.
"In 2013, a family I was familiar with, children kidnapped their father, which was very exciting and shocking," Zhou Ziyang recalled.
This extreme event inspired him to reflect on the people and things in his hometown in recent years. "In those two years, the economic changes in Erdos were particularly dramatic. It was not an exaggeration for students to ask in advance how much money you could earn, what to call each other, and what to fly to other places to do their hair.
In the crazy development of the whole society, people’s good and evil have changed greatly, and I want to write what I have seen and thought into this script slowly, which became the original intention of Zhou Ziyang’s creation of The Old Beast.
Lao Yang watched the once prosperous and crazy Ordos in the unfinished building.
When he was writing the script, his mind kept echoing the words of director Ang Lee: "Chinese’s family is a soft shell made of tears, bearing love and moving in disappointment", which became the emotional core of The Old Beast.
"The closest relationship in this world is the relationship between two people. In the old beast, the closest relationship has been completely torn apart by reality. Love may exist, but it has been torn apart. This is the greed in human desire in the crazy pursuit of economy."
[Talk about the title]
I prefer "old beast"
"Old bastard" is everyone in the crazy times.
In 2016, Zhou Ziyang came to the venture capital unit of the FIRST Youth Film Festival with a script. At that time, the title of the film was also called "Old Bastard". When talking about the name change storm from "old bastard" to "old beast", Zhou Ziyang did not shy away from the consideration of "over-examination", but what attracted him in the end was the fit between "old beast" and the temperament of the film.
"I prefer the old beast. The temperament of the old beast is very similar to that of Inner Mongolia, and it is also very close to the temperament of the characters. The trapped beast is a comprehensive and simple name," Zhou Ziyang said.
Zhou Ziyang: I prefer the "old beast", which fits well with the temperament of the characters.
Many people misunderstand that "old bastard" refers to the protagonist Lao Yang, but in Zhou Ziyang’s understanding, "old bastard" refers to the whole era, "these people are not only Lao Yang in this era of crazy pursuit of personal wealth and desire".
It is true that everyone in The Old Beast has his own "jerk" points, such as the children’s disobedience to filial piety and the kidnapping of the old father in partnership; For example, the salesman who sells a house adds his fists to the old man if he doesn’t agree.
"Everyone is constantly faced with moral choices in their own situation, and everyone’s motivation for choosing is to protect themselves. For them, there are strong reasons. They think they are right, but at the same time they are hurting their most important people," Zhou Ziyang said.
Next page: Talking about people: Lao Yang is the guardian of traditional values
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