Movie review is to analyze and comment on a movie's director, actors, camera, photography, plot, clues, environment, color, light, audio-visual language, props, transitions, editing and so on. The following is the movie review of "A Hundred Birds" that I have collected and organized, I hope you like it.
"Birds of a Feather" Movie Review Part 1
When cool special effects and celebrity faces become more and more gimmicks to sell movies, thinking about and caring about culture is becoming less and less popular in movies. This phenomenon is a product of the impatience of the people under the conditions of the market economy, and it is the sorrow of Chinese movies.
What makes people happy and grateful is that there are always some directors who still stick to their original intention of making movies.
The suona plays an important role in China. It is essential for weddings and funerals. The suona has experienced the prosperity of the "Birds Toward the Phoenix". At that time, not only suona, all the "craftsmen" have mastered a craft and extraordinarily respected. At the height of the boom, the obo maker sat on the master's chair, and in front of him knelt a crowd of filial sons and grandsons. The number of people playing and the tunes played - four, eight, and one hundred birds facing the phoenix - showed the character of the deceased and the size of the occasion. The Hundred Birds Toward the Phoenix is the highest evaluation of the deceased's good character, and it is also the highest evaluation of the obo maker's character and skill--only the disciple with high moral character and good skill can get the master's authenticity and learn this song. So people in the village are proud to learn how to play the suona, and even more proud to be able to play the Hundred Birds Towards the Phoenix.
The respect of the villagers for the oboe players and the harshness of the oboemaker's apprenticeship have made the oboe a skill to be looked up to. The first time I saw a suona player was when I was a child, and I was in the middle of this era. However, the good times didn't last long. With the disbanding of the Jiao family class and the establishment of the You family class, the society was changing quietly. The influx of Western musical instruments and the combination of songs and dances attracted the public's attention. Whether it was because of a momentary curiosity or an enduring attraction, the oboe is a skill that has really gone from being a frowned upon to being slowly unheard of.
The lack of attention from the outside, and the difficulty in realizing the suona craftsman's own livelihood, have all contributed to the inexorable decline of the traditional suona craft.
The protagonists, Jiao Sanjie and You Tianming, are honored and admired for their perseverance in saving the suona culture! The suona can no longer support the family, but has become a burden that delays earning and living, suona craftsmen have to find their own way out. One by one, Master Jiao San and Tian Ming invited the craftsmen to come here, but they couldn't save them from the decline. It is not easy to put together an ensemble of 8 people to play the "8 Stages", and all the efforts may not be effective, but the craftsmen themselves are persistent and simple, and they can't lose the skills passed down from their "masters' masters' masters".
However, the decline is inevitable, and Jiao Sanjiu's perseverance is even more poignant when he knows he can't do it. The last song, "Hundred Birds Toward the Phoenix", is also the last song of the suona craftsmen. The big "Dian" character behind them is not only a tribute to the deceased, but also a tribute to the oboe craftsmen's skill. When all the music fades, leaving only the suona sound of grief, 8 suona craftsmen and switching the 800 miles of Qinchuan land into one, solid yellow land between the suona played a sad and beautiful echo. Come to think of it, this song is the last elegy of the craftsmen's perseverance, and why is not the suona itself issued by the "save this skill" call?
You Tianming is the representative of a group of people who insist. Before the hardship of learning from a teacher and learned the highest repertoire of the glory of the hundred birds to the phoenix, and now no one asked for the skills, you Tianming remembered in front of the teacher made a vow. Yes, the emergence of the Director of Culture gives people a glimmer of hope, whether such traditional skills can really be sustained by people's attention to the "intangible cultural heritage" nowadays. The master's last words, the painstaking efforts he made to ask the oboe craftsmen one by one to play the last song, and the last song that he played alone in front of the master's grave, "Hundred Birds Toward the Phoenix," are the most important part of his life. "Hundred Birds Toward the Phoenix" brings tears to one's eyes. Playing alone seems to signal that there is no one left to hold on to it, and it also signals that there are still people holding on to it, even if they are just one person.
He is not only upholding the oboe as a skill, but also upholding and passing on traditional culture, and protecting the cultural essence of the Chinese people that has lasted until now.
But inheritance is never the business of one person or a few people. Traditional skills and culture can not only rely on the craftsmen's passion to maintain the non-extinction, but also need each of us to identify and adhere to the culture. This is what the director leaves the audience to think about. It is worth thinking about how to let these dying cultures be passed on.
Some people say that the movie's narrative approach is traditional, and the editing and processing do not have many highlights. Yes, as a "root" type of movie, it is rooted in the simple yellow earth, the characters are also simple rural characters. Imagine if you put the ordinary people of the sixties in Lady Gaga's clothes, wouldn't it be a joke? Wouldn't it be a joke to paint the Great Wall and Dunhuang murals in brilliant colors? The same is true for movies. Narrative ultimately serves the story, and it is only when the narrative technique is in harmony with the story and characters that it complements the story.
On the contrary, the movie's fresh and beautiful reed fields, paddy fields ...... The Chinese elements are pleasing to the eye, but they are also a cultural symbol and a hint of the director's promotion of traditional culture. The movie is full of life flavor of the dialogue full of feelings, simple countryside feelings also make people miss. Whether you're a post-80s or post-90s, those familiar scenes will bring back memories.
In the end, the decline of the oboe after the boom was a bit hasty, and the turnaround was too fast, and the treatment of the drawbacks of modern culture (Tian Ming is looking for his brother, and all his brothers are differently affected by the drawbacks of modern civilization and get sick and injured) is also a bit thin, but the flaws do not cover up the good, and a good movie will be a success if it wants to convey what it wants to convey to the audience. In any case, the movie's attention to traditional culture is worthy of respect.
Lastly, the name of the character in the movie, Tian Ming, is a reflection of director Wu Tianming himself.
By Dark Green Sunset Chinese film director Wu Tianming's posthumous film, "Birds of Prey," is set to open in theaters tomorrow, going head-to-head with Hollywood superhero blockbuster "Captain America. At the premiere held last night, big directors, filmmakers, cultural celebrities and government officials, including world-class movie masters Zhang Yimou and Martin Scorsese, all gave their full hopes and expectations for the movie's performance. And it seems that "The Hundred Birds" has become another litmus test for the conscience of Chinese movies, but regardless of the box office performance, "The Hundred Birds" is worthy of praise in the plot.
As a melodramatic film that focuses on the tradition and inheritance of suona culture, the plot of Hundred Birds, One Phoenix is not boring, but rather has a lot of tension in the dramatic conflict and emotional tension, and there are even a number of places where it pokes at the tear ducts, making people feel the urge to cry like a fountain. In fact, this kind of movie is very easy to make people sleepy and boring. However, Wu Tianming, who has a strong sense of local sentiment, starts with a solid emotion, portraying a delicate and sincere master-disciple, father-son, and brotherly love, taking the inheritance and promotion of the traditional cultural carrier suona as the main axis, and the suona love as a solid and rich bond, which firmly connects the simple emotions between two generations of brown old men, presenting the audience with a set of folklore folk customs peculiar to the Loess Plateau of Northwest China.
Director Wu Tianming is a master of China's fourth generation of filmmakers, and his films "The Tremolo of Life," "Life," "The Old Well," "A River Without Beacons," and "The Changing Face" are all about the folklore of China's people, and the sincerity of their feelings. I watched these films in open-air cinemas in the early days, and later enjoyed them in video halls, movie channels, and modern theaters. It can be said that these works of director Wu Tianming, although the number is not large, but almost all are fine, not only in the international harvest of numerous awards, in the domestic is to get awards to get soft. He has also tapped into Zhang Yimou and other master filmmakers. Wu Tianming's directorial works have spanned more than 30 years, which is precisely the 30 years when a hundred schools of thought and flowers blossomed in Chinese cinema. Nowadays, Chinese cinema has stepped into the ranks of the world's great powers, but unfortunately, director Wu Tianming has already sailed to the west and is not fortunate enough to see it with his own eyes. However, it is gratifying to know that the last movie he directed during his lifetime, "The Hundred Birds", is finally going to be released to meet with the general audience. Regardless of the box office geometry, the word-of-mouth, praised for its vivid reputation, will certainly be able to comfort the spirit of director Wu Tianming in heaven.
The Birds of Prey inherits director Wu Tianming's delicate and refined narrative style, and this movie, like The Old Well and Life, has a strong flavor of the Huangdui (yellow earth), and in the traditional culture of the oboe, the sound of the gusts of love, we can feel the Northwest's simplicity of the folk style, passionate, bold, and exuberant. Although the movie is about the inheritance and development of suona culture, the essence of the movie is the true love between people, the true feelings between people and suona, and the simple feelings between people and the countryside and the earth. Director Wu Tianming's sharp camera language accurately captures the subtle relationship between people and people, people and suona, so it's only natural that the plot can ignite the audience's mind, activate the emotional ****sound, and stimulate the psychological ****vibration.
The Birds of a Feather writes about people in suona, writes about society in suona, organically blends suona, people and society's destiny together, and presents the conflict of social development on people's destiny, and the conflict of suona culture in slices with a view of a big and small picture. Therefore, the movie builds several groups of wonderful conflicts, and it is through the three-dimensional presentation of these groups of conflicts that the audience can actually experience the urgency and reality of the suona culture inheritance and promotion.
In fact, the suona is not the only one, there are many valuable intangible cultural heritages like suona in China that need to be protected. Perhaps, it is not everyone's responsibility, but these things are always someone to do, adhere to, just like the suona master and disciple in the movie. Just like director Wu Tianming, who never forgets his original intention and never changes his accent. I think, as a viewer, all we can do is to go into the theater to enjoy and spread this movie as much as we can. Spread the suona culture inheritance and development, for the inheritance of Chinese intangible cultural heritage to do even just a little effort.
"Birds of a Feather" Movie Review Part 2
Craftsmen, this word has appeared quite frequently in recent years in reports, articles and film and television works. But for the craftsmen themselves, there are mixed feelings in the society.
There was a time when artisans were seldom mentioned in the art world, and even included in the category of "pejorative". These people believed that art was about creation, not about repeating the same thing over and over again, sticking to the same process, and sticking to the same attitude as a craftsman. The "artisan", who is valued purely for his skill, is caricatured as useless, even to the point of being irrefutable.
However, in today's fast-food culture, there seem to be fewer and fewer people who can truly be called masters. The spirit of the craftsman has also been praised and promoted more. Popular new media platforms such as "One" and "Ershang" push many of their original videos with "craftsmen" as the centerpiece. They have widely spread the attitude of pursuing perfection, striving for excellence, and obsessing over their own pursuits. As a result, craftsmanship has been recognized as a jewel again.
In fact, it is. Monotonous repetition of the same thing on the other side, is not precisely the treatment of this matter of excellence, from one to the end? Especially from director Wu Tianming's posthumous work "Birds of a Feather", I have a deeper understanding of the craftsman.
As a post-90s generation, I have an enigmatic love for traditional culture. Maybe it's because I stayed with my grandparents when I was a kid, maybe it's because I grew up in the countryside, or maybe it's because I'm curious about the unknown world of the past and the future. Therefore, when the rural environment appeared in the footage of "Birds of Prey", I was shocked by an inexplicable force. The movie, in fact, is very simple. It is about the traditional art of suona, which is being passed on, although it has encountered various difficulties such as money, foreign instruments, and a lack of personnel, which has led to suona playing becoming less and less valued. However, the suona people have been trying to persevere in the hope that they can continue to pass it on from generation to generation. As the suona king, Mr. Jiao San, says in the play, "The suona is not for others to hear, it's for yourself. The famous producer Fang Li's kneeling for the box office, although his starting point is respect for the movie and the director, but personally, his approach is completely contrary to the thematic idea that "The Hundred Birds" is trying to convey. A good movie deserves to be shown to people who know and love movies, and high or low box office is not the only criterion to measure how good or bad a movie is.
The director of the film, Wu Tianming, the "godfather" of the fifth generation of Chinese film directors, is no different. In the era of commercial movies, he still maintains his pursuit of art, a kind of sincerity, but also a kind of sentiment, he really shot the movie to the soul. At the end of "The Hundred Birds", because the suona was passed on, the deceased Master Jiao San was able to rest assured and stride boldly into the distance (another world). Of course, there is also the point that the passing on of skills is not a rejection of foreign cultures. The film ends with a soundtrack of suona and "foreign instruments" playing together, which also shows the traditional art of "accepting all rivers".
There is no shortage of craftsmen in Chinese society today. As long as you are engaged in a certain work, skilled in a certain technology, you are a craftsman. But how many craftsmen are there in contemporary times who really have a heart? Craftsmen are craftsmen without a heart, and craftsmen with a heart are people!