At the age of 42, she made her directorial debut in the movie Me and My Fathers, directing the Poetry chapter of the movie, which tells the story of Chinese astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s.
| By Xiaodi Xu
In the 14th century A.D., a Ming Dynasty man named Tao Chengdao decided to realize his dream of flying. Sitting on a chair bundled with 47 rockets and holding two large kites, he launched the first fire of mankind into the sky with his life, and when the smoke cleared, he was pulverized.
The Chinese people's passion for "flying" is engraved in the long river of history, from wood birds to bamboo birds, from paper kites floating to smoke in the air. Even in the penniless times - the howling north wind at minus 30 degrees Celsius, the yellow sand flying in the sky, the rice crackers and salt water are the three meals, the dilapidated adobe house is the residence, but also do not forget to talk to the sky and the stars. Such years, by the Chinese aerospace industry veteran Chi bremsstrahlung academician evaluation: a hard and happy life.
In the upcoming movie "My Fathers and I", the unit "Poetry" tells the story of this group of astronauts.
On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the creative team held a screening in Beijing Space City, where 88-year-old Qi Fahrenheit watched the movie with tears in his eyes. He recalled that day at the Jiuquan base, the "Dongfanghong 1" ignited after the core arrow separation, the rocket comrades jumped up and down with excitement, but he did not dare to be happy. He jumped up only when the satellite reached the Kashgar station after a half-circle, and that was the happiness he would never forget.
The director is a "newcomer" - Zhang Ziyi, 22 years from the movie, collaborated with Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee, Wang Jiawei, Feng Xiaogang, John Woo and other major director, took the Golden Rooster Award, Hundred Flowers Award, Huabiao Award, Golden Statue Award, Golden Horse Award five. "At the age of 42, she is a first-time director. In Poetry, she shows the ordinary but tragic story of a family of four under the yellow sand and starry blue sky. Behind them is a group of aerospace people who chewed on nests and worked with explosives, but dreamed of "writing poems in the sky".
For Zhang Ziyi, the first difficulty is to find the origin of the story - the astronauts have a vast array of deeds, which one is more touching?
She did a lot of character interviews, eight months time, the draft material generated a dozen versions: the couple of unresisting commitment to scientific research, the launch base of the elementary school in the silent teaching principal, the scientific research in the family home to do kites want to let the octave fly to the sky of the children ...... each leads to countless possibilities.
Until the story of Xu Liping, the "gunpowder sculptor", entered her vision. Solid rocket engines are the "heart" of carrier rockets and missile equipment, filled with rubber-like fuel, Xu Liping's job is to use knives for fuel shaping. This is an extremely delicate, dangerous process, a few grams of fuel can burn violently, but Xu Liping in hundreds of kilograms of fuel surrounded by carving out the gunpowder surface with an error of no more than 0.2 millimeters. So for more than 30 years, his body was twisted in a monstrous way due to maintaining a posture for a long time, and his hair was getting thinner and thinner due to frequent contact with gunpowder.
"Every time I drop the knife, I can hear my own heartbeat." This was the award speech awarded to Xu Liping by Moving China in 2015. Zhang Ziyi was fascinated by this work, and then discovered a group of astronauts who worked hard to launch "China's first star" but stayed behind the scenes.
"Go, catch, see, hear." This is the central requirements for the launch of the first artificial satellite. Whether it goes up or not depends on whether the Long March 1 launch vehicle can send the satellite up. First and second level is a liquid engine, has been tested successfully; difficult is the third level of solid engine, the international blockade of technology, all rely on self-reliance, crossing the river by groping the stones.
In 1965, when the wind whipped through the Gobi grasslands of Inner Mongolia, a group of young people from other provinces came here to set up camp, secretly carry out a project code-named 651 - the development of the third stage of solid rocket engines. Here perennial sandy winds, every step will be blocked by quicksand back half a step, legs and stomach soon sore and stiff. All the cadres and workers, while engaged in scientific research and production, while their own hands off the adobe, in the barren slopes of the wild mountain covered with "dry barricade", all year round, basically rely on the nest, potatoes and cabbages to eat.
More than 50 years later, Zhang Ziyi brought the crew here to shoot, will have become a broken wall "dry barricade" and small school, restored to its original appearance. When the first generation of astronauts working in Inner Mongolia, 76-year-old Gao Chongwu came to the set to observe, a "seem to have traveled through time and space". Camera set up in the house where he and his colleagues lived, the actors were busy in the real engine test bed. Explosion-proof wall rebar exposed, mottled, is the year was thousands of degrees of fire calcination left behind the scars.
Gao Chongwu told a lot of stories for Zhang Ziyi happened here. The most unforgettable person is the chief engineer Yang Nansheng. 1950, Yang Nansheng gave up the high-paying employment in the United Kingdom, rolling back to China, rooted in the desert. One of his legs suffered from severe sciatica, so he used his other good leg to pedal his broken bicycle and "rode alone in the desert" every day in the face of high winds. At that time, there was no high-speed camera, in order to find out the explosion point of the engine failure, Yang Nansheng often stood behind a wall of observation windows to take a closer look. Transparent Plexiglas is only 5 centimeters thick, and once it explodes, the consequences are unimaginable.
On April 24, 1970, the team led by Yang Nansheng used the last push of the third-stage solid engine to send the "Dongfanghong No. 1" into space. In the movie, Huang Xuan plays the father of Yang Nansheng's shadow - the same bike ride through the wilderness, the same behind the observation window of the pilot plant with explosions and death. Under the stars, he talks to his son on a seesaw, speaking cryptically about his work, "I'm a poet, a man who writes poems in the sky."
In order to "write poems in the sky", his father sacrificed his young life. While watching the movie, Gao Chongwu kept shedding tears. He remembered the burning and explosions that he had witnessed in those years, remembered those fallen comrades, and remembered the slogan of the aerospace people: "Dedicate your youth to a lifetime of dedication, and dedicate your lifetime to your children and grandchildren."
Gao Chongwu also told a story to Zhang Ziyi. One year, four researchers were using high-pressure water to cut propellant, the result was an explosion, all sacrificed. One of them, a young man, had planned to take the train back home with his girlfriend after work, and the next day was their wedding. Gao Chongwu went to sympathy, the girl is lying in bed, saw him immediately stood up, not a tear, just repeatedly said: "I can hold out."
The mother, played by Zhang Ziyi in the movie, is just such a woman. After her husband's sacrifice, she could not tell her children the bad news, only that her father was working overtime, burying the pain deep in her heart. The male colleagues in the unit decided not to go home collectively at night, disguising the illusion of working overtime. She held the ashes in her hand and bowed y, the muscles on her face twitched uncontrollably, and she could no longer restrain her tears.
After the sacrifice of her husband, she still continued the unfinished business, continued one of the most dangerous jobs in the world - in the gunpowder "micro-carving". In order to portray this role, Zhang Ziyi personally to the workshop, to the national labor model Luo Huaicong learning. The first day on the knife carving, more than three hours later, her hands are worn out calluses, silence can be heard in their own heartbeat.
The windows of the workshop are very low, a lift of the leg can step out. Master Luo told Zhang Ziyi, so that when an explosion occurs, everyone can run out in time. At work, the empty plant only one or two people, a dry for several hours, because of the toxicity of gunpowder, people out of the face is green. Gao Chongwu said Zhang Ziyi performed a "psychological pressure under the feeling of vomiting", that is often seen in the faces of his colleagues look.
And when it comes to children, mothers are under a different kind of pressure.
In order to find the right little actor, Zhang Ziyi interviewed no less than 500 children. There is still a long time to go before the camera, the crew took the young actors to the shooting site. They were quickly integrated into it, playing with dirt, rolling iron rings, playing slingshot, and mud every day, and all of them were tanned and energetic.
There is a scene in the movie that touched many people. On a night of heavy rain, the house was flooded, and the son cried in the darkness and questioned his mother if his father was dead and why he didn't come home. After the storm, the mother took out a lantern and told her son that this is what they do, and that "mom will die one day". At night, the son releases the Kongming lantern and shouts to the sky, "Mom, I don't want you to die."
That rainy night scene was shot over three nights. The young actor is changing teeth period, wearing dentures when filming, say lines when an excitement, teeth fell in the sludge, "we will help him 'find teeth all over the place'". The mother wants to beat her son's butt, Zhang Ziyi heartbroken, put on several layers of butt pads for the young actor, the result is not enough to cry real. The executive director was furious and told to take it all off. Zhang Ziyi can not afford to, only took off a layer. This time, the little actor has a feeling, "not I beat him pain, is he really into the drama.
After this heart-breaking play, Zhang Ziyi to quickly "out" to see the monitor, but also think of mobilizing the child's emotions, "quite a fine point.
Everyone felt her desperation. During that time, Zhang Ziyi only sleep 3 hours a day, every version of the script received, will organize everyone around reading. When it comes to professional problems, ask Gao Chongwu, "sometimes 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, 1 o'clock is still looking for me". Executive director is often "harassment". Zhang Ziyi watched a documentary, think in the scene and art can draw on, even if it is already late at night 2 o'clock, will immediately send her a microblogging.
Until now, Zhang Ziyi still feels that everything is like a dream. "I never thought of being a director, but this job came, so let's be brave and bold."
Zhang Ziyi has always been a "spare no effort". Those stories that have been circulating for many years, repeatedly proved this point: from 11 to 17 years old, she practiced in the dance academy in the dark, not enough talent, in the dark after lights out to the practice room to press the legs, sleep at night, put the legs on the wall to sleep.
Into the Chinese opera, she did not have a day to spend the days of youth, every day for the homework to do a good job on the fire. She rowed a skit, the teacher Chang Li see her a pair of small thin arms, and the noodle is particularly authentic, asked her at home is not often pancakes. Zhang Ziyi said no, "is my mom every day to give me 2 pounds of flour practice".
My Father and Mother, she spent the day mixing with farmers, feeding pigs and planting every day. In the movie, the running is real, the fall is real, for a walking bumps in the shot, she wore eight pairs of pants.
The filming of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", she and Michelle Yeoh's understudy to fight, nails were cut off, the thumb inserted in the snow to stop the pain; hanging wire, directly to the wall with the face.
Shooting "Hero", when there is no play, she moved a small bench on location, learning Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, how they acted, the Hong Kong media gave her the nickname, called "bench princess".
The screenwriter Shi Hang described the first half of Zhang Ziyi's life as a "low flight", "it looks like a lot of space, but in fact, the top layer after layer, layer after layer, is blocked by a transparent partition".
Until 2013's The Grandmaster. Wang Jiawei a shoot 3 years, "Gong Er" Zhang Ziyi and her brother in the train station duel that scene, minus 30 degrees Celsius in the Northeast, she played all night. With this role, Zhang Ziyi took 12 "after the movie". In the movie, she has a lot of wonderful lines, but the most favorite is Tony Leung Chiu-wai said: "Kung Fu two words, a horizontal and vertical, stand to the end is the winner."
Shooting Poetry gave Zhang Ziyi another experience. The last scene before the finalization is a nearly 3-minute "one shot to the end". The camera from the land up, through the sand, follow the child's footsteps into the "dry barriers" dormitory, walking through the small square of the research base, looking at the distant test bed.
For this long shot, the crew rehearsed for three days, shot three times, more than 40 pieces of material. After each shot, Zhang Ziyi ran from the front of the monitor to the scene, to 15 groups of children patiently explain, cheer, and then run back to the front of the monitor. She hopes that this difficult to a little "arbitrary" shots, can link the audience's memory, emotion and strength.
China's aerospace has taken every step, and is not "sparing no effort" to overcome every difficulty to "arbitrary" fortress? At the end of the poem, the daughter of the astronauts in the window of the Shenzhou spacecraft saw the "Dongfanghong No. 1" sliding past, which is the rocket developed by the fathers and mothers launched into the sky that star.
"Dongfanghong No. 1" is indeed still flying. Back then, Qian Xuesen in Xi'an satellite measurement and control station, satisfied with Yang Nansheng said: "You give the thrust is not small ah!" That's why the star is still in space. It is still around the Earth, to meet the future generations in the sky to renew the poem.