Zhang Yu as Xu Dong in Siberian Tiger
Guilin
The movie “Siberian Tiger” that is currently being shown has nothing to do with the Siberian tiger, but a story about a group of frustrated people. The title is more like a metaphor, not only indicating where this absurd comedy takes place, but also pointing to the spiritual predicament of the protagonist in the film.
It is a fine tradition of Chinese comedy films to attach importance to the shaping of little characters, and effectively shaping the images of little characters has also become an important comedy creation proposition. However, at present, the two mainstream commercial comedy camps represented by Ning Hao-style comedy and happy twist-style comedy are in crisis in this regard. The emergence of “Siberian Tiger” has brought some enlightenment and discussion space to how contemporary comedy films shape small characters.
A Possible Attempt to Make Small Characters with Absurd Comedy
“Siberian Tiger” tends to be absurd comedy as a whole, which is also the personal style that the director Geng Jun is good at. The researchers define the absurd comedy as “a kind of exaggerated and profound serious comedy with philosophical connotations”. On the other hand, it also means the possibility of innovation, because absurd comedies can help creators go beyond the appearance of real life and enter into the truth of life and the depth of human nature to explore. If the creator’s ability is outstanding, it is possible to produce high-profile masterpieces, and even film history classics, such as “Dr. Strangelove”, “The Truman World“, “Frozen” and so on.
“Siberian Tiger” adopts the form of absurd comedy, trying to excavate and explore the soul world of the little people, and even try to touch the overall spiritual situation of Chinese contemporary society, which is very courageous. Another innovation of “Siberian Tiger” is that it is not a complete absurd comedy. Because absurd comedies tend to present a surreal and symbolic aesthetic feature, the real social aspect may not be shown in it. And the absurd comedy has a kind of hopeless mood, giving people a feeling of hopelessness. The Chinese film industry has produced some such works, such as Guan Hu’s “Bull Fighting” and “Killing Life”, Jiang Wen’s “Let the Bullets Fly” and “One Step Away”, Huang Bo’s “A Good Show”, Chen Jianbin’s “A Spoon” Wait. “Siberian Tiger” tries its best to avoid the surreal sense of absurd comedies, and strives to excavate a real social state, and uses the power of reality and ideals to fight against the despair of absurd comedies, bringing some hope to the viewers.
In order to realize the above possibilities, Siberian Tiger has made various artistic attempts. In the plot line composed of very bloody and unbearable mundane life, such as the husband and lover caught cheating by the wife, and the financial disputes between relatives due to business failure, the director intentionally inserted some poetic and ideal characters such as Xiao Er and poets into it. . This strong contrast creates both a sense of absurdity and an attempt to get rid of the absurdity. There are also deliberately low-status characters to use philosophical and esoteric words when they carry out trivial acts, which is also to create a sense of absurdity, and at the same time try to awaken the rational thinking of the audience to fight against the sense of absurdity. In terms of image presentation, the film also presents the most specific broken environment images realistically in a documentary style, while showing the beauty and romance in a lyrical style. This series of juxtapositions makes the emotions conveyed by the film also complex, ranging from despair and helplessness, to an emotional gaze and nostalgia for the hometown, and to the creator’s sympathy for the little people.
These efforts of “Siberian Tiger” actually brought a lot of fresh ideas to the creation of small characters in contemporary Chinese comedy films, and touched on various possible ways to shape small characters in the creation of current comedy films. For example, how to avoid presenting small figures as abstract symbols and landscapes? How to portray the spiritual temperament of small people? How to make small characters not fall into complete absurdity? How to pursue poetry and beauty in the creation of small characters? How to find light in suffering narratives? etc.
Why didn’t you make the applause and applause?
“Siberian Tiger” is the first commercial film directed by Geng Jun. As a director who has been shooting niche art films, he neither has much experience in directing commercial films, nor has he established commercial film awareness, especially he has not handled the author well. A combination of style and commercial film. This has led to the fact that although the film’s creative awareness is good, and there are many fragments full of wisdom flashing in it, in the end, it has not been able to form an organic and unified film work, resulting in the effect of applause and audience.
The film still adopts the plot and character ideas of art films that the director himself is accustomed to. Not only did the several clues fail to establish an organic connection, but each clue was very loose, and there were a lot of plot blanks, which made it impossible for the audience to immerse themselves in the plot of the movie. The male protagonist, Xu Dong, is a passive character who often appears in art films. He lacks clear will and motivation, and just slips from one situation to another. The image of the wife is even more ambiguous. What is the relationship between their husband and wife? Why has my husband cheated on him so many times? Such questions are completely unanswered in the film. This kind of character image with no motives and goals, and a very ambiguous moral outlook, not only has no way to make the audience empathize, but also increases the audience’s sense of alienation from the film, which can be said to have violated the taboo of commercial films.
Because of the indistinct characters, the actors’ performance characteristics cannot be fully developed. Whether it is Zhang Yu in “The Unknown” or Ma Li in “Charlotte Trouble”, both have contributed quite good comedy performances and portrayal of small characters, and with these two comedy films, they have established comedy in the minds of the audience. Image look forward to. But the director completely ignored their star characteristics, which made the two stars not only have no room to play, but became a heterogeneous element in the film, and failed to form a good performance with the other actors from the director’s original cast. interactive. Therefore, at the performance level, the “Siberian Tiger” with comedy stars is not as seamless and distinct as the previous “Easy + Happy” by the director’s original cast.
As mentioned above, the director consciously inserted some symbolic images into the main plot, such as the Siberian tiger, poetry, philosophy, Xiaoer’s kites and ladders, etc., but they are all artificially suspended in the film and are not organically integrated with the film content. . This also shows that it is quite difficult to develop the spiritual exploration of small characters in the form of absurd comedies, while avoiding the surrealism and despair of absurd comedies, and the director himself needs more exploration and attempts.
Little Character Crisis in Comedy Movies
The reason why I am willing to spend pen and ink to discuss the pros and cons of Siberian Tiger is because of the two relatively successful commercial comedy camps in the film market – the hybrid comedy represented by the happy twist comedy, and the comedy represented by Ning Hao style. The plot-driven comedy has been in crisis for minor characters in recent years.
Happy twist comedy has always paid less attention to the integrity of the plot and the creation of characters. There is no close logical relationship between the plot paragraphs, but several relatively independent segments, which are grouped together by far-fetched coincidences and random patchwork, relying on the distribution of the laughing points in each segment and the comedy performances of the actors. The quality of this kind of comedy is mixed. There have been relatively good works such as “Charlotte Trouble” and “Half Comedy”, but the shoddy works still occupy a considerable weight. In recent years, the quality has been deteriorating. The problem is becoming more and more prominent, and the audience’s senses can only be stimulated by a lot of pranks and other jokes. It can be said that this kind of comedy film, which mainly relies on various jokes and jokes, is inherently incapable of portraying powerful little characters and revealing the truth of social reality.
The plot-led comedies represented by Ning Hao-style comedies usually adopt the method of combining comedy with other mature types, attaching importance to the combination of laughing points and plots, the plot structure is relatively strict, and it also places great emphasis on the shaping of characters. It is quite guaranteed, which also gives it a certain advantage in shaping small characters. Some representative works, such as “Crazy Stone”, “Elegant” and “Crazy Alien”, have created a lot of impressive images of small characters closely related to the propositions of the times. However, with its huge commercial success, the driving force for innovation has become increasingly scarce, and the quality of real life has become increasingly lacking. The 2019 “Beneficiary” concentrated on exposing many problems of this type of comedy. One is that the underlying environment is highly landscaped in the film. Dirty streets, dilapidated houses, neon lights and billboards, row upon row of snack bars and other environmental images have been reused many times, and they have actually become an abstract underlying landscape, obscuring the real society. The second is that the image of the little person loses the sense of grounding. In “The Beneficiary”, the suffering of the protagonist Wu Hai is exaggerated regardless of the reality of life, resulting in a lack of credibility for his suffering. What’s more serious is that the morality of Wu Hai’s image is relatively vague, and the values are even more problematic. The third is to add too many elements of post-modern jokes to realize the entertainment function, making the small characters appear slick and superficial, unable to deal with more serious and major issues of the times.
It can be said that Chinese contemporary commercial comedy films urgently need the vitality brought by some fresh ideas in the shaping of small characters. From the perspective of the healthy development of Chinese films, writers and directors like Geng Jun who have a distinct personal imprint and are committed to ideological and artistic exploration are very precious resources for the development of commercial films and have a lot of innovative power. Although “Siberian Tiger” cannot be regarded as a good and well-received case, its filming and release also give us a hope that if there can be some kind of positive interaction between the author, director and commercial film, it may be able to make more powerful Little People are back in our comedy movies.
(The author is a professor at the Faculty of Arts, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
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责编：张晓荣 ]