Author |Punpeng Editor |Fan Zhihui
Do business in the world and hang the appetite of the Quartet. ”
In 2019, Wong Kar-wai won the copyright of "Flowers". In 2020, the project will be launched. Wong Kar-wai still does not change his true nature, and it took nearly 4 years of fine polishing before it was finally released. Every keyword that belongs to "Flowers" has made it look forward to it among the audience. This line of Mr. Bao in the play seems to have become a portrayal of the audience's heart.
After the broadcast, "Flowers" attracted polarized reviews.
Lovers love it to restore the Yellow River Road in the 90s one by one, love its movie-like shots, every frame is amazingly beautiful, and regard it as a phenomenal masterpiece that reshapes the aesthetics of domestic dramas;The hater hates it for deleting the three story lines in the original work to one, reducing the ups and downs of the half-century era into a section of business wars, and the irony should be renamed "The Wolf of Wall Street", pointing out that it is pretending to be profound, but in fact it is suspended, but it is just a middle-aged version of "Little Times".
Now, when "Flowers" is updated more than halfway, the popularity remains high, and the popularity value of Tencent** station once exceeded 31,000 and remained above 27,000, with a score of 8 on Douban1, the 10-minute ratings of CCTV's eight sets of premieres broke 2, and the peak ratings were 26……
More and more audiences are beginning to feel the charm from "Flowers", and the ultra-luxurious soundtrack lineup behind it can be said to be indispensable. On January 9th, the topic of "how much money did Wong Kar-wai spend on songs" was even higher in the hot search, and according to industry estimates, the copyright fee of the soundtrack of "Flowers" was about 10 million yuan.
So, Wong Kar-wai spent 10 million to buy a license, what is so good about the soundtrack in "Flowers"?
Wong Kar-wai's adaptation of the original book of "Flowers" was drastic.
The original work focuses on the three protagonists, A Bao, a foreign trade businessman, Hu Sheng, a lawyer, and Xiao Mao, a laid-off worker. The three of them met at a young age, but in the process of growing up, they flowed into three social classes, and the social network of the three protagonists extended a picture of life in contemporary Shanghai.
Wong Kar-wai only picked up Ah Bao alone, telling that Ah Bao took a few hundred yuan borrowed and became rich overnight through **, and became the president of Bao. While the ups and downs of the business world, Po also had a series of love entanglements with Reiko, the boss of Night Tokyo, Miss Wang, a foreign trade company, and Li Li, the owner of Zhizhenyuan.
From ** to TV series, it is like Bao's two lives in a parallel universe. However, from Jin Chengyu to Wong Kar-wai, they all tried their best to present the core soul and value expression of "Flowers", that is, "silent".
"No sound" is a unique word in the Shanghai dialect, which means "silence, no response". In the original work, the word "not loud" appears thousands of times, leaving countless ambiguous and only understandable blanks for **;In the TV series, Wong Kar-wai also regards "no sound" as a topic, which is the logic of Ah Bao's actions that listen openly and doubt secretly in the ten-mile ocean, the unknown feelings that float and are pressed in the relationship between men and women, and the blank space of an era on the Yellow River Road.
Director Wong Kar-wai introduced in "From Flowers to Flowers Don't Make Noise" that "no sound" is a creator's attitude, and it is the common creative code of Jin Chengyu and Wong Kar-wai. "I only say what I can say, what I want to say, and I speak well. Text has the advantage of words, and images have the advantage of images......The original work is not loud, we can fill in the blanks, and complement each other".
Hong Kong film critic Luo Zhanfeng once commented on Wong Kar-wai's films: "Because of aphasia, so**" In previous film works, filling the gaps in emotion, behavior, and atmosphere with ** has always been what he is good at. In the TV series "Flowers", which tested the waters for the first time, Wong Kar-wai's use of the soundtrack is also quite exciting.
The characters to the narrative emphasize "not ringing", but instead make the soundtrack "ring". All unspeakable stories and feelings can be told by **, because it doesn't make a sound, so**.
In "Flowers", Wong Kar-wai uses a large number of opera scenes. When Reiko returned to Jinxian Road from Tokyo, Teacher Shi downstairs was broadcasting the Meipai Peking Opera "The Drunken Concubine", and the men waiting for the two women had to make an oath, and Yang Guifei secretly agreed with the fate of the two women.
When Reiko returned to the room and sat down, the radio downstairs played "Suo Lin Bag" again. This singing section tells a story of giving away and planting good fruits, and once again alludes to the story line of Po and Reiko, subtle and restrained, all left to the audience's imagination.
In addition to opera, "Flowers" is also a collection of pop hits and film and television songs in the 90s. When these melodies containing collective memory sound, the background of the times, the mood of the characters, and even the motivation for their actions do not need to be repeated.
In order to promote the Sanyang brand, Miss Wang invited fashion editors, Hong Kong photographers and models to dinner, and Wang Jie's "Annie" was sung at the wine table, which was the era when Hong Kong's popular ** greatly influenced the mainland;When Mr. Bao created momentum for the Sanyang brand, the singer invited was Fei Xiang, a national idol who is well-known in the Spring Festival Gala, singing "A Fire in Winter";When Mr. Bao and Boss Ma were pushing cups and changing lamps for business, they sang "Love Fight to Win" at karaoke, which was also the favorite inspirational song of countless businessmen who climbed up from the bottom in that era.
In addition to reflecting the times, many of the songs also became "destiny songs" for the main characters in the play.
When Po and Miss Wang stood at a fork in the road in life, Wong Kar-wai paired Miss Wang's one-man show with Faye Wong's "Obsessed and Unrepentant". The proud Puxi Pearl is willing to sell tea eggs with Bao, and she will always be obsessed with love and have no regrets. When Miss Wang wants to go to the factory, she makes an appointment with Po before leaving to confirm her feelings. But Ah Bao never came, and at this time, Jacky Cheung's "Stealing the Heart" sounded over and over again, which also indicated the state and state of mind of the relationship between the two.
"Stealing the Heart" also appeared when Mr. Bao and his ex-girlfriend Xuezhi reunited and separated ten years later, and Bao, who had not yet made a career, could only watch the white moonlight of the year go away, and the parting platform was matched with a bitter **, singing the helplessness of love between lovers.
Many years later, Mr. Bao and Xuezhi reunited again, the economic strength and social status of the two were reversed, and Wen Zhaolun's "Suiyuan" sounded, which also heralded the complete end of the relationship between the two, and there was no ten-year appointment. In the song, the next shot cuts to Miss Wang sitting on the roof eating ice cream, which also means that the relationship between the two of them has no result, and in the end they can only sigh "Love comes from the right time and place, and the difference is every penny, it is all empty".
"Sudden Love" is the fate song of Reiko and Po. This song is the theme song of "Tokyo Love Story", and whenever this song sounds, many viewers will naturally think of the regrettable love between Rika Akana and Maroji Nagao. In "Flowers", Reiko and Po meet in Tokyo, and she meets her old acquaintance in a foreign country, and she gives it to herWith a plane ticket and a business card, she gave up everything in Tokyo and returned to Shanghai to prepare for the night Tokyo from scratch.
With the blessing of this song, Reiko and Rika Akana's images coincide, she is always brave in love, and after seeing through love, she resolutely leaves. For the audience, the regret between Rika Akana and Nagao Maruji was also inherited by Po and Reiko.
In addition, the impressive soundtrack in the play also includes Zhang Yusheng's "My Future Is Not a Dream", beyond's "No More Hesitation", "Glorious Years", "Like You", "Looking Away", Jiang Yuheng's "Looking Back Again", Chen Baiqiang's "What to Ask for in Life", Wang Jie and Ye Huan's "You Are the Eternal Pain in My Chest", etc. For "Flowers", which has only 30 episodes, Wong Kar-wai chose 57 soundtracks, and most of them chose to authorize the more expensive original songs. However, this is also where Wong Kar-wai excels.
He mostly chose pop hits and film and television songs from the 90s, which not only expressed the mood or situation of the characters, but also alluded to the background of the era in which the story is located. And choose the more familiar original version, so that the role of the melody can be maximized, and the amount of information that cannot be carried by those pictures is completely supplemented by the collective memory carried by the song.
Wong Kar-wai's works all revolve around boring and lonely characters, and they are often accompanied by grievances.
David Podwell, a contemporary American film theorist, once commented on Wong Kar-wai and the ** in his films.
Wong Kar-wai is proficient in using various languages and styles to open up a new narrative space for the film, making the inner world of his characters richer in texture and layer. A wonderful soundtrack in the style of Wong Kar-wai, which is full of pitches in his works.
For example, in "Chongqing Forest", Faye Wong plays Ah Fei always lives in her own world, likes Tony Leung but is ashamed to confess, she takes advantage of working hours to run to someone's house to clean up, her fantasy is not enough for outsiders, Wong Kar-wai inserted a song "Dream Man" into her unreasonable behavior, the original song is "Dreams" by the Irish rock band The Cranberries. The melody and Faye Wong's voice are placed in the film, which strengthens the projection of the song on Afei's role.
Tony Leung is undoubtedly Fei's "dream man", and Ah Fei himself is also a "dream man", a person who lives in a dream, fluttering and flickering, often in a sleepwalking-like state, pun intended. The song fails to rationalize Faye Wong's grotesque behavior, nor does it clearly point to the development of the story, Wong Kar-wai just uses this song to create a dream-like atmosphere.
In "**", Wong Kar-wai chose three tangoes from Astor Piazzolla **. One is the tango ** symbolizes the most important scene in the film, Buenos Aires, which is a city that belongs to the tango culture;The second is to use tango** to present the pull of love and hate, separation and union of a pair of homosexuals, and use tango as a metaphor for the wrestling of love.
In "The True Story of A Fei", Wong Kar-wai chose a large number of Latin American dance music, among which he especially loves "My Shahl" by Cuban ** X**ier Cugat , which appears as many as five times in the film, each time using a cheerful rhythm precisely to set off a mournful atmosphere.
It is worth mentioning that "My Shahl" and "Jungle Drums" in "The True Story of A Fei" are also used in "Flowers".
Similarly, the scores "La Donna Romantica" and "Dark Chariot" composed by Japanese soundtrack master Shigeru Umebayashi for "The Grandmaster" and "2046" are also used in "Flowers".
In previous films, these soundtracks have represented the classic role of Wong Kar-wai's lens, and between intertextuality and reuse, just like the "labyrinth" of the characters in his films, these ** have also constructed Wong Kar-wai's own "** labyrinth".
From rock music to tango**, to Latin American dance music, Wong Kar-wai has a strong sensitivity to **, and uses it in movies.
In the interview, Wong Kar-wai has said that many of the soundtracks in the film were accidentally encountered by him, such as "**Middle Tango** from two CDs that the producer bought at the airport, and the Latin in "The True Story of A Fei" also comes from his ethereal memories of Hong Kong's 60s theater**.
And this time and again, the "clever hand" determines the characteristics of Wong Kar-wai's film soundtrack that emphasizes intention, atmosphere, and de-narrative. However, in "Flowers", compared with the narrative style, editing techniques and lighting design, Wong Kar-wai's treatment of the soundtrack is more in line with the habits of TV dramas.
Different from film works, Wong Kar-wai abandoned the small language soundtrack, and mostly chose songs with lyrics as the soundtrack, focusing more on the embodiment of the background of the times and the portrayal of the characters' hearts.
From the singer Jacky Cheung's "Stealing the Heart" to Oda Kazumasa's "Sudden Love", and even the Black Panther's "No Place to Shame", they are all classic works with a certain mass base and can stir the audience's "DNA". Even relatively niche opera soundtracks such as "The Drunken Concubine" and "Suo Lin Bag" are also famous masterpieces familiar to the audience, and they can naturally be associated with the complete story line and core story theme behind the opera.
It can be said that in the first stop of the TV series "Flowers", Director Wang first "went down" to the soundtrack.
When an hour-and-a-half-hour movie turns into a 30-episode TV series, Wong Kar-wai complements the characters' inner monologues in addition to the artistic conception and atmosphere, laying clues for the development of the story.
But "going down" does not mean subtracting ingenuity, and he has a lot of ** types for "Flowers":Classical music, rock music, pop**, local opera, red classic songs, he chose ** also from different regions, Hong Kong, Beijing, Taiwan, different regions** gathered in a film and television drama, which also verified that the most popular trends of thought and culture of that era were surging in the fertile soil of Shanghai.
He uses ** to match the picture, infiltrating a poetic effect, injecting emotional texture into the image. Regardless of the beautiful pictures and delicate scenes, just the dimension of the soundtrack, Wong Kar-wai's "Flowers" is enough to represent the long-lost ingenuity of domestic dramas.
We are far from the age, very close to the **.
In "Flowers", those classic songs of the 90s carry the collective memory of the Chinese people, as long as the melody sounds, the past is still vivid. When the feelings in the soundtrack are rekindled, when the audience experiences the surprise of "opening the blind box" in the movie, the difference in the price of "Flowers" has just been broadcast, and it has been eliminated to a certain extent.
Off screen, these classic old songs have undoubtedly contributed a wave of new topics to "Flowers". When "Annie", "Stealing the Heart" and "Looking Back Again" play, the audience will remember how they felt when they heard these songs, share their unique and personalized memories of the song, and have the greatest spiritual resonance with the characters.
In the end, I have to joke: "It's too early to scold, "Flowers" is not a middle-aged "Little Times". ”
At this time, I will really agree that even if Wong Kar-wai really spent 10 million to buy the soundtrack license, it would be worth it.
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