Is Ning Hao laughing?
There was only hot water and Ning Hao's glasses on the wide solid wood table, and during the interview, he drank hot water without glasses, and a warm fuzz hung between us.
So what can be done? You never try to come up with a solution in the movie. I asked. not only asked about the new film "Mr. Red Carpet", but also pointed to many propositions thrown out by Ning Hao in his past movies.
Nothing can be done, accept. I knew that there was nothing to do in life, so I accepted it helplessly. Ning Hao hid behind the warmth and seemed to smile, "Sometimes we make absurd (movies) and deconstruct ourselves, and everyone forgets after pulling the calves." ”
His speech is calm and relaxed, but his expression is always incomprehensible. Just like his films, he never lets the audience see through at a glance what exactly he wants to tell you, maybe he doesn't want to say anything, and expresses everything in wordsless. The so-called absurdity is rare and confused.
Ning Hao played the same director Lin Hao in the Spring Festival file "Mr. Red Carpet". It seems that he always seems to be smiling but not smiling, noncommittal. In the face of the blind command of the investor, the strong personal will of the actor, and the network of chickens and dogs...He was directing a play, and he was watching a play at the same time. Don't take a stand, just do things.
Mr. Red Carpet" stills.
The interview took place in a studio of "Bad Monkey" in the northeastern suburbs of Chaoyang District, and I walked through the gray earth and sky in winter to find a house, where there were no monkeys I wanted to see, but many Buddha statues were placed, smiling calmly and ambiguously. Oh, there was a monkey that bumped into me when I first entered the door, a King Kong-like Wukong, with his head hanging down to the ground, with a hideous face, as if he was welcoming you and driving you away.
The 46-year-old Ning Hao also looks more "Buddha" than he imagined. In addition to the state of the whole person, the mentality is also Buddha. In the face of rapidly changing technology and the market, he has to participate in more work that has nothing to do with movies than before, "It's actually not pleasant, but it's annoying when you're forced to roll, right?" ”
Something new in the new world occasionally caught him off guard.
On February 3, he and Andy Lau were guests in Dong Yuhui's live broadcast room, and in less than 10 minutes after the broadcast, 300,000 movie tickets were sold out. When Dong Yuhui asked if he wanted to "add it again", Ning Hao was still in a state of confusion: "Has it started?" ”
After the live broadcast ended, 600,000 pre-sale movie tickets disappeared like magic.
Ning Hao and Andy Lau were guests in Dong Yuhui's live broadcast room.
This is something that the world would have been far from imagining ten years ago, or even five years ago.
Of course, Ning Hao has not been idle in the past few years. In 2020, he contributed a unit short film in the tribute film "My Hometown and Me". The rest of the time, the audience saw Ning Hao's name on the big screen, mostly as a producer. He and his bad monkey continue to help young directors complete their stories, including "I Am Not the God of Medicine", which created a double miracle of domestic film word-of-mouth and box office in 2018, and "All or Nothing" in 2023.
The world is changing rapidly, the way movies are made, the way movies are sold, including the meaning of movies, the people in movies.
Just like in the new film "Mr. Red Carpet", the big star Liu Weichi played by Andy Lau doesn't understand "666" and "Lao Tie", he will be anxious, but this anxiety in turn forces him to save himself more vigorously in other aspects.
Mr. Red Carpet" stills.
Ning Hao can also be anxious, but he can always adjust himself to a state of balance. In the conversation, somehow those deep issues and those predicaments that make people scratch their ears and cheeks are dissolved.
I may not be able to watch a movie for a short time. When it comes to the impact of the short ** era on traditional art, he "let loose the words", once again dissipated the seriousness, leaving a blank.
The flat red carpet slowly spreads out, and a dazzling red crosses the screen. The cart carrying the red carpet drove by, and slowly crumpled and twisted the red carpet together.
This is the first act at the beginning of "Mr. Red Carpet", a joke story that revolves around the red carpet, and director Ning Hao walked back to the audience after three years.
Just like that carpet, "twisting" is a key word that the characters in the movie are always experiencing. Making movies, looking for investment, participating in competitions and winning awards, crisis public relations ......Every little thing may be twisted and entangled because of a smaller thing, and in the end it will make the chickens and dogs jump, helpless.
In Ning Hao's films, the protagonist is often like this: at first, he just wants to accomplish a small thing, but he is always involved in a series of noises and noises. Or under the teases of fate, go to a different path. The protagonist has a bit of a harlequin meaning, and the accident is intertwined into a certain necessity, and the absurdity is born here.
In "Crazy Stone", Guo Tao just wants to protect the jade in order to keep the factory. Although it did keep the jade in the end, it failed to keep the factory. He became a civilian hero, but fell into another kind of foolish embarrassment and nothingness.
Stills from Crazy Stone.
In "Crazy Racing", Huang Bo just wanted to bury his master well, but he was accidentally involved in a series of unprofessional drug trafficking, killers and ** oolongs.
In the more brutal texture of "No Man's Land", Xu Zheng just wanted to get out of the no man's land, but he encountered obstacles all the way, and in the face of the rough law of the jungle, the elite values from civilized society were torn to shreds along with his body.
And what makes up these accidents and miscellaneous things is often the true colors of human nature and the human heart: desire, hypocrisy, selfishness, cowardice, and a little bit of compassion and softness, which constitute a complex absurdity and a sense of black humor.
It's the same with Mr. Red Carpet. Andy Lau plays the actor Liu Weichi and Ning Hao plays the director, both of whom share a simple purpose: to make a good movie. But they found that even if they had the funds, fame, and conditions, they could not always reach their destination.
Mr. Red Carpet" stills.
What the hell is wrong?
Is it because the heart of art is not pure enough? Liu Weichi wants to make this film, but he is still trying to win awards.
Is it that the environment is too "warm" and deformed? The management is not interested in the content and is pointing fingers. Netizens and viewers also put the concept first and danced with the wind. Even the little suckling pig who matched Andy Lau was frightened and fell downstairs in this chaotic atmosphere of chickens flying and dogs jumping, and died with a whimper.
The movie itself has become the least important thing.
In Ning Hao's view, these are all problems brought about by communication. "Communication" is not only the word of the movie that Lin Hao wants to make in "Mr. Red Carpet", but also the word that Ning Hao gave to "Mr. Red Carpet".
But wouldn't that be the case ten or twenty years ago when movies were made?
Because at that time, everyone was still relatively unified in values, and there would be no special separation. For this question, Ning Hao rarely affirmed decisively.
There's no doubt that the internet has exacerbated the divide between people. In Ning Hao's view, this is all a problem caused by "communication".
Mr. Red Carpet" stills.
In the Internet era, there are more and more communication tools, but communication is becoming more and more difficult. Any little thing can be publicized. "In the past two days, there has been a lot of noise on the Internet, and in Ning Hao's own life, the community property company can't take out the garbage, and it is also noisy. Ning Hao also feels that sometimes it is quite helpless to go online alone.
He described these communication dilemmas as a form of modern violence, "...... ideas, genders, times, occupations, ages."Violence in communication between people comes from all dimensions, you see, now the whole world is fighting like a hot kiln, there are wars everywhere, what we call ineffective communication and malicious communication, in the end it will develop into war, it will develop into an uncontrollable situation. ”
However, as always, Ning Hao threw out questions, but did not try to give answers, nor did he make moral judgments about the characters in the film.
Or, as in his films, he doesn't choose to make any guesses or generalizations about "what's after." "Actually, the conclusion is quite sad, but we can just recognize the reality. When I recognized the reality, I was a little relieved. ”
After making movies for more than 20 years, Ning Hao doesn't know the destiny of heaven, and he doesn't want to know, he only knows his destiny and how to save himself as much as possible in the changing era.
Ning Hao has had a wide forehead since he was a child, and when he was a child, his elders praised him for being smart. Until a physical examination diagnosed hydrocephalus, "ventricular atrophy", it turned out to be a disease.
The family took Ning Hao to Tiantan Hospital for CT, and the doctor gave two suggestions: the operation "released water", but it may cause a big change in the patient's temperament; Or coexist with "water", the disease has not spread for so many years, and there must be no major problems.
Ning Hao chose the latter: "Then let it accumulate, don't even know who you are after the operation." ”
Know yourself", this is one of the themes that Ning Hao tirelessly explored in the movie later.
Old photos of Ning Hao. Ning Hao has explained several times that almost all the characters in his stories are ruined by "arrogance", and there is no other. When people think that they have conquered the world and defeated the environment, they are not far from overturning.
In "Crazy Aliens", Huang Bo thought that he had successfully expelled the aliens, but in fact, it was just other aliens who drank fragments and left by themselves. In "Crazy Stone", the protagonist who guards the jade becomes a personal hero, but in the end he fails to save the factory. The fate and struggle of people have not been able to resist the great current of the times.
In "Mr. Red Carpet", Liu Weichi also has an arrogant side, but he was not ruined in the end, but tripped and fell by the environment. Instead, in reflection on hubris, he rediscovered himself.
In Ning Hao's story, "people" are actually very small, and he himself has been well versed in this since he was a child.
Ning Hao, who picked up a paintbrush at the age of ten, painted dreams since he was a child, and after graduating from secondary school, he was assigned to the Taiyuan Repertory Theatre as an artist. Fate dropped the first absurd joke on the head.
Later, Ning Hao drifted north with the 2,000 yuan given by his father, and learned photography with his roommate who rented a basement together, and his childhood dream found a new opening-film and television. Finally, Ning Hao learned to draw movie posters at the School of Art of Beijing Normal University.
At the end of the 90s, the poster was still hand-painted, and "painting a poster is actually a magnified painting". After graduation, the first poster drawn by Ning Hao was Andy Lau. Within a few years, because of Andy Lau's investment, Ning Hao threw out a "Crazy Stone" that broke the record of Chinese film history, which was somewhat fatalistic.
Crazy Stone poster.
But back then, just after Andy Lau finished painting, a large printer was born, "In the future, everyone will use a large printer to color spray, and I will have no career." ”
Ning Hao was admitted to Beijing Film Academy again to learn "** photography". After two years of studying darkroom technology and post-production, when I graduated, digital photography was born and film was left behind.
Now that I finally became a director, everyone is filming Douyin again. I don't think the movie will have a long life. Ning Hao said with a smile, "I think what I'm doing is dying, don't you think this is ridiculous in itself?" I'll never be able to keep up with the changing times. ”
Ning Hao's first real film was "Incense" he wrote when he was 23 years old, and it was also the only film he has so far focused on his hometown of Shanxi Town.
Ning Hao's first movie "Incense".
It only took 15 days to shoot "Incense", and the actors were all Ning Hao's middle school classmates, and they didn't charge a penny. Later, after "Incense" won the Best Film Award at the Tokyo Ginza Film Festival, Ning Hao shared the prize money equally with the big guys.
Since then, a typical Ning Hao paradigm has begun to take shape: a small person, who wants to accomplish a simple little thing, but somehow has many difficulties, and finally has to become another self, or use some kind of self-alienation method to achieve the goal.
Soon after "Incense", Ning Hao met Andy Lau.
In 2006, Ning Hao was shortlisted for the "Asian Rising Star Guide Program" initiated by Andy Lau, with an investment of 3 million and a box office of more than 20 million. At that time, Andy Lau's only request to him was: "Shoot whatever you want".
Ten years later, Ning Hao founded the "Bad Monkey 72 Movie Project", which continued this sentence to young directors. The seeds grow into trees and continue to shade, "[young directors] need money the most," he said with a grin.
Starting from "Crazy Stone", Ning Hao has experienced a few years of rapid progress. "Crazy Racing", which grossed more than 100 million yuan three years later, "Heart Flower Road", which broke one billion eight years later, and then "Crazy Alien", which won a box office of 2.2 billion yuan in 2019, Ning Hao, who is good at skillfully integrating commercial comedy and realistic expression, has gradually become a Chinese director with a certain monumental significance.
Crazy Aliens" stills.
However, in the past ten years, Ning Hao has always found it difficult to find a suitable story to put Andy Lau in. Even if he wanted to. It wasn't until two years ago that I suddenly thought: "Andy Lau has acted in hundreds of films, what else has he not acted?" This question led to an inspiration: Andy Lau himself.
Stephen Lau in "Mr. Red Carpet", and finally a star cluster that integrates Andy Lau, Tony Leung, and Stephen Chow, experiences some subtle situations similar to people in reality, and even similar episodes that have appeared in the news.
But Ning Hao said that when he was writing the script, he didn't know those "realities" at all, "When you enter the reality of the drama, sometimes it is inevitable to bump into the reality of reality." "Art is a mirror of reality, but they don't have to learn from each other.
Mr. Red Carpet" stills.
Like his films, he chooses not to disclose and distinguish between the virtual and the real, so that the audience can understand for themselves. The boundary between truth and falsehood, the boundary between inside and outside the drama, is expressed in the form of carnival and juggling, which is absurdity.
But what's behind the absurd?
Ning Hao still insisted that there would be nothing after that, and when he saw the reality, he was "satisfied". But in reality, he certainly doesn't stop there. If a movie doesn't have what he really wants to say, he won't make it.
There should always be something soft and firm that has helped Ning Hao get to the present, helped his protagonist, and can always leave something that really has a sense of reality and "reality" after everything is dissolved.
Nowadays, the world of cinema is changing even more violently. "For example, cinemas".
In 2003, when Crazy Stone was released, there were only 3,000 screens in the country, and now it is close to 90,000, an expansion of 30 times. "It will force the film to change, and it will lead to a change in the way we choose the movie".
Ning Hao is not the kind of director who "even if there is only one audience watching the movie, I have to shoot it", "If there is a day when art is no longer needed, then it is not needed".
He believes that "man will not conquer the sky" and "fate must be greater than yours." ”
Ning Hao has talked about the story of the monkey on many occasions, "fighting to defeat the Buddha", making trouble in the Heavenly Palace, that is the monkey in the mythological story, giving people the illusion of changing their lives against the sky.
But the real life is the monkey trapped in a cage in Ning Hao's childhood memory.
Mr. Red Carpet" stills.
When Ning Hao was a child, there was a zoo downstairs at home, which was equivalent to today's "Wanda Plaza". For Ning Hao, the zoo is a small river and lake in his childhood. The children evaded tickets and climbed over the wall to get in, and several groups of children from different "forces" mingled outside the cage.
But Ning Hao was not interested in the huge "King of Ten Thousand Beasts" in the cage. Elephants, lions, and tigers are lifeless, disgraced, "unmanageable, and lacking in character or vitality."
The only exception is the monkeys.
Monkeys have emotions, personalities, and freedom, and even if they are locked in a cage, they look like they will always be unruly. However, it just looks.
Every time Ning Hao saw a monkey, it was there desperately shaking the tree, "I said that this stupid monkey was shaking the tree for others to see, and then I found that it was also shaking there when no one was looking, I said what is it doing, but I thought about it the other way, what can it do if it doesn't shake the tree, and it can't do anything, so it can only be locked in a cage and shake the tree." ”
At the beginning of the movie "No Man's Land", which was filmed in 2009 and released in 2013, Xu Zheng, who played the lawyer, told a story about monkeys with a narration: "The monkey wants to eat the peaches on the tree, but he wants to avoid being attacked by the tiger, so the two monkeys decide to cooperate, one goes up the tree to pick peaches, and the other sentry underground. So, the two monkeys became a group of monkeys, and finally the group of monkeys became a crowd. ”
No Man's Land" stills.
There are so many similarities between monkeys and humans, but only humans can use tools. People use not only tools, but also power and circumstance. Only human beings can sum up the inextricable intertwined relationship between emotion and reason, appearance and essence from experience.
Watching Ning Hao's films, it is especially difficult to ignore the relationship between people and the environment.
No Man's Land, where individuals break into a heterogeneous environment. The lawyer played by Xu Zheng is like a mistakenly fallen chess piece, placed in the northwest desert infinitely close to the jungle world, and the values of the urban elite have been impacted and challenged by that wild civilization, and even provoked, primitive and vigorous blood flows out, and the sun is like gunsmoke.
Crazy Aliens is a heterogeneous object that breaks into an environment. An alien monkey accidentally breaks into a circus zoo in Chongqing and is manipulated by the two protagonists to make money. Things from higher civilizations were fooled by lower civilizations, and gradually, the monkeys themselves became "crazy" and "made a big fuss in the heavenly palace" in the world of fools.
The director does not try to convey any values of truth, goodness and beauty, but the audience can always linger autonomously.
Crazy Aliens" stills.
Exploring the plight of people through the film and exploring the imbalance between the external environment and the inner self of the individual is something that Ning Hao will never get bored of. His protagonists' hands, which try to manipulate the world and change their fate, sometimes look like monkey jugglers.
Didn't Goku also surrender after he died? Zhao'an became a fight to defeat the Buddha. Speaking of monkeys, Ning Hao laughed, "There is a monkey in a cage, but you can only be kept in a cage for the rest of your life, right?" It's a very helpless situation. ”
is like the scene at the end of "Mr. Red Carpet", Andy Lau stepped on a balance bike and walked around the house, "Whether you are willing or not, life has to go on, you can only fight alone in this way." ”
At the end of the movie, the protagonist loses almost everything, the new film, the trophy, the love, the family, ......He was alone, on a skateboard, wandering around the empty office building. He had understood something that had been bothering him, and he began to look down and pay attention to his feet.
Mr. Red Carpet" stills.
But after that, he (Liu Weichi) may still encounter new problems and new troubles", unsurprisingly, Ning Hao pulled that sense of warmth and redemption back a little, and fell back to the unpredictable reality surface.
However, audiences who are familiar with him know that he will definitely leave enough compassion and comfort for his protagonist, and leave a little real idle pen in addition to the absurdity.
is like the desperate little monk in "Incense" who was arrested and sent to the Public Security Bureau, and met three merry women who were willing to support him; is like Pan Xiao, a lawyer who is delicate and self-interested but willing to sacrifice his life to save the dancer. is also like Xu Zheng, a pharmacist who first acted on profit and then acted on sentiment in "I Am Not the God of Medicine", which later helped Wen Muye become famous.
Ning Hao always can't help but pull his own hero, and he always can't help but have a hint of redemption and hope. can't let go of compassion and tenderness, so his humor is actually not so "black" and absurd.
After 2019, Ning Hao didn't make a feature film for some years. He once said in an interview, "It's not because I don't have time, it's not because I'm tired, but I don't think it's meaningful to shoot something, what to shoot?" There are not many commercial films in the world, and there is no shortage of commercial films. ”
The era of "madness" has passed, the world is moving towards order, and chaos is more individual and internal than the outward absurdity of times of social change. Therefore, Ning Hao Lao said, "absurdity is no longer my theme".
In 2022, Ning Hao will have a conversation with Xu Zhiyuan in "Thirteen Invitations", the director who has made a series of "crazy" works, but he shows a calm and relief in the show that exceeds many audiences' expectations. He denied that he was "fighting" against something, and instead chose the word "doubt", to remain skeptical is to remain independent, to keep himself.
Ning Hao was a guest on "Thirteen Invitations".
He said, "The absurd is still not the only thing that is really the most valuable, and the part that can touch the lifeblood of the world, I don't think it is necessarily." ”
Now Ning Hao talks less and is more peaceful. But he doesn't think this is the main change in himself, and the biggest change in the past ten years is still "fat".
He still doesn't have Weibo, he doesn't post much on Moments, and before he wants to "say anything", he should first figure out "what not to say".
Just like the support for young directors, as a producer, he rarely uses his own will to make suggestions on the content of the film, and the more common advice is to block, "This direction doesn't seem right, I want you to explore that direction", he may be a guide, not a driver.
The unruly "bad monkey" never left him. Ning Hao said that the young directors selected by "Bad Monkey" Pictures are a bit like "monkeys". To summarize their commonalities, Ning Hao mentioned two points: "they all have their own things they want to express", and "everyone still has a little bit of realism".
Even though the absurd characters are changing, starting from the essence of life that most people are familiar with, starting from the ontology of "people", it is still Ning Hao's inner persistence.
I can only choose what I can do, try to be as true to myself as I can, and do the projects I love. Ning Hao said that this is called "dodging left and right in the era of change, dodging left and right to maintain one's own direction." ”
Ning Hao in "Thirteen Invitations".
The monkey "has become more internalized, and now Ning Hao, who is also the bear and wolf who provides the backing, is a falcon with a vicious and precise eye, but overall, he has become more like a certain plant. Deeply rooted, looking into the distance, perceiving and blending into the environment while preventing oneself from being swallowed by the environment.
He did not shy away from using Lin Hao in "Mr. Red Carpet" to express himself, "The director also has his own obsessions." Ning Hao said, "He always thinks that I will go to the film festival and then win the award, right?" He always compares to Bong Joon-ho. I always think I'm a master, and I still learn French when I have nothing to do, and I'm quite second. He couldn't stop laughing.
There is a scene in the movie where director Lin Hao disdains to participate in the hustle and bustle when he is in the investor club, but stands alone and silently recites French words. The Cannes Film Festival is in France.
Ning Hao really carried it.
The picture in the article is ** on the Internet.
Author |Xiao Yao.
Edit |Wu Qing.
Typography |Toru Kazama.