Feng Xiaogang: "I'm particularly interested in offending the audience"

The trailer and concept poster for Feng Xiaogang's new film "I Am Not Pan Jinlian" caused a huge amount of controversy when it was released, and more than anything else, it was because of one of the director's comments. "I am particularly interested in the matter of offending the audience." This is very much in line with director Feng's character, especially after starring in "Old Man". Some people might want to grab this quote and take it to the top, especially since the internet has been so unsettled lately. As a joke, director Feng didn't earn his title as the king of Chinese New Year movies by offending his audience.

The rounded cover frame certainly goes against the audience's aesthetic habits, but it's important to understand that the frame has not always been what we're familiar with, but it's always changing, and no matter how much it changes, it's ultimately there to serve the movie.

What we commonly refer to as picture size is actually called "aspect ratio," and before the advent of the widescreen, the ratio was generally 1.33:1, but after the 1950s, a variety of ratios began to appear. Nowadays, there are two types of aspect ratios for movies, 1.85:1 for standard screens and 2.35:1 for widescreen.

How did you achieve the circular frame in I Am Not Panjinlian? It's a cover-up. Usually the specs of a movie are wide and flat, but sometimes the director deliberately chooses to cover it up for artistic effect. Feng's practice is not original, it first appeared in the era of silent movies, and was called "circling in and circling out". Truffaut used it in Wild Child to show the jungle children's nervousness about civilization, but only in moderation. Unlike Feng, who did it for the entire movie.

Feng isn't the only one who has changed the frame in his movies in recent years. Jia Zhangke's "The Story of a Mountain" and Hou Hsiao-hsien's "The Assassin of Nie Yinniang" have all "offended" audiences.

In order to reflect the sense of the times, "The Story of the Mountain and the River" uses three different frames for the three eras: 4:3, 16:9, and 2.35:1.

The choice of the circular frame for "I Am Not Pan Jinlian" is not a show-off, but more of an artistic pursuit. As for why it was chosen, the director knows best, so let's take a guess.

First of all, it is voyeuristic imagery, in a short film "tuner" in a line: "What kind of environment are we living in ah, either a voyeur or an exhibitionist!". . Hitchcock, the master of suspense, used scenic frames to represent windows in many of his movies to satisfy the audience's desire for voyeurism. Because it's voyeurism, we have the feeling of being on the outside, watching the farce from a cold perspective.

Secondly, there is the irony of "peace and harmony", the idea that everyone is looking for stability, but she, alone, is trying to upset the balance. The circle actually suggests stability, closure and femininity. But no matter how hard she tries, she is still inside the circle, blocked off and at the mercy of others.

Let's briefly analyze the composition of the movie.

In this scene, the man is in the center of the frame, and Li Xuelian is squeezed to the lower left edge, and the power relationship is well understood. The area where the man is located occupies almost the entire space, in an encircling position. The man's back is to the camera, and there is a sense of isolation from the viewer, a refusal to communicate the implications of compromise.

The circular frame, which already has a sense of enclosed suffocation, has an additional car glass, showing Li Xuelian's predicament at this point; she's not just trapped in the car, she's trapped in this endless quagmire as well.

The road of petitioning, Li Xuelian has been walking, spring, summer, fall and winter, but like this round frame, she can never go out, even if she goes out and will come back, people want to see the world outside the frame, but for her the world in front of a dark.

What kind of world is sad, a world that makes clean people dirty, she seeks justice all the way to say that she is not "Pan Jinlian", but all the way down the road she completely became Pan Jinlian. In the scene above, after the pleasure, the windows are spaced horizontally and vertically like the bars of a prison, and the character is placed underneath the prison, as if there is a heavy weight pressing down from above. Maybe she is also wondering which is better, the inside or the outside world. In fact, whether inside or outside, she was never the dominant one.