Film Name: 长安三万里 / Chang An
Those of you who have been mocking Chasing Light Animation’s “all picture, no story” should be careful, as Chasing Light is holding back a “super move” with Chang An, which I’m sure will wow the world. The movie is 168 minutes long, which is a bit anti-human for an animated movie, but not too long for a historical biographical prose poem, and maybe not even long enough.
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In today’s environment, “Chang An” is really a bit “out of time”: it is too traditional, too simple, and seems to be one-dimensional, and the viewing experience is not easy and pleasant, but it has a “long time not mentioned but never disappeared” heavy Breath, this spirit is enough to cross time and space, passed to the heart of the country after a thousand years. The ambition, romance, realization, and sentiment are valuable assets unique to our land.
{Friendly note: Spoilers below}
The story of Chang An is set in the aftermath of the An Shi Rebellion, when Gao Shi, the Tang provincial governor, is fighting an unfavorable battle against the Tubo army, and when confronted by the supervisor, Eunuch Cheng, Gao Shi reminisces about his lifelong relationship with Li Bai. The movie has historical archetypes and contains a lot of historical facts, but it will not (and cannot) restore 100% of the history – because this is a pan-biographical prose poem that borrows from people to express their feelings, and it only needs to grasp some important traits in the characters to dig deeper and amplify them, and then it will be able to achieve a wonderful article, similar to Lu Xun’s comment on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, when he said “I want to show Liu Bei’s long and thick and seemingly false, like Zhuge Liang’s wisdom and near demon”.
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Chang An” in order to highlight Li Bai’s dashing, impetuous and arbitrary, so that Li Bai more a stream of greasy and pompous, in order to highlight Gao Shi’s thick, simple and down-to-earth, but also make Gao Shi more three mute and stupid. If Li Bai and Gao Shi were to be told in a serious documentary, such a treatment would be a disaster. …… But as an animation that “pines for the characters,” Chang An plays this hand boldly and effectively. Personally, I like Gao Shi as the protagonist of the movie very, very much, to put it in a larger sense, his life happened to be a complete experience of the two periods of time, the reign of the Emperor and the An Shi Rebellion, and to put it in a smaller sense, with the gaze of the “mediocre Gao Shi,” he was more able to see the immortal, the mortal, the elegant and the commoner in his eyes and in his heart. Moreover, Gao Shi’s growth experience in the movie can also be used as a “life cultivation guide” for the majority of ordinary people:
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When he was young, he was full of ambition, hoping to rely on his own efforts to revitalize the family, but repeatedly encountered walls in Chang’an; always feel that the talent is not met, until he met Cui XII in Yangzhou, who is better than himself in terms of birth, talent, and martial arts, and the other party in the political balance and the limitations of the body of the daughter, can only be indulged in sexual intercourse, and it is not surprising that he could not come out of the woodwork by relying on his own passion and ambition; return home to concentrate on reading and practicing martial arts, but it is also a little bit of closed-door work, and it is only after he has experienced Border consumption of blood and courage, did not build an inch of success, he wrote “half dead warriors before the army, the beauty of the tent is still singing and dancing”; save Li Bai and Guo Ziyi set up a ten-year contract, and so long as people to the middle age is still “nothing”, resigned to go to Goshu Han’s office to be a clerk, and so on! After the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, it was only after the unprecedented career that …… Gao Shi’s life is worth talking about, not after 50 years of success, but before his constant introspection and self-criticism. In contrast, Li Bai’s role in Chang An is much more fragmented, but no matter whether it’s a triumph or a disappointment, those fragments constitute Li Bai’s “highlight moments”.
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That’s why I like the movie to adopt Gao Shi’s perspective to see Li Bai: because Li Bai’s real life is not complete, he is a dashing and uninhibited great poet, but also pretends to be the world’s stupid official fan, can not be changed, “naïve and childish” achievements of him, but also limited him to death. …… Gao Shi’s calm and steady vision, so that Li Bai’s body of the immortal fell to the ground. Li Bai is far from being the whole of Gao Shi’s life, but Li Bai and other talented people’s dusty past and beautiful poems are the important part of Gao Shi’s life. Take Gao Shi and Li Bai’s “three visits to the Yellow Crane Tower” as an example. The first time the two just met not long ago, are white body of them, the future has similar expectations, but at that time Li Bai to Cui Hao wrote “sunset where is the countryside? Smoke and waves on the river make people sad” can not put pen to paper, a speechless Gao Shi also acquiesced in the bystanders taunted. The second time is the two hurriedly waved goodbye to Meng Haoran, Li Bai on “whether to go to be a son-in-law” has an answer, he wrote down the “lonely sails far away from the end of the blue sky, only to see the Yangtze River flowing in the sky”, but also lost the trace of his friend, leaving only a large He also lost sight of his friend, leaving only a big “No”.
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The third time the two did not really climb the Yellow Crane Tower, but rather a false reference to revisit a former place, at this time Gao Shi was a key official in the fight to pacify the King of Yong, Li Bai was a prisoner who stood on the wrong side of the line and suffered from a lot of snickers, they did not meet, but in the broken walls on their own more ups and downs of the trajectory. From Gao Shi’s “pro-people” perspective, we are able to see how the poet’s life was both tumultuous and brilliant (and how these experiences often worked for him). With a good friend, wrote “silver saddle shining white horse, soughing like a shooting star”; lost the Hanlin, wrote “can break the eyebrow and bend the waist to the power and nobility, so that I can not be happy face! ; get free, wrote “the sound of apes on both sides of the crowing, light boat has passed ten thousand mountains” …… In the past, I talk about the work of Chasing Light Animation, are the first from the picture to talk about, “Chang An” is obviously the story of the characters accounted for a large part of the story, but this does not mean that its visual performance But that doesn’t mean that the visual presentation is any less noteworthy – on the contrary, the movie is going to be a critically acclaimed classic scene. That’s right, it’s the “Wine” scene, where the real is transformed into the virtual, and the virtual is transformed back into the real. 06
At first, this is just Li Bai and a few friends after drinking poetry, “life must be happy, do not make the golden bottle empty to the moon”, then, there will be a drunkenness toward the nature of the spill, Li Bai pulled Du Fu, they broke the water riding a crane, rocking up 90,000 miles, over the waterfalls, the Milky Way, and then to the heavenly palace, and a group of gods and goddesses, and exchange of cups, “ancient sages are lonely, but the drinker to stay famous”, and then “with you to eliminate all the sorrows of the past”, then realize that the dream is waking up, and back into the dream. “All the sages were lonely, but only the drinkers kept their names, and when they “shared the sorrows of the past”, they realized that they had just woken up from a dream and went back to the dream. Under Mr. Xuan Xiaoming’s interpretation, the audio-visual effect of this section is even more upgraded… It can be said that, just based on this song “Will Enter the Wine”, “Chang An” is already worth it. Bringing the focus back to Gao Shi, and figuring out Gao Shi’s status as the main character in the movie, as well as his relationship with Li Bai, the main idea of “Chang An” also comes to light. “Gao’s gun, not for dancing, only to kill the enemy”; ‘I’m a clumsy man, not as talented as Li Bai and Wang Wei, but I still have the martial arts in me’; “You’re an exiled immortal, going back to heaven, I’m a man of the world, in the world I am a man of the world, hovering in the world.”…… These lines combined with the battles taking place in the main timeline, a character who constantly recognizes himself, positively learns to live with himself, and who is open-minded and down-to-earth, is established.
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The flashbacks and direct narrative of Chang An achieve a high degree of unity: Gao Shi’s strategy of deceiving the Tubo army and breaking their back is consistent with Li Bai’s thinking of deceiving his rivals when he taught himself sumo wrestling, and the fact that he ceded the credit to Yan Wu afterward, and kept quiet about his secret assistance to Li Bai, adds another dimension to his usual “honest” persona. The cunning of “hiding clumsiness” realizes the sublimation of “no sharpness of the sword, no great ingenuity”. No matter how true or false the portrayal of Gao Shi’s low regard for merit and fame and his lack of interest in wealth is at the end of the movie, the movie has completed the construction of his character – he is a chivalrous warrior and a Confucian general, with the spirit of the traditional Chinese scholars and Confucianism (and even the official mindset is revealed), and he is not destined to be the most talented and dazzling son of heaven, but the most talented son of heaven. He is not destined to be the most talented and dazzling son of heaven in history, but the ideal shore that is relatively easy for the most ordinary people to reach. Of course, in order to appreciate and like “Chang An”, you still have to have some compulsory education experience and family sentiment, otherwise, as far as an animated film is concerned, the audience can easily be suffocated, and the film is a bit too “honest” in its narrative choices, and puts all the material to the full, especially in the middle section, which does have the flavor of dragging and running out of the topic, as if the old man was reading a book, and then he was just reading a book. It’s like an old man reading a book, long and boring, the following students must be easy to desert …… but I can’t help “Chang An” is really a good book ah, as long as you read into it, it will definitely let you shout wonderful.
My favorite poster for Chang An is this one: the prosperous and magnificent Chang An is far in the distance, near it is Li Bai and a large group of other poets, who are looking away from Chang An drinking wine and making fugues, and then nearer is Gao Shi alone, looking at Chang An in the distance and the poets in front of him, and each of us in the audience nowadays, we can see Chang An, Li Bai, Gao Shi, and we can also look inward and see ourselves here. “As long as the poem is there and the book is there, Chang’an is there.” Chang’an is real and concrete, but also ethereal, the words, phrases, sentences and texts passed down in history together construct the blood and spirit of our nation, they are a heavy burden, but also a priceless treasure. You and I have a “Chang’an” in our hearts, and why should this “Chang’an” be just “Chang’an”?
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