"We didn't want "American Girl" for three years, and no day was dedicated to a movie," choked on stage as she won the Golden Horse Award for Best New Director at the 58th Golden Horse Awards. Turning the hard days of her life into a movie, recalling the experience of anti-immigrantism, she responds with a phrase from Tagore's poetry collection: "The furthest way is the nearest way", which has made her miserable days and ultimately brought her closer to herself.
"American Girl" takes 2003 Taiwan as the background of time and space, tells the heroine Fang Yi because of her mother's cancer, without warning must pull up the roots grown in the United States, back to the culture, environment, identity have brought her a huge impact on Taiwan, unable to adapt to the anger and helplessness, born a fire, in Fangyi and mother smouldering.
At that time, Taiwan was not Fang Yi's home, her heart has a symbol of freedom in the Oregon field, galloping white horse in the wilderness running, that moment the world is still, in addition to the present, other no longer important. "American Girl" with the white horse as Fang Yi's thoughts of home, the desire for freedom, when Fangyi finally arrived at the stables, found the white horse, the reins and tears in her eyes revealed - that is never to return to the hometown.
The "American Girl" story prototype comes from the life experience of director Yu Fengyi, who says that filming the story is, to some extent, like rewriting the past in memory, in order to move forward.
Do you know Mom loves you?
Thinking about the theme of the First Minister's film, She tried many subjects, but always wrote, put and felt uninteresting, until she began to write her own family story, found that she could always write it down.
"Reconciliation is a word used by many people, but I will feel that true reconciliation is reconciliation with myself. "
Thought that has been put down in the past, in the end of the United States to study, move back to the new shop to live with his mother, it seems that the dead ash and fire, "together with the quarrel, think, wow!" There's no reconciliation yet! The anger in my heart came up and I felt that I had not really put it down. The mind says to put down, but can our heart really go there? Did you deceive yourself?
How do I put it down? What the hell was going on? What was mother thinking? Where did my anger come from? With questions, Yu Fengyi embarked on the creation of "American Girl" road, "as a screenwriter to look back at that time, in order to write each character three-dimensional, need a lot of transposition thinking, can not find excuses for any role." If I were writing an autobiographical novel, probably no one would challenge me, put it in a movie, and the actor would do it, and he would break the casserole and ask him the answer he wanted. Then I have to ask myself: Why write this?
So Yin Fengyi began to talk with her parents about the story of the immigrant's return to Taiwan, interviewing his parents' family, friends, and even pulling her mother together for psychological counseling. Vacuum in 2003 emotions and confusion, as dialogue began to flow, if you understand a person's native family, you will be more receptive to why he is so. My mother's blood relatives are not in Taiwan, my grandmother died before I was born, I am very strange to my mother's native family, she is like a vacuum role, why do you think she is like this? Why do you have these habits? This is not reasonable. Until you meet your mother's sister and they do the same thing, you'll feel like that!'
"What I've learned is that it's important to be neutral, that is, not to judge. Some viewers will say that the family feels sharp, but I'm writing these things either with sharpness, and I want to be neutral, that's, he said this to me, and I've done it before, and I don't think about it, whether it's good or bad. If I judge the character at the script stage, I deprive the audience of the opportunity to experience the character.
Time gives Yu Fengyi a far-reaching perspective, so that she can think about the role from the creator, third party perspective to say this sentence, do this behind the motivation, try to understand the process of the role, but also let her closer to the time of their own and family.
True reconciliation is reconciliation with yourself.
Looking back to get the heartache and the same reason, Yin Fengyi through the role to say. In one scene, sister Fang'an says to her sister Fangyi, who quarreled with her mother, "Do you know that mother loves you very much?" For Yin Fengyi, Fang'an's role projects the most original look before Fangyi experiences frustration and anger - the soft, warm parts.
In the final analysis, behind the tit-for-tat quarrel, the background is still endless love for the family.
(Extended reading:"Lonely Taste" film review: first with their own reconciliation, before the real usher in the end)
The furthest road is the nearest
Having experienced immigration and anti-immigrantism, There is a need for more in Fengyi's life course to re-root and return to the original state, and now to see the situation of life like that, she responded with a sentence from Tagore's poem collection: "The furthest road is the nearest road."
"Starting from scratch can lead to a lot of frustration, and when you get used to or accept that life is about facing a lot of situations where you have to start over, you're not so afraid to start over. Or will not feel so afraid of failure, because the big deal is like this, did not try, but more regret. When frustrated by zero, there will be a reason in the long run, and I believe in fate.
Like filming "American Girl", those seem to be around the long way, feel pain in the course of life, in fact, to bring themselves closer to life, closer to their own center of the only way.
Creation, she laughs, is a very sly thing, "a lot of the reasons why a lot of creators are driven to create is because you have a lot of pain, you want to express it, it has a lot to do with self-expression." I feel that if I want to mature, I need 'without me', the more I can see things more thoroughly. can be more focused on the spirit of the play than on his form. "
There is a scene in the film, playing the father of Zhuang Kaixun alone in the stairwell crying, let the audience see his father's tears in the family's perseverance and commitment. Yin Fengyi is also growing up and creating the process, away from the childhood "I", to the viewer's point of view to understand the father, understand that as a man, the father said not much, but always with action to express the introverted love.
"In our culture, it's hard to say love you, mom and dad always do too much and talk too little, especially Dad. I think growing up is about seeing what he's done. Because after the hour will be very concerned about what the parents said, in fact, his love in many actions. Everyone receives love in different ways, and we often behave in an ineconsequed way, forming a parallel universe with two lines like this (hands drawn in the air). It takes understanding to cross slowly.
In "American Girl", in addition to telling the character's confusion about identity, the fear of death and loss also runs through the film. Having experienced death and loss in the sense, but also let Yin Fengyi on the ups and downs of life, "I feel that there is no eternal success, there is no eternal failure, everything is the process." I will also become quite live in the present, we have only now, do what they want to do is very, very important, can not wait until then, because there may not be that 'time', this is death and disease, very early gift to me! In a different form, let me cherish the time I have more.
Because it's still a minority, I'm standing here
"American Girl" filmed the story of the female life of a girl and her mother after 90 years, and early on, She Fengyi mentioned in an interview, "The biggest motivation for me to get into this business is to tell more women's stories, Chinese stories, Chinese people have many identities, not just immigrants."
The reason why it is important to record women's stories, in the words of Yu Fengyi, is that the wonderful stories that happen to women are too incomparable to the proportion of works that become works, so she wrote, she shot, "If there are a lot of people filming, it becomes mainstream, I think it's great, then I will do something else." Isn't there a famous saying? Murakami said: 'Between the tall hard wall and the egg, I will always stand on the egg side. ' Because it is still a minority, so I choose to stand here, but also because of the realization that the power of life itself comes from this weakness. Life begins with a fragile beginning, and that's precious.
As a global cultural medium, the film has become a part of popular life, but also let The power of the next generation to see women's stories in movies, "you will feel as if the story put into the film is important, this matter is important enough to be written into a book, made into a film!" You've been educating the next generation, equality and equal rights, and he's going to see it most directly, and you're going to see it first. I think movies are the most direct force you can see.
Yin Fengyi also said that in this era, a lot of things become slogans, slogans can be shouted at any time, but in the end did, saw what is more important to her, "do what she longs for change, become part of the change."
She pondered for a moment and came up with an intriguing point of view, "Chinese teacher told us before that he said that when one era goes back to the key words of another, scholars will find that matter particularly important in their analysis because it (keywords) repeat itself." But the teacher told us, in fact, often this key word is not something.
"Because what we want is something that is not there." Because if there is, you won't keep talking. So I think it's also possible to think, so we're so active in saying we want equal rights, so what's actually? Can equal rights have more detail?
In the contemporary approach to equality and equal rights, Yin Fengyi chose to stand on the minority side, film the story of a woman's life, in her way, become part of the change.
After loss, we can still love life
At the end of the visit, She also shared a recent film that had a deep impact on her, "Drunk Hour", by Danish director Thomas Vantenberg, about four middle-aged Danish uncles who live a miserable life and embark on an alcohol program to test the claim that "the human body lacks 0.05% alcohol".
"Look at it and think, this is life. This is a director's love of life. It's great to see something so overlapping in form and content, to see its spirit. Well, I really see, I don't usually want to drink, but look at it and think, what about the bottle of wine in the fridge? Drunk while watching, feel so happy!"
She added that she thought the film showed her the ultimate in a creator, "the director's daughter died unexpectedly before filming started, and then people advised him to stop filming, there was a character that was supposed to be his daughter to play, but he felt that the daughter should want him to finish the film." I think that's the will of a creator, even if we think it's hard to make a movie, it's hard to do anything, but he puts the pain of bereavement in his work, and after this loss, he can still love life. And he is not the slogan pompously said: love life! It's the real one that took you there.
This time for "American Girl", Yu Fengyi won the 58th Golden Horse Award for Best New Director, she choked on stage and said, "Thank you for all the fate of this movie." Those hard days, because they were made into movies, so with the export of these three years, we don't have a day not want to "American Girl", not a day is not dedicated to the film. Turn the hardest days of her life into movies, and you may be able to see in her the tender backbone of the creator, who, even after experiencing the pain of fear of losing a loved one and the loss of self-identification, performs in her own way - after the loss, we can still find an outlet to move forward and still love life.