Zhang Yimou is a famous director. His personal impression is that he is simple, low-key, and good at grand narrative scenes. His movie pictures are very beautiful, and his storytelling ability is average. Therefore, he has many bad movies and has been complained about on the Internet.

As a director who is a photographer, that’s understandable.

You see, such an ordinary audience can also point fingers at great directors based on various news from the media, and seems to have a sense of superiority that is nothing more than this.

I read the book "Zhang Yimou's Homework" because I got an introduction from the author of the book, Fang Xi, who mentioned several of Zhang Yimou's characteristics: He pushed himself dry and squeezed all the hard work out of him; Pragmatic in making tools, stable and outstanding continuous performance, and indifferent to never explain to the media.

I became interested, so I found this book and read it. It has more than 200 pages and not much content. It is actually a collection of Zhang Yimou’s photography works, or a memoir of his photography works. This book is narrated by Zhang Yimou. , compiled and written by Fang Xi.

After reading the whole book, I have several thoughts: First, Zhang Yimou’s diligence really confirms the sentence: People who are better than you work harder than you. Second, Zhang Yimou is really a very, very good person. A pragmatic person.

1 Zhang Yimou’s Diligence

Zhang Yimou only attended the second grade of junior high school and left school under the tide of that era. In 1971, he was fortunate enough to go from being an educated youth to work in a cotton spinning factory. Worker. The restless Zhang Yimou wants to learn photography, but how to learn it?

He borrowed books from his cousin and classmates. He read and copied the borrowed books. Even at that time, he couldn't understand many books, so he just copied them first. In this way, it took three years to copy hundreds of thousands of words.

I copied books for three years and used the money I saved to buy a camera. I worked hard to apply the theoretical knowledge learned in the books into practice. Because photo paper is very expensive, I have to think about every photo. It will take a long time to release the film. I kept shooting like this for two years before I took some good photos.

Zhang Yimou said: "So I probably had this creative mentality very early on. Failure is common and perfection is unobtainable. If you fail all the time, you are no longer afraid of failure." - A thin-skinned officer is prone to failure, but a thick-skinned officer is prone to failure. Those who have practiced it know that it is not easy and know how to work hard. If they fail, they can only say, "Look at the next one, maybe the next one will be better."

Even after he went to college, every time he watched a movie, Zhang Yimou would carry a stack of medical information cards given to him by his mother, hold a pen, and record the composition, lighting, etc. while watching the movie. After watching a movie, write down dozens of cards.

At that time, a college student in the film school would watch more than 500 movies throughout college. In this way, Zhang Yimou watched all the movies in this stupid way.

This kind of diligence is not only in school, but also in his future career as a film director. Zhang Yimou is the person who can endure the most on set.

In fact, looking at his experience, he is a talented person, but in the process of cooperating with Tuanchi, he proposed new ideas one second and overturned them completely the next second. Just like that, Continuous innovation and constant denial, everyone is exhausted, but Zhang Yimou can still continue energetically.

Chen Danqing said: He is usually funny and fun, but when he works he has a vicious face. When he talked about a certain scene during the filming of the movie, he immediately entered the studio state, and a fierce expression returned to his face. It was an expression of struggle with something, which was intimidating.

2. Zhang Yimou’s pragmatism

His pragmatism may stem from his upbringing. At that time, his background was not good. His father and brother were all born in the Huangpu Military Academy. , the uncle also went to Taiwan with the Kuomintang.

So when he was working in the factory, whenever there was a power outage or special occasion, the factory would organize study sessions. At the beginning, party members, league members, and party activists would be notified to stay, while others would leave. Every time, it was Zhang Yimou. Leave alone. Later, it was changed to directly inform Zhang Yimou to leave.

This special status allows Zhang Yimou to always behave with his tail between his legs in the group.

After entering college, he was greatly impacted by his classmates and Beijing. He was ten years older than his classmates and felt old and rustic. His classmates were all descendants of cultural circles. Arita Zhuangzhuang and Chen Kaige both have extraordinary conversational skills. Zhang Yimou felt that he had too much to catch up with.

So when he was assigned to the Guangxi Film Factory, which was the worst at the time, after graduation, everyone else was aggrieved. Zhang Yimou didn’t have any ideas, because for him, he could go to college and be assigned after graduation. , is already very lucky.

After entering the Guangxi Film Factory, they made their first film "One and Eight". This film is called the pioneering film of the fifth generation of directors. Although the film did not pass censorship at that time, It caused a great sensation in the literary and artistic circles at that time.

But in fact, they were not the ones to choose this script at that time. There was such a script in the factory, and the boss liked it very much, but no one was filming it, so they, a few freshly graduated college students, asked for this task.

"It doesn't mean that you have the conditions and qualifications to pick something from the beginning. If there is a position, take it quickly. Do it with your heart first, and then chop out three axes for others to see." Zhang Yimou said.

This pragmatic attitude also reflects his understanding of his own tools. He said that the so-called instrumentalization is to quickly make yourself a tool at the beginning of any difficult situation. You need to know what the organizer wants and how to become a useful role in this matter. For example, a designer should conscientiously realize the living needs of the owners, instead of thinking about tearing down and rebuilding other people's houses every day.

As Fang Xi said, we always think that the word "tool" insults human creativity. Even if you believe in Shakespeare's words that human beings are "the essence of heaven and earth, the primates of all things", you believe that dignity comes from human free will and independent personality. But when you do things, you will find that you have to deeply understand the needs of the environment, the organization, and others again and again, and creatively meet these needs, so that you can gain external forces to break the cocoon of insight and ability again and again.

3. Zhang Yimou’s lack of explanation

The convenience of the Internet now gives everyone the opportunity to speak out online and let others see your thoughts and opinions.

Nowadays, the public seems to be very familiar with the operation of criticizing celebrities. After a celebrity incident occurs, it is often a test of the public relations capabilities of the celebrity and the team. Everyone will observe the celebrity or How the team responds.

For Zhang Yimou, every movie and every major event has a lot of bad reviews. He never lacks channels and opportunities to express himself. However, Zhang Yimou seems to have been criticized and criticized again and again, and it seems that Zhang Yimou has never come out to explain anything. This is very different from the entertainment stars we are familiar with now. He said: Explanation may be the most instinctive reaction of people after being wronged. Everyone has grievances, but grievances, like luck, cannot be copied. Now I see a lot of celebrities explaining carefully on Weibo, and I feel so troubled for them. These things are meaningful to you, and they may not be positive. The public actually doesn’t care. ”

He has more important things to do, to move on and let his works speak for itself. Rather than staying in place to explain, staying in place to explain is, in his opinion, rolling around in the mud.

This is a very wise understanding. Indeed, as soon as you start to explain, you will be stuck in the hard wall of time and you will not be able to move forward. Very slow. At the same time, your response has become the target of a new round of attacks.

After reading "Zhang Yimou's Homework", you have a sense of intimacy with Zhang Yimou, because you discovered the so-called genius. , but I am more diligent than you, more focused than you, and continue to work hard silently after experiencing more failures than you, while hoping that the next time may be better.