Why do domestic suspense films like to shoot in Chongqing?

“China Gotham” Film and Television Illustrated Book

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “NOWNESS Now” (ID: NOWNESS_OFFICIAL ) , author: Effy, editing, layout: Thea.

Jianghu movies in rivers and lakes cities

Following the breath, Chongqing is always foggy and dusty.

Wet air and flies in the hot pot in the restaurantBoiling The hot air is choking together, and the bustling market The air was overflowing.

More than ten years ago, Ning Hao, who was fledgling for the first time, wandered here. He made a decisive opportunity to prepare a new work in Chongqing, and a “rock” (“Crazy Stone”) was stirred up to stir up waves. Since then, the vigorous and funny Southwestern Mandarin has become fashionable, and various film and television crews such as suspense, crime, and black humor have flocked to Chongqing. Chongqing has been named “China Gotham”.

©️Movie “Crazy Stone” 2006

Ning Hao once lamented that “Chongqing is difficult to be formatted.” The symbolic label “Gotham” has rapidly narrowed the aura of Chongqing. Fog can be more than layerIt is scattered and scattered, with continuous rain and rain. Its three-dimensionality is hidden in the dense urban streets and alleys, and it extends in the small closed counties such as Wushan and Fengjie.

Gotham LabyrinthDrawing Jianghu

Chongqing has a peculiar topography, with mountains and ridges The valleys are arranged alternately. The tall buildings had to be built unevenly on the hillside, intertwined with winding embankments and ramps, and row upon row of chic stilted buildings.

This city is a contradiction between the new and the old. New buildings are eroding the old space that needs to be eliminated by planning.The new order continues to expand, controlling the disorderly old city.

©️ Movie “Crazy Stone” 2006

The ending song of “Crazy Stone” yelled, “There are no more bridges, less fog and less rain. Watching cars pass by the road on the roof.” This does not include the light rail that whizzes through the buildings. ! If it’s the Yangtze River CablewayPassengers on the cable car dropped a can of Coke without quality, and they might hit the small broken car on the flat ground. The frightened driver immediately cursed, “Hey, you died in the cable car!”

©️The popular youth drama “The Sky of the Wind Dog” is also shot in Chongqing

“Hot Pot Heroes” photographed this dizzying three-dimensional mountain city, with many coincidences staggering across the sky, in a The multi-dimensional space is deep into dense story lines. This is not the way that “the stupid thing of the League of Stupid Thieves stealing the real and fake emeralds” became popular in the past. The air-raid shelter hot pot restaurant can dig a tunnel to the bank vault, so it is logical that the bank robbers and the debt-collecting creditors went wrong.

©️Movie “Hot Pot Hero” 2016

Shelvinghere the audience can believe in the frustration of the little boss of the hot pot restaurant, and can also become a hero who sees justice. There is also “The Beneficiary” that is directly tailored for Chongqing, which still focuses on the themes of black humor.

©️Movie “The Beneficiary” 2019

Except for the hot summer rose, Chongqing has always accumulated a gloomy and gloomy year for the rest of the year, with a sense of brokenness and hazy sadness in itself.

Zeng Guoxiang chose Chongqing’s architectural shell and undulating labyrinth atmosphere, and went to landmarks to brew the youth of the weak on the margins of “Youth in Youth”. Xiaobei and Chen Nian climbed up from the quagmire of life, and they had to bend around the rugged mountain road to pray for powerless destiny to open a skylight.

©️Movie “Youth of a Youth” 2019

And “Sunshine Chongqing” does not obscure the region of Chongqing, but deliberately avoids the use of dialects. On the contrary, it makes the journey of salvation of father and son’s dilemma less humane and wastes the unique temperament of Chongqing.

©️Movie “Rizhao Chongqing” 2010

Chongqing was the protagonist of the story at times, and sometimes faded into the narrative, but “The Silent Truth” launched a “three-line parallel” justice pursuit here. Director Chen Yifu said: “We need to find three time and space scenes in one city at the same time, and the length is more than 300. Chongqing is our best choice.”

Chongqing’s old and mottled surrounding county towns were used to create a young and vigorous life in Jiangyang in the late 1990s, and the crew also abandoned popular scenes such as Hongyadong and Ciqikou to create a more convincing three-stage time and space . This successful attempt made Chongqing not limited to acting as the protagonist or background board, making it possible for a richer cross-generation story.

©️TV series “The Silent Truth” 2020

Wushan YunyuXunfeng Festival

A series of well-known suspense film and television dramas have left Chongqing with the brand of “China Gotham”, which is a bit rigid. In fact, Chongqing is the mainstay of the heavy industry in the southwest region, and the magical wonders of the main urban area are only a certain aspect of it. What a different author may find in Chongqing is another scene.

Yuan Zhen once marveled at the clouds of Wushan where the clouds steamed Xiawei, and wrote a good line saying “Once the sea was difficult for water, but Wushan is not a cloud”. Wushan, located in the east of Chongqing, is known as the “gateway to the northeast of Chongqing”. Zhang Ming, the sixth-generation director from Wushan, has repeatedly focused on this, filming the Wushan trilogy “Wushan Yunyu”, “Secret Words Seventeen Hours” and “Their Names Are Red”.

©️Movie “Wushan Yunyu” 1996

Zhang Ming’s exploration of Wushan’s sentiment is the same as Fenyang’s to Jia Zhangke. He is eager to record the state of anxiety, change and aphasia of the county people under the impact of the times by showing the flooding and changes of Wushan, the county seat of the Three Gorges Project. The documentary “The Spring of Wushan” is poetic, melancholy and sticky, and it also deeply cares about the passing of time in this country.

Jia Zhangke, who is also the sixth generation, also recorded Fengjie, another county town in Chongqing that was about to be annihilated by the Three Gorges Project. He originally went to the Three Gorges Reservoir Area to shoot the documentary film “East” for the artist Liu Xiaodong. During this period, he decided to Italy The drama “The Good Man in Three Gorges”. The starting point of the story is a county that is more than two thousand years old and will be demolished in two years.

©️Movie “The Good Man in Three Gorges” 2006

Han Sanming came here to look for his wife and daughter for thousands of miles, and Shen Hong also looked for her husband who had not returned for two years. Jia Zhangke was also looking for the foundation that was about to be crushed and swallowed under the booming dam. Those who end up walking the tightrope are the fate of all the wandering people here.

Mahjong hot potDrink leisure tea

How many people in Chongqing love to play mahjong? Ask Liu Bo of “Hot Pot Heroes”, he doesn’t make money from investing in the bomb shelter hot pot restaurantThe money is enough. Why don’t you worry about the store day and night and give it to the brothers? Play majiang. Liu Bo took the risk and misappropriated the cash in the bank’s vault. His first idea was still to play mahjong to win the foreign debt. Liu Bo must believe that he can stand tall on the hemp altar.

Leave aside the counter-examples of good gamblers like Liu Bo who owe debts, take a look at the dim traffic teahouse in “Crazy Stone”. The streets and alleys are not full of grandpa and auntAssemble the game to rub hemp. The aunt has been trained for many years and has superb skills and can observe all directions. She touched the mahjong in her hand, and looked around. She unexpectedly saw the man in underwear looking through the hotel balcony. Contemptuously teased “Rogue!” and played the card.

Playing mahjong is probably a common meal for people in Chongqing. There are games to save. If you don’t pay attention to the place, the four people sitting around will start to lively. Others always admire the Chongqing people who are so idle.

In addition to playing mahjong, which is good, what else can Chongqing people do? gossip. The so-called “positioning the dragon gate array” is to talk about the world, make a pot of chrysanthemum tea, choose the traffic teahouse, 4 yuan per person. There are yellow and broken walls, smoky black ceiling fans, square tables and long benches that have been polished over the years, and surrounded by white-haired old men with their pipes in their mouths, playing poker, chess, and Go. The days just wandered by.

The land of Bashu, which is rich in tea, has also created a hot pot of rivers and lakes due to the prevailing dock culture, and Chongqing hot pot came into being. Three or two friends have a few glasses of wine, dipped in a saucer of oil and feasted on it. In “The Silent Truth”, Pingkang Sanjie is eating hot pot while admiring each other, and becoming the best friends of life.

Chongqing people can talk about business even with hot pot. The two policemen of “You are a teenager” ate and deal with the case, and when there is a disagreement, only food can tell the truth. “Hot Pot Heroes” is more distinctive, the Dongzi hot pot restaurant is in a sluggish business, and the old classmates almost went their separate ways. In the end, it was a hot pot meal on the rooftop to renew brotherhood.

The hot pot can carry a lot, it can melt into the eclectic passion and blood, and it can also bring the restrained tenderness to the wine table.

Staring at Chongqing with images is often coated with a subtle romantic or spectacle imagination. The Chongqing framed in the lens is thick, magical, depressed, or dilapidated.

Kevin Lynch once said in “Urban Intentions”, “We can’t just think of a city as something that exists in itself, but should understand it as a city felt by its citizens.” The hidden urban texture and real life experience can only be captured from a more private and multidimensional perspective.

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Gotham LabyrinthDrawing Jianghu

Wushan YunyuXunfeng Festival

Mahjong hot potDrink leisure tea