He once said: "Being a thoughtful filmmaker is what I hope to do, and I have been doing it."
On July 3, according to Hong Kong media reports, Luo Qirui, a famous Hong Kong director and screenwriter, passed away on the 2nd at the age of 69. It is reported that Luo Qirui suffered a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital.

Luo Qirui

Another Hong Kong director of the same generation, Wang Jing, who seems to have taken a completely different film path, posted a heart-wrenching sigh on Weibo—so talented, so handsome, I always feel that he can do more, The world is impermanent, and it is time for our generation to leave one by one. Goodbye.

Hong Kong director Wang Jing's Weibo commemorates Luo Qirui

Luo Qirui is a representative of the "New Wave" of Hong Kong movies, a witness to "The Thief of the Years", and the author of a series of Hong Kong movies with a humanistic temperament. There are not many works directed by him, but almost all of them are the favorites to win awards that year. His movie box office is not high, but he has worked with countless big stars, and even Jackie Chan asked him to write a love story about his parents. He is an elite academy who graduated from the film department of New York University, but his works always maintain the local characteristics and feelings of Hong Kong films. People seem to be so lively and lively and have a long aftertaste.
"The Thief of Time" Autobiographical Film Documents Changes in Hong Kong
The movie that Luo Qirui is most familiar with is of course "The Thief of the Years". In fact, this film, which was only released in 2010, is Luo Qirui's "Original Intention". He once revealed that when he just graduated from college, the first movie script he wrote was this. But at that time, the investor heard that he was telling the story of his own brother, and Luo Qirui had just returned from studying abroad and was unknown. So out of the expediency of establishing a foothold in the industry, he and his wife Zhang Wanting first filmed the story of a family class. This film called "Seven Little Fortunes" was released in 1988 and won the 25th place for him and Zhang Wanting. It won the Golden Horse Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

"Seven Little Fortunes" poster

It was not until after the 21st century that he and Zhang Wanting each voted for a story about memories. Luo Qirui's memory of his brother "overwhelmed" Zhang Wanting's memory of his mother, and this project had a chance to be photographed. At that time, Luo Qirui was already middle-aged, and his childhood reminiscences were a little more heavy.

"The Thief of the Years" poster

"The Thief of Time" uses children's eyes to see the world, tells the stories of ordinary people in Hong Kong in the way of children, and tells "little people" with real little people. That child is Luo Qirui himself.
In the movie, the warm picture of Luo Jinyi and Luo Jin two brothers lying in front of the radio listening to "I Want to Be Free" and humming along, moved many audiences. Luo Jinyi's prototype is Luo Qirui's brother. Luo Qirui and his brother have always had a good relationship. The unfortunate death of his brother's illness has a great impact on him. "I really believed what my grandmother said, 'As long as you fill the bitter sea with your most precious things, you can meet your relatives', and threw all the treasures that I 'stealed' from everywhere into the sea, but still nothing Seeing my brother." Luo Qirui once said in an interview about his disappointment in the face of the departure of his relatives.

"The Thief of the Years" set photo

Luo Qirui's choice of actors was unexpected at that time. Ren Dahua was a frequent guest in Hong Kong movies of police and gangster films, and Wu Junru was always the "laughing aunt", but Luo Qirui asked them to act in literary films. Later, he said, "I challenged the audience a little bit, and I also challenged myself a little bit. It happened that they all liked the script after reading the script and were willing to act, so I said, let's gamble together!" Although Ren Dahua has long been recognized as a Hong Kong A representative of powerful actors, "The Thief of the Years" is still his only award-winning work for the best actor at the Academy Awards.

Ren Dahua's Weibo to commemorate Luo Qirui

Ren Dahua was very sad when he heard the sad news of Luo Qirui's death. He said on Weibo: "It's really hard to accept that Mr. Luo Qirui is my teacher and a close family friend. He has left us. On the set of "The Thief of the Years", we ate bowl cakes together and focused on filming the shoe-shining scene together..."
Jumping away from Luo Qirui's personal memories, "The Thief of the Years" can be called the social and political history of Hong Kong from the perspective of the common people. The film tells the audience about the little-known Hong Kong past, not only the warm affection among relatives, neighbors, and classmates, but also the revelation of the evil spirits of the society at that time. The film is neither beautiful nor hideous. It reproduces the life of a bottom-level citizen who is both drifting and struggling in the changing times. Because it truly presents the various emotions of ordinary people, it has the quality of a civilian epic.

Stills of "The Thief of the Years"

And the other strength of this film for Hong Kong is that it really protected a neighborhood in Hong Kong from being demolished. When the film was filmed, it happened that the Hong Kong government wanted to demolish most of Wynn Street, leaving only three of them for protection. In order to make movies and to protect the memory of Hong Kong, Luo Qirui and the main creators at the time called for many times at the press conference, hoping to preserve this old street. In the end, because of the filming of "The Thief of the Years", Wynn Street, which was about to be demolished, was saved. The Hong Kong SAR government made a decision that Wynn Street has become a folk protection street in Hong Kong.
Unlike the outside world who regard the 4 awards at the Academy Awards, the Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and other honors as awards brought by this film to Luo Qirui, Luo Qirui's meaning of this film is just, "After the filming, I feel much more relaxed, like It is because the memories are placed in the grid in an orderly manner, and I am relieved."
The youth he grew up in is what he always misses later, "I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. So I miss this period very much. I think it was a very imaginative and very dynamic era in Hong Kong. If If you ask me, I think the 1960s was a very important era not only for Hong Kong, but also for the whole world. Every country and region started to develop and become active in this era. My puberty happened at this time, and I loved that experience, although it was a lot of sadness. Maybe because a lot of my firsts were in the 60s and 70s, and it made me cry and laugh , so to this day, I still miss it very much.”

Luo Qirui on the set of "The Thief of the Years"

unproductive intellectual filmmaker
After graduating from high school, Luo Qirui wanted to study film, but at that time there was no university in Hong Kong offering such a major. Luo Qirui had no choice but to study the literature related to it. After graduation, the movie dream still existed in his heart. Since his family could not afford the cost of his study abroad, Luo Qirui worked part-time to save money. He worked as a bank clerk and later in advertising, and at one point he did a decent job, but he still couldn't give up his movie dream. Eventually, he was admitted to the film department of New York University, where his dream began. It was also in college that he met the most important partner in his career and life, Zhang Wanting. They later co-created and completed films that have always been emotionally moving, such as "A Fairy Tale in Autumn", "City of Glass", "Eight Liang Jin", "Song Dynasty" and "The Story of Three Cities".

Luo Qirui and Zhang Wanting

In an interview with The Paper, the two talked about their cooperation. For decades, they have maintained the same enthusiasm as when they were shooting homework in college. The excessive tacit understanding has long been difficult to distinguish each other, and the division of labor is not so clear." Producer, screenwriter, director, take turns", but more often, Luo Qirui prefers the work of screenwriter. In the film circle of director-centric theory, Zhang Wanting, who has won the Best Director Award several times, is more famous than Luo Qirui, who is a screenwriter.
"We are soul mates, and we only need to say a few words, and the other person can fully understand each other's meaning. The taste in seeing things and the pursuit of life goals are also the same, which is the most important point. For example, if he is A guy who makes a lot of money making three movies a year, and it takes me ten years to make one movie. If we have very different goals in life and movies, we can't be together. We have been making important life decisions for so many years. It's the same. Of course, he also brought me a 'free script'." Zhang Wanting commented on her golden partner at the time.

"Autumn Fairy Tale" poster

Since the 1980s, the rise of the "new wave" that Luo Qirui, Zhang Wanting and others were in brought Hong Kong movies into a new stage. The veteran Shaw Brothers is showing a slight decline, Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan's kung fu comedy has opened a new chapter, the competition between Golden Harvest and Xinyicheng has become fierce, Li Xiuxian's Universal Pictures focuses on the themes of criminal police and gangsters, and Tsui Hark's film studio plays ancient costume fantasy The banner of heroic blood, the white-collar comedy of Eryou Film Company founded by Zhang Jianting and Chen You, Luo Qirui was the backbone of it, and also a touch of color in the golden age of Hong Kong cinema at that time.
In their works, the dialogue is in-depth, the script structure is rigorous, and the characters are prominent. They fully comply with the creation mode of Western classic comedies. Although they mock human nature, they are limited to warm criticism. "One House and Two Wives", "One Wife and Two Husbands" and "The Wife Killing 2" written by Luo Qirui are all light comedies showing the delicate relationship between husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend, and "urban love" has gradually formed a genre. In the field of more academic research, Luo Qirui's script style is fresh and indifferent, often bringing out sentimentality, and the core of the script is often the changes in the identities of male and female lovers, the gap and the heart that can never be forgotten.
But at the same time, Luo Qirui is obviously not satisfied with this. In terms of male and female love and family affection, he can be a good screenwriter with ease, but he still has greater creative ambitions.

"Song Dynasty" stills

Luo Qirui's "Song Dynasty" and "City of Glass" created in the late 1990s tried to use an epic pattern to interpret the influence of the times on personal destiny.
Before writing the script of "Song Dynasty", he read more than 200 related books before starting to write, because he "doesn't want to distort history, let alone write a script that doesn't even feel emotional about himself." The three sisters of the Song family, played by Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh and Wu Junmei, entered a grand history from an emotional point of view, and major historical events showed rare delicacy and affection in Luo Qirui's writings.
In 2001's "Beijing Music and Road", it talked about the conflicts faced by three young people with completely different cultural and life backgrounds. With the early "Illegal Immigration", "Autumn Fairy Tale" and "Eight Liang Jin" and other "immigrant trilogy", it is like an intertextual writing about cultural conflict. It seems that Luo Qirui's creations never escape from such creative motifs. "Because I grew up in a place with a lot of cultural conflict. Hong Kong was a part of China, then it became a British colony, and then it became part of China. It's half-Chinese, half-Western background and by The resulting conflict is an attraction for me."
He cooperated with almost all the mainstream big stars in Hong Kong, but he did not drown in the floating light of the Hong Kong film circle. He did not want to squeeze into the lively film circle, nor did he want to live in the city of Hong Kong, because there "needs to raise his head to 90" Angle, you can see a small piece of blue sky in the high-rise buildings." Luo Qirui lives in the outer suburbs, only to create with peace of mind.

"Three Cities" poster

The last time Luo Qirui's film met the audience was "A Tale of Three Cities" in 2015. Zhang Wanting and Luo Qirui have been preparing for this film for 3 years, investing 90 million yuan, with Liu Qingyun and Tang Wei as the starring roles, but the box office failed miserably, and only 12 million yuan was received. On the eve of the film's release, director Zhang Wanting and producer Luo Qirui were interviewed. They talked about investment difficulties and thanked the box office and word-of-mouth of the previous film "The Thief of the Years" for the "credit" they brought them. At the same time, they also firmly believed that "Three Cities" conveyed 's lasting love beliefs can impress today's young people. They even revealed to reporters excitedly that if "A Tale of Three Cities" is realized, the next drama "The History of Blood and Tears of Chinese Workers", which they have dreamed of for more than ten years, will also be put on the agenda. However, the final result was less than satisfactory.
Luo Qirui once said in an interview that he actually prefers to be a director than to be a screenwriter, but he often thinks too much and cannot start shooting. "I actually don't like screenwriting the most, because being a screenwriter is a very lonely job, and the process of starting from nothing is too painful. As a director, I like the feeling: everything in my heart slowly appears in front of my eyes. That's the feeling of wanting to become a god. Because the director's job is like a god, something that doesn't exist before, and turns it into a presence. This feeling also often makes me feel pain, because what comes out is not what I originally intended The perfection in it, or seeing this self-created thing eventually become a paradox uncontrollably, I feel like an incompetent god."
After the success of "The Thief of the Years", it is not that there are no projects to find him, but he always wants to make the part of the movie he wants to make the most. In his view, the genre of Hong Kong movies has become less and less, and it is difficult to find like-minded collaborators. "Some people have passed away, and some people have made things that make me feel like they are wasting their talents and making money. In fact, there are a lot of Chinese audiences, and a movie only needs to be watched by 5% of the audience. You can relax the restrictions and let Filmmakers can make thoughtful films.”
In recent years, although no film works have been released, he is sometimes seen in the list of mentors of some film festival youth support programs. He once said when talking about advice to young filmmakers: "You have to ask yourself do you really love this industry, if you say I love it, it's not enough, you say I love it very, very much, and I am willing to give up things will do.”
In "The Thief of the Years", Luo Qirui wrote a classic line, "People live a lifetime, they must believe in something, so that they can go one step at a time, and go all the way." practiced.