[Jia Zhangke: Everyone can be a "romantic generation"]
After writing a column in the newspaper "The Amateur Film Era is Coming Again" in the last year of the last century, he transformed himself into a "person with a digital camera" in 2001 of the new century and began to "shoot freely", without any presets, and improvise movies. The shooting equipment is even more varied, including but not limited to DV, Arri 535 camera, 16mm film camera, 5D SLR camera, VR camera...
After 22 years of continuous filming, the accumulated footage reached 1,000 hours. Then, "The Romantic Generation" was released. Director Jia Zhangke set a 22-day release time for the film, just like performance art. In his view, this is a farewell gift to a period of time.
In 22 days, Jia Zhangke and his team visited 67 cinemas in 21 cities, attended 84 meet-and-greet sessions, and met and chatted with more than 21,700 audiences. In the end, 260,000 people went to the theater to watch the film, and the box office was 10.312 million yuan. "Thanks to the audience, art films have a lot to offer!" Jia Zhangke wrote on Weibo.
Jia Zhangke has shot more than 20 films so far. Yu Liwei, the cinematographer of the film "The Romantic Generation", said after the first cut of the film that "this form of film is a risky thing for the current market and audience", but almost every film Jia Zhangke shoots is a risk. Taking risks is also experimentation, and Jia Zhangke is not afraid of it. As early as when he was in school, he established a "Youth Film Experimental Group".
What should a movie look like?
At the beginning of the century, Jia Zhangke had just turned 30, and he enjoyed the carnival atmosphere very much. China joined the WTO, Beijing's bid for the Olympic Games was successful, and walking on the street, people were singing and dancing everywhere, young people were fearless in exploring the world, and strangers greeted each other. "In that atmosphere, I felt that I should make a film."
Most people think that a movie has to go through several stages from scratch: first the script, then the actors, then the set, and finally the editing. Jia Zhangke once described such a movie as: the water is surging, but in fact it is still flowing along the canal.
This time, Jia Zhangke wants to remove the canal and let the film flow naturally with the river. As for where it will flow, he and the water don’t know the direction. “I like the randomness and contingency captured by this kind of camera, which is to feel, shoot, and improvise some stories. Then after shooting, edit them into a movie.”
This bold idea is as incredible as an ignorant teenager who wants to make a movie after watching a movie. In 1990, the 20-year-old Jia Zhangke had the desire to make a movie after watching Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth. "I feel that it has greater inclusiveness and possibilities than any other form of expression I know: in addition to vision and hearing, there is also time."
This is also a wonderful encounter between the fifth generation and the sixth generation of directors. Chen Kaige was the director of the film Yellow Earth, and Zhang Yimou was the cameraman. The films they later directed, such as Farewell My Concubine and Red Sorghum, were a big hit at many international film festivals.
Recalling the days of filming Yellow Earth, many crew members were deeply impressed. In June 1984, when they were returning to Beijing after filming on the Yellow Earth Plateau, Zhang Yimou suddenly shouted "Stop the car". He jumped out of the car, took off his shoes and respectfully placed them in the middle of the road, saying, "It's not easy for you to follow me. Now that the filming is over, I'm leaving you here."
Chen Kaige once said: The big tree of the fifth generation of Chinese film directors will slowly lose its branches and leaves. Many years later, someone will ask, who are the fifth generation directors? In fact, we are just a group of children who have seen some great sufferings of society and people in our youth, experienced some small personal hardships, but still love our country and our culture. When the wind and clouds meet and the sky breaks, we are illuminated by the sunshine in the cracks of history...
Jia Zhangke, who was born in Fenyang, Shanxi, was also illuminated by a ray of light. In his impression, his hometown has strong sunshine every afternoon. Under the direct sunlight without any obstruction, the mountainous town is wrapped in warm colors. One day, Jia Zhangke's father watched the filming of a movie on site. The movie is called "Young People in Our Village", written by Shanxi writer Ma Feng and directed by director Su Li. It tells the story of a group of aspiring young people splitting mountains to divert water and build a hydroelectric power station. Jia Zhangke recalled: They didn't know that their busy work scene would make the young people watching silently next to them excited. When my father told me about this experience over and over again, he must not have thought that he had planted the gene of film in his son.
Jia Zhangke, who did not get a satisfactory result in the college entrance examination, stood at a crossroads in life. He learned to paint and write novels. Finally, he was struck by the light of the movie in his confusion, where he saw a familiar scene. Jia Zhangke was determined to make a movie, but he didn't know how far away he was from making a movie of his own. It was like the ridges of the loess land. You can shout at the top of the mountain, but you don't know how far you have to go to meet.
He has lived and worked in the countryside. In middle school, he was not doing his job properly. He painted screens for other people and signs for restaurants. He lived near the railway in the suburbs of the city. His neighbors included migrant workers, fruit vendors, and truck drivers... Following deep and shallow footprints, he walked towards the palace of film.
In 1993, Jia Zhangke was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy. At that time, the North Third Ring Road had not yet been repaired. He watched countless domestic films, but none of them could directly correspond to his inner experience. "I'd better make my own films." He returned to his hometown from Beijing to look for young people in small towns and counties.
Who is the romantic generation
Someone asked, have you ever imagined how long you will stop making movies? Jia Zhangke said: There are only two reasons, one is that you can no longer make movies, and the other is that you are tired of it. Just like any other industry, after working for a long time, some people don’t want to do it anymore and leave, while others love this career all their lives.
I accidentally entered an industry, fell in love with it, and tried to change it, or to make it more possible. Jia Zhangke started to shoot the "Hometown Trilogy", and many people resonated with it. There are many "Xiao Wu" in small counties in China, but no one has ever expressed them.
"There are too few films that truly record the changes of this era with an honest attitude." Jia Zhangke's films are so close to reality, real, direct, and rough. This stems from his pursuit: filmmaking must have a certain documentary quality.
Old songs, radio, television, mobile phones, dance halls, overnight stays with internet access, thermos bottles, tapes, magazines, and public telephone booths are the witnesses of the times in "The Romantic Generation", while small towns, the Three Gorges, mines, and performance venues are representative spaces. At the beginning of the film, a middle-aged woman singing in a small house with a coal stove in winter instantly takes the audience back to the beginning of this century through the time tunnel.
On December 14, 2024, Jia Zhangke's film "The Romantic Generation" was screened in Datong. A "little old man" with a cane and a staggering gait attracted everyone's attention. He wore a red hat and looked like he had suffered a serious illness. He only said two sentences throughout the whole event, and he burst into tears before he finished speaking. But at the beginning of the movie, the male protagonist was still a sunny and handsome young man more than 20 years ago, known as "Datong Leslie Cheung". The audience also saw the shadows of almost all of Jia Zhangke's films in this movie, and saw the mountains and rivers that have experienced ups and downs and still have warmth, and also saw that everyone is dreaming of creating their own maritime legend.
Jia Zhangke likes to use long shots, through the slow and meticulous "caressing" of the shots, the faces of ordinary people are presented one by one. If they were in real life, it would be almost impossible to see what is special about them, but when they appear on the big screen, the audience can look at them again and think about their value.
"This is an instinctive choice," Jia Zhangke said. "I grew up in a compound with seven or eight families, including workers, farmers, teachers, soldiers, and police. When I became a person with the opportunity to express myself and create works, this was a group of people that I found difficult to betray and leave."
Some people say that you can only discover your hometown when you leave it. Jia Zhangke left Fenyang and went to Taiyuan, Beijing, and overseas. The farther he was from his hometown, the clearer he saw it. He summed up a set of "differential writing" methods: write about his hometown when he is in Beijing, and write about Beijing and Shanghai when he is in his hometown.
Who are the romantic generation? Jia Zhangke explains the title of the film like this: the so-called "romantic" refers to a group of people who ride the waves, as well as a group of people who fall into the waves. In fact, those who, like Qiaoqiao, have experienced the wind and waves and still stand firm, are also the "romantic generation."
Everyone can be a romantic generation, and every individual's efforts are not in vain. Everyone's contribution is reflected in the presentation of history. "I want to use movies to face the unavoidable difficult moments that everyone has to go through, no matter what era."
When Jia Zhangke was young, he always liked to stand on the street and watch people. He said that those strangers running back and forth always give people an inexplicable feeling of warmth. Therefore, making documentaries became a natural choice for him. "The important thing is that every time I make a documentary, I feel that the justice and courage that are about to disappear in my body have returned to my body. This makes me feel that every life is full of dignity, including my own."
There is no end to the hometown photos
In "Mountains May Depart", more than 10 years after leaving his hometown, Liangzi, who was seriously ill, returned to his hometown with his wife and children, waiting for the last moment of his life to stop; "Brother Bin", who suffered a stroke and hemiplegia in "Ash Is Purest White" and "A Generation of Romantic People", also returned to his hometown.
Jia Zhangke said that his film focuses on people who have suffered setbacks in life. Basically, they have a unified action trajectory, which is to return to their hometowns. This is also the current situation of many people in reality. "When they decide to return to their hometowns with the memory of wandering, it is not just what Guo Bin said in "The Romantic Generation" that 'home is still good, at least there is an apartment', but also family affection, human feelings, and a familiar lifestyle."
Jia Zhangke was born in Fenyang, Shanxi Province in May 1970. His father was a Chinese teacher and his mother worked as a salesperson in a store of the County Sugar, Tobacco and Wine Company. He also had an older sister who was six years older than him.
Jia Zhangke has always called himself a Fenyang boy and cherishes his personal experience here. In his hometown, Jia Zhangke first felt the simplicity and beauty that came from the grassroots and was passed down from generation to generation. When he was a child, his parents were busy with work and were often not at home, so he and his sister went to find the "wet nurse" in the same courtyard, learned paper cutting from her, listened to the wet nurse tell the story of "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", and ate from the same pot with the wet nurse's family when he was hungry.
In his hometown, Jia Zhangke spent a "chaotic and restless" youth. In his impression, Fenyang is not a big city, and it takes less than 5 minutes to ride a bicycle from east to west and from south to north. He used to ride a bicycle all day in the small county town, going around in circles, not knowing the direction. He stole a cigarette and leaned against someone's back wall to watch the wind whirring the wires, danced breakdance in a dance troupe, watched movies in a video hall, and ran wild on the street with friends.
In his hometown, Jia Zhangke had the idea of recording the changes of the times. After Jia Zhangke was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy, he went home for the Spring Festival one year. Many of his childhood classmates and friends came to his home to visit and chat. He saw that the transformation of society was bringing various profound and specific impacts to the lives of the grassroots people in this small county.
A reporter once asked him whether he felt pressure or inferiority after coming to Beijing from the remote Luliang Mountains to work in the film industry. Jia Zhangke said, "When you carry the 5,000-year history of the mountains and rivers in your heart, you do have a sense of security and can walk with confidence."
Jia Zhangke gave an example, saying that Shanxi is the hometown of Guan Gong. In Shanxi culture, "emotion" and "righteousness" are sometimes separated. "Emotion" is the foundation, and "righteousness" is commitment and responsibility. As time goes by, people become strangers and emotions tend to fade. The spirit of "righteousness" will still be used to deal with interpersonal relationships. "I miss the affection and righteousness I felt in my past life in Shanxi very much."
Thus, "Platform", "Mountains May Depart", "Ash Is Purest White"... Fenyang, Shanxi has become an important aesthetic scene in Jia Zhangke's films.
“You can never finish filming your hometown.” Jia Zhangke said firmly, “No matter where the director shoots, he is actually filming his hometown.”
Echoing the classics
"We are watching a movie, and the people in the movie are watching us," said Jia Zhangke.
Movies are like novels. How they start and how they end, where there is inspiration and where there is a stroke of genius, can all be seen. For example, when Xiao Wu was handcuffed to a roadside electric pole, more and more people came to watch the excitement. This was an improvisation rather than a preset ending. The same ending, Shen Tao dancing alone in the snow in "Mountains May Depart", left the audience with many sighs...
In addition to the lack of plot and the travel-style shooting, "The Romantic Generation" is a "speechless" generation. The heroine does not say a word in the whole film. This kind of creativity is not forced or preset. Jia Zhangke felt that language was redundant during the editing process. "Women are complicated. If she speaks out a knot, she is a knot. If she is silent, she has thousands of knots."
Jia Zhangke once said, "I care a lot about the relationship with classics." He added Jin Opera elements to the film, but he also admitted that he thought it was very noisy when he was a child and didn't recognize the ancient sounds in it. Only later did he hear the sadness and humiliation of those ancient sounds. The earliest inspiration for "The Romantic Generation" came from the Soviet filmmaker Vertov's film "The Man with the Movie Camera"; the process of making "Xiao Wu" was inspired by the Italian film "The Bicycle Thief"; the use of long shots reminds people of "The Factory Gate" when the film was born 130 years ago. The inventors of the film, the Lumière brothers, set up a camera outside the factory gate to record the workers walking out of the door after get off work, riding bicycles, walking, a natural and simple scene.
What is a classic? A writer can say that a classic book is one that you read again as if you were reading it for the first time, and the first time you read it, it feels like you are reading a book you have read before. The same is true for movies.
[Interview: Responding to doubts about the new film, talking about history, hometown and AI]
The main audience of "The Romantic Generation" is the "post-00s"
Grass Weekly: Are there any memorable scenes during the release of the movie "The Young and the Restless"?
Jia Zhangke: The release of "The Romantic Generation" is the most roadshow I have ever done in the domestic film market since I started acting. I have traveled all over the country. One of the most profound impressions is that the main audience is still young people. I have always been worried that the age of the global moviegoers is growing, but in fact, if there are good content, programs, and movies, and the director is willing to promote them, young people will still respond positively. This film started shooting in 2001, and the story spans 22 years. At the beginning, we were worried that only people who came after would like this film. The "post-60s", "post-70s", and "post-80s" would be the main audience of this film, but so far, the main audience of this film is the "post-00s", which is quite unexpected.
Another thing that left a deep impression on me was that everyone recalled themselves through a movie, including the impact of the country's development path on individuals, which involved a lot of common memories. Many viewers were not asking, but expressing. In Datong, an audience member talked about his understanding of the "romantic generation". He believed that "flow" was a verb, because he settled in Datong from Inner Mongolia, and he wanted to find an ideal residence. He called himself a wanderer. We have a lot of common memories of the mobility brought by society, the changes in fate brought by mobility, and the vitality of mobility itself. Many people left their hometowns, or moved from rural areas to cities, or from inland areas to coastal areas, or moved in the opposite direction, looking for a better life. This was very touching.
Grass Weekly: The heroine Zhao Tao in "A Generation of Romantics" did not speak throughout the whole film, and only shouted at the very end. What was the director's intention?
Jia Zhangke: Qiaoqiao only sang one song and shouted at the end of the film. This was a method used in early silent films to deal with this role, although the entire film was in sound. There were two considerations: one was that I always felt that the film should not be too melodramatic at the beginning, because if it was a traditional feature film with a strong plot, we would not have to shoot for more than 20 years, accompanying the changes in our lives, including the growth of the actors, who acted from their 20s to middle age, with changes in their appearance and the changes in their surrounding lives, spanning the Internet era and the artificial intelligence era. Since so much was recorded, the focus of this film was to follow the male and female protagonists on a journey through the ages.
Another thing is the resilience of the Chinese people, especially the resilience of Chinese women. The ordinary people I care about, no matter how many twists and turns they go through, how many unknown situations they experience, their vitality is tenacious. This kind of resilience means living bravely, meeting challenges, and understanding and digesting everything by yourself. Just like the heroine, who experienced emotional setbacks, on the one hand, she felt lonely and seemed to have nowhere to tell, and on the other hand, she finally joined the torrent of night running and kept moving forward. This is the spirit of the times.
Grass Weekly: A quarter of the new century has passed, and you have made many documentaries. How do you understand the concepts of time and history?
Jia Zhangke: In the early days, the film medium had the function of broadening horizons. Countries were called "ambassadors in iron boxes". When I was making films, it was already the era of satellite TV, and this function seemed to have disappeared. But movies can leave our inherent life trajectory and see how other people live, or what another reality is.
When I took the camera into an industrial city like Datong, I still had a strong sense of being detached. Whether in Beijing or Fenyang, there are no such dense mining areas, industrial facilities, and millions of industrial workers. Such urban atmosphere and group living conditions are still relatively unfamiliar. This film has the function of transcending regions and realities and focusing on them. For example, in 2001, in the old city of Datong, we shot footage of a water supply point, which was not edited into the film. Residents were queuing up to get water, paying a few cents to carry a load of water. At that time, such scenes could not be seen in big cities, but they could still be seen in Datong. Therefore, this inspired me that I cannot stick to my personal experience, but need to pay attention to and gaze at another reality.
People often ask me why I shot three films with long time spans in a row - "Mountains May Depart", "Ash Is Purest White" and "A Generation of Romantic People". On the one hand, it has to do with my age. When I shot "Mountains May Depart", I was in my 44s and 45s. I had just gained experience and was interested in putting people's fate in a long period of time and looking at different situations at different times. In the past, my films were all about temporary situations. After I had some experience, I was very interested in seeing how many secrets and different situations people would encounter over a longer period of time. I have to be true to my own way of looking at the world.
In addition, to some extent, it is also a fight against the fragmented reality. Human memory is fragmented, but how can we form a historical perspective and viewpoint through the fragments to form a whole? Life itself is also fragmented, but it can be processed and a holistic understanding and description can be completed within the timeline. Subconsciously, these three films are my fight against my fragmented personal understanding.
Watching this movie is like looking at a Picasso painting
Grass Weekly: There are some doubts about the evaluation of "The Greatest Show". What do you have to say to them?
Jia Zhangke: The doubts are mainly concentrated on two points. One is that the audience is not used to movies with weak plots. As long as the audience changes their viewing ideas and gets the key to open this movie, it is easy to immerse themselves in it. This is also one of the reasons why we have so many roadshows. This is not a threshold, but we need to help the audience change channels. Many audiences are very good at watching movies. One audience told me after watching it that watching this movie is like watching Picasso's paintings. If you have experience watching Picasso's paintings, it is easy to understand this movie. I said this is a movie with weak plots, and he disagreed. He also said that my movie story is too full, and our understanding of the story is too simple. Many points are stories, and we can make up stories in our minds. (Questions) are also concentrated on one point, which caught me off guard. Some viewers think that I am using some old materials to fool people. First of all, they do not understand the value of these images. It is not that there is any problem with taking out images taken more than 20 years ago. They are precious memories, not cleaning up the hard drive. (The materials) are rich in historical and aesthetic information. It's like if we get a bronze ware, would you think it is garbage? Of course not, it is a treasure. This is not just cleaning up the leftovers in the refrigerator. For me, this is a treasure that I have treasured for more than 20 years. As a historical image, many people don’t realize how precious it is. This statement made me laugh and cry, but it also reminded us that there is a lack in the understanding and dissemination of image culture. We say that we must protect historical memory, such as the temples in Shanxi, the Terracotta Warriors in Shaanxi, and the intangible cultural heritage. For more than a hundred years of historical memory, an important carrier is the image. It is priceless, it is a real historical moment, and it is a face that may be submerged by history. In addition to images, movies also have sounds. For example, today we have no knowledge of the sounds of the Tang and Song dynasties. We can’t feel them, and we can’t even imagine them. Images are richer carriers, and they have archaeological significance.
Grassland Weekly: Your films often feature ordinary people who have experienced many hardships. What kind of thinking is this?
Jia Zhangke: There are many group portraits in "The Romantic Generation", which are a bit like today's casual shots. The whole film uses many different photography methods, including fixed gazes and slow movements like caressing, which condense the emotions of the creators at the time. We used an emotional method to shoot a lot of faces that are easily forgotten in the long river of history, portraits of ordinary people, and recorded them as images. To some extent, they represent the requirements of the times. I believe that 100 years later, people will say that the filmmakers at that time paid so much attention to ordinary people. I think this is enough. It carries a humanistic spirit.
The film "In the Qing Dynasty" is a commercial film.
Grass Weekly: Will you try commercial films, or stick with your previous style?
Jia Zhangke: I don’t reject other styles of movies. I just made a 6-minute AI short film. Different stories are suitable for different types and methods. Maybe some themes will be suitable for commercial film methods in the future, but even if it is a commercial film, it will definitely continue my humanistic thinking and tell the story of the groups I care about. This will not change much. I am not a person who changes for the sake of change, but it is impossible for people to remain unchanged. When the times require you to change, when the new era mood needs to be expressed by commercial films, I will definitely not reject it. I am also a commercial film audience. I have been preparing "In the Qing Dynasty", which tells the awakening of the entire nation in the late Qing Dynasty. This is suitable for commercial film performance. It has to restore an era of the late Qing Dynasty, re-set the scene, and make costumes. It is a martial arts drama.
Grassland Weekly: Will the change in your current identity affect the way you observe society and your hometown?
Jia Zhangke: For filmmakers, where you come from and whether you are willing to belong to the place you come from are subjective choices, although the objective is always changing. I come from Fenyang, and I always call myself a Fenyang boy, because that is where my emotions are. I always think that I belong to such a place and region, and I can easily return to my life. But if you don't identify with the past and the place where you started, you can't go back. You have to have the ability to airdrop yourself into your past life and become a part of it. I think I have this ability. I always tell myself that you are the Jia Zhangke at No. 5 Luluba Street, Fenyang County, Shanxi Province.
Grassland Weekly: You have shot a trilogy on the theme of hometown. Have you finished shooting this theme?
Jia Zhangke: You can never finish filming your hometown. There is a secret. No matter whether it is a writer or a director, no matter where he shoots, he is actually filming his hometown. Hometown means the way we first know the world. No matter how far we go, the world described by our hometown is our ruler, and we take this ruler with us on the road. For example, when I go to New York to shoot a film, I go to Paris to shoot a film. In fact, I am using my hometown to measure another area, looking for the characteristics of that area, and at the same time locating and discovering my hometown. Even when you are shooting space, you are actually shooting your hometown, because when you encounter a new area, you still define it with the ruler given to you by your hometown. This ruler of hometown cannot be thrown away, so it is far from being finished, but it does not mean that you will always shoot movies with your hometown as the background, but what your hometown teaches you will always be carried with you.
The charm of real-life movies cannot be replaced by AI
Grass Weekly: You just talked about artificial intelligence. How much do you imagine future technology will change movies?
Jia Zhangke: It is difficult to judge it, but I think we can promote the change in the way we want. At present, the biggest challenge faced by the film industry is artificial intelligence. AI-generated scripts and posters are not subversive. What is subversive is the AI-generated images. The development speed of AI-generated images is calculated in months, and the progress is very fast. In this case, we actually have three possibilities: one is very optimistic, or our tools may make AI movies, which is different from live-action movies and animated movies. The second is completely pessimistic, and the traditional film industry is replaced by it. But I have always tended to be in the middle. The direction of technology is determined by the users. If the users bravely use it and create more application scenarios, it will develop in the direction you want. A more benign direction may be a new partner, just like our crew may have an additional director called AI director, and they can work together to complete the movie. This may be a better way. But more is actually difficult to predict. Is there a newer audio-visual method that poses a greater threat to the film? At present, there is a possibility.
But the charm of real-life movies cannot be replaced by AI. The trend of AI-generated images that more realistically restore reality is unstoppable, but one thing is that for filmmakers, there is one thing that cannot be replaced, which is the charm and joy of encountering life with a camera, just like "The Gentlemen". Maybe there are fewer screens, but there are still many people making movies. The charm and pleasure of movie life cannot be replaced. Let me stay in front of the computer for two or three months to make a movie, and let me hold a camera and enter life for two or three months, I will definitely choose the latter. There are many obstacles and possibilities, but I think embracing technology more can make it develop in the direction we like.
Grass Weekly: Will the concept of film change?
Jia Zhangke: The concept of film will not change. The current concept of film is to restore the material world through the medium of images. However, it is more difficult to predict the changes in terminals. For example, we are now more nostalgic for watching movies in groups, so movie theaters still exist. Even if the ticket sales are not good, even if three or five people watch a movie in a dark room, it is still a group viewing. If the ticket sales are good, one or two hundred people will watch it together. This kind of group viewing, the mutual infection of emotions is incomparable to other media, and there is a sense of ritual. Even scientists don’t know where the terminal will go. New terminals will appear, and the viewing mode of movies will change, but long live movies.
Grassland Weekly: You studied film theory and screenwriting at the Film Academy, and later became a director. What are your thoughts on the switching between words and images and the pros and cons of performance?
Jia Zhangke: Words and images, literature and movies are all irreplaceable. Words are abstract, and they awaken your imagination. Your imaginary world is idealized, abstract, and even indescribable in language, but movies are concrete. To some extent, a crisis that literature adapted into movies often faces is that it cannot meet the expectations of readers' imagination. The problem between abstract words and concrete images across media would not arise if the two did not cross media. For example, the image of Liang Shanbo, Liang Shanbo in your mind is always perfect, and turning it into an image will cause a sense of loss. But on the other hand, there is a real sense of film. As a language, there is a saying that film is "the end of language", and it can also express things that language is unable to express.
