CineVue: Jia Zhangke’s A TOUCH OF SIN is probably one of the most anticipated and discussed Chinese film in 2013. CineVue’s contributing editor Lesley Yiping Qin had the opportunity to interview director Jia Zhangke and actress Zhao Tao. We talked about the consistency and evolution in Jia’s “gallery” of characters, his emphasis on fictionalization and imagination to approach the truth, and his turn of direction to genres. To learn more about the film, you can also check out the ChinaFile blog for a comprehensive interview on the film and read the passionate New York Times review.
A TOUCH OF SIN opens Oct 4, 2013 at IFC and Lincoln Plaza Cinema.
Film Synopsis:
An angry miner revolts against the corruption of his village leaders; a migrant worker at home for the New Year discovers the infinite possibilities of a firearm can offer; a pretty receptionist at a sauna is pushed to the limit when a rich client assults here; a young factory worker goes from job to job trying to improve his lot in life. Four people, four different provinces. A reflection on contemporary China: that of an economic giant slowly being eroded by violence.
Director’s Note:
“These four (death) incidents are well-known to people throughout China. They happened in Shanxi, Chongqing, Hubei and Guangdong – that is, from the north to the south, spanning much of the country.
I wanted to use these news reports to build a comprehensive portrait of life in contemporary China. … Violence is increasing. It’s clear that resorting to violence is the quickest and most direct way that the weak can try to restore their lost dignity. For reasons I can’t fully explain, these four individuals and the incidents they were involved in remind me of King Hu’s martial arts films. I’ve drawn on inspiration from the martial arts genre to construct these present-day narratives.”
– Excerpts from Kino Lorber Inc’s presskit.
LOOK BACK IN ANGER – INTERVIEW WITH JIA ZHANGKE AND ZHAO TAO ON A TOUCH OF SIN
CineVue: A TOUCH OF SIN revisits a lot of locations and characters of your previous works, from your hometown Shanxi to the coastal regions as appear in USELESS (2007); the discontent of Dahai makes him a more vocal version of Xiao Wu; Sanming travels from Shanxi to the Three Gorges; Xiaohui and Lianrong in the fourth story seem to have walked out of UNKNOWN PLEASURES (2002) to the assembly line in USELESS and the backstage of THE WORLD (2004). There are several layers in this revisiting that I like about: first is that there is a consistency in your works – in fact, in XIAO SHAN GOING HOME (1995), your first short film, there are scenes of street violence and chun yun, the Spring Festival travel season; the second is that, to me, the self-referencing and reinventing is a way of self-expression amidst the existential crisis. Probably it is because in the first story, the scene of the horse being whipped strikes me as an allusion to Nietzsche’s insanity. And Nietsche in his Ecce Hommo revisits his body of works. This whole idea of revisiting intrigues me. Would you like to talk about your intention, if any, behind it?
Jia Zhangke: I have a gallery of the characters that I like, and I deliberately let them reemerge in my films. Sometimes they will be playing different roles, sometimes the same. They all drift in my films. So characters like Sanming in STILL LIFE (2006), including the other coalminers, have reappeared in this film. I care much about the wholeness of my works. To use my own time markers, my first film is PLATFORM (2000), because that is the story about the decade from 1979 to 1989. My second film is XIAO WU/PICKPOCKET (1997), set in the 90s. Sanming in these two films — in the 80s he becomes a coalminer, in STILL LIFE in 2006, we find out that he has bought a wife (CV: and his daughter has gone to Dongguan, Guangdong, where the fourth story happens), yes his daughter has gone to Dongguan. The essential migration of crowds and incidents in China has not changed too much in the past decades. Ten years ago, people were already migrating from the inland to Dongguan. It is the same now. But life is changing, the problems they are faced with are changing too. We are still old acquaintances, but the world has changed, so have the people around us. The time for Xiao Wu is the time for bee pagers. The time of A TOUCH OF SIN has become that of weibo (Chinese twitter).
CV: But now you expose your characters in the gallery to the extreme scenarios and let them react in violent ways. This is not without your own intense thinking on the violent incidents in recent years.
JZ: The geographical locations of these incidents have an inherent connection. Shanxi is my hometown. Chongqing in the Southwest is somewhere I have shot a lot. Hubei might be the only new place for me. Guangdong has appeared in my past work too. This is the same land, the same people residing in it —— the feelings in the films are still mine, China is still the China (where I have shot films in), I am still what I am, but suddenly we are confronted with some unbelievably extreme incidents in our lives. That made me want to explore what went wrong.
CV: You have always emphasized the importance of fictionalization in your work, be it reviving your own memories in PLATFORM (you mentioned it was not because you had a good memory to tell the stories so vividly, but that you were able to imagine), or imbuing the documentary with performativity or stagedness, or imagining the logic of action and real-life conditions as well as the interpersonal relationships in A TOUCH OF SIN. However the outcome unwaveringly points to the truth. Where does your confidence to imagine come from?
JZ: The truth is not presented in front us so blatantly. The truth comes to us through the feelings and the understanding of one person towards another. Only this way we can grasp the truth. Truth or truthfulness does not lay bare in the life. You have to possess a certain degree of sensibility so as to straighten out the logic of emotion and disclose the buried truth. So it is only with the artist’s ability to imagine based on the understanding of the character, that we can convey, by the means of fictionalization, what we feel about the truth and truthfulness. So the purpose of arts is not to fictionalize. The purpose of arts is to understand life and nature of life. But there are two paths to achieve such understanding —— one is through non-fiction, the other is fiction. Non-fiction can of course directly present something, but in other cases, such as how violence is bred in the mundane life, why a rule-abiding person would become a gunner, it is impossible for us to document the exact process of how violence is bred. The process can only be grasped when we imagine it as a whole, when we delve into imagining the influences of and frustration in the character’s interpersonal relations. Of course the ends are the same. I’ve always believed that fictionalization and truthfulness (in documenting) are the two paths to the truth, with the same end. In Chinese aesthetics we say “truth, kindness, beauty”. That is to endorse the means of aestheticization to enter the truth.
CV: Here is a personal question or comment. In an interview that I liked a lot, you said that there was a scene in your memory that you would never transplant into your film. You said it would only be kept in your memory. It was one day at dusk you saw the military security flares being shot right into the sky. You were thoroughly shocked. So I was also shocked when I saw the story of San’er, when San’er takes a gunshot at the sky. I thought I saw a very personal aspect in this particular story —— or in other words, maybe San’er, played by Wang Baoqiang, is a personification of your ideals, in terms of how fluidly he moves, and the fact that he probably has more control over his fate than other characters. When creating this character, did you try to inject in him something personal?
JZ:（Laughs.) This should be subconscious. Maybe. (Maybe) Making a film is like burglary. It is inevitable, since I had control over the writing.
CV: In your films, the continual appearance of Wang Hongwei and Zhao Tao seems to have brought the continuity of time off the screen into the story. Yet it looks like to me that the development of Wang Hongwei’s appearance is linear, from the disfranchised Xiao Wu to the abuser in this film, while Zhao Tao is multi-faced. They are like the signposts of time in your films.
JZ: They do have had different roles throughout my films. Zhao Tao plays a diverse spectrum of characters, from a performer in the local dance and music troupe, to the amateur model in UNKOWN PLEAURES, to the nurse tracking down her husband in STILL LIFE. Wang Hongwei has played different roles too. He is not always playing Xiao Wu. Compared to them, Sanming is a permanent presence. He has only one identity in my films, that is Sanming. In PLATFORM, he is young, right about to start to work in the coalmine; in THE WORLD, he goes to Beijing to take care of things for his deceased fellow; STILL LIFE is his own story, in which he tries to find his wife in Fengjie. At the end of STILL LIFE, he leads the coalminers back to Shanxi to work. At the beginning of A TOUCH OF SIN, he and his colleagues are going back to the Three Gorges for the Chinese New Year. He is an everyman, with one permanent identity. Perhaps the only thing that has never changed in my films is that Sanming keeps appearing. As for Zhao Tao and Wang Hongwei, they are always with the same faces, but I have been experimenting with them by letting them playing different characters in different situations and stages of life. Or another way to explain it is that, for example, Zhao Tao represents the multiple possibilities of a character. Maybe a young girl in the local music and dance troupe will at some point get mired in the marital crisis in STILL LIFE, and then this woman will possibly migrate to work in a sauna only to confront such humiliation. These are the multiple possibilities of a character’s fate.
CV (To Zhao Tao): In UNKNOWN PLEASURES, you played Qiao Qiao and there was one scene of violence that looks alarmingly the same as A TOUCH OF SIN. Qiao Qiao is repeatedly pushed back to the seat on the bus. In A TOUCH OF SIN, Xiao Yu also encounters repeating assaults. What was your reaction to this part of plot?
ZT: Actually it was when some other people asked about it that I remembered I was constantly pushed back by the boyfriend in UNKNOWN PLEASURES. When I was on the set of A TOUCH OF SIN, I did not realize that. It took me the longest time to shoot this scene. For about six hours. I choreograhed with Wang Hongwei to act. He kept beating me, I kept turning around my head. We both kept adjusting. I was actually beat up like that for six hours. When I went to Cannes half my head was still aching. Director said that maybe beating a dozen or two dozens times would suffice. But I felt that beaten twenty times, I could act like Xiao Yu has reached the maximum of tolerance, but for Zhao Tao myself, there was still some room to tolerate the pain. I have never in my acting tolerated such an amount of humiliation. In that scene I feel that the duration of tolerating is prominent. I kept wondering how many times of beating I could stand. It was about 38 times. At last neither Xiao Yu the character nor Zhao Tao the actor could bridle the anger any more. (I knew that) She has to pull out the knife in the end, so I wanted my rage to reach the boiling point. Only by then she could pull out the knife to defend her dignity. It was a difficult shoot because Wang Hongwei beat really hard. But I found that once I cried, Wang would become very nervous, which would make our next shoot together even more difficult. So I held back the tears, or went out to cool off my face and cry secretly, and then came back to make sure that I was in a good shape to finish the shoot.
One instruction Director gave me was the act of turning around the head and the unsuccumbing spirit in my eyes. He told me that Xiaoyu had to turn around her head, and her eye must be sharp and unsuccumbing. That shows Xiaoyu’s strong-headedness and persistence.
CV: You have been constantly walking in Director Jia’s films – such as UNKNOWN PLEASURES, STILL LIFE, I WISH I KNEW, and A TOUCH OF SIN. What was the instruction for you when you were walking in these scenes?
ZT: Walking is the easiest way to express the emotions of the character. Shen Hong in STILL LIFE walks to look for her husband. In UNKNOWN PLEASURES, Qiao Qiao walks in search of her Self. Here Xiao Yu walks into the new future in a strange environment. Every character carries a different emotion and inner play.
CV: The cinematography, editing and pacing of this film is different from your previous ones. In scenes with extreme violence, the camera points directly to the blood and wounds, very unlike the romanticized treatment of violence in martial arts and action genre films. When such violence clashes with the everyday settings, it stuns people much more forcefully. This is quite unlike the more subdued resistances and revolts in your earlier works. For instance, in I WISH I KNEW, the messages from the interviewees and the mise-en-scene might create some sort of tension. Yet A TOUCH OF SIN’s visual language and layered symbols seem to point to one direction, exclaiming that “This is the truth in my film, and these are the things that I care about!” How did you choose the language for this film?
JZ: Speaking of violence, I was quite hesitant about how to portray violence in this film as the theme and much of the narrative depend on it. First of all I was debating whether the film should contain any violent scenes. We could have potentially gone with a different type of narrative that would leave out the happenings of these violent events but still tell the same story. We could show the building up to violence and the aftermath but skip over the happening, and it could still work. But later I decided to keep those moments in as I felt this to be of the first chances for Chinese cinema to reflect on the issue of violence. Showing these violent moments are important to me because they present its destructiveness and brokenness. If the audience cannot directly observe the destructions caused by violence, how can we start to reflect on it? Not seeing violence would crumble the basis of our discussions of it, so I decided to leave in those scenes. From the very beginning, the film was planned to use the presentations of the martial arts genre, but I would still think about the distinctions between my film and the martial arts ones. Usually violence in the martial arts, crime and action films from Hong Kong are romanticized or choreographed, as in John Woo’s and Johnnie To’s films; they have a certain beautifying aesthetic for violence. But my film is a negation of violence; I want to show the audience the destructive nature of it so that they could see the individual’s tragedy in intending violence and carrying it out, instead of being encouraged to combat violence with violence. So I believe that depicting violence as a consequence and showing the course of violence were necessary. As this film was working in the martial arts genre, and violence and action sequence being very important to that genre, I needed those action scenes to support my attempt at a genre film. From the underlying narrative to the cinematic language, this film is certainly closer to a genre film than any of my previous works. My earlier films were auteurist, and this film borrows from certain genres because the story works in that way. And once the genre is set, the requirements of that genre follow, including straightforward storytelling and the relative directness of the narrative.
CV: But I feel that you have still kept your own film language, such as the performativity in the crowd scenes and the trivial but richly-layered information imbedded in the background audio.
JZ: Yes, and I think I found a great way of depiction. I feel that the transitions in this film span the ordinary and the dramatic. When each character is introduced, even when they are in moments of great tension, such as Dahai and Xiao Yu suffering grave emotional conflicts because of injustice or romance, at the moment of tension the character still stays in their ordinary mode. I like to keep to the day-to-day life in my work, because the point of this narrative is that violence rises out of the ordinary – I am not simply talking about violence itself, but how it forms in our daily lives. So this film gives me an opportunity to incorporate some of the characteristics in my earlier work – the presentation of people in their natural environments and even the aesthetics of documentary – and bridge that into the dramatic. Once the narrative reaches over to the dramatic, the actors and the film enter into a dramatic state.
That’s why I chose actors like Jiang Wu, Wang Baoqiang, Zhao Tao and Zhang Jiayi; they are great stage actors. When the dramatic moments arrive, actors like Jiang Wu would rise to that level of energy, but they can also deliver their characters naturally in the more day-to-day setting.
CV: (To Zhao Tao) Xiao Yu is always talking into her cell phone or reading text messages in her section of the story, but we never hear the other side of the dialogue or see the messages. What is she hearing and reading? When you acted out the scene of murder, did you reference actions in opera films or martial arts films?
ZT: The plot only gives three days to Xiao Yu, so all the complexities of her emotions had to be conveyed within those three days. On the first day we observe Xiao Yu’s entangled affair, and on the second day Xiao Yu goes to visit her mother, and discovers that her parents have divorced. She doesn’t really have any familial or romantic reliance, and she is always looking at her phone. (CineVue: Which reminds me of Shen Hong incessantly drinking water in STILL LIFE.) Yes, but she has a purpose to that. She is waiting for her boyfriend because they only waved through the window at the train station; when she tried to approach him for a word the train started and drove away, so she is waiting for his message but receives none.
During filming, Director emphasized that Xiao Yu should slowly let out the air of a heroine (or xia nu, a chivalrous woman warrior). I also watched A TOUCH OF ZEN many times, not to imitate the character, but to find the touch of a heroine. When I at last pulled out the knife – Xiao Yu transforms from an ordinary girl, to a victim, and then to the perpetrator of violence, she is a real tragic character – I identified with that moment; I would have done the same thing if I were in her place. It was quite a satisfying filming experience for me. When I learned about the incorporation of martial arts and body language from the script, I took on martial arts for a while and really wanted to use what I had practiced in the film. But the scene only allowed for a brief second to showcase my training. When I pulled out the knife, my body needed to re-adjust. Then I asked the director if I could turn the blade and then strike, so I could express the action in that brief moment and in a more elegant manner.
CV: How do you perceive the idea of “the crowd” in your film? The drifting heroes (or xia, chivalrous warriors) usually work outside the system and could rouse immediate response from the crowd. But in this film, the characters are remnant warriors, and the crowd only observes them from a distance, never responding to their actions.
JZ: This idea isn’t a new invention, as we will always have what Lu Xun calls “the onlookers”, or what Wang Xiaobo calls “the silent majority”. If these four protagonists are warriors, they are warriors buried among a vast sea of people. So for me, the image of the crowd is very important, because the crowd wouldn’t curb the powerful and help the weak, they would only stick to where they belong. And we are all part of this crowd. I am always answering to the question posed to the final scene of the film, the question regarding the “sin” (CV: in the ending shot, the opera singer sings his line: ”Do you admit your sin?”) – Silence is sin. In this system where we are used to being silent, even when the root of the problem sits with us, we believe it to be other people’s tragedies. But I don’t think the four stories in this film are others’ tragedies; they are our tragedy. That’s why I wanted to subtly connect the four tales because they are inseparable; they are not entirely unrelated happenings from this place and that, but have something in common. As film language requires its own logic, I used such logic and language to construct minor connections between the stories, so that I can tell the audience that these are not isolated incidents; they pertain to all of us.
FULL TEXT OF THE ORIGINAL INTERVIEW IN CHINESE
CineVue: 影片里重回了你过去电影里许多地点和人物，从您的家乡到沿海，大海意难平的模样总让我想起小武，韩三明从山西到三峡过年，小辉和莲蓉仿佛从《任逍遥》里走出来到了《无用》的制衣场和《世界》的后台。这里面有几重意义我很喜欢，一是您一直以来自我的一致性，《小山回家》中其实就有街头暴力的场景，以及春运的主题；二是这种重返和重新塑造在我看来是一种存在的危机中自我表达的方式。可能是因为开头马夫鞭打马的场景让人不能不想到尼采发疯的典故，而后来我被告知尼采在发疯之前写的《看呐这人》中回顾了他生平的所有作品。这几重若有似无的关系让我想要探究其中的意味。所以您能不能谈谈这方面的意图？
其实我有一个自己喜欢的人物的画廊。我也刻意地让这些人物在不同的电影里面——有时候改头换面，有时候就是那个人重新出现——穿游在所有的影片里。所以《三峡好人》里的三明、包括那些工人，他们出现在这个电影里面。因为我很看重我电影的一个整体性。用我自己的连结方法的话：我第一部电影是《站台》，因为那是从1979年到89年，这十年的故事。然后第二部电影是《小武》，是90年代的故事。就好像三明这个角色，在80年代他开始变成一个煤矿工人，然后到2006年《三峡好人》的时候发现他曾经买过一个老婆，（采访者：女儿也去了东莞），对，他女儿也去了东莞。内在的中国发生的事情和人的流动，这几十年其实并没有太大的改变。十年前，人们就从内陆到东莞这样地流动，现在还一样。但是生活在变化，他们面临的问题也在变化。都是故人，但世界变了，人也变了。小武的时代是传呼机的时代，到了《天注定》已经是微博的时代。
CineVue: 但是你把你画廊里的班底全部重新拉出来亮相，并让他们对于这次的遭遇做出了极端的反应。这就代入了你对最近的事件的一些非常紧密非常集中的思考。
贾樟柯：这些事件涉及的地方，他们内在的地理区域有一种连续性。山西是我的故乡，西南重庆是我经常拍摄的地方。比较陌生的可能是湖北。广东之前也出现过。但是就是这样的一片土地、这样的一群人——其实这里面的感受还是我的感受，中国还是那个中国，我还是我，但是我们突然发现自己的生活里出现了一些不可思议的极端的事件，这就让我想要去探究究竟出了怎样的问题。
CineVue: 我发现您一直说“虚构很重要”，不论是如《站台》这样对记忆的反刍（你在一个采访里说过，不是你的记忆好，其实那些故事都是想象的），还是在纪录片中加入表演和摆拍的成分（你也说过纪录片的镜头又时候捕捉不到镜头前这个人最真实的一面），又如《天注定》这样对个人行为逻辑的探究和对他们的生活情境的想象。然而这种虚构和想象的产物却又被认为直指真相。您的这种的自信从哪里来？
贾樟柯：实际上事实本身不是呈现在我们面前的。事实是通过感受，通过一个人对于另一个人基于感情的理解，才能掌握。我觉得真理或者事实并不是裸露在生活里面的，所以它必须有一定的情感逻辑和一定的感受力，才能够把埋藏的事实呈现出来。所以在这个情况下，作为艺术家的想象力，跟建立在人物理解之上的想象力，通过虚构的方法，才能呈现出来我们所能体会到的事实、真实是什么。所以艺术的目的不是为了虚构，所有艺术的目的都是为了理解生活、理解生活的本质。但是理解生活本质的路径有两条，一条是非虚构，一条是虚构——非虚构当然能把有些事情呈现得非常直接；但有些主题比如说暴力，在日常里面怎么滋生出来、一个循规蹈矩的人为什么最后变成拔枪的人，这个暴力滋生的过程我们不可能记录到。那个过程只有我们建立起对它的想象，（想象某个人物）在他的人际关系里所受到的影响和挫折。这个只有建立在对角色的想象当中才能呈现出来。当然终点都是一样的。我一直说虚构和真实是通向真实的两个路径，但他们的目的是一样的。中国人所谓“真、善、美”，就是一种从美学的方法进入到一个真的境界里面。
CineVue: 接下来我有一个比较私人的问题。在一个我非常喜欢的您的访谈里您说过有这样一个记忆里的场景您不会拍进电影，它只会存在在您的记忆中。那个场景是说您有一次看到军队的信号弹打向天空，你完全震惊了。所以我看到第二个故事里，三儿朝天开了一枪的时候我也特别震惊，觉得着这么私人的部分被拿出来——或者换一种问法，王宝强的这个角色他的化身感比较强，他的游动性，以及他的结局，似乎还是更多地掌握在他自己手里。您在设计这个角色的时候有没有注入一些自我的东西？
贾樟柯：（笑）这个就是潜意识。或许吧，就是拍电影也是打家劫舍。这是难免的，因为自己在操作这个剧作嘛。
CineVue: 在您的影片里王宏伟和赵涛都是不断地出现，仿佛是把银幕外的时间的连续新带进了电影里，但王宏伟是似乎是线性的，发展的，从小武的落魄到施加暴力的暴发户（或者地方黑势力），而赵涛是多面的，每个角色千变万化。他们似乎是您电影中时间的标志
贾樟柯：他们两个在我电影里的确是两个不同的角色。赵涛是几个截然不同的形象，从文工团的演员，到《任逍遥》里小城市的野模特，一直到《三峡好人》里找丈夫的护士等等，同样一个人塑造的是截然不同的角色。王宏伟也是一直演绎不同的角色，并不永远在演小武。比较恒定的是三明，他在我的电影里只有一个身份，就是三明。从《站台》开始，他很年轻，要在煤矿上工作了；到《世界》里面，他到北京要给同伴料理后事；到《三峡好人》里变成他的故事，他去奉节找妻子。在《三峡好人》的最后他带着工人回山西挖煤，而在《天注定》一开始他和他的工友要回三峡过年。他是一个普遍的人物，他只有一个身份。所以可能对我来说，在我的电影里面唯一不变的就是三明总在出现。对于赵涛和王宏伟来说，他们的面貌当然是统一的，但是他们的人物性就是不同的阶段在实验不同的角色。或许有另外的解释，就是像赵涛这样，她可能代表了一个人物的多重命运可能性。即使是一个年轻的文工团女孩儿，也可能遭遇像《三峡好人》里那样的婚姻危机，而这个遭遇婚姻危机的女人也可能流落到一个小的桑拿里面遭受这样的屈辱。就是这样的一种人物命运的多重可能性。
CineVue：（对赵涛）你在《任逍遥》中扮演的巧巧遭受到的暴力，有一段与《天注定》十分相似。你在扮演小玉的时候，对于这个场景的设计是怎么想，又是怎么反应的？
赵涛：实这个问题也是别人提起我才想起原来当时在《任逍遥》里被男朋友推来推去，其实我当时没有这个意识。那场戏拍了最长的时间，大概六个小时。我跟王宏伟在动作上有一个配合，他一直在打我，我一直要返身回头。他一直在调整状态，我们也一直在磨合当中。这是让我实实在在地被打了六个小时。去戛纳的时候半边头还在疼。其实导演告诉我说打十几二十下就够了，但是我觉得打到二十下的时候我可以表演出来小玉忍受到了极点了，但是对于赵涛来说我还可以忍受。这种对屈辱的忍受是我以前在电影中没有体验过的。在那场戏里我觉得这种承受非常的突出，我一直在想我能够承受多少次被打。大概有38次。然后到了那一刻不论是小玉还是赵涛这种愤怒都不能再忍受了。因为后来她是要拔刀出来的，我希望自己的愤怒达到沸点，这样才能让她拔刀出来维护自己的尊严。当时拍得挺辛苦的，因为实在特别疼，劲儿全在王宏伟手上。但我发现我一哭王宏伟就特紧张，这样我们下一场戏就更难演了。所以我就强忍着，出去用冰块捂着哭一会儿，回来之后再重新回到好的状态。
当时导演给我的一个指导是回头的眼神。他说小玉一定要回头，要有犀利的眼神，有小玉的倔强和小玉的坚持在里边。
CineVue：（对赵涛）您在贾导的电影里一直不断的行走，《任逍遥》《三峡好人》《海上传奇》《天注定》，导演在拍摄的时候给您的是怎样的指示？
赵涛：这种行走是人物情感抒发最需要最简单的一种表达方式。沈红的行走她是在寻找丈夫，《任逍遥》的行走她是在寻找自我，而小玉的行走是她去到一个陌生的环境里寻找一个新的未来。每一个角色的处理情感和心情都是不同的。
CineVue：影片的拍摄手法、节奏都不同以往。在几个极端的暴力场景中您的镜头直视鲜血和伤口，反而让人觉得完全不同于浪漫化暴力的枪战片和武打片。而当这种暴力发生在这些生活化的场景中时，它是加倍的惊心动魄。我觉得《天注定》不同于您以前影片中静默的抵抗和反叛——比如说《海上传奇》，它各个层面的信息可能是指向不同的方向。而在这里，《天注定》的视听语言、各种层面的符号都指向一个方向，很坚定很明确地告诉观众“这就是我电影里的真相，这就是我关心的范畴。”您是怎样选择这次的电影语言的？
贾樟柯：谈到暴力场面——首先是因为这个电影的故事和叙事和主题都是关于暴力问题的，所以我当时就比较犹豫，该怎么呈现暴力场面。首先是是否要出现暴力场面。同样的故事我们可以采取不同的叙事方法，可以完全把暴力发生的过程省略掉。我们可以呈现暴力发生之前、暴力发生之后（的情况），而恰恰把暴力发生的过程省略掉。这样也成立、也可能。但我后来决定保留暴力的场面，因为我觉得这是中国电影刚刚能开始反思暴力问题，出现暴力场景对我非常重要，因为它（的重要性）在于呈现的是暴力的破碎感，暴力的破坏性。如果我们在讨论问题的时候，让观众看不到暴力的破坏性，我们怎么去反思？这样就缺少一个谈话的基础。在这样的情况下我就决定保留这些暴力的场面。当然整个影片一开始就想要以武侠片的方法来呈现。我会想我的电影和武侠片的区别在哪里。一般港产的武侠片、犯罪电影、枪战片，它们的暴力场景是美化的、舞蹈化的，比如像在吴宇森和杜琪峰导演的电影里面，都是那样一个暴力美学。对我来说，因为这是一个否定暴力的电影，我想让人们看到暴力的破坏性并不是鼓励人们去以暴制暴，而是让人们去看到暴力发生在个人身上是有一种玉碎的意图和结果——所以我觉得这种暴力作为一种后果，以及暴力的过程，应该呈现出来。
同时既然是类型化，武侠类型的本身，暴力场面、武打场面是非常重要的，我想我也需要这种场面来支持我类型化的努力，因为的确这个电影本身从潜在的叙事到电影语言，跟过去的作品相比，是非常靠近类型的。以前的电影是作者型的。这部电影学习了一些类型片，因为故事非常合适。那么选择了类型，就要有类型的要求。这就包括叙事的直接性、叙事本身不会有太多的曲折。
CineVue：但是我觉得这次的电影你自己的语法依旧在里面，镜头前的人群，从工人吃面，到红袍锣鼓队从镜头前经过，到工厂工人吃饭等等，都具有一种表演性。而电影对于环境声音的捕捉也依旧十分丰富。
贾樟柯：在我的电影里面衔接的时候，我觉得我找到了一个非常好的描述方法，我觉得它是一个横跨日常状态和戏剧状态的过程。当每个人出场的时候，即使他们有很强烈的争吵，或者像大海和小玉这样有很强烈的感情冲突——包括感情问题，包括面临的不公正的问题——这些问题发生的时候，他们仍然是在日常状态里面。我很喜欢保留日常状态，因为我觉得这个叙事重点在于暴力在日常状态里产生——我不是单在谈暴力，而是在谈暴力在日常中是怎样形成的。所以它给我一个机会，发挥我过去电影里的一些特点，呈现人在日常情境中的自然状态，甚至是纪录美感，再一直衔接到戏剧状态的时候，演员和影像本身就进入到一个戏剧的模式里面。
所以为什么这次演员方面像姜武、王宝强、赵涛、张嘉译，让他们来出演，因为他们是非常好的戏剧演员，当戏剧时刻到来的时候，像姜武他非常有爆发力，同时他们的演技也能够在日常状态下保持一个自然融合。
CineVue: (对赵涛)小玉在她的故事里一直在接电话看短信，但是我们听不到对面的声音，看不到她的所看到的信息。她在看什么？在挥刀杀人的场景里，有没有借鉴一些戏曲电影和功夫电影的身段招式等等？
赵涛：小玉的戏只有三天时间，但她的情感的复杂性都在这三天表现出来。第一天我们看到小玉的情感的纠葛，第二天小玉去看妈妈，发现爸爸妈妈已经离婚了。小玉她其实没有亲情、没有爱情，她一直在看那个手机（问：让我想起《三峡好人》里沈红喝水），其实她也是有目的性的，她在等她的男朋友。他们只是在窗户口打了个招呼，她走过去要跟他打招呼的时候车已经开走了。她是想得到他的信息，但其实没有等到。
其实拍的时候导演一直强调一定要慢慢地让小玉身上侠女的气质体现出来。《侠女》我也看了很多很多遍，也并不是特意要摹仿她，但是想要找到那种属于侠女的特质。特别是我最后拔刀的那场戏——小玉是这样一个从普通的女孩，到受害者，再到施暴者，这样一个悲剧式的人物，当她拔刀的那一刹那，在那一刻我是认可的，作为赵涛在那一刻我可能也会这样去处理事情。
拍的时候其实也特别过瘾，看剧本的时候知道需要用到一些武术、一些肢体语言的东西，所以也练了一段时间武术，演的时候也特别想要把练的东西发挥出来。但是因为片段的问题，只是给了我很短的时间把我武术那方面的成果展现出来。拔刀的那一刻我整个身体需要一个换气，我跟导演建议我能不能把刀刃这样一转再挥出去，就只有利用这一点点的时间，把这个肢体语言表达出来，变得优雅一些。
CineVue: “众人”的面目在您的电影里是怎样的？侠游离于体制之外，但如果他们振臂一呼会得到回应。但在这里，他们是如您在亚洲协会所介绍的那样，是“残侠”，电影中的众人只是在看着他们，而并不紧密地呼应他们。
贾樟柯：其实这也并不是太新鲜的一个感受，始终我们都有鲁迅所说的看客或王小波所说的沉默的大多数。如果这四个人物是侠，他们也是人海中的侠。所以对我来说，群像很重要，他们并不是真的会锄强扶弱，他们只是在他们所属的群体里。我们都属于这个群体。最后那一幕的问题我一直在回答，关于“罪”的问题（注：影片以《玉堂春》的一句“你可知罪”结尾）——沉默就是罪。在这样一个体制之下，习惯沉默，以及，可能我们自身出了问题，却以为与自己无关，认为是他人的悲剧。电影里这四个人的悲剧我认为不是他人的悲剧，而是我们的悲剧。也因为如此我才想让这四个故事很微妙地关联，他们不是分离的，不是天南海北各不搭界，而是有着内在的联系。电影语言需要有它的逻辑，而我建立起来的四个故事之间很微弱的关联，就是想用这样的语言告诉人们，事件并非孤立，它跟任何人都有关联。
Interview and Transcription: Lesley Yiping Qin
Interview Translated by Lesley Yiping Qin and Yongle Wang
Lesley Yiping Qin holds an M.A. degree in Cinema Studies at NYU. She has worked in film festivals and organizations like Tribeca Film Fesitval 2012, MoMA Film Department and The Robert Flaherty International Documentary Seminar. She is also a freelance translator and editor at cinephilia.net, one of the most influential Chinese-language grassroot film blogs for film critics, journalists, scholars and fans.
Yongle Wang is a recent graduate of Kalamazoo College, Michigan where she majored in English, minored in Math, and spent a lot of time in the TV studio and the video editing lab. She started doing documentary work in 2010, and earlier this year finished a 65-minute film Some of Us about feminism in mainland China. She is interested in filmmaking, literature and writing, and hopes that one day she can get paid reading books. Her favorite novel about New York is James Baldwin’s Another Country.