| Author: Xu Xiaodi
In the14th century, a man named Tao Chengdao of Amin Dynasty decided to realize his dream of flying. He sat in a chair with 47 rockets tied to it, holding two big kites in his hand, and fired the first human fire into the sky with his life. He was exhausted after the smoke cleared.
China people's yearning for "flying" is engraved in the long river of history, from wooden birds to bamboo finches, from kites to smoke. Even in that era of poverty-the north wind whistling at MINUS 30 degrees Celsius, the yellow sand flying all over the sky, wowotou and salt water were three meals, and the dilapidated adobe house was the residence, and I did not forget to talk about the sky and Chineydy. Such years have been appraised as a hard and happy life by Academician Qi Faren, a veteran of China aerospace industry.
In the upcoming film My Father and I, the unit poem tells the story of this group of astronauts.
On the Mid-Autumn Festival, the creative team held a screening in Beijing Aerospace City, and 88-year-old Qi Faren watched the film with tears in his eyes. He remembered that at Jiuquan base that day, after the ignition of "Dongfanghong No.1", the core and arrow separated, and the comrades who made rockets jumped up with excitement, but he was afraid to be happy. When the satellite circled half a circle and arrived at Kashgar Station, he jumped up, which was an unforgettable happiness.
The director is a "newcomer"-Zhang Ziyi, who has been engaged in film production for 22 years. He has cooperated with famous directors such as Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Xiaogang Feng and John Woo, and won the Golden Rooster Award, Hundred Flowers Award, Huabiao Award, Golden Award and Golden Horse Award. At the age of 42, he directed The Pipe for the first time. In "Poetry", she shows an ordinary and tragic story of a family of four under the blue sky and yellow sand. Behind them are a group of astronauts who gnaw at Wowotou and interact with explosives, but dream of "writing poems in the sky".
For Zhang Ziyi, the first difficulty is to find the origin of the story-the stories of astronauts are vast, which one is more touching?
She did a lot of interviews with people, and in eight months, she produced more than a dozen versions of the manuscript materials: the couple who devoted themselves to scientific research, the principal who taught silently in the primary school of the launch base, and the children who made kites in the family home of scientific research to fly the music box to the sky ... each of them has countless possibilities.
Until the story of "gunpowder carver" Xu Liping came into her sight. Solid rocket engine is the "heart" of launch vehicle and missile equipment, and its interior is filled with rubber-like fuel. Xu Liping's job is to shape the fuel with a cutter. This is a very delicate and dangerous process. A few grams of fuel can burn violently, but surrounded by hundreds of kilograms of fuel, Xu Liping has to carve a powder surface with an error of less than 0.2 mm. For more than 30 years, his body was deformed because he kept a posture for a long time, and his hair became rarer because of frequent contact with gunpowder.
"Every time I put down the knife, I can hear my heartbeat." This is 20 15' s acceptance speech awarded to Xu Liping by China. Zhang Ziyi was attracted by this work, and then he found a group of astronauts hiding behind the scenes to launch "The First Star of China".
"Get up, grab, look and listen." This is the first man-made satellite requested by the central government. Whether it can go up depends on whether the Long March 1 carrier rocket can send the satellite up. The first and second stages are liquid engines, which have been successfully tested; The difficulty is the third-stage solid engine, and the international blockade is very tight. Everything depends on self-reliance and crossing the river by feeling the stones.
1965, when the gale blew over the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia, a group of young people from other provinces came here to camp and secretly carried out a project code-named 65 1-developing the third-stage solid rocket engine. There is a big sandstorm here all the year round, and every step will be blocked by quicksand, and my legs and stomach will soon be sore and stiff. All cadres and workers, while engaging in scientific research and production, take off their own adobe and build a "dry foundation" on the wild slopes. They basically eat corn bread, potatoes and cabbage all year round.
More than 50 years later, Zhang Ziyi came here with the crew to shoot, and restored the "Ganji" and the Broken Wall Primary School to their original appearance. When Gao Chongwu, a 76-year-old first-generation astronaut working in Inner Mongolia, came to the studio to observe, it seemed to have traveled through time and space. The camera is in the house where he and his colleagues lived, and the actors are busy on the real machine test bench. The colorful steel bars exposed in the explosion-proof wall are scars left by thousands of degrees of fire.
Gao Chongwu told Zhang Ziyi many stories that happened here. His most unforgettable person is Yang Nansheng, the chief engineer. 1950, Yang Nansheng gave up his high-paying job in Britain and returned to China to take root in the desert. One of his legs suffers from severe sciatica, so he pedaled his broken bike with the other good leg and rode alone in the desert against the strong wind every day. At that time, there were no high-speed cameras. In order to find out the explosion point of engine failure, Yang Nansheng often stands behind an observation window separated by a wall and observes it carefully. Transparent plexiglass is only 5 cm thick. Once it explodes, the consequences are unimaginable.
On April 24th, 1970, the team led by Yang Nansheng sent "Dongfanghong-1" into space with the last push of the third-stage solid motor. In the movie, Huang Xuan's father has the shadow of Yang Nansheng-riding a bicycle in the wilderness, meeting with explosion and death behind the observation window of the experimental workshop. Under the starry sky, he and his son sat on the seesaw and talked about their work in secret: "I am a poet, and I am a person who writes poems in the sky."
In order to "write poetry in heaven", my father gave his young life. While watching the movie, Gao Chongwu kept crying. He remembered the burning and explosion he witnessed personally in those years, the comrades who died, and the slogan of the astronauts in those years: "I dedicated my youth to my life, and I dedicated my life to my descendants."
Gao Chongwu told Zhang Ziyi a story. One year, four researchers were cutting propellant with high-pressure water, and they all died in an explosion. One of the young men originally planned to go back to his hometown by train with his girlfriend after work, and the next day was their wedding. When Gao Chongwu went to mourn, the girl was already lying in bed. When she saw him, she stood up at once without a tear. She just kept saying, "I can hold on."
Zhang Ziyi's mother in the film is such a woman. After her husband died, she couldn't tell the child the bad news, only knowing that her father was working overtime and buried the pain in her heart. The male colleagues in the unit decided not to go home collectively at night and pretended to work overtime. Holding the ashes in her hand, she bowed deeply, her muscles twitched uncontrollably, and she could no longer hold back her tears.
After her husband died, she continued her unfinished business and one of the most dangerous jobs in the world-"micro-carving" on gunpowder. In order to shape this role, Zhang Ziyi personally went to the workshop to learn from the national model worker Luo Huaicong. On the first day of carving, more than three hours later, cocoons were ground on her hands, and her heartbeat could be heard in the silence.
The window of the workshop is so low that you can walk out as soon as you lift your legs. Master Luo told Zhang Ziyi that when there was an explosion, everyone could run out in time. When I go to work, there are only one or two people in the empty factory, and it is a few hours. Because of the toxicity of gunpowder, people turned green when they came out. Gao Chongwu said that Zhang Ziyi performed a "feeling of vomiting under psychological pressure", which he often saw on his colleagues' faces.
In the face of children, mothers are under another kind of pressure.
In order to find suitable young actors, Zhang Ziyi interviewed more than 500 children. There was still a long time to leave the camera, and the crew took the little actors to the shooting location. They quickly integrated into it, playing with soil, rolling iron rings, slingshots and mud every day, all tanned and energetic.
There is a scene in the movie that touched many people. The house was flooded on the night when it was raining cats and dogs. The son cried and questioned his mother in the dark. Is dad dead? Why doesn't he go home? After the storm, the mother took out a Kongming lantern and told her son that that's what they did. "Mom will die one day." In the evening, my son released the Kongming lantern and shouted to the sky, "Mom, I don't want you to die."
The rainy night scene was filmed for three nights. The little actor is changing his teeth and wearing false teeth when filming. When he spoke his lines excitedly, his teeth fell into the mud We will help him' find teeth everywhere'. When the mother wanted to spank her son, Zhang Ziyi felt distressed and gave the little actor several layers of fart mats. As a result, she didn't cry enough. The executive director lost his temper and told him to take it all down. Zhang Ziyi loathe to give up, only took off a layer. This time, the little actor had a feeling, "I didn't hurt him, but he really got into the play."
After this heart-wrenching drama, Zhang Ziyi had to "walk out" to watch the monitor and think about arousing the children's emotions, which was "very accurate".
Everyone felt her despair. During that time, Zhang Ziyi only slept for three hours every day, and every time he received a script, he would organize everyone to watch it. When encountering professional problems, I asked Gao Chongwu, "Sometimes you call me at midnight 12, 1." Executive directors are often harassed. Zhang Ziyi watched a documentary and thought she could learn from the scenery and art. Even at 2 o'clock in the middle of the night, she would send her a WeChat immediately.
Until now, Zhang Ziyi still feels that everything is like a dream. "I never wanted to be a director, but when this job comes, just do it bravely."
Zhang Ziyi has always been a "spare no effort" man. Stories circulating for many years have repeatedly confirmed this point: from 1 1 to 17 years old, she practiced in the dance academy in the dark, and her talent was not enough. After turning off the lights, she went to leg press training room in the dark, slept at night and put her legs on the wall.
After entering the Chinese opera, she didn't waste her youth every day, and she was anxious to get angry and do her homework every day. She drew a sketch. Teacher Chang Li looked at her forearm and her face and asked her if she often cooked pancakes at home. Zhang Ziyi said no, "My mother gives me 2 Jin of noodle training every day".
Shooting "My Mom and Dad", she hangs out with farmers all day and feeds pigs to farm every day. In the movie, running is really running and falling is really falling. She wore eight pairs of trousers to shoot the bumpy scene.
In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, she confronted Yang Ziqiong's stuntman. When her nails were cut off, she put her thumb in the snow to stop the pain. When hanging the wire, directly hit your face against the wall.
When "Hero" started shooting, she moved a small bench and stayed on location to learn the acting skills of Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung. The Hong Kong media nicknamed her "Princess on the Bench".
Screenwriter Shi Hang described Zhang Ziyi's first half of his life as "flying low". "It seems that there is a lot of space, but in fact, one layer after another, one layer after another, is blocked by transparent partitions."
Until 20 13, great master. Wong Kar-wai filmed for three years, and "Gong Er" Zhang Ziyi confronted his brother at the railway station. She played all night in the northeast at MINUS 30 degrees Celsius. With this role, Zhang Ziyi won the 12 "best actress". In the movie, she has many wonderful lines, but her favorite is Tony Leung Chiu Wai's sentence: "Kung Fu is two words, one horizontal and one vertical, and the winner is the one who stands at the end."
Shooting Poetry gave Zhang Ziyi another experience. The last scene before the murder was "a mirror to the end" for nearly 3 minutes. The camera goes up from the land, through the dust, and follows the children's footsteps into the dormitory of "Ganji", past the Little Square of the scientific research base and overlooking the test-bed in the distance.
For this long shot, the crew rehearsed for 3 days, took 3 shots and made more than 40 materials. After each shot, Zhang Ziyi ran to the scene from the monitor, patiently explained to the 15 group of children, cheered and ran back to the monitor. She hopes that this difficult and somewhat "willful" lens can connect the memories, emotions and strength of the audience in series.
Isn't every step of China's space flight "at all costs" to conquer every fortress that is difficult to be "willful"? At the end of the poem, the astronaut's daughter saw the "Dongfanghong-1" passing through the window of shenzhou spaceship, which was the star launched into the sky by the rocket developed by her parents.
"Dongfanghong No.1" is still flying. At that time, Qian Xuesen said to Yang Nansheng with satisfaction at Xi 'an Satellite Monitoring and Control Station: "The thrust you gave is not small!" This is why this star is still in space. It still surrounds the earth, welcoming the poems that future generations continue to write in the sky.