"Unique One" In The Fifth Generation

Huang Jianxin is a"Unique One"among the fifth generation of movie directors. Unlike Zhang Yimou's and Chen Kaige's directing style, which is full of grand narratives, gets rid of national/historical parables and never pays close attention to constructing visual spectacles, Huang Jianxin finds another better way to actively explore the urban films. His urban films focus on social reality and catch subtle mental activity of the urban ordinary people; by means of converging with our traditions, the films embrace the reality with vivid subjective consciousness through the ordinary people and events. The theme of the films is about our society and real life; it focuses on dissecting characters, fate and mental activity of ordinary people and disclosing serious social and family problems, which reflects the hidden reality problems concerning humanity, culture, morality and ethics and thus arouses our contemplation. Huang Jianxin's steadfastness and creativity during his directing career shall influence and encourage a host of filmmakers. The urban film world he constructs for his movie audiences and his mature directing state shall play a positive role to the development of Chinese urban films. Though his several films are controversial, yet the defects do not outweigh the merits. Frankly speaking, controversy is a good thing for an artist's creation and shall help him keep self-examining the defects. On the other hand, exploration and creation is bound to be go with defects. So defects should not be regarded as the obstacle of art creation but the interior motivation for the artist's continuous exploration.In the introduction part, it makes a brief description on Huang Jianxin as"Unique One"among the fifth generation of film directors and his urban films. Then the thesis makes a detailed description by combining the specific films, which consists of three chapters: Chapter one is to describe the aesthetic style of Huang Jianxin's films in terms of black humor, art design and narrative perspective; Chapter two is to analyze the concern for human beings in Huang Jianxin's films and the aesthetic tension of his artistic creation; Chapter three will analyze the embarrassment Huang Jianxin encountered and his several controversial films in order to expound Huang Jianxin's contemplation over his films and to convey some views on the future development based on analyzing the current state of Chinese urban films.