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In a well-known cultural area near Beijing's East Fifth Ring Road, a bar invested by Chen Sicheng has a poster of his new film "Decryption" hung on its exterior wall. The bar is quite famous in the cultural area, not because of the celebrity effect, but because there are too many reasons to go in: a full wall of French windows next to the park, a drink with the same name as the movie, a terrace garden with soft sofas for watching outdoor movies... To use the most popular words this year, it is fun and chill, and down-to-earth - you can eat new-style hot pot and barbecue, and the price threshold is not high.

Some people on social media commented that Chen Sicheng is a successful and shrewd businessman. His success is beyond doubt. The three words "Chen Sicheng" are almost a guarantee of box office success. The new film "Decryption" was officially released on August 3. One week before the release, 140,000 people on Maoyan already "wanted to watch it".

But he probably wouldn't agree with the words "shrewd" and "businessman", because there are too many calculations implied in them. Although movies need to follow some rules, they are never a formula product that can work by adding and subtracting. His "Tang Detective" universe has become popular, "a lot of crime suspense projects have come to me", and the success of the "Manslaughter" series has brought countless similar projects to him, but Chen Sicheng declined them all. Last year, there were a total of 144 projects that came to him, of which only 5 were unanimously approved by him and his team. "I'm not refusing to remake, suspense or a certain type, but I pay more attention to what can be explored and expressed in the content, whether it's fun and interesting, and this is the meaning of making a movie for me." Chen Sicheng told "China News Weekly". When accepting a film, his standard is still emotional, not rational.

The film "Gone Girl", which he produced last year, is almost a collection of current hot topics. One can imagine that several people carefully planned and designed in front of a whiteboard, marking all the key words with arrows and emphasis symbols...but this is not the case. In his opinion, this is a misunderstanding of outsiders, because the production cycle of a movie takes at least one year, and with the iteration speed of people's interests today, no one can predict with certainty what the hot topics will be a year from now.

But he does not deny that he is a smart man. In "Detective Chinatown 3", he said through his character: "Everything in this world that can be attributed to art requires talent." Chen Sicheng's talent is rhythm, knowing how to advance and retreat, and knowing the limits, so he can delicately balance a variety of complex elements together to gain the widest audience.

Director Chen Sicheng's work photo. Photo provided by the interviewee

Complex "Decryption"

The new film "Decryption" is very different from Chen Sicheng's previous works, but after watching it, you will inexplicably think of his famous film "Detective Chinatown". The beauty of "Detective Chinatown" lies in the high degree of genre fusion - it combines comedy and mystery lightly and successfully, and it is a classic mystery. The difficult sense of proportion makes the film neither too crazy nor too confusing in reasoning. Most of the audience burned their brains in the playfulness and laughed heartily after leaving the cinema.

He pushed the extreme of blending completely different and even mutually exclusive genres in "Decryption". Probably no one can define "Decryption". It is a spy film, a biographical film, a drama film, and even a fantasy film... but it is not all of them. Chen Sicheng said: "I used to make more genre films, and the extreme genres actually constrained my imagination, while "Decryption" expanded the boundaries of my imagination."

"Decryption" was not originally in Chen Sicheng's top priority sequence. It was actually a bit accidental that it was filmed so quickly. In 2020, Chen Sicheng was preparing the movie "Ball Lightning". He has always been interested in science fiction themes, which is his idealism. But because of some international emergencies, the real shooting location that had been explored could not be visited, and the project had to be suspended. At that time, he watched the news every day and saw many individuals rise and fall in the major events of the times. People were trapped in their own "cages" and each had their own helplessness. Chen Sicheng found that he suddenly resonated with many characters in "Decryption", because although they had their own choices in the face of fate, they were more driven and coerced by the times, whether it was the protagonist Rong Jinzhen, or the three members of the Rong family, including Zheng, and Xiaomei.

What he heard and saw in reality made Chen Sicheng's creation shift. "I found that my creative perception was more focused on the relationship between the individual and the times. This proposition may accompany me for a while. I don't know how long, but it prompted me to choose "Decryption"."

"Decoding" is a work nominated for the Mao Dun Literature Prize by the writer Mai Jia. It tells the story of Rong Jinzhen, who has a mathematical talent but is lonely and fragile, burning her life to decipher the code. After reading the novel repeatedly, Chen Sicheng extracted the theme that "everyone is a unique code, and this life is the process of decryption". This is the first time he has created a film based on a literary work.

Rong Jinzhen's life is inseparable from mathematics, codes and dreams. Whether it is abstract and profound numbers, codes, or strange dreams that reflect Rong Jinzhen's subconscious, blank spaces can be left in the text of the original novel, but the movie needs to present these strange plots and elements to the audience through images, which lays the foundation for the uniqueness of the movie "Decryption". In the view of the original author Mai Jia, how to express Rong Jinzhen's dreams and how to show the soul of the original work in dreams are challenges that must be faced in the adaptation process of the movie "Decryption". This makes Chen Sicheng quite excited. On the one hand, it is rational mathematical calculations, and on the other hand, it is a magnificent dream. They are harmoniously blended together and the imagination of the text is presented in the form of images. Although it is difficult, it is also a new exploration and change.

The novel "Decryption" has a solid realistic foundation. The original author Mai Jia has actually lived and worked in similar institutions, so he can write a credible feeling. If the movie "Decryption" wants to stand out, the scene must be real. In order to create a convincing scene, the art set design team visited half of China to find a suitable filming location. Finally, when they were almost desperate and ready to shoot in the studio, they finally found a military sanatorium built in the 1950s. The sanatorium is very similar to the environment related to the covert front of that era in terms of temperament, age, and underlying logic of planning, and even the sense of secrecy surrounded by dense vegetation. While carrying out the real-life transformation, Chen Sicheng's team searched for reference prop prototypes around the world. Cage antennas, detection machines, punched cards... were all restored and produced. He almost built an intelligence bureau for "Decryption". The technical reconnaissance expert who served as a consultant said: "After coming in, it's like returning to my bureau."

Rong Jinzhen wrote hundreds of formulas and tens of thousands of numbers densely on the walls of his dormitory, ranging from several representative forms of primitive codes to the logical presentation of modern codes, to mechanical codes and deduced group theory equations, spanning the history of code development. All of them were strictly verified by scientific consultants and then hand-painted by the art team.

After sufficient research, the scene of that year was restored. However, in the realism like a biographical film, an extremely fantastic and magnificent dream was inserted: the red beach, the strange walrus, the fairy-tale Ferris wheel, the huge chess pieces... all make the film present a surreal atmosphere that is completely opposite to realism. The contradictory style is once again intertwined in Chen Sicheng's film. This is just like the connection and contradiction between a person's dream and reality. This movie is also like a real "dream-making".

The final poster of "Decryption". Photo/provided by the interviewee

"Tang Detective" Universe

In the theater where "Decoding" was watched, there was a scene that almost made the whole audience burst into light, knowing laughter - the blind man A Bing played by Wang Baoqiang appeared. Audiences who are familiar with the film and television works adapted from Mai Jia's original works or like spy war film and television dramas will definitely not forget him. In "The Counterfeiter", which is known as the originator of domestic spy war dramas, A Bing, who has an extraordinary hearing talent, is the eavesdropping hero in this "code world". At this moment, "Decoding" was linked with the classic old drama nearly 20 years ago. Similar little jokes are not uncommon in Chen Sicheng's works. The "Tang Detective Series" has paid tribute to the classic detective works of Ellery Queen and Conan Doyle. The scale is not easy to grasp, because once the rhythm is lost, it will cause embarrassment like a joke.

Paying tribute though, he did not follow the old path of classics. Take "The Decryptor" for example, because dreams play such an important role in it, it determines that this movie cannot be shot according to any traditional genre that people are familiar with. Chen Sicheng likes projects that have a large creative space to accommodate his own ideas, because he always has a lot of ideas.

In 1999, Chen Sicheng was admitted to the Central Academy of Drama with the first place in his major. He started filming in his junior year. Because he always had his own ideas and did not obey the director's arrangements, the producer called the Central Academy of Drama and asked Chen Sicheng's teacher Wang Lina there to persuade him. Wang Lina found Chen Sicheng and said something that had a profound impact on him - if you are really capable, you can be a director in the future and have the final say. Now as long as you are an actor, you must listen to the director.

In the following years, Chen Sicheng became known by more and more people through TV series and movies such as "Migrant Workers", "Judge Mom", "Soldier Assault", and "A Night of Spring Breeze", but he was no longer satisfied with being an actor.

In 2011, Chen Sicheng successfully entered the ranks of directors with the TV series "Beijing Love Story" which he wrote, directed and acted in. Once the TV series was broadcast, it became a hit of the year. At the "2012 National Drama Festival" awards ceremony, "Beijing Love Story" was among the "Top Ten", and the theme song "Beijing Beijing" sung by Wang Feng was heard throughout the streets and alleys, and drifted into the ears of every "Beijing Drifter". At one time, hundreds of film contracts came to Chen Sicheng, including TV series and movies, some for him to act in, and some for him to direct. Chen Sicheng was thinking about what he should do next, and he decided to make a movie, because movies are his ultimate dream.

He first adapted "Beijing Love Story" into a film version. At that time, the film market was in a stage of being fed back by television. A number of TV series with IP characteristics that were popular on TV were filmed into movie versions, such as "Love Is Not Blind" and "Wulin Waijia". "Beijing Love Story" was the end of this phenomenon, and it received a good box office of more than 400 million yuan. Chen Sicheng successfully let the investors see his potential.

The following year, Detective Chinatown was released. It was not only the first hard-core mystery film in the mainland film market, but also successfully combined comedy and mystery. You know, there is a huge gap in style between the two. It is difficult for the audience to think rationally after laughing. If they are not careful, the atmosphere of the two will destroy each other. Detective Chinatown was a success. The hard-core mystery story attracted core fans and won word of mouth for the film. The comedy action scenes attracted ordinary audiences, driving the box office to achieve "breakthrough" growth.

Corresponding to the yin-yang combination of genres, "Detective Chinatown" also successfully mixes two main characters with huge contrasts, Tang Ren and Qin Feng. One is responsible for comedy, and the other is responsible for reasoning; one is a middle-aged man who has experienced a complicated life, and the other is a young man with a clean and pure temperament. They are like two sides of the same coin, which also provides more possibilities to attract audiences of different tastes and ages.

In the end, this dark horse movie that grossed 822 million yuan at the box office made both investors and audiences see the huge potential in Chen Sicheng, and he became a hot new director in China.

In 2014, the Film Bureau sent several young directors to Hollywood to study, and Chen Sicheng was one of them. He thought it was a very rewarding experience. He learned how companies like Paramount packaged and promoted their films, saw the professionalism of their different types of work, and became more convinced that film is a combination of art and business.

Therefore, when filming "Detective Chinatown", he had already built a fairly broad commercial space for this project. He wanted to make the detective stories in Chinatown into the "Detective Chinatown Universe" and the detective combination of "Tang Ren + Qin Feng" into an artistic image with sustainable value. What he wanted was not the success of a movie, but a collection of detectives, as well as the entire "Detective Chinatown Universe" series of works and derivatives controlled by him. In an interview, Chen Sicheng said: I don't want to be the one whose cake is divided, I want to be the one who makes the cake.

In just 6 years, Chen Sicheng has maximized the IP value of the "Tang Detective Universe". "Detective Chinatown 2" won the second place in the 2018 movie box office list with a box office of nearly 3.4 billion yuan, and "Detective Chinatown 3" had a box office of 4.524 billion yuan, ranking third in the 2021 box office. The online drama has also been released for two seasons. The theater movie focuses on all age groups and is a comedy, while the online drama is biased towards young audiences and has a more obvious style. The "Tang Detective Story Universe" has been initially formed.

"Decryption" Shanghai Film Festival red carpet photo: Liu Haoran, Daniel Wu, Yu Feihong, Ren Luyao, Chen Yuxi. Photo/provided by the interviewee

I'm willing to continue taking risks

Directors with high box office often have highly recognizable labels, such as Guo Fan's "science fiction", Xu Zheng's "comedy", Ning Hao's "absurdity", Lu Yang's "new martial arts" and Wen Muye's "realism". Chen Sicheng's labels are undoubtedly "suspense" and "mystery", although many of the films classified as Chen Sicheng's works were not directed by him.

In the 2020 online drama "Detective Chinatown", Chen Sicheng, as the producer and chief screenwriter, brought out four new directors, Ke Wenli, Dai Mo, Yao Wenyi, and Lai Mukuan. Soon after, the online drama "Detective Chinatown 2" was co-directed by young directors Wang Tianwei and Yao Wenyi. Ke Wenli and Dai Mo directed the two parts of "The Accidental Manslaughter" respectively, and Lai Mukuan directed the crime suspense film "The Corridor Pavilion". Except for "The Corridor Pavilion", the other films were all produced by Chen Sicheng. Last year's box office dark horse "The Vanishing Girl", Chen Sicheng was the producer again, and introduced young directors - Cui Rui and Liu Xiang.

This summer's "dark horse" "The Silent War" actually has nothing to do with Chen Sicheng, but people still feel his shadow everywhere, probably because the director is Ke Wenli, who thanked his mentor in the end credits. In this way, Chen Sicheng not only built a "Tang Detective Universe", but also, intentionally or unintentionally, built a "suspense universe".

With his experience in the comfort zone, he has formed a production system that can protect the younger generations. He is seeking more creative breakthroughs. So, as a director, he is not happy to be labeled as a suspense film director: "I think people may have some misunderstandings about me. I don't reject labels, but I am still trying and growing. It is too early to define my creative style with a certain type..."

In the summer of 2022, Chen Sicheng's fantasy blockbuster "Mozart from Outer Space" created for children suffered a box office Waterloo, with only 223 million yuan, and was taken off the screen 29 days after its release, and moved to the online platform. In the context of fantasy films being basically blank and children's films having been absent for 20 to 30 years, "Mozart from Outer Space" is actually a very representative film, and its completion is also above the passing line. After all, the last time people saw a work of the same type was "Pili Babe" in 1988.

Maybe it’s because local commercial films have never presented such a look, and the audience can’t believe it; maybe it’s because the mixture of comedy + fantasy + family + friendship + dreams is too rich, and the audience can’t eat so much at once; or maybe people who came for the three words "Chen Sicheng" actually watched a children's film and felt cheated. In short, this challenge that no one has dared to try for many years, both word-of-mouth and box office failed. I don’t know when I will see the next mainland children's fantasy film.

"If there is an opportunity in the future, I am willing to continue taking risks." Chen Sicheng said, "I am a person who is willing to keep challenging and keep trying to move forward." So he went from being an actor to being a director, and then to being a screenwriter and producer. He will pay more attention to the commerciality and strong genres of the films he is producing. After all, there are directors standing in front of him and he is responsible for their creative future. As for the films he directs himself, he would like to try new areas if the company's operating conditions allow. He told China News Weekly: "I may continue to try and take greater risks in the future for the films I direct myself."

He admires two film masters the most, Hitchcock and Kubrick. Hitchcock directed 59 films in his life, and he only shot one genre, suspense to the extreme. Kubrick has been in the film industry for 48 years, and he has only directed 13 feature films, science fiction, war, horror, black comedy, crime, almost all of which are different. "A Clockwork Orange", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Dr. Strangelove", "Full Metal Jacket", "The Shining", "Eyes Wide Shut"... Each work shows a unique artistic perspective and is also a commercial success.

He would rather challenge different themes and genres in his creations like Kubrick did, because his interests are different at different stages of his life. The first few films had strong genre attributes because "there was no other way at that time". On the one hand, he wanted to make a series of films, after all, there was no such thing before, and on the other hand, he also needed to endorse himself commercially. Compared with his previous works, his latest directorial work "Decoding" has a weaker sense of genre and a stronger author attribute.

Chen Sicheng does not think that the author's attributes and commerciality are necessarily contradictory. He is currently watching the American TV series "Participate", a TV series that tells the story of the filming of the classic movie "The Godfather". In the play, there are many conflicts of opinion between the investors and the creators. In the end, it is proved that the creators did not focus so much on the idea of ​​"whether it will sell well or not", but instead achieved the result of selling well. So perhaps the so-called commerciality cannot rely solely on business. According to Chen Sicheng, the creators have to iterate and update themselves, otherwise they will easily be abandoned by the audience, but it is not enough to just seek innovation and change. They must also adhere to the particularity of the film, the audio-visual effects, the topic, the audience participation... In the final analysis, it is still the talent of moderation and integration.

He is willing to believe in his own work, although there are times when he believes too much, otherwise there would not be the "Mozart from Outer Space" with dashed expectations, but most of the time, he believes that his aesthetics and expression can be accepted by most people, because he positions himself as an ordinary audience, and he pays attention to the same things as everyone else. For example, he reads social news every day. The inspiration for "Gone Girl" came from social news. He does not blindly pursue the so-called mysteries, nor is he arrogant. He can "put himself in others' shoes", so he is not a creator who sets a high threshold for himself.

Facts have proven this point. On Maoyan's filmmaker box office list, Chen Sicheng ranks third with a total box office of 12.2 billion yuan for films he directed. The top two are Tsui Hark and Zhang Yimou, who are nearly 20 years older than him, with box office revenues of 14.609 billion yuan and 14.164 billion yuan respectively. Now, with the release of the movie "Decryption", perhaps this ranking will change.

Published in the 1151st issue of China Newsweek magazine on August 5, 2024

Magazine title: Adventurer Chen Sicheng

Reporter: Li Jing