It must be affirmed that among contemporary writers, Nguyen Nhat Anh has the most stories adapted into films, each time creating a fever on the small screen and "winning" at the box office. Films from television to cinema that have been remade based on this writer's stories include: "White shirt on the schoolyard" (1990); "Bubbles in the sky" (1997); "Trouble boy" (1998); "Kaleidoscope" (2004); "Female student" (2008); "I see yellow flowers on the green grass" (2015); "The girl from yesterday" (2017). And another film that is about to start filming in 2023 is "Once upon a time there was a love story".
“I See Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass” is one of the films adapted from Nguyen Nhat Anh’s stories, creating resounding success. (Screenshot from a scene of the film).
The appeal of the story
Nguyen Nhat Anh's stories are very real and contain a unique rustic quality that is hard to confuse. His writing style is also based on every beat of life and is deeply rooted in each existing person, so when reading, readers are quickly drawn in and find it hard to stop, even though the whole story does not have many outstanding climaxes, or too precious or mind-boggling details. The characters in Nguyen Nhat Anh's stories are often children, but they captivate the souls of adults because of the small stories that each of us has experienced before growing up. The love stories he describes are not sentimental, sentimental, nor are they passionate or passionate, but are just the first emotions of life, shy but lingering, such as: Viet An and Tieu Ly in "The Girl from Yesterday"; are feelings of love but lifelong regret for being slow to confess, such as Ngan and Ha Lan in "Blue Eyes"...
The love stories in Nguyen Nhat Anh's novels when adapted into films are all romantic but haunting, like Ngan and Ha Lan in "Mat Biec". (Screenshot from a scene in the film).
Slowly, gently but painfully, anxiously, reminiscently, lovingly... each book by Nguyen Nhat Anh, when published, creates a phenomenon with readers. Reading his writing, we always see a special, attractive writing style that comes from humor, clarity, full of kindness and love. What is special is that it helps those who are confused in life with the evil and falsehood that are common every day, to have a belief that goodness, kindness and beauty still exist in life and in relationships between people that are full of gossip and fatigue.
“Mat Biec” also captivated audiences when it was adapted into a film. (Screenshot from a scene from the film).
The film brings the audience human values.
Having its own readers, when Nguyen Nhat Anh's stories were adapted into films, this group of people wanted to go to the cinema even more to satisfy their curiosity: Is the film as good as the story? Does the film convey the content and fully convey the emotions of the story? And above all, in a market full of high-octane, dramatic films, the audience still loves the romanticism in each plot that Nguyen Nhat Anh built. It touches the beautiful things in the soul.
Director Phan Gia Nhat Linh, who successfully adapted "The Girl from Yesterday", said: "Nguyen Nhat Anh's stories are often successful when made into films, mainly thanks to the emotional element, bringing the audience humanistic values, instead of the big and bold things that other stories often want to create to make an impression. It is the gentle element, along with the lingering feelings of first love, of a time of innocence, in Nguyen Nhat Anh's stories that attract audiences to the cinema."
Meanwhile, Director Victor Vu, who was quite successful with two successful film adaptations, "I see yellow flowers on the green grass" (2015) and "Mat biec" (2019), said that he stuck to the plot, using poetic visual language to bring the audience into the world of children in a village. To highlight the story of brotherhood, student love, and bring the audience back to their beautiful childhood in "Mat biec", he chose smooth scene transitions and solid acting from a brand new cast to bring freshness, like the author's writing style. "Many literary works are rich in characters but the story does not have many highlights, throughout the story are only the thoughts and feelings of the characters themselves. The filmmaker's job is to find the main, most prominent line, to build everything around logically and convey the soul of the work," he shared.
Many generations of modern Vietnamese, including filmmakers, grew up with Nguyen Nhat Anh’s literature. Therefore, it gradually became a big part of nostalgia. Nguyen Nhat Anh’s literature is a rich and evocative source of material, creating space for filmmakers to be creative in terms of cinema.
Writer Nguyen Nhat Anh (sitting in the middle) talks with young directors about his literary works. (Photo provided by Director Trinh Dinh Le Minh).
In the near future, another work by Nguyen Nhat Anh will be adapted into a film, "Once Upon a Time There Was a Love Story". This is a story about the friendship and love between two boys and a girl from childhood to adulthood, facing the challenges of fate. The trio, Phuc, Vinh, and Mien, as described by Nguyen Nhat Anh, have come to the end of a love story. Director Trinh Dinh Le Minh, who will adapt "Once Upon a Time There Was a Love Story", does not hide his excitement, rather than pressure, when making a film from Nguyen Nhat Anh's story. He said that each director has their own choices and ways of handling the original work, with their own mark, as long as they create interesting spiritual food for the audience. He said: "Perhaps, it is the gentle element, without dramatic climaxes, along with the lingering feelings of first love, of a time of innocence and purity in Nguyen Nhat Anh's stories that attract audiences to the theater. We need to be creative in the way we tell stories, to emphasize the writer's qualities."
Nguyen Nhat Anh's writings often give people what they are lacking in the midst of modern life, full of changes and transformations. For example, the writer often tells about people, memories of an old time, especially romantic, classical love, handwritten letters in the time when our grandparents often preferred to express their love through literature... It is this source of material rich in space-creating evocativeness that has helped filmmakers freely unleash their soaring creativity./.
Lam Khanh
Source link
Comment (0)