Life As String

Chen Kaige is a leading figure of the fifth generation of director in China. As one ofmainstream directors who had grown up in the New Era, Chen Kaige has strong sense ofmission and responsibility. It has been embodied in his films. Go through all his films beenshown, the sense of mission and responsibility has been evolved into his tragedyconsciousness and is well presented in the tragic characters. With the changes in times and hotissues, Chen Kaige’s vision in films is changed and it make his tragic characters developed.Though the general thread of his tragedy consciousness and the development of his tragiccharacters, this paper aims to analyze the influence for the Chinese films’ narration by ChenKaige’s tragic characters and his heavy cultural foundation in the films.The paper is divided into five chapters:Chapter1is the preface. The tragedy theory belongs to the literary theories. It is usedearlier in the analysis and research in novels, poetry, dramas and later in films. In Chinesefilm industry, it has few ones to use tragedy theories to study in the development of the tragiccharacters in films. In the Chinese contemporary films, the general evolution of the tragedyconsciousness has Chinese characteristics. And among them, Chen Kaige’s tragedyconsciousness has its own formations and features.Chapter2centers on gathering up the thread of tragedy consciousness in Chen Kaige’sfilms. It divided into3parts: First, the development from the ritualized historical scenery tothe sudden changes of the small in daily life; Second, the development from the interjectionfor facing death to valuing and looking back the true meaning of life; Third, developmentfrom the disappointment for an uncertain destiny to understanding the defective humanity.Chapter3is analyzing systematically the tragic characters in Chen Kaige’s film narration.According to the evolution of his tragedy consciousness, the tragic characters can be dividedinto3types and their features are: the desire for breaking through the bondage of density, thedescription of the hopeless struggle in history and the persistence of humanity in the suddenchanges of daily life.Chapter4is exploring the influence on the Chinese contemporary films’ narration byChen Kaige’s tragic characterization. It embodied in the following parts: First,Chen Kaige made the tragic characters from the historical individuality to the individual history;Second,when Chen Kaige created the features of the characters, he broke through theoversimplified and formulaic moral construction and began to lay stress on making a realshow and a all-round expression of characterization’s dark side and dirty side; Third, forgetting a truer and more successful characterization, Chen Kaige gallantly broke through thetrue history and time and had a imaginary revolt in order to make a perfect unification of thereal history and artistic authenticity.Chapter5is the conclusion. The tragic characters in Chen Kaige’s films embodied histragedy consciousness and tragedy spirit. The history of his tragic characters’ evolution is thehistory of his tragedy consciousness’ development. And because of the well rounded andutterly different depictions, the audience and appreciators can have many differentinterpretations.It just like Bakhtin’s theory of polyphony whom is one literary critic in theformer Soviet Union. However, Chen Kaige’s tragic characters is the embodiment of histragedy implications.