The Formation and Aesthetic Characteristics of Jiang Wen’s Personalised Cinematic Style

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-475-4_56How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Jiang Wen; Personalised Style; Aesthetic Characteristics

Abstract

Jiang Wen is one of the most distinctive and controversial directors in contemporary Chinese cinema, renowned for his pronounced personalised style, which has earned widespread international acclaim while eliciting polarised responses from domestic audiences and critics. This study delves into the origins of Jiang Wen’s unique style, tracing its roots to his personal experiences, artistic education, creative philosophy, and filmmaking practice. Through a comprehensive analysis of his representative works, including In the Heat of the Sun (1995), Devils on the Doorstep (2000), Let the Bullets Fly (2010), The Sun Also Rises (2007), Gone with the Bullets (2014), and Hidden Man (2018), this paper examines his distinctive aesthetic features in narrative structure, audiovisual language, thematic expression, literary adaptation, and postmodernist techniques. The findings suggest that Jiang’s style stems not only from his profound engagement with Cultural Revolution memories, personal emotions, and historical reflections but also from his innovative exploration of cinematic language, personalised approach to literary adaptation, and adept use of postmodernist methods. This style imbues his films with unique artistic value, while also presenting both challenges and opportunities amidst the wave of commercialisation. By systematically delineating the aesthetic characteristics of Jiang Wen’s cinema, this paper seeks to illuminate how his work balances artistic integrity and individual expression, offering fresh perspectives on the diversified development of Chinese cinema and providing theoretical insights for the creation and study of contemporary art films.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Hanxue Zhang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/11
TI  - The Formation and Aesthetic Characteristics of Jiang Wen’s Personalised Cinematic Style
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 10th International Conference on Modern Management, Education and Social Sciences (MMET 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 480
EP  - 488
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-475-4_56
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-475-4_56
ID  - Zhang2025
ER  -