Characteristics of Traditional Aesthetics in the Film Music of the Far East Countries

The article is devoted to the problem of film music in the cinema of the Far East countries. This topic has been insufficiently investigated in the Russian film studies and musicology. Summarizing the experience of Russian researchers of audiovisual synthesis in the film, the author of this article tries to extrapolate it to the Far Eastern material. So, on the basis of the film audiovisual design theory, it is proposed that the main factor influencing the audiovisual synthesis in the film is to highlight the aesthetic space in which the authordirector exists and creates and the characteristics of his attitude to this space.

Therefore, the focus of attention is the question of the influence of traditional aesthetics on audiovisual synthesis in the films of the Far East directors. It is noted that there was formed a highly developed, original philosophical and aesthetic tradition (conjugated with Buddhism and Taoism) in China. This tradition had an impact on all Far Eastern art in general, which in turn affected the Far East cinema. This is characteristic of the synthetics of the Far Eastern art culture in general.

Basing on the understanding that the mythological and symbolic origins of all visual arts, theater, music and cinema are connected with traditional aesthetics, the author considers the basic aesthetic principles, including the ideas of “hidden beauty”, “artless simplicity”, “religious reminiscences”, etc. on the example of some films. In a detailed analysis of the short film 100 Flowers Hidden Deep (dir. Chen Kaige), symbolic relationships between visual and sound images of Chinese traditional culture are revealed, through which the deep meaning of the film is conveyed.

The author of the article comes to the conclusion that considering the films of the Far East directors it is possible to trace down several semantic levels, visible and hidden, which give multidimensionality to the film text, where each dimension flows into the other. Thus, the audiovisual design of the film harmoniously inscribes into the context of Chinese traditional aesthetics with its symbolic system, without knowledge of which it is impossible to understand the author's intention.