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, from Leng Feng (" Wolf Warriors " 1&2), who are brave and invincible, to Liu Peiqiang and Wu Qianli (" Wolf Warriors " 1&2) who sacrificed their lives for the country Bridge");
and then from the proud, heartless Charlotte , Wang Duoyu (" Charlotte Troubles " " The Richest Man in Xihong City "), to seeing life and death, sacrificing yourself Zhang Chi and Duguyue (" Speeding Life ", " Walking Alone on the Moon ").
The two most typical big stars of the Chinese movie have both changed their screen images over the years.
, behind this, is the further sadness of Chinese films: the death of the mother ("Li Huanying", "The Miracle Stupid Child"), the death of the father ("'s Life Events ", " Assassination of the Novelist "), the death of the child (" Manslaughter") 2", " will send you a little red flower "), the death of a friend ("Myth of Love"), the death of a lover ("The Four Seas")... The death of
has become inevitable in the plot, and the protagonists will never understand Unhappy knot.
When drama choices like this become so unified, it's hard not to see a shadow of a big era.
- Gun Manuscript Editor-in-Chief Xu Yuan
The Death and Stability of Chinese Movies
Text / Zi Ge
About the Author: Film critic, Gun Manuscript chief writer, a moderate enough centrist.
This Mid-Autumn Festival is not at all family friendly.
The five movies I watched "Mom! "Brother, hello", "The end of the sea is the grassland ", " has her in the world ", " still thinks you are the best ", all of them died unfortunately. According to incomplete statistics, the deceased included a father, three mothers, a boyfriend and a brother. In addition, four of the five films are tearjerkers, three have the protagonist suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and two involve suicide plots... This makes the entire Mid-Autumn Festival look very mourning.
This is not an unlucky problem of auspicious , but that all creators hold a pessimistic view invariably. I have to say that there is a potential tacit understanding, or it is a collective symptom of the post-epidemic era.
(Note: There are as many as 12 new films released in the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, and the genres are also very rich. The total box office exceeded 370 million yuan, and the total number of movie viewers exceeded 9.43 million. However, the total box office still fell 26% from last year's 499 million yuan )
The "death" in the five films is not a decoration, but a key point.
"There is Her in the World" itself is an anti-epidemic film. It is strange not to mention death. On the contrary, there is one and only one person, which seems abnormal. In
"I Still Think You Are the Best", "The End of the Sea is a Prairie" and "Hello, Brother", all those who died were "Mom". And death all constitute the core narrative driving force.
Specifically, "Still" explores how the family will be maintained after the death of the mother? The cause of death of the mother in "Brother" has become the biggest suspense in the whole film. And "The End of the Sea" has the highest death rate. In addition to his mother, it also includes a Mongolian teenager.The death of two Han Chinese teenagers, and the hero himself, he is terminally ill, and his time is short.
"Mom! "Dad" is the one who died. This father, who has been absent from the beginning of the film, turned into a cloud, entrenched on the heads of the mother and daughter in the film, and shrouded them all the time. The death of
is undoubtedly the motif of this Mid-Autumn Festival.
(Note: "There is Her in the World" is the most powerful lineup in the Mid-Autumn Festival. The main promotion is "women's perspective", and the topics are around the epidemic, family and career. However, as of press time, it has only 5.5 points on Douban, which is not enough to pass the line. )
Looking a little deeper, except for "The World", the other four films all move from human death to some kind of more abstract death.
"Still" is about "the death of the traditional family". It's a story about "separation". The three brothers in the
film are either half fathers or half mothers. Due to the emotional entanglement of the previous generation, they passively formed a family, and because of the death of the previous generation, they were faced with the choice of gathering or dispersing. In the end, the family really fell apart. It actually expresses that a family does not have to be forced to be in the same room. Sometimes, a proper "separation" can lead to a more harmonious "reunion". Furthermore, considering that this is a Hong Kong film, it makes more sense.
From the actors to the plot, "I Still Think You're the Best" has a strong Hong Kong-style flavor, coupled with Huang Zihua's popularity in the Cantonese-speaking area, Guangzhou, Foshan, Dongguan accounted for nearly half of the box office. The background of the film is the restructuring period of state-owned enterprises in the early 1990s. In the film, the two "steel rings" made by the 38 red flag bearers are a symbol of love and the glory of the working class.
"The End of the Sea" and "Mama" are both about "the death of memory or history".
For the former, because people are dying, their memories will also dissipate, so they have a journey to search for history. But paradoxically, the history it seeks to trace—three difficult years that began in the late 1950s—is precisely the most veiled history. And the film didn't retrieve it, but just turned it into a warm narrative that avoided the important.
and "Mom" has a deeper and more painful inquiry into history. The film implicitly expresses that the father committed suicide by throwing himself into the lake because of his persecution in the turmoil and his daughter's incomprehension. This has also led to years of grievances between mother and daughter. Later, her daughter suffered from Alzheimer's disease, and her memory began to become disordered and gradually disappeared. At this time, the mother became a mother again and took care of her daughter who lost her memory.
In a sense, forgetting history is like a country suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The result of is of course not only amnesia - forgetting who I am and where I came from - but also the collapse of the entire order of life.
However, "Mom" can only talk about everything in a short time, and the second half becomes a popular tearjerker. Although I do like the ending, the mother and daughter face the sea, standing on a turbulent beach, and it's not hard to guess that they will be swallowed up by the history of the past.
It should be said that in this Mid-Autumn Festival, "death" is the most inopportune topic and the most striking highlight.
"Mom! "focusing on the elderly and Alzheimer's patients who are rarely shown in domestic movies, the media's publicity for it is still "annual tear gas"
The whole Mid-Autumn festival is bad, but it is not surprising at all, it is nothing more than a microcosm of the current state of Chinese film.
In a sense, contemporary Chinese films have become synonymous with conservative and mediocre.
You will find that the pioneering topics that have been widely discussed on the Internet have never appeared on the big screen today. In other words, as a public medium, film has already lost its proper social function here. And the big screen, as a mirror that sees reality, has long since become a funk mirror that distorts reality.
take women's issues as an example. The five films in this Mid-Autumn Festival all contain significant female elements.
"Mom! " is a woman's play through and through, "There is Her in the World" is an anti-epidemic film with a female perspective, "The End of the Sea is a Prairie" is about a mother looking for her long-lost daughter, "Hello, Brother" is about It is the story of saving mother. In "I Still Think You Are the Best", it is the mother, not the father, that unites this special family.
(Note: Li Shaohong said that the first thing I wanted to do was to write about the reactions of family members to the changes, which is worth observing and pondering. After the finished product of "There Is Her in the World" was released, it was still not needed. The highly praised Zhou Xun acting)
However, behind such dazzling female elements, the female issues are repeatedly invisible. Of course, it does not mean that films involving women must discuss women's issues, but at least when dealing with female characters, the growing female consciousness should be treated as a certain premise. But this is not the case.
"Mama" and "Sea's End" are like a pair of mirror images. In the former, the male-father is always absent, but has become a powerful force on the scene, controlling the relationship between mother and daughter; the latter is essentially a story of a mother looking for a daughter, but this story must pass through a male perspective and narrative to be presented.
If these are just creative choices, then the last three films are blatantly conservative or even retrogressive.
"Brother" plays time-travel with seriousness, but the final destination is an extremely old question: protect the adults, or protect the children? The last time I heard this question was in The Legend of Zhen Huan. And its essence is nothing more than asking, for a woman, whether motherhood and human nature are more important. In order to achieve the greatness of motherhood, the film "Brother" naturally has to protect the children. In order to reduce the moral hazard of the male protagonist, the main creator deliberately designed him to be a big soft boy, obedient to his wife. Seriously, if my wife says we can protect you, only mother is good in the world.
(Note: "Hello, Brother" appeared on the stage with a time-travel theme and era filter, as if extracting elements from 's happy twist 's works and then piecing together a movie. The jokes are conservative and the issues are backward. It's hard not to say it's bad. It's quite obvious)
The biggest selling point of "The World" is the female perspective. But the "Mom's Baby" declaration in the film is staggering. Ma Baonan, played by baike , cried to his wife: "In the past, people said that I was Ma Bao, but I was not happy. But I admit now that I am Ma Bao, and I am used to being taken care of by you. Now I only hope, God Give me one more chance, let me be your husband and mother (suffering from new crown , dying) son again. (Effective)" As a result, just after this Mabao declaration was finished, the camera turned, over there Mom just woke up. It can be called the modern version of "Mom Loves Me Again".
"Still" puts aside the theme of separation, and tells the old story of polyamorous love. What makes me, a male viewer, feel uncomfortable is that the reconciliation method of the two brothers at the end of the film is that the eldest brother helps the second brother who has injured his arm to hold his genitals for a small reconciliation...The camera position of the is that two people face the camera, and the picture only takes the upper body. It looks like the auditorium of the theater is used as a urinal.
The above-mentioned conservative and retrogression on women's issues is by no means an isolated case, but widespread in various social issues. Chinese films have long fallen behind the times and the audience. It is more and more like a sketch on the Spring Festival Evening, always using the Internet buzzwords from four or five years ago and telling outdated jokes.
because what it worries most is never how to act well or how to please the audience, but how not to make mistakes and how to complete the given action first. That is, survive first.
(Note: "I Still Think You're Best" builds a entanglement of three men and three women under one roof. In fact, a Taiwanese girl was used as a bystander to the family, and she broke the knot in the protagonist's complex relationship)
In the sinking era, the economy is the first to sink, followed by the concept.
And as an economic activity with the expression of ideas as one of the important goals, film is bound to be unable to live alone in such an era. Waiting for it can only sink together.
Chinese movies are in such a quandary. In the face of the ever-increasing economic pressure of the epidemic, coupled with the double attack of ideological censorship and public opinion censorship, there is not much space left for creators. The more in such a situation, the more "seeking stability" becomes the only viable option.
As a result, no one touches on social issues anymore, tear-jerking and laughing are all the rage, and the main theme has become the safest iron job. All provocative, sharp, pioneering, and novel expressions have all been smoothed out by themselves. Not to mention, in the long run, this steadfast mentality has brought about a more general creative regression and the formation of a new and firm comfort zone.
(Note: This movie has the same name as Julia Roberts , there is no rating on Douban, and it has been released for a month, and you may not know it exists)
The death of Chinese movies Steady, it is two sides of one body. The more desperate
is, the more the creators will inadvertently show pessimism and death, and the more in this dead silence, stability has become the unanimous choice of everyone.
Naturally, this choice is not only for creators, but for everyone. In the end, it is the moment when we chose Chinese films together, and together we decide the future of Chinese films. When will
turn around? I don't dare to speculate. After all, the recovery of the economy is easy, but the loosening of ideas is extremely difficult. It will probably take a long time. At least, in the foreseeable future, there is no possibility of an inflection point.
If you don't believe me, please see the film list of the National Day file.
Editor/Xu Yuan
Typesetting/Lime
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