Let us turn the time hand back to 1927.
When Itakura parted ways, Mao Zedong and his wife Yang Kaihui never saw each other again.
When half a century passed by in a blink of an eye, workers rebuilt Chairman Mao’s old house in Itakura. When they pushed open the old walls, they found that the cracks inside were filled with letters.
Until Chairman Mao's death, he had never seen these letters.
And every letter is filled with Yang Kaihui’s inexpressible longings.
The reason why I bring up this past incident again is because this year marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of Chairman Mao Zedong.
But what really made all kinds of emotions in my heart ripple again was the major revolutionary historical drama that is currently being broadcast - "Ask the Cangmang".
has been on the air for three weeks, and the ratings have been among the top three in the country, even if it is not the first.
As for the Douban score, it is as high as 8.6, and it continues to rise. The reason why
has achieved such results is actually very simple - "Ask the Cangmang" is the best among similar works from any angle.
First, the child is determined to leave the hometown.
In fact, most of the previous similar works paid more attention to the grand narrative - the big historical direction, the big historical events and background, and the appearance of various heavyweights.
discovered very little from the subtleties.
The opening chapter of "Ask the Cangmang" is a Dongting fisherman's song.
Chairman Mao Zedong in his youth jumped into the water and swam forward near Orange Island in Changsha.
Distant mountains, green trees, clear water, fishing boats, and young people with great ambitions.
What caught his eyes was the boundless beautiful scenery, but what he was thinking about in his heart was always the devastated and broken mountains and rivers.
Chairman Mao Zedong, who was in his youth, rewrote a poem and gave it to his father to express his aspirations.
The poem is written like this:
"A child is determined to leave his hometown, and he will not return it if he fails to learn. There is no need to bury his bones in his hometown. There is no green hills in life."
Rushing from the small Shaoshan Mountain to the broader world in the distance, He was finally no longer trapped in a small corner.
Time goes back to 1912.
At that time, China had maintained a feudal monarchy for more than two thousand years. With the outbreak of the Revolution of 1911, it completely became a speck of dust in history.
The 19-year-old Chairman Mao is studying by himself in the Hunan Library.
He later said in his memories that his biggest gain at that time was seeing a world map for the first time.
"It's funny to say that I went to private school, elementary school, middle school, and served as a soldier, but I have never seen a world map, so I don't know how big the world is."
"In my mind, Xiangtan County is bigger and Hunan Province is bigger. China has been called the world since ancient times. Of course it is huge! In the Hunan Library, there is a world map. I pass there every day and look at it. I stopped and looked at it, and it surprised me."
It turns out that China only occupies a small part of the world, Hunan Province is even smaller, Xiangtan is no longer visible, and Shaoshan Village has no shadow.
Second, multi-line narrative, actors take care of themselves.
For TV dramas, it cannot just be simple expressions of emotion.
After all, it is not a prose, an essay, or a fleeting glimpse of the heart, but a story that needs to be told well with an appropriate rhythm.
At that time, Chairman Mao returned to Changsha, and 10 years after the end of the feudal monarchy, China was still divided by warlords and people's livelihood was in decline.
Mr. Sun Yat-sen is in Guangzhou, Chen Duxiu is in Shanghai, and Li Dazhao is in Beijing. They are all struggling to find a way to save the country. The dawn of the new democratic revolution is about to appear.
"Ask the Cangmang" sorted out the complicated situation at that time and adopted a multi-line narrative method to show this period of history.
But what is worthy of praise is the performance of the actors.
For a long time, among the actors who played the young Mao Zedong, there are two outstanding ones. One is Hou Jingjian, whose representative work is "The Awakening Age", and the other is Wang Renjun in this drama.
Especially Wang Renjun has a bookish aura that Hou Jingjian does not have.
The most important thing about the young Chairman Mao he plays is that he captures the spiritual resemblance. There are moments of pride and moments of personal emotional entanglement in his movements.
Regarding the selection of actors, "Ask the Cangmang" can be described as "extremely bold".
Except for Ma Shaohua's Mr. Zhongshan, who is relatively stable, the selection of other personnel was very worrying at first-Ning Li's Chen Duxiu, Baike's Chiang Kai-shek, Zheng Yecheng's Zhou Enlai, and Jiaze's Yang Kaihui, etc.
But the result is very good, all the characters are completely standing.
Take Ning Li and Baike as examples.
Ning Li's most impressive character is undoubtedly Li Toyota - a super ruthless person.
But when he played Mr. Zhongfu, he was able to eliminate all traces of his previous roles one by one.
is confident, cheerful, talkative, full of revolutionary optimism, as if he was born to do it, everyone revolves around him, and he is extremely charming.
As for Bai Ke, of course it was "never expected."
It is rumored that when he came to play Chiang Kai-shek, many people complained about it, even now.
But my opinion is different. Chiang Kai-shek, played by
Bai Ke, may not be highly similar in appearance, but his grasp of the character's personality and temperament is actually a very interesting creation in recent years.
Third, Asking the Vast Land
In fact, from the moment the title of "Asking the Vast" came out, it is not difficult to see that director Wang Wei has great "ambition".
After all, he has made films like "White Night" and "Secret and Great."
If, I mean if, you ask him a sentence from Chairman Mao's poem: "Ask the boundless earth, who is responsible for the ups and downs?"
Then he will definitely answer - the people, only the people.
I have been following the drama for a long time. I am fascinated by the excellent details and careful thinking in the drama.
When Mao Zedong went to Anyuan, he visited the local coal mines.
First of all, how did he get there?
Wearing a long coat, he came to Anyuan in the name of running a school through the introduction of his uncle Mao Ziyun (who was the section chief of Section A of Anyuan Coal Mine at that time).
This means that he did not arrive in Anyuan with the lowest status, nor did he arrive in Anyuan with a high profile like Li Lisan, who wrote directly to the mine director.
only came through a middle-level introducer, which will not have a big impact on the local interest structure.
Therefore, he will not be ostracized as soon as he arrives in Anyuan, which is very conducive to investigating the true situation of the coal mine.
The long gown he wears is a symbol of intellectuals. He has also published many articles in "Ta Kung Pao" to show the coal miners that he came to investigate this time with both attitude and ability. It is a consensus that
goes deep into the bottom layer.
After all, we come from the masses of the people, and we have to go to the masses of the people. But how to go and when to go is a science.
When Chairman Mao recalled the Shaoshan Chong he was familiar with, he still saw the big from the small:
"Judging from the situation in Shaoshan Village, the average working people live a miserable life, either starving or freezing, or because they have no money. Some people died of illness after taking medicine, and some were imprisoned to death because they couldn't pay the money or food."
"In Shaoshan Village, I have not seen many happy people. This is true in Shaoshan Village, and probably the same is true in Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, and the whole world."
So what did Mao Zedong go through before going to Anyuan?
When he was persuading Huang Ai and Pang Renquan, he was suddenly awakened by Huang Ai's words - Have you ever been a worker? Mr. Zhongfu and Mr. Shouchang have probably never been workers, right?
It is all these accumulations that constitute the excellent quality of "Ask the Cangmang" as a revolutionary epic.
All viewers may wish to take a look.