From a market perspective, comedies are a type of movie that better meet the needs of Spring Festival moviegoers. In the Spring Festival of 2024, four works, " Hot ", " Speeding Life 2", " Bears Reversal of Time and Space " and "Article 20", all have "comedy" tags posted on the online ticketing page. This attracts the audience. Among them, the new work "Bear Bears" continues the consistent comedy style of the series, while the remaining three works try to achieve the narrative effect of "laughing with tears". " Article 20 " directed by Zhang Yimou adopts a completely different processing method. The two elements of sadness and joy are presented regularly and alternately like beads of different colors, causing the audience to repeatedly "cross between joy and sadness". Jump". The director's ability to stir up the audience's emotions is certainly admirable, but what is more worthy of careful consideration is whether the two narrative techniques of tragedy and joy form a synergistic effect, or do their separate battles lead to the internal division of the film?
A mix of serious movies and comedy sketches
The narrative theme of "Article 20" is realistic. The title of the film points to "Article 20" of my country's Criminal Law, which is the legal article on "justifiable defense." The entire story also revolves around the modification of the judgment standards of this article and the progress of the country's rule of law.
In the film, Han Ming, a prosecutor from the county town, was seconded to the city for the sake of his son's academic success. He was also handling three cases related to self-defense: one was an old case, in which bus driver Zhang Guisheng stopped a man from harassing a female passenger and turned back. He was beaten and smashed in anger; secondly, Han Ming's son Han Yuchen fought with the bully in order to stop school violence and injured the bridge of his nose; thirdly, villager Wang Yongqiang had been abused by bullies in the village for a long time, and out of endurance, he killed He was stabbed to death. The above three situations all have high social attention and can also affect public emotions, establishing the seriousness of the film's theme. The fourth case that
’s work has briefly mentioned but is worthy of careful study is that Han Ming injured his senior who molested his ex-girlfriend Lu Lingling and insisted on the bottom line of justice and refused to admit his mistake, which affected his graduation assignment. Han Ming's own experiences echoed those of the protagonists in the three cases, establishing the rationality for his putting social justice before his individual future at critical moments, and also echoing his life choices in his youth. At this point, the serious social concerns in the story have formed a relatively complete logical closed loop.
However, the film does not simply dominate the entire film with a serious atmosphere of realistic concern, but tries to neutralize the tragic color of the work by constantly adding the "sweetener" of comedy. It is not difficult to find that most of the comedy passages in the work occur in the absence of the protagonists of the three cases, and are mainly promoted by Han Ming and his wife Li Maojuan. For example, in order to avoid misunderstanding by his wife, Han Ming noted the caller name of his ex-girlfriend and current colleague Lu Lingling as "Wang Tiejun", forming a name gag. Another example is that when Han Ming and Lu Lingling were investigating clues to the case, they staged a hilarious verbal fight with the owner and his wife of a small store. These paragraphs are relatively complete, like comedy sketches interspersed with discussions of serious social issues, and have little effect on advancing the narrative.
Even the insertion of some comedy scenes has, to a certain extent, eliminated the original seriousness of the film. After the incident of Han Yuchen injuring the bully was filed, the scene in which Han Ming, his wife, and his brother-in-law accused each other and complained in the car created a comedy effect in the character's character and use of language. Considering that the three people were talking about Han Yuchen's future life direction, the inclusion of comedy elements may easily make people question whether the parents really understand the seriousness of the matter.
The atmosphere of the film alternates between sadness and joy, which also challenges the audience's aesthetic habits and emotional stability. A typical example is the scene where Han Ming and his wife drove to chase Zhang Guisheng, who went to Beijing to appeal. One second, the couple called Zhang Guisheng to give up the appeal. The scene was hilarious. The next second, a speeding truck hit Zhang Guisheng's car. Destroying people and causing the audience's emotions to fall from a high point of relaxation and joy to a low point of astonishment and speechlessness.
Such a drastic emotional change certainly gives people an uncommon aesthetic experience. However, excessively frequent cycles of sorrow and joy will also cause the audience to have constant mood swings, and even fall into a state of dumbfounding.
Two purposes that are difficult to balance
The serious theme and comedy technique of "Article 20" are separated from each other because it fails to effectively reconcile the two purposes of artistic expression and commercial success. The addition of comedy elements certainly makes the film more in line with the holiday atmosphere, but the problem is that when the comedy scenes take the story away from the core plot a little frequently, the sense of separation between the two purposes is also increasing. If those deliberate comedy sketches are eliminated, the film should have a more realistic and caring atmosphere, and its thinking on social issues can be expressed more smoothly.
In most cases, it is difficult for one video to achieve both purposes at the same time. Even Zhang Yimou still needs to constantly explore and adapt to the "spleen and stomach" of the market. During the Spring Festival in 2023, Zhang Yimou created "Manjianghong" based on the "recipe" of popular stars, comedy elements and feelings of family and country, and won the annual box office championship in one fell swoop. However, the shortcomings of comedy scenes affecting the overall sense of the story were already reflected at that time. This time, "Article 20" was copied in the same way. The artistic effect was burdened by comedy elements, and the box office performance was not as good as expected. This makes people doubt the rationality of forcibly achieving two purposes in the work.
It should also be noted that the inclusion of comedy elements is the director's deliberate catering to the audience's taste in order to achieve commercial success, or is it a concession made to the market out of desperation? Today, the schedule market has formed an important support for the film industry, and meeting schedule demand is also a necessary prerequisite for achieving a balance between supply and demand. The cloak of comedy in "Article 20" is obviously a clear market consideration, but the realistic caring core of the film is also an urgent need in the current market. In fact, what the current local film market needs is a more mature supply and demand relationship. By allowing works like "Article 20" to exist without excessively catering to the market, two purposes can be achieved.
