Recently, Hong Kong and Taiwan movies have been released in Oita one after another.
is a Taiwanese movie first, and released two masterpieces, " Weekly Remove Three Evils " and "Old Fox", one is a cool movie and the other is a fierce movie.
Hong Kong movies are not far behind.
has launched two big moves in succession, " under the day " and " Youth Diary ", both of which are realism masterpieces.
These four movies are all Douban movies with a score of 8 or above, and they are all worthy of attention in the near future.
If you want to choose one of the four movies to watch, Pigeon recommends "Diary of a Youth" first.
The film won the "Audience Choice Best Film" at the 60th Golden Horse Awards, received 12 nominations at the 42nd Academy Awards, and was selected into Douban's list of the most anticipated Chinese films in 2024.
currently has a Douban score of 8.4, making it the highest-rated Chinese film in 2024 and a strong contender for this year's Best of the Year.
01,
Many people may be confused.
Aren’t Hong Kong movies lonely? Why is
so popular this year?
In fact, current Hong Kong films are like a tape, divided into side A and side B.
a is a commercial film, characterized by being "big and vulgar".
In this field, there are no actors, and the old guys like Louis Koo, Lau Ching Wan, and Lam Jiadong are back and forth. The filming is about drug wars, gun battles, and police and gangsters. The audience has long been tired of watching them. Hong Kong films like
should indeed withdraw from the stage of history.
b is a literary and crime film with the characteristics of "small but beautiful".
In the early years, "Days and Nights in Tin Shui Wai", " Sister Tao ", " The Thief of Years " and " Walking in the Snow to Seek Plum Blossoms ", in recent years, "The Heart of the Heart", "Corridor of Justice", "The Viper Lawyer" and " "Under the Sun" and "Diary of a Young Man" are both of this type.
They are like a sharp knife, peeling off the surface of society, or showing the beauty of people's hearts, or poking at the darkness of human nature, becoming a unique Hong Kong-style stir-fry on the movie table.
In recent years, a large number of b-side Hong Kong films have been introduced, giving the dying Hong Kong films a new lease of life.
"Youth Diary" is one of the best.
The director of "Diary of a Youth" is Zhuo Yiqian, a new director who won the Academy Award and is not well-known.
But the producer of this film is Er Dongsheng.
Ee Dong-sheng is known as the director who is best at making emotional scenes in Hong Kong.
He pays attention to marginalized groups. In order to make a good film, he will conduct a lot of rural surveys.
He spent 8 or 9 months focusing on mental patients and made "The Story of a Dirty Man";
He spent 8 years collecting information about drug dealers around the world and made "Disciple ";
He paid attention to China who was living in Japan. He made " Shinjuku Incident ";
he paid attention to Hengdiao and made " I am a passerby ";
he paid attention to "Three Thousand Orphans Entered Mongolia" and made " The End of the Sea" It’s grassland 》.
Later, when he supported the younger generations, he passed on this realistic spirit.
He is the producer of the recent "Under the Day" and "Diary of a Young Man".
"Under the Sun" focuses on abuse in institutions for the disabled, and "Diary of a Youth" focuses on children committing suicide by falling from a building. They are both acute social issues.
Putting aside the grand narrative, for ordinary audiences, "Diary of a Youth" is a "very easy to cry" movie.
After 60 minutes of a 95-minute movie, the theater was already bursting into tears.
A friend of mine even cried so hard that his "eyes were swollen and he couldn't see clearly."
It is not difficult to make people cry. What is difficult is to make people think after crying.
What is rare about this film is that although it is a thrilling subject matter, the director managed it with enough restraint and the piano soundtrack soothes people's hearts.
You said it is a teenager's suicide diary, but I said it is a healing antidote for adults.
’s last cry is a release of emotions, which is warm, heartfelt and heartfelt.
So just defining it as "a movie that makes you cry" would be an underestimation of it.
02,
"Diary of a Youth" is very similar to Shunji Iwai's classic work "Love Letter".
In "Love Letter", two heroines with the same name and surname connect a lingering love story through a letter.
In "Youth Diary", a pair of brothers who are separated by Yin and Yang rely on a diary to tear apart the abnormal love of their original family.
Their success lies not in the story, but in the structure.
Director Zhuo Yiqian of this film used three techniques to create this exquisite "structural magic box".
The first move is to make a splash in the east and attack in the west.
The whole film is a two-line narrative.
The first line is the suicide line.
On campus, someone found a suicide note written in advance.
Teacher Zheng deduced from the handwriting that the suicide note should be from a student in his class.
In order to intervene in the student's suicide, he began a secret investigation.
The second line is the growth line.
Zheng Youjie, a 10-year-old child, encountered troubles while growing up:
His parents didn’t love him, his younger brother was too smart, he had poor grades and repeated a grade, he couldn’t sleep well at night, and he couldn’t concentrate in class. At a young age, he already realized that the world is not worth it.
According to the general movie shooting method, the first suicide line is more gimmick and is the main line;
The second growth line is more tame and is the secondary line.
The two lines are intertwined. This is a standard social suspense movie.
This is how the director shot it from the beginning.
He asked Teacher Zheng to become a detective in a serious way, and he investigated and collected evidence. He successively eliminated the suspicion of the squad leader and the cake, and slowly got closer to the initiator.
In the growth line part, the director followed the steps and created a stupid child who lacks love, which is no different from all movies that reflect the pain of children's growth.
Until the middle part of the film, the main line and the secondary line suddenly changed. In the main plot of
, "who is the suicide" suddenly becomes unimportant. What the director wants to show is the young generation living in depression and anxiety.
So much so that the classmate who finally wrote the suicide note appeared, and the director only gave him a vague back view.
It doesn't matter who he is.
Who they are is what matters.
The main line began to be freehand, changing from solid to virtual, and became a secondary line.
And the previous sub-line, after telling a cliché story about the growth of a stupid kid, suddenly came to a reversal, suddenly made waves, changed from fiction to reality, successfully hit the hearts of the audience, and also changed from the sub-line to main line.
The audience thought that they were watching a suspense film, but after going east and west, what they saw was a social ethics film, and the sense of surprise came from this. The second trick of director
is called trick guidance.
While telling the story in two lines, the director used parallel editing to advance the stories of Teacher Zheng and Zheng Youjie at the same time.
The audience was inadvertently misled, forming a wrong story line:
The stupid kid grew up to become a mediocre teacher, encountered a suicide incident on campus, and recalled his childhood past.
The first 60 minutes of the film have been performed according to this "wrong version".
It wasn't until a black and white photo appeared that the audience realized that the stupid boy's life was forever fixed at the age of 10.
Teacher Zheng is not that boy, but his younger brother.
The dislocation of identity brings about the biggest reversal in the whole film, and the audience's tear ducts instantly burst.
The brilliance of this narrative is that after the audience gets the "correct version", they quickly infer three details-
The clever younger brother finally became an ordinary person, which shows how much his brother's death affected him;
The older brother then The younger brother's wish was to become a teacher, and the younger brother helped his elder brother fulfill this wish;
the younger brother read his elder brother's diary many years later.
The real death of a person is to be forgotten by everyone. Although the death of his brother is sad, at least his brother always remembers him.
But the memory of my younger brother is mixed with a bitterness that is difficult for others to taste.
When the elder brother was laughed at by the whole class, the younger brother once showed contempt;
When the elder brother was chased by his father, the younger brother pretended to do his homework and turned a blind eye;
When the elder brother hugged the younger brother tightly late at night, the younger brother pushed him away he.
How heart-warming the details of the present are, how chilling the details of the past are.
What is written in the diary is the voice of the elder brother, so why is it not the confession of the younger brother? The third trick of
video is called from the outside to the inside.
Just by telling a story about a strange twist, the movie is not enough to touch people's hearts.
On the surface it tells the story of a 10-year-old boy who fell from a building, but behind it is the trauma of generations of families in East Asian countries and the anxiety of the entire society.
The director can always radiate from a small point to a cross-section of society.
For example, it was clear that only one student wanted to commit suicide, but during the investigation, Teacher Zheng discovered that almost every student was facing tremendous psychological pressure.
He even hallucinated all kinds of world-weary thoughts from his classmates in class.
An extreme case suddenly turned into a group portrait.
For another example, after my brother committed suicide, my mother ran away from home in anger, and my father's choice was to throw things and drink alcohol.
uses two different ways of handling an incident to teach us how to deal with conflicts in intimate relationships.
Also, we are also faced with a suicidal teenager.
The younger brother was indifferent to his elder brother, which brought a fresh life to an abrupt end;
Many years later, he learned the lessons of that year and patiently talked with the sad students on campus. The most amazing thing about
is that the elder brother and the younger brother are very different on the surface, but they can actually be regarded as the same person.
As everyone grows up, they are a mixture of two personalities: elder brother and younger brother.
One is the pride of his parents, living a lucky and silent life.
One is a shame in the hearts of parents, free but lonely inside.
The ending for most people is to kill the disobedient elder brother in their souls and become the obedient younger brother. Although
's personality is incomplete, at least he survived.
These mappings from the outside to the inside turn the film from an isolated line into an intertwined network, in which every viewer can see their own shadow.
Everyone is crying, to some extent, they are crying for their past selves.
The chill is mixed with the warmth, and there is depth hidden under the warmth, making the entire movie extremely rich in layers. There are many things to note about the videos
03 and
.
For example, the analysis of society is very similar to Yang Dechang, like a gentle and sharp scalpel, cutting open the lesions of East Asian society;
For example, the use of aerial shots has a bit of Hou Hsiao-hsien's shadow.
There are also performances by actors.
The father played by Cheng Zhongji is chilling, and Teacher Zheng played by Lu Zhenye is gentle and restrained, but also full of dramatic tension.
The most difficult thing is Huang Zile, who plays Zheng Youjie.
The crying scenes were particularly well performed, especially the one when she was made to stand by the teacher and faced with the ridicule of her classmates, which was heartbreaking.
Of course the video is not perfect.
Many people have criticized it. Except for the shocking twist, the rest of the film is a bit draggy. For example,
used a lot of words to describe the love history of his younger brother, and even added slow motion and romantic filters, which was a bit overwhelming. Director
explained during the screening session that the younger brother had huge obstacles in dealing with intimate relationships after his older brother committed suicide. The love scene was also shown to illustrate the great impact of the unexpected death of a loved one on people.
For another example, the film was forcibly whitewashed later in the film, which brought a great reconciliation to everyone.
Before his death, his father missed his dead son, and his younger brother forgave his father in a conversation with his secretary.
Although the whereabouts of the mother who ran away from home are unknown, a happy ending is indispensable.
Brother Pi thinks that the director probably didn't want the story to be too desperate, so he arranged such a slightly warm ending. In fact, his heart is infinitely sad.
The English name of the video is time still turns the pages, which translates to "time always passes".
I am reminded of the sentences in Lu Xun's "In Memory of Mr. Liu Hezhen".
"Time is always passing, the streets are still peaceful, and the limited lives are nothing in China. At most, they are just for idle people without malicious intentions to talk about after dinner, or for idle people with malicious intentions to make 'rumours.'" Seed. "
This sentence can be the best comment for the video.
04,
The irony is that such a masterpiece has no popularity when it is released in the mainland.
is currently in theaters for 11 days, and its reputation has broken the previous record for this year's theatrical films set by "Dune 2". However, the film schedule continues to decline. Many viewers can't buy tickets if they want to see it, and the total box office has only just exceeded 10 million.
Perhaps the topic of "teenage suicide" is too shocking.
While watching the movie, we noticed that the Cantonese word "ex-boyfriend" was translated into "close friend", and "puppy love" is a forbidden word on the big screen.
An 18-year-old young man is told that he cannot fall in love. Falling in love is a heinous act, but a 22-year-old young man is forced to go on a blind date. Being single is a treason.
Young people who have grown up in this environment of avoidance, discipline and self-deception have probably been killed countless times in their hearts.
When will we see works like this produced in the Mainland?
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Yi Li Ji
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