went to the theater to understand the confusion:
's recently released movie " There's a Canteen by the Clouds " was denounced by some viewers as the worst of the year and asked the director Zhang Jiajia to withdraw from the film. The Douban score was only 5.4 or maybe Proof; some viewers said it made them cry and even felt healed. The movie's box office exceeded 200 million yuan in four days, making it the current box office champion in June. More than 6 million people have watched the movie in theaters.
So, this is a bad movie? Or a masterpiece?
When I walked out of the theater, I had a feeling:
Even though the film has received mixed reviews, it is very likely to make a profit without losing money; even after this film, the Chinese film industry will open up a new genre track - films full of Zhang Jiajia's literary flavor, referred to as Zhang Jiajia's body movie (warm reminder: the following contains spoilers).
一
Zhang Jiajia was first familiar to the public as a writer. His "Passing Through Your World" sold millions of copies a year. Later, he also started making movies.
Zhang Jiajia's film is like a collage, pasting different art materials onto the same drawing board, making it a seemingly complete work, which can then be exhibited publicly and tickets are sold. Whether the painting is worth the price of admission depends on the splicing materials and final finish of the painting. In the
film, Zhang Jiajia used four groups of character stories.
One is the love story between Niu Datian (played by Kong Lianshun) and Qin Xiaozhen (played by Zhang Yifan). Niu Datian became the richest man in the town by relying on a small gambling house, selling fake goods, and selling fireworks. In order to win the heart of the goddess and reassure his parents, he set fire to the company warehouse. An accident caused Qin Xiaozhen to be disfigured. After the gap between the two people was completely smoothed, they expressed their heartfelt feelings to each other and embraced each other with tears in their eyes.
The second one is the father-daughter story of Wang Yong (Lin Jiachuan) and Qiuqiu (played by Chen Xianen). His beloved wife died of illness, the man who owed money ran away, and Wang Yong went crazy. He mistook sheep dung eggs for money and only cared about two things all day long: using money to treat his wife's illness and enrolling his daughter in school. Believing that he was a hindrance to his daughter, he went to a bank with a knife to cause trouble, forcing the police to shoot him, and eventually died.
Third, the story of the siblings Mao Tingting ( Wang Luodan ) and Mao Zhijie ( Wang Dalu ). The deaf-mute sister opened a massage parlor in the property left by her parents and worked hard to run it. The brother, a rogue gambler, comes every month to smash up shops and demand living expenses, thereby forcing his sister to sell her house and divide the family. In the end, the elder sister bought an insurance policy (similar to a pension) for her younger brother and got married and moved away.
Fourth, the mother-in-law and love story surrounding the protagonist Liu Shisan (Peng Yuchang). Grandma Wang Yingying (played by Aaliyah) was seriously ill and died soon, so she traveled hundreds of miles to bring back her grandson who worked in a big city. Cheng Shuang (played by Zhou Ye) suffered from a disease that could kill him at any time. Before the last operation, he returned to Yunbian Town to meet the people he wanted to see. They had a happy and pure time of "family reunion", and then came the turbulent farewell and death.
Zhang Jiajia collected four types of information: mothers-in-law, father-daughter, siblings, men and women, and linked it up with Liu Shisan and Cheng Shuang selling insurance in a small town. The two are like a pair of "ferrymen", ferrying all living beings in the town to the other side of reconciliation, love and "hard living".
The warp and weft of these stories are intertwined, seemingly full and orderly, and have a sense of all kinds of living beings; however, when you get closer to this collage and take a closer look, you will find that the lines, composition and aesthetic expressions are almost all regular. Can't afford to scrutinize.
Let’s look at Niu Datian. He burned down the factory warehouse to prove that he would change. But with the factory gone, how Niu Datian can survive, and how to deal with the factory’s contracts, orders, and employee placement issues are not mentioned at all.
Reality is reduced to one dimension: romance is forced and the complexities associated with it are ignored.
In the father-daughter love chapter, the crazy father misses his daughter so pitifully that he once had to dig through garbage to eat it; but the daughter in a small town is not doing badly. The most exaggerated thing is that the father and daughter have never appeared in the same frame. The so-called drag, the so-called fetters, the so-called deep love have become rootless trees. There is only a tragic suspension of forced misery.
In the sister and brother chapter, the elder sister has a sense of sacrificial spirit for no reason. Instead of being angry or complaining when the younger brother smashes the shop, he thoughtfully prepares living expenses and delivers them to the younger brother on time. It seems that only this kind of contribution regardless of gains and losses, consequences, and grievances can achieve success. equals love. This kind of forced sacrifice is a naive formula that weakens human nature to the point where one-dimensional giving equals love.
As for the two most important people around Liu Shisan, there is no foreshadowing in the plot. It took less than ten minutes to explain that grandma got sick, was hospitalized, and died. As for Cheng Shuang, her life of more than ten years seemed to have been drained away. She always stayed in the summer of her childhood, loving Liu Shisan unswervingly. Why, why? unimportant. Everything was just to arrange her farewell after my grandma passed away.
"Farewell between life and death", a series of traps, forced to move, just because I'm afraid you won't cry.
This collage painted by Zhang Jiajia recruits various emotional materials, does not care about logic, abandons details, and piles them on the canvas too casually, using sensational music that emerges from time to time to fill in all the exaggerations and paradoxes. Coupled with the fleeting easter egg-style gathering of stars, the audience is immersed in this long MV, without thinking, just immersed.
二
A friend who is not a book fan and went to watch the movie and gave it four-star reviews said that many people in his theater cried while watching it. A strong man sitting in the back seat of the cinema where I was was also sobbing when he saw his grandma passing away and Cheng Shuang saying goodbye.
Before discussing this kind of "crying", we might as well review Zhang Jiajia's first film - "Passing Through Your World", which he served as screenwriter and original author, in which the famous breaking scene Yue Yunpeng chased Liu Yan in a taxi, Shouting "Swallow, Swallow", the regret, suffering, pain and despair of giving everything for love but losing nothing made thousands of netizens cry and moved.
Is it because of the role that I cry so hard? Plot? Movie? Art? Or because people in this world are always prone to things hurting others. We, who never let go of joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, evil and desire, will have crazy thoughts when we touch every scene and emotion.
Faced with Zhang Jiajia's emotional condiment - the seven-emotional person, it is inevitable to shed tears and feel sad for it.
We are not mourning the love of "Yue Yunpeng", nor are we heartbroken because of the departure of two angelic relatives and lovers, grandma and Cheng Shuang, just because we also have close relatives and loved ones. Our tears are shed for ourselves.
Zhang Jiajia, the master of emotional coordination, makes explosive material and almost "calculates" the audience. He bets that the audience will laugh here, cry there, feel that "the world is worth it" here, and lament "the end of the road" there.
Let’s take a look at some of the spices in the film:
Liu Shisan is wandering around in a big city selling insurance, with his boss suppressing him and his girlfriend decisively breaking up with him. Hangover and crying in the rental house. After the lofty words, he is like a mourning dog.
This seasoning is called sour.
He returned to his hometown, to a small town outside the world where clouds could be seen thousands of miles away when he opened the window. He met a girl one summer who came to comfort and accompany him in frustration before he "dead". At the same time, his ex-girlfriend who abandoned him suddenly returned, had noodles with Cheng Shuang in the rain, staged a drama of "female competition", and finally left calmly.
In the end, Cheng Shuang's surgery was successful, and Liu Shisan managed to make 1,000 insurance orders in one year. Somehow, without any explanation, it was completed. Both career and love are harvested, this is simply a cool romance novel.
This seasoning is called sweet.
The sweet and sour ends are mixed with all kinds of seasonings in the middle:
Wang Yong, who is driven mad by love and the tragic dilemma of reality, is suffering;
A lot of small comedy scenes: Liu Shisan runs around naked with his bath towel covered , Qiao Shan once again staged a big health massage segment, etc., this is delicious;
Niu Datian, who risked his life for love, ran and fell, and set fire with passion, this is spicy;
After tasting all kinds of flavors, he finally served a bottle of high purity Liquor, pour it into your mouth:
Grandma is hospitalized, the funeral is arranged, the bell rings, the mourning hall is set up, the hero climbs a mountain on a snowy night, hangs a soul-calling lantern, and then cries, "Grandma is back." The male and female protagonists are wrapped in a quilt and shrunk on the top of a mountain on a snowy night, not afraid of accidents such as hypothermia. Only in this way can the pain of bereavement be highlighted.
Are you crying or not?
Zhang Jiajia's smorgasbord is full of sour, sweet, bitter and spicy flavors. No matter how sophisticated your taste is or how cold-blooded your personality is, you will inevitably be hit by one or two of the emotions.
It’s just these emotions, due to the fractured narrative, the bloody conflicts, the sloppy characters, and the perfunctory plot, that produce an effect: except for the intense emptiness, hot suspension, and violent confusion, there is nothing. .
Zhang Jiajia is indeed good at cooking, but his ingredients are not fresh or complete, and the heat is too high and spicy, almost just for the last bottle of white wine. After three rounds of drinking, your liver and intestines will break, that's right.
三
In today's commercial movies, some people are always trying to challenge and open up new subdivision tracks: such as Chen Sicheng's "social topic" movie, Jia Ling 's "reality show" movie, Wu Ershan's "Feng Shen" "Industrialized" movies, and then Zhang Jiajia, only provide "emotional" movies that don't care about anything else.
Putting aside the debate of merits and demerits for now, just looking at the box office, the path of emotional movies is feasible. The migrant workers live a mediocre life and lack effective emotional liquor and a reason to cry bitterly. It is not a bad idea to go to the cinema to release their emotions.
Speaking more broadly, it is also good for it to explore the genre of commercial films. For example, Zhang Jiajia used animation to describe the protagonist's childhood in the first eight minutes of the film, just to create a fairy tale and contrast the subsequent characters' obstacles and embarrassment. Although controversial, it is also an exploration.
Zhang Jiajia, picture according to Visual China
A toast to Zhang Jiajia for her enterprising innovation; but the problem is that since it is a movie, it must tell the story that a movie should have.
Chen Sicheng's suspenseful story, lens language and aesthetic expression are definitely above the domestic standards; and Jia Ling's personal involvement in the game, the sincerity of the two films is unparalleled; not to mention "Feng Shen" , there is "tap water" because the quality control is strong enough; as for Zhang Jiajia, as the original author, screenwriter and director, the literary and artistic concepts, creative methods and expression routines he filled in the film are completely subordinate to the one who became famous for writing "Bedtime Stories" Zhang Jiajia became popular ten years ago.
He is more suitable to construct a short story of about 2,000 words, tell a 10-minute story, and quickly express the pain, loss, confusion, sentimentality and other emotions of youth. No details, just ingenuity. No growth, just atmosphere. I don’t have the patience to write about a character in a down-to-earth manner, and am more accustomed to writing all kinds of golden sentences to shock viewers and readers with similar emotions.
This is why, several years later, after going through work, family, etc., looking back at Zhang Jiajia, we seem to be unable to regain the original excitement and sadness.
When he stitches together ten-minute or ten-minute fragments of the story and fills in the logical breaks with music, this is tantamount to covering up his lack of ability to tell a long story. A collaged film is like a crumbling building block. No matter how exquisite and complicated the decoration is, it cannot conceal the fact that it will fall down as soon as it blows.
It’s okay to have emotions, but the overflow of emotions is not a shield for narrative failure. It’s time for Zhang Jiajia to wake up.
Text/Li Ruifeng Editor Su Jing
