" Welcome to My Side " is a slightly "greasy" title, but it is a refreshing work that is not exaggerated or bloody. Compared with many youth romance movies that use too much force, it is even more valuable. What deserves special praise is that the film's carefully designed narrative traps are clever but not deliberate, and the deeply buried foreshadowing is infectious but not too embarrassing when the mystery is revealed. In short, this is indeed a rare work that can make the audience feel relaxed and happy, and worth the price of admission. Why
is anti-routine and not "painful" is popular. The other side of
's relaxation may be excessive blandness. If you think about it carefully, the conflict between Chen Xiaozhou (played by Yu Shi) and Feng Jianan (played by Wang Yinglu) in this film is just that girls ask boys to quit smoking, and it is difficult for boys to get rid of this bad habit in daily life. Of course we can regard it as the film's presentation of real life details, but in any case, whether such a "little thing" can support the dramatic conflict of an entire love movie is debatable - the lack of unforgettable love After "Pain," even the final reunion seems to have lost its true emotional power.
In recent years, the public has scorned the "pain" in youth love movies, such as clichéd plots such as failure, lovelornness, fighting, abortion and death, and regarded them as unnecessary moaning and pretentiousness - this is exactly what this film has done away with. One of the important reasons why it can be widely recognized by the audience.
But the key to the problem may not be "pain", but what kind of "pain" is needed in youth romance movies. People should probably not forget that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the sixth generation of directors as a creative group entered the historical stage of Chinese films, the "pain" of youth was one of the most profound imprints in their works. Zhang Yuan's "Beijing Bastards", Guan Hu's "Messy Hair", Wang Xiaoshuai's "Pole Girl", " Seventeen-Year-Old Bicycle ", Lu Xuechang's " Grown Up ", Jia Zhangke's "Xiao Wu" Films such as "Platform" reflect the confusion, pain and cries of young people on their journey of growth.
If you look further, in Wu Tianming's movie " life ", young Gao Jialin gave up love in the countryside and chose love in the city. In the end, he failed to change his life and was lost on the road of life. Self-worth. Isn't this the "pain" caused by youth and love?
It can be seen that the real "pain" of youth is of course meaningful. However, the absence of a sense of history and the damage to the relationship structure between the self and the world are reducing the "pain" in many youth romance movies to boring gimmicks and hypocritical decorations. Because of the isolation from the outside world, the "pain" in the vacuum is limited to individual trauma or natural trauma, but fails to deepen or expand into a cultural trauma and cannot be integrated with the "pain" of the times, history, and collectives.
Real "pain points" are downplayed and "small feelings" are magnified
In this film, Chen Xiaozhou encounters a workplace crisis due to an accident after a breakup (if he cannot be promoted, he will face being laid off), while Feng Jianan has been unable to find someone after graduation. Work and fall into self-doubt. However, the real "pain points" in the lives of these contemporary young people are deliberately downplayed in the film - Chen Xiaozhou successfully achieved a promotion and salary increase because of his love, and Feng Jianan, who had repeatedly encountered difficulties in finding a job, easily became An up owner with countless fans. This not only makes the "pain" of the lovers light and suspended, but also makes the love in the movie, like the fantasy setting, separated from the real world.
The era is obscured and history is suspended, and this is not the only problem encountered by this film. At that time, ", your deskmate, " mentioned the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. However, this important historical statement was abbreviated as a heart-stirring moment of love - the male protagonist Lin Yi went to participate in the parade, and was soon persuaded by the female protagonist Zhou Xiaozhi to go back to school. The "big" history completely fades into the "small" background where the hero and heroine hold hands for the first time.
In ", that year, ", when Beijing's successful bid for the Olympic Games was cheered by viewers both inside and outside the TV, the relationship between the hero and heroine finally became tense and collapsed, and friendship and love were instantly shattered. In the end, the individual joys and sorrows overwhelmed the important historical moments, and the feelings of the "small self" rather than the will of the "big self" became the only criterion for measuring the value of youth.
Over the years, when youth romance movies have invariably begun to avoid the outside world and real history, the young people in the movies have gradually become self-centered, equating others around them with the entire society, ignoring or even ignoring those who seem to be "with themselves". "irrelevant" people, things and life. From this we can also understand why many youth love movies are filled with all kinds of bloody and exaggerated plots - if young people are enclosed in their own "small world", of course the importance of the details of life will be infinitely magnified .
The recently released " There's a Shop in the Cloud " uses a false hometown as an antidote, trying to cure the "pain" of young people wandering in the city, but it turns out to be a bowl of chicken soup for the soul that has expired; "Hourglass" "" insists on staying at the level of "no one is seventeen forever, but some people are always seventeen", using "pain" as a cheap emotional comfort tool. The audience's complaints and criticism of them have once again confirmed that the road of "painful youth" has already come to an end.
Collision with the real world "Pain" makes sense
So, does this mean we should eliminate "pain" altogether? It is not difficult to find that more and more film and television works, like "Welcome to Me", are determined to abandon the gloomy tone and sad atmosphere, trying to "send sugar" with a relaxed and happy tone, and regard ideal youth and love as The spice in ordinary life. As the film's slogan says, "The world is screaming, and you are the only antidote." It's cute and cute, and it also makes us temporarily forget all the troubles in the world.
However, this may only make people miss the " to youth " more and more. This work, which has also been criticized by the public, raises a very profound issue of the times: Should young people from humble backgrounds choose the beautiful love of poverty or the promising personal development? Furthermore, why do young people have to face such harsh multiple-choice questions in life? What leaves them with no choice? In a sense, the connection established by the film between young people's youth and real society has not been surpassed for more than ten years.
At the end of "Welcome to Me", Chen Xiaozhou unexpectedly saved Feng Jianan in time. But some questions linger in my mind: If Chen Xiaozhou loses his job due to a strange disease, what should Feng Jianan do? Should Feng Jianan, who has grown into a traffic master, really stay for Chen Xiaozhou's love? What if "running away" is a more reasonable life choice for Feng Jianan than Chen Xiaozhou's boring joke?
Such an assumption is of course very disgraceful and untimely, but this may be the real role of "pain": no matter what era we are born in, perhaps only after breaking through ourselves and colliding with a larger and more real world can we It is possible to see the face of "pain" clearly in a reflective way, and then it is possible to understand the meaning of youth and love to oneself, the group and a generation.(Beijing Youth Daily)
