The most equal and certain thing in a person's life is death. Rich or poor, noble or small, no one can escape. This is the ultimate issue in life and the initial dramatic conflict. Everyone has to face it, but it is also the most difficult to photograph. Domes

In a person's life, the most equal and certain thing is death.

Rich or poor, noble or small, no one can escape.

This is the ultimate issue in life and the initial dramatic conflict.

Everyone has to face it, but it is also the most difficult to photograph.

There is still no decent domestic drama that truly faces "death".

Unexpectedly, just after the 2024 summer season, a new Taiwanese drama released by Netflix actually brought out one of the most difficult tasks in the world - facing the deceased - "Life Cleaner".

In 2020, a TV movie of the same name was released, which was well received. Four years later, he was still the director of the film, and the lineup was completely changed, and this series was launched again.

starring, Feng Xiaoyue , Song Yunhua , Jin Shijie. Does

still taste like the movie version? After finishing two episodes in one go, I felt like I was following "Tomorrow's Cleaning Society" in the drama and walked into one human story after another. After reading it, I was speechless and choked up.

It confronts the most embarrassing situation after death, and also shows the true cruelty of the world -

Life is the most lively life, and death is always the loneliest. "Some people are gone, and no one cares."

And for the living, "saying goodbye is never a simple thing."

I think that in terms of scale and depth, this drama has made a dark horse out of subjects that cannot be filmed in Chinese dramas.

Almost all of the most unspeakable "taboos" in the world have been thoroughly explained by this drama.

1. Only after understanding the three difficulties of life cleaners can we understand the most difficult job in the world.

When it comes to life cleaners, that is, the staff who deal with the aftermath of accidental deaths, our first reaction is probably "terrible" ”, “bad luck”, “stay away”.

Although similar work, we have already watched Zhu Yilong 's movie " Life Events ", the Japanese movie " The Embalmer ", and the Korean drama "I Am the Organizer of Relics".

But to be honest, the intensity of the above work is much easier than that of a life cleaner.

In my opinion, being a life cleaner is simply the most difficult job in the world. How difficult is

?

A burst of cell phone ringtones disturbed the protagonist Dachuan (played by Feng Xiaoyue)'s interest in playing pinball machines. A job came to his door.

As the main force of Tomorrow Cleaning Society, a company that specializes in organizing, remediating and cleaning the deceased, the company owner Long Ge is not around. He can only meet the customer in person - the manager of a hotel.

A long-term resident died unexpectedly in the room and was not discovered until the smell was too strong.

Okawa comforted the manager: After their cleaning, the room will be as inoperable as before.

To be honest, it is difficult to recognize this man at first glance as the handsome man in " Little Times ", Feng Xiaoyue.

With short hair and a lazy shirt, he changed his past delicate image and looked like a rough uncle.

From a secular perspective, being a life cleaner is not a decent job.

But Dachuan’s arrogant appearance will make people have a better impression of this job.

Although everyone is taboo, this job is very technical.

To clean up all kinds of special death scenes, at least three hurdles must be overcome. Each of these three hurdles hits the life gate of ordinary people.

The first step is to overcome fear.

The manager who guided Dachuan said on the way that your job doesn’t look like much, and the tools are similar to those of a hotel aunt, so why not do this job for me.

Dachuan said yes, give us three achievements.

But as soon as the manager opened the door, Dachuan pushed him in. In less than half a second, the manager vomited all the way and escaped.

and then spit it out and let Okawa handle it by himself.

What’s even more outrageous is that after another two seconds, the manager ran back and asked Dachuan to help him see if he had seen anything he shouldn’t have seen.

walked to the corridor and saw that the empty corridor looked a bit eerie. The manager suppressed his fear and slowly poked his head out. He saw a little girl sitting quietly in the corridor and turned his head sharply.

The manager was so frightened that he lost his wits and asked Dachuan and the others, did you see it?

Okawa asked: What did you see?

After hearing this, the manager screamed and ran away.

Dachuan and the others were left laughing and greeting the girl. It turned out to be the youngest daughter of the single mother Zheng Yiwen in the team, who came to wait for her mother to get off work.

The second hurdle is to overcome nausea.

Life cleaners face all kinds of dead people.

For example, this person was a well-known fitness instructor before his death, but he was injured in the bathroom. He fell down before he could call for help and never got up. After more than 20 days, the smell in the room made it no wonder that the manager vomited when he saw it.

The work of cleaning and disinfection is also very cumbersome.

First, you need to spend a lot of time to be fully equipped.

Wear airtight protective clothing, gas masks, and goggles.

If the weather was like this, sweat would flow all over the body in no time.

The most annoying thing is that the corpse liquid will flow under various furniture, and it is not an easy task to remove and dispose of it. No wonder the only woman is a big guy.

For novices, that kind of bloody flesh not only means a loss of appetite, but also means "vomiting one day every day and one day every day."

No wonder later, the daughter of Brother Long, played by Song Yunhua, said that she wanted to join, and Dachuan bet that she wouldn’t be able to do it in three days.

The third hurdle is to overcome prejudice.

The entire society is prejudiced against life cleaners.

All practitioners are facing the same dilemma.

Zheng Yiwen said at the beginning that her daughter was obediently waiting for her to do her homework in the corridor after work. She had stopped work and happily attended her daughter's class meeting. She heard her daughter talk about her mother's work, "It is to help dead people and clean things up."

full audience There was astonishment.

At the end of the class meeting, she reminded her daughter awkwardly, didn’t she agree to only mention her father’s work and not her mother’s?

But my daughter asked innocently: Do you have any questions?

But she paused for half a second and said, it’s okay. At that moment, the reality of life as a life cleaner was revealed through the back of the paper.

And the grand proposition of this drama about life and death has finally been slowly revealed.

2, the mother who died suddenly in the hotel, the son who was made things difficult for the landlord... the "secrets" that are unspeakable in the world are revealed.

The most special thing about the drama is that through the special job of a life cleaner, this cold world can be seen through.

Okawa and the others clean the room of the deceased. They also clean up the regrets between the deceased and his relatives and friends by handing over the deceased's belongings.

Just like the movie version, the director seems to be looking at the world from a distance, not reasoning from the moral high ground, and letting the viewers find their own answers.

There are no young or old on the road to death. Death is lonely and destined to be terrible. It is not only the death itself that is terrible, but also the people at the bottom who die suddenly, leaving themselves and their loved ones with huge embarrassment and regret.

The life cleaner is the last person to witness this embarrassment and regret.

Therefore, here you can often see the joys and sorrows of life and all kinds of things in the world.

When Brother Long, played by Jin Shijie, finally appeared, the first case he and Dachuan dealt with was the sudden death of an older woman in an apartment.

The landlady of the apartment began to complain when they saw Dachuan. Dachuan was so angry that he deliberately moved things loudly. Brother Long's daughter said, is life more important or collecting money?

For the landlady, of course money is important.

So when faced with the son who came to collect her mother’s body, of course she had to complain loudly. At this time, the son’s face was still normal.

But the next words made the son's face change: It's really immoral to die like this, why commit suicide when you have nothing to do.

The son who had been patient said seriously: The police report made it very clear that my mother died suddenly.

The ugliness of human nature is revealed at this moment, which is full of irony.

But the landlord refused to give up, saying that he had to close his business and spend a lot of money on his business, and his son would have to bear it.

Brother Long couldn’t bear to listen, so he came over and said that the landlord should bear these things himself and should not pass it on to his family members.

The landlady’s face immediately changed: “Who are you? Do you recognize Brother Hua here?”

As a result, Brother Long smiled faintly: Xiaohua, I haven’t seen him for a long time. If you ask him to come out, I’ll ask him, is he relying on Obu (in Hokkien, meaning bad tricks) to defraud his family members and make money?

Being a life cleaner may be an unpopular job, but this scene allows people to see another side of human nature.

And the next scene makes people unable to hold back tears.

Dachuan and the others found the old man's belongings and gave them to their middle-aged son. Among them were a large pile of unsent letters.

The son took the letter and thanked Dachuan and the others, then opened it and looked at it. Finally, the middle-aged man couldn't help it anymore, and he knelt down and cried heartbrokenly.

Brother Long patted his back gently to comfort him.

But at this point in the story, there is actually a question: I can see that this middle-aged son is not a bad person. Why did you leave your mother to live alone in this cold apartment?

I didn’t find the answer until my son read the letter his mother wrote to him alone.

It turned out that his mother had been lying to him all the time when she told him that she washed dishes for others. This woman’s real occupation was a special service worker.

When my son was a child, he didn’t know how to speak. When his son is older, he doesn’t even know how to speak.

lived alone and died alone. It was not until his death that the letter he had the courage to send to his son was seen by his son.

But judging from the son's expression, what this mother's shock bomb left him should be a deeper longing for his mother.

is not about hate. But with love.

Faced with the death of their loved ones, the living will always leave regrets, a little more, a little less.

is like the son who was raised by a mother who did a special job in the play. He is gentle and courteous, and is a much better person than the landlord who was asking for a lot of money. However, it was not until his mother died that he thought of collecting her body.

Even, I don’t even know what my mother did or what disease caused the sudden death.

But perhaps for this deceased lady, keeping the secret in her heart forever is a great maternal love and also retains the last dignity of being a mother.

We always like to judge right from wrong and always rush to define everything.

But what this drama says is that in the face of life and death, there is no big deal, and there may not be right or wrong.

Death All living beings are equal, life is a passing experience.

Just those emotions that are either calm, explosive, or surging, will always turn into a complicated melancholy when facing the remains of their loved ones.

then condensed into an unforgettable memory.

The deceased is gone. Perhaps the most difficult thing to face with this loss is the living. That’s why the work of a life cleaner is so valuable.

3. On the surface, we are filming "death", but in fact, we are filming "life". I didn't expect that Taiwanese dramas have improved so much in recent years.

Life and death themes are difficult to film.

Especially life cleaners, which inevitably involve various "death scene cleaning" occupations, the scale of the photos is too large, which makes people feel sick; they are too melancholy, causing depression; if they are humorous, they are easily frivolous; if they are too emotional, they are easy to fall into Sensational.

"The Cleaner of Life" is better because of the clever structure of the play. One case per episode takes into account the life difficulties of Okawa and his team.

starts from the perspective of the job of a life cleaner to explore the profound propositions of life that are inaccessible to daily life.

The topic of death is very heavy, but "The Cleaner" is very light.

The series is obviously used in the form of light comedy to dilute sadness and heal pain.

For example, when faced with a customer who was making things difficult for a convenience store girl who had just lost her mother, Okawa would deliberately knock over the customer's e-donkey, force the customer to chase him, and then run away.

There are also some unscrupulous shopkeepers who like to complain about the deceased. Dachuan and the others will deliberately play tricks on them to vent their anger on the relatives of the deceased.

These human touches with a small sense of joy always make people laugh and cry.

is a short story about a deceased person, which leads to a social proposition. Although it is about cleaning up life, its theme is all-encompassing.

The pain of special families, the aging of society behind lonely death, the indifference of strangers in society, etc...

"Death" is the most embarrassing.

But the good thing about life cleaners is that they keep the last dignity of the deceased and give the deceased their last dignity.

And these practitioners are not like the serious, cold and unsmiling people in the stereotype.

They can also talk and laugh, have families to take care of, and live their own lives.

For example, Wan Tu’s demented mother and Zheng Yiwen’s lovely daughter.

Whether they are practitioners or the deceased, they are all human beings.

The living are human beings, and the dead are also human beings.

Respect for life is the most precious and moving thing about this group of people.

There are two "warmth" scenes in the drama, which I like very much.

First, Zheng Yiwen’s daughter told her mother’s job. Zheng Yiwen couldn’t help but remind her child, but the child asked her mother indifferently.

Children have no concept of life and death, but their minds are crystal clear.

The second paragraph is when the day's work has settled down. A group of life cleaners gathered together to eat hot pot. Dachuan arrived late and grabbed Wantu meat to eat. He also said that the meat had a name on it, and everyone urged him to take a shower.

These people see the dirtiest death scenes every day, and they also see the dirtiest human hearts.

But their hearts are not broken.

The existence itself is also a kind of beauty.

To a certain extent, "The Cleaner of Life" disenchanted the profession.

Although the scale of the series is not low, you can feel the perseverance in life.

The series still has the flavor of a movie version, with the conciseness and conciseness of Taiwanese literary and artistic films. The story is not explosive and the dialogue is plain, but it condenses the praise and criticism of human nature and the summary of regrets in life. Although it is cliché, it still makes people feel warm. .

Once upon a time, Taiwanese dramas were synonymous with idol dramas, but in recent years, Taiwanese dramas have emerged with a wave of new forces.

From " The Distance Between Us and Evil " to large-scale crime dramas, it continues to break the scale, challenge genres, face the current social status quo, and touch the abyss of human nature.

"The Cleaner of Life" is like this.

Living a lifetime, being able to say goodbye decently is actually a great blessing. This drama uses the eyes of Okawa and others to see the taste of those people who left without dignity and even left traces in the house that need to be cleaned. .

And these life cleaners also have their own life trauma.

Stories bring us closer to the place of life and death. We can read other people’s stories and heal our own wounds.

In recent years, domestic dramas and various ancient puppet dramas have continued to create new fantasy hits.

Perhaps our internal entertainment creators have disdained to create a life drama like Life Cleaner that is not dirty at all and is not dreamy at all.

Dream drama Yes, people who choose to forget their pain may just want to live in the present.

However, how we view death determines how we choose life.

Although "Life Cleaner" is about the most difficult job in the world, it conveys how people inside and outside the story cherish the value of life.

All death education, in the final analysis, is to accept farewell and move on.

"The Organizer of Relics" wrote:

"The irony of living is that you always live with death on your back. As long as there is life, the moment of death will come, without any exception." Survival and death are like two sides of a coin.

The focus of "Life Cleaner" is actually very light.

The house is dirty, so naturally someone will clean it up.

The dead leave and new ones move in. The cycle repeats.

No one wants to leave until they are ready, but death comes suddenly.

In any case, I hope that everyone who has finished watching this drama will be like Okawa who sat down to eat hot pot after a busy day.

After a difficult day in life, under pressure, in the mud of life, never forget to tell yourself:

It is always good to be alive.