At the beginning of April, the silent cinema ushered in a super dark horse! On the first day of
's release, the movie earned over 10 million at the box office with a 7% share of low-ranking films, and its performance was quite impressive.
was released less than 2 days ago, and the box office exceeded 20 million.
Before the movie was released, went overseas and was nominated for the best film in the main competition section of the Tokyo Film Festival.
Director Gu Xiaogang won the 2023 "Kurosawa Akira Award" awarded by the Tokyo International Film Festival for this film, becoming the youngest winner of this award since its establishment in 2004.
starring Jiang Qinqin also won the "Asian Film Awards Best Actress" for this movie.
" Plants and Trees in the World "
After the film was officially released, the first wave of word-of-mouth came out. Audiences who had watched the film gave it very high praise. It can be said that it received rave reviews:
"I am shocked that such a scale can be released in China." ! "
" This is a good movie that appeals to both refined and popular audiences. "
" is one of the rare movies that I haven't watched on my phone once this year. She and her sisters have bought tickets. It is a must-see movie for the elderly. "
So, why does such a movie with a new theme and new format receive a lot of praise and become a dark horse in this period?
Let’s chat.
First,
The plot does not shy away from scale, and the horror of MLM organizations is vividly presented.
"The World of Grass and Trees" is the first domestic film to focus on anti-MLM themes.
The movie tells the story of He Mulian (played by Wu Lei ), a recently graduated college student, who sacrifices his life to save his mother Wu Taihua (played by Jiang Qinqin) after discovering that she is trapped in a pyramid scheme.
In terms of standards, the film is not taboo at all.
"The part about MLM is so terrible, it's on the level of a horror movie. Just sitting there and watching it makes me collapse."
The video shows the full range of through 2 examples. "When one person joins a MLM, the whole family suffers." The dangers of make MLM ugly. The truth emerged bloody.
The first one was the first job Mu Lian found, selling health care products in a senior center.
In the early business training, the company's senior management used "4-word secret" to explain how sales staff deceive the elderly.
The first step is to accompany you.
has formulated a targeted plan to accompany the elderly when their children are no longer around and lack love.
It is not enough to come to your home for one day. You must come to your home every day to chat, walk, do laundry, cook, and help solve the small problems encountered in life.
Let the elderly put down their guard against you and slowly treat you as someone they can rely on.
The second step is coaxing.
After gaining the trust of the elderly, you need to use your sweet words to the extreme.
uses all means and methods to allow the elderly to come to the center to experience health care products and health care equipment.
As long as he comes, more than half of the success will be achieved.
The third step is scary.
has been through hard work, it’s time to add some hard stuff. After experiencing it,
told them that their bodies are full of problems and they need to use more products to become healthy.
Appropriate threats, especially useful in this situation.
The fourth step is guilt.
At this stage, the elderly have trust in you and are afraid of their diseases. You can increase your "acting skills" appropriately to make the elderly sympathize and feel guilty towards you.
can make up a tragic story, perform a "real show" on the elderly, any method will do as long as it takes money out of their pockets.
Although we probably know some of these routines in our daily lives, this is the first time we see them so intuitively in a movie.
When I saw the elderly step by step walking into the sweet trap set by the sales staff, and in the end the family refused to listen even though they tried to persuade me, I felt really worried for them.
can’t help but think, what should we do if the elderly around us encounter such a thing?
The second one is the core story of Mu Lian saving her mother. Taihua was kicked out of the tea garden by her boss’s mother because her affair with her boss was exposed, and she accidentally joined a pyramid selling organization called “Butterfly International”.
Through the perspective of Moss Flower, the film directly and vividly analyzes the key closed loop of the four core elements of MLM: "money, information, professionalism, and trust".
initially released the temptation of human nature through the "message" of "money" through Taihua's friends. A "My brother is very successful" was able to attract Taihua, who had just been frustrated in life.
then misappropriated "professional" knowledge in the guise of psychology and the false pretense of a "professional" business company to defraud the "trust" of relatives and friends.
New economic model, new means of making money, new industrial structure, these high-sounding words are actually ridiculous terms derived to cover up "pyramid schemes".
In the end, the MLM organization achieved its true purpose of "acquisition and defrauding money" and also realized the illegal closed loop of "money-information-professional-trust-money". In the
movie, we watched Moss Flower fall into the trap little by little, and every step seemed to be done without going out of the way.
But with the layers of psychological defense broken down and the extreme temptation of the scene in front of her, Taihua was inevitably trapped in it. Even her son, who was at the top of her heart, turned a deaf ear to her cries.
In addition, the director also uses the large-scale visual perception to let us intuitively feel the horror of MLM organizations.
is so lively and direct, no wonder netizens call this movie the most topical movie in 2024.
Second,
The character creation is too real, and the loopholes in the human heart are completely torn open and interpreted
Of course, the visual impact is only the most intuitive expression of the movie. In the narrative process of
, through the analysis of the main characters, we go deep into the core of the film layer by layer, allowing us to see the more terrifying and unpredictable methods of MLM organizations.
In the movie, Mu Lian had three attempts to save her mother. After the first attempt to save her mother failed, the police officer in charge of the case said this:
The law can solve the loopholes in society, but it cannot solve the loopholes in the human heart.
So what are the so-called loopholes in people's hearts that are exploited by MLM organizations? The answer is clearly given in the movie, everything comes from "desire".
But dig deeper, where is the source of ’s “desire” ?
Why do so many people believe in this MLM organization like crazy? The movie also gives three answers through character creation.
The first type is due to inferiority complex.
For example, the protagonist Wu Taihua in the movie.
She lived a very miserable life in the first half of her life. Her husband ran away, and her son kept thinking about finding his father. It was hard for her to be liked by someone, but she was disliked by the other person's mother, and her son did not support her.
When she came to the MLM organization Butterfly International, someone on the stage kept trying to persuade and persuade her. She was told that people can go crazy but cannot accept their fate. The eight words
gave her an outlet for her misfortune and unbearability in the first half of her life.
She doesn’t want to be an abandoned person, she doesn’t want to be a person despised by others, she doesn’t want to have to compromise for the sake of her missing husband and her son who has just entered the society.
She wants to live like a human being and live like herself!
I must talk about Jiang Qinqin’s acting skills here.
In the scene under the bridge between her and Wu Lei's Mu Lian, Jiang Qinqin's explosive acting skills fully demonstrated the madness of Moss Flower.
She screamed, "I'm willing to do it even if I don't make a penny, and I'm happy too." The makeup on her face was stained by the rain, and she looked like a crazy "clown". It was so exciting.
This represents her current state. She is trying to find herself, but unfortunately she uses the wrong method, making everything look ridiculous.
The second type is derived from eye staining.
When you see others succeed, especially that 10.8 million yuan falling from the sky, it is all money! Who can not feel itchy?
All it takes is a small investment, as long as you successfully share it with 3 people, as long as you...
's brainwashing propaganda, coupled with the extremely impactful money-spreading link in front of you, all you need is personal experience and a little desire , it’s hard not to be shaken.
In the video, everyone saw the huge amounts of money being scattered, and the desire on their faces could no longer be concealed.
Taihua, who was originally very cautious, became completely obsessed with the huge profits from MLM. She kept shouting "Success! Success! Is this MLM? No!"
Such a tempting picture even made people stay in the group for a long time. The internal MLM executives have lost their way.
really thought that if he recruited 600 people, he would get 10.8 million yuan and retire with success.
Look, no matter who it is, when the inner desire is aroused, it is difficult to escape.
The third type is due to preference.
The climax of the film is when Mu Lian sacrifices his life to join a pyramid scheme in order to save his mother, trying to find real evidence.
But during this process, he experienced a critical moment when he almost lost himself.
What is Mulian's weakness? It's the father.
His father, who has disappeared for 10 years, means a lot to him.
When he blacked out the people important to him on the note again and again, and finally left his mother, he mentally completed a difficult patricide.
At the same time, he suddenly understood what Lao Qian said:
"It doesn't matter anything, what matters is that your mother is happy."
After the mental attack, at this moment, he who was originally looking for evidence seemed to I have become a little lost and started to believe everything in front of me.
circles the most important people, and under the guise that you want to do it for them, makes people fall and collapse little by little.
This is a mind control method used well by MLM organizations.
Through the interpretation of these three desires, the movie shows us another terrifying aspect of MLM.
Originally, you may have thought that the MLM scheme had no products, but simply locked you up and allowed you to continue to develop and go offline.
But this is not the MLM in the movie. They dare to show their faces and come up with products to tell you: We have products, and physical sales are not MLM.
They will package MLM and tell you that it is a new method of marketing, a new model that is different from traditional industries, and the right path to success, allowing you to go from doubt to belief to recognition.
In the movie, MLM is not only the temptation of the dream of getting rich, but also a test of human nature and a defeat of people's psychological weaknesses.
MLM organizations have many attacks and brainwashing specifically targeting emotional vulnerabilities, and this is the most terrifying thing.
Third,
The scale is not limited to MLM. "The World of Grass and Trees" has produced the conscience of domestic films.
During the roadshow of the film in Zhengzhou colleges and universities, many students spoke on the spot and expressed that they resonated very much during the viewing process.
Because in my life, my family members have also experienced being deceived by fake health products and MLM organizations, and my classmates’ grandparents have been deceived by health care mattresses.
can arouse such resonance because the details in the movie are very vivid.
Because the film not only ensures the viewing effect, but also carefully polishes the authenticity. The director of
and the behind-the-scenes team went deep into real MLM organizations and conducted field research for several months. When
conceived the script, the director put himself in the perspective of a pyramid scheme organization to design the main narrative line of the "MLM scam" in the film.
The result is obvious. What is shown in the movie is a true reproduction of the huge pyramid scheme with "98% similarity".The vivid scenes and highlight scenes in the
film, such as "riding on the bus", "psychological games", and "spending money with the boss", are all derived from the real experience of the director and his colleagues on the front lines of MLM organizations.
Before the official filming of the climax of the MLM sequence in the film, the crew conducted targeted training for the relevant personnel who played the role of MLM personnel.
not only arranged for the actors to observe and imitate with the help of a large number of videos, so as to vividly restore the true state of the "MLM staff", but also convened a number of non-professional actors as extras to conduct two simulation shots.
Simulated shooting, as the name suggests, is to simulate real situations for shooting.
In the end, under the real situation where the director created a blurred boundary between images and reality, it brought great inner shock to the people participating in the filming.
Actor Wu Bi, who plays the head of the MLM group, said that "feels very guilty and feels that he has deceived people into it."
Wu Lei, the leading actor in the film, also had this question during the filming process:
"Can I still be awake? Can I still maintain my true self?"
And the filming process was too real, even He was also reported to the police by passers-by at the scene. Because
was mistaken for a real MLM organization, the degree to which the movie truly restores MLM activities can be seen.
In addition to the large-scale issue of MLM, there are many deeper and more obscure expressions of scale in the movie.
For example, the father who disappeared for ten years, the good uncle who left with his father, the mother's unspeakable secret, and the depression that has been suppressed for many years.
These are not specified in the movie, but they are left open for us to think about. It has great stamina.
also talks about the wonderful mother-son relationship between Mu Lian and Moss Flower, the existential gap, the crazy mother and the persistent son.
I believe that "The World of Grass and Trees", which has strong social significance, will definitely be one of the highlights of domestic movies this year. It is worth watching, and we should take our parents to watch it.
is exactly what the saying goes:
One more person watching the movie, one less person suffering!
bluestone movie | Lao Meng
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