After the Spring Festival, nearly five months passed, and the first truly popular domestic movie finally came.
Confident continuous large-scale screening, the number of people who want to see the dual platform is 800,000, the pre-sale box office is 50 million, and the screening is divided into dual platforms 9.7. These announcement actions and data results should be very clear in the industry.
"Life Events" is going to explode.
Even, counting the Spring Festival file, integrating the word-of-mouth of major platforms, and giving a title to "Life Events"Best of the year, also can be called deserved.
An evaluation from the ordinary audience may be right-
The process of watching this movie is to jump repeatedly between hahaha and meowed.
On the surface, it is not difficult to sum up where the audience’s good feelings for "Life Events" come from-
Uncle Lori’s classic combination, all-staff online performance, polished fine scripts, sincere and touching emotions.
If we take a closer look, Life Events has done a very good job in one of the most critical places, which is exactly what most domestic films have failed to do. To put it simply, it is what director Ning Hao mentioned before. In genre film creation, the most ideal goal points to-
Two words,Qiezhen.
For the creators and the audience, those who smile and shed tears in the movie are often the most fulfilling; For the audience, the feeling that life is like this and this story I believe from movies is often the most enjoyable.
Or directed by Ning Hao,Only at the moment of touching the truth can the audience and the creator achieve real communication.
This is the secret of the success of Life Events.
Cultural truthfulness
Touching the truth is not easy.
The first step really is the original intention of creation. Why make a movie? For the box office? To cater to the market? Or for self-expression?
Such a simple and rude division may not be fair, but different original intentions will indeed bring completely different realistic performances.
Specific to "Events in Life", director and screenwriter Liu Jiangjiang, a pure newcomer, has rich experience as a TV reporter. Because grandpa is a carpenter, he often makes coffins for people, and he has been exposed to the funeral industry since he was a child, plus more than two years of folk collection, which is all the real materials he accumulated before he constructed a film in his mind.
So what is the first key to this film, along with the original intention of creation?
It is the truth of the film atmosphere, the truth of the story background, or, more macroscopically, the truth of the cultural genes of the whole film.
That is, let the audience fully feel from the beginning-
This is the city we live in, this is the people we will meet and say in our life, and this is our familiar and unfamiliar cultural customs and cultural traditions passed down from generation to generation.
Liu Jiangjiang’s growth and collection of folk songs were mostly in North China, but in the end he chose to set the story in Wuhan, which, to some extent, took a fancy to the city’s cultural advantages.
The fireworks in Jiangcheng and the vivid dialect charm are two excellent auxiliary tools. After eating a bowl of Regan Noodles in a plastic box and saying something about the kidnapper, the audience will feel the truth, and then quickly enter the context of the film.
On top of this, there are the culture of death carved in Chinese’s bones-not only depicting the details of the funeral industry, but also showing the avoidance and disgust of ordinary people eating dead food.
No matter what attitude the audience takes, when Mo Sanmei shouts out those so-called funeral terms, at that moment, many people must be inexplicably touched and deeply immersed in it.
Similarly, some humorous and interesting passages are maximized in comedy, which also benefits from the clever use of this culture in the plays.
Behind the laughter and tears of the audience is the power of culture, and all the real movie-watching reactions of the audience are also the best feedback to the culture.
The characters are true
The cultural foundation, further down, is the concrete people in it.
The authenticity of the characters has always been the key to the success or failure of a movie.
In the event of life, most of them are based on the two absolute cores of San Ge and Xiao Wen. Specifically, there are two points in the film that are worthy of praise in terms of the truth of the characters-
One is a complete and credible growth arc.
Qualified genre films, character growth is standard. It should be said that the audience can guess what will happen to the third brother and Xiaowen at the end-one will find a new home and the other will find a new self-so the focus of Liu Jiangjiang and Han Yan’s creation is to make this growth process complete and convincing.
Especially for the audience in China, integrity is second, but it is not credible, which is very important.
The polishing of this part of the script, especially the behavioral logic design of several key plots of the characters, is very solid and professional.
The creator must understand that when the audience suddenly asked why TA did this in the dark cinema, the film was already losing the audience.
If the characters are true, they need the audience to give TA, which is the response to this role-the former is to satisfy the audience’s personal prejudgment, and the latter is the surprise that the creator buried one step ahead of the audience.
At this moment of the movie, every audience can feel the growth of the third brother.
The second is to create the most real details.
Detail is a weapon to depict characters and a bridge to touch the truth. Just give a few examples—
The third brother appeared, and in the first scene, he wore a small shirt and sat in the driver’s seat of a van, playing around and sending voice to his girlfriend. Then get off the bus, spit out the chewing gum, take out a cigarette and lick it, pick up one from the pile of paper money and light it, and bicker with others while directing the work until you enter the next scene.
After this series of actions, even if nothing has happened, the image of this character will stand up in front of the audience at once.
Then to Xiaowen, her details are even more vivid.
For example, the third brother lost track of time. When running all the way went to the kindergarten, Xiaowen, who had been waiting for a long time, saw him, his head was still low, but his mouth was raised, and his smile was half shy and half expecting.
Xiaowen’s feelings for the third brother have changed, and this smile alone is enough.
More easily detected, or crying.
Because there are a lot of crying scenes in Xiaowen, we can see that the creators are deliberately making distinctions and using different crying to present more delicate characters’ emotions and moods.
The first big tear in the movie is the crying of Xiaowen, who is very real and childlike after being told the truth by the third brother in the funeral home.
Later, we can not only see Xiaowen’s silent tears of missing her grandmother in the sky, but also wake up in a taxi and cry in panic at the back window.
Including the following paragraph, in a panic, Xiaowen called the third brother first, and then blurted out the father directly. These details are too consistent with the true performance of a child, and this small change is an absolutely lethal tear moment for the delicate audience.
In fact, behind the details, it is still the careful logical thinking that leads.
In the final analysis, it is really a technical job that the difficult can’t and the learned can’t be difficult.
Emotional truthfulness
Finally, the ultimate goal is to have emotional empathy and resonance with the audience.
It should be said that from the cultural background to the characterization, there is no shortage of audience’s emotion and participation in every real link, but in the end, whether a movie’s emotion can touch the truth or not depends on the empathy, that is, whether the audience will think so-
This is the emotion that I have in my life, and this is the emotion that I expect to have in my life.
The communication between Life Events and the audience in this part is particularly rich.
Among them, there are two groups of important human relations, one master and one deputy-
The main line, the mutual warmth between the third brother and Xiaowen, strangers, from friends to father and daughter, is solid enough in every step, so solid that my uncle asks Xiaowen, who do you want to be with, Xiaowen jumps to the third brother’s side, without lines, just one eye contact is enough to warm the hearts of the audience.
The film also uses the transformation of two people’s perspectives to push this feeling forward all the time.
The third brother looked at Xiaowen in the yard and understood the loneliness and sadness of this unruly child.
Xiaowen looked at the third brother who was living in Wuzhishan from the bed and photographed his embarrassment of being crushed at the foot of the mountain. Perhaps she didn’t even realize this closeness.
Second line, third brother and old mo, the father and son.
Perhaps for many viewers, the emotional resonance of this sub-line is only much more than that of the main line.
It is not only because of the clumsiness of communication between them, but also because this relationship plays the most important role in the expression of the theme of the film.
Among them, there are not only three elder brothers who, with the help of their father, completed the advanced vocational skills and cognition, and then realized their personal growth, but also the sighs and helplessness conveyed by Lao Mo when he told the fate of the second brother in the reconciliation between father and son.
One sentenceIn order to catch a dead one, our family took a live one.This kind of pain, which is both professional and family, is direct to people’s hearts.
And when the main line and the secondary line are merged together, finally, the relationship tried to express is also sublimated-
From specific people to the living and the dead.
It seems to be talking about death, but it is still about those four words-
Live well.
Face up to the passing death and cherish the beauty of the present. The expression of the film is actually not complicated at all, but in the end, Lao Mo’s will became the real crowning touch of the film.
This design perfectly integrates culture, characters and emotions, and conveys the concept of life and death that the film tries to emphasize to every audience in the most effective and moving way.
After that, the wedding from the wedding shop to the funeral shop at the end was the most meaningful sublimation expression of this view of life and death by the director in camera language.
Now, we have all seen how powerful the power to touch the truth is.
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For mainland audiences, this week’s event is to see "Life Events".
Standing at the mid-year node, we expect that Life Events will make a good start for this summer file and for China movies in the second half of the year.
Some works are destined to shoulder the significance and responsibility beyond the film itself.
One Liu Jiangjiang and one Han Yan are not enough.
We need more efforts to be realistic creators and the whole industry, and we need to find lasting and realistic ways and motivation.
At least "Life Events" makes us believe for the time being-
China movies, it’ll be fine.
Whether it is traveling through the hustle and bustle of the city or galloping on the trails in the countryside, it can become a beautiful scenery that attracts every heart eager to return home. The car is spacious and comfortable, and every detail reveals the care and care for family members, making every trip a warm journey.
