Sports documentary "Awesome! The premiere of "Junior" at the FIRST Youth Film Festival attracted endless applause and cheers from the audience. Compared with several other feature films that appeared early at the film festival, or have a unique artistic temperament or strong personal expression, this work can be said to be extremely industrially completed, and it is very friendly to the audience, and it is easy to be brought in by the natural growth stories of young athletes.
In the film, the mischievousness of the little devils who make people laugh, the poor appearance of the original family, the appeal of sports competition itself, and the uncertainty of the future fate of the baseball school are all mobilized one after another to mobilize the crying and laughing nerves of the audience. At least for me, I did find the emotion and passion that I had been missing for a long time since the epidemic and could only be given in theaters.
At the beginning of the movie, in the field of Laiyuan, Hebei Province, orphan Liang Zhengshuang is about to be sent away by his second uncle to Sun Lingfeng, the former captain of the national baseball team who came to select sports seedlings. At the same time, in the most water-scarce countryside in Ningxia, the mischievous Ma Hu is also bidding farewell to his family and going to Beijing, where he can eat, live and study. The story of the growth of two children with very different personalities but the same poor background slowly unfolds.
Nearly a year ago, I also briefly taught with a group of philanthropists in Nujiang Prefecture, Yunnan Province, which is classified as a deep poverty, and one of my companions was a former captain of the national ice hockey team who had retired for many years. In addition to giving physical education classes to the village children on the high slope, on the last day of the trip, he also gave a lesson to the physical education students of the county no. 1 middle school, and directly poured cold water at the beginning, "There is only one Messi, only one Yao Ming, and only one Liu Xiang." You are seventeen or eighteen years old, and there is no hope of becoming famous. But the ice and snow industry is far more than just athletes, supporting teaching, venues, equipment, marketing, marketing, advertising... There are far more opportunities for employment and wealth than in your mountains. ”
And the middle-aged sun Lingfeng who built a private baseball base in the documentary, because he began to learn baseball at the age of 7, to avoid becoming a bad boy in the mixed society, and even step by step became the three-term thief king of the Chinese Baseball League and the head of the national team, of course, it is more clear that sports seedlings must be grasped from an early age. Of course, he also did not forget to remind the seedlings he had recruited, even if he could not become a sports star, the road of the sports industry was still wide.
Indeed, compared with soccer, basketball, rugby, and ice hockey, which are physically confrontational, East Asians who are relatively inferior in their physiques have a better chance of getting ahead in baseball, which relies more on technology and teamwork. Therefore, in a media interview outside the documentary, Sun Lingfeng confidently said, "Give me ten years, I will definitely be able to send the children from these ravines to the Major League Baseball, which will be a sensational thing in the world baseball world." ”
However, unlike north American and Japanese children who grew up in honeypots and were immersed in baseball competition culture, these poor children from remote areas of Hebei, Ningxia and Tibet were born with far worse nutritional conditions. To this end, the baseball base must first ensure that the children have meat to eat. In the movie, the Ningxia children who came to the village on the outskirts of Changping in Beijing were sloppy and praised when they called home, "Every meal has meat." ”
Director Xu Huijing, who has a background in news reports for many years, is more keenly aware of Liang Zhengshuang and Ma Hu, two children with very different personalities, and in filming and editing, they are gradually identified as protagonists with character arcs. Xiao Shuang's father died prematurely due to illness, and he grew up with his second uncle, but because his mother did not know where to go, he could not be classified as an orphan by the local government. His explosive power is very good, so he was identified as the no. 1 pitcher by Zhang Jinxin, the "master" who served as the specific coaching of the base, but although Xiaoshuang was in a stable state, he was far from lively and competitive, and often cried his nose because of fights with children.
The Hui people's children are sloppy, but they are small overlords, who dare to fight when they play, and energetically dance the Vibrato internet red song "Motorcycle Shake" in the dormitory, and even coaches and directors have to call him "Tiger Brother". However, he was always in trouble, extremely unsociable, but did not dare to sleep alone.
Zhang Jinxin, the head of the faculty in his late seventies, is the mentor of the school's founder, Sun Lingfeng, who does not seek financial returns, but only hopes to one day bring out a star who can play in Major League Soccer, a Yao Ming in baseball. However, the strong implementation of relieving Beijing's functions and reducing population density also quickly came to the outskirts of Changping. Bungalows that do not meet the residency requirements have been demolished one after another, children's dormitories are in jeopardy, and baseball bases with non-organizational qualifications are still struggling to compete for legal status.
With a child who is not afraid of sloppy nature as the protagonist, the documentary has a natural entertainment. During the winter training in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, he was not assigned to a team, and his little temper came and complained that he was a "stray dog that no one wants." And such emotional flashpoints abound in the film, and the abandoned little double has no interest in finding his mother, but wants to see his brother.
Striving in setbacks, overcoming dangers in crises, news features and even all elements of feature films are in "Awesome! "Teenagers", with a very comfortable and appropriate rhythm. Xiao Shuang restrained his unsociable temper and entered a team. This junior team, called "Strong Baseball", has played all over the country invincibles and has also been invited to the United States, the hometown of baseball. The children were eye-opening, but they also learned about their true level in the game against the Chicago Juniors. Competitive sports that rely on strength to speak, it is difficult to really have the miracle of turning over in "Wrestling, Daddy", "strong stick" National Junior lost 1:11 to the Chicago teenagers.
Awesome! "The Boy" gives such a complete story and character encounters, which is very different from the independent documentaries that grow wildly in the fan image, and it is no wonder that after the premiere, it is unanimously recognized by the audience as having a very high level of industrialization. And this is undoubtedly a compliment to the quality of the film, although the director was frank after the screening, in fact, everything is not easy, the first contact with the baseball base, and Sun Lingfeng said, "just make a small documentary", did not expect to finally become a complete 110 minutes of "industrial" masterpiece.
Life also doesn't always have Hollywood dramas with Happy Ending. The suburban primary school where the children were given cultural lessons was demolished, the urban village was transformed, and the baseball stadium in the south became commercial real estate... To make matters worse, Liang Zhengshuang, who had a melancholy personality, did not want to play, returned to the laiyuan countryside, and shouted at the second uncle on the hillside, "You can't leave me alone." ”
The Happy Ending side, of course, has it too. The baseball base is legally attached to the foundation, the driving range has been moved to the tall Tsinghua University, and the grumpy "Tiger Brother" has become better tempered but has retained the ambition to win. At the end of the film, he introduces himself, "Hello everyone, my name is Sloppy, from the intersection. Lost, and then picked up by the baseball love base", triumphantly sang Zhang Zhenyue's "Goodbye" on the shuttle.
Text | Zhang Hailu Edited by | Chen Kaiyi
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