With only the first round of on-demand screenings, "The Lion Boy" won 17 million at the box office.
At the same time, it also won the word of mouth, scoring a Douban score of 8.3, so that a group of melon-eating spectators were willing to tap water.
We have reason to believe that as a dark horse at the end of the year, it is destined to write a strong stroke in this year's theater records.
This week, our film group took everyone to the screen to get an early look at the film.
What I didn't expect was that "Lion Boy" is not only a good movie, but also a good "listening" movie.
The film uses "Daoshan Pretty Boy" by Wujo Ren and "Mo Cheating Young Poor" as the soundtrack, one used at the beginning and the other at the end.
The two songs correspond to the youthful spirit of the protagonist Ah Juan.
First use "Daoshan Liangzai" as the opening, reflecting Ah Juan's casual and free, and then ending with "Mo Cheating Young Poor", reflecting his brave and unyielding teenage tenacity.
The lyrics of "how to go up the mountain, how to go down the mountain" complement the theme of the film.
And the lines in the movie also appear a similar expression, "In this life, people are like lion dancers, going up and down the mountain."
So, to put it simply, "The Lion Boy" is actually a story about "going up the mountain and going down the mountain".
Frankly speaking, the nested idea of "Lion Boy" does not seem to be new, but it is a cliché of "young people's dream growth" and "waste firewood group counterattack". Similar issues have long been common in the field of Chinese films.
But the main reason why it can stand out is that it makes a very interesting mixture and reconciliation of the elements of national style and realism.
It is also about "counterattack" stories, but in different contexts, the stories it brings out are also different. For example, Cape Seven, Sewing Machine Band are in a musical context, and Shaolin Soccer is in a football context.
"Lion Boy" chooses a rather remote lion dance field.
The lion dance is the narrative background and emotional imagery that runs through the film.
At the beginning of the story, the history and culture of the lion dance are explained in the form of ink paintings, and then through the process of the protagonist learning the lion dance, the characteristic kung fu of the Guangzhou lion dance is presented one by one: teng, flash, jump, flutter, ascend, walk plum blossom pile, pick green...
The lion dance in the movie refers to the spiritual strength of young people.
Ah Juan, Ah Cat and Ah Dog are three teenagers, originally recognized as "waste firewood". They are either thin and bullied, or hang erlang as idle, or eat amazingly and have a fat body.
Despite their banality and lack of dreams and ambitions to change the status quo, they all have a roar in their hearts that tries to vent, and they have an ambition to become a lion.
Therefore, when they met the lion dance and the lion dance master salty fish strong, the dormant male lion in their hearts was also awakened and embarked on the road of "sick cat" becoming "male lion".
In the final of the lion dance competition, when Ah Juan challenged the former Optimus Prime, who had never been crowned, with blood footprints, we all knew that no matter what the result was, Ah Juan would surpass herself.
What he really wants to overcome is not the difficulties in front of him, but the fear in his heart, as the line in the film says, "In ancient times, people used lion dances to scare away fierce monsters, but also to dispel their inner fears."
"Lion Boy" blends the theme of juvenile counterattack and lion dance, which is a rare innovation in itself, but what is even more rare is that it makes the country land, from "creating gods" to "creating people".
In recent years, mythological themes have provided an internal driving force for a large number of domestic animations: Sun Wukong, Nezha, Jiang Ziya, White Snake and so on. The overloaded display of these mythological images has greatly backlogged the space for realistic animation.
The emergence of "Lion Boy" has exposed us to a more vivid and sensible real world.
Privately, its realism is mainly manifested in two aspects: the reality of the environment and the truth of the characters.
Let's start with the reality of the environment.
Set against the backdrop of a small town in Lingnan, the film has a strong pyrotechnic atmosphere: fiery red hero flowers (kapok), overgrown ponds, hand-beaten beef balls, lion dance celebrations, ancestral halls, salted fish shops and so on.
Director Sun Haipeng also lived in Guangdong for more than a decade before. Because of this layer of origin, they have greatly restored the rural picture of Guangdong through the collection of wind.
In the second half, Ah Juan went to Guangzhou to work, and the color grading of the painting style has changed significantly, from bright and warm rural weather to deep and cold reinforced concrete, reflecting the contrast of the protagonist's state of mind with the situational contrast.
These creative considerations highlight the texture of this film to a large extent.
Let's talk about the real characters.
The protagonist Ah Juan has a strong universality. He is a left-behind teenager living in the countryside of Lingnan, his parents work in Guangzhou, and he does not see him once a year, so he can only rely on his grandfather on weekdays.
Later, the father who worked at the construction site suddenly returned, the plot took a sharp turn, and the audience also felt deep sympathy for Ah Juan's suffering.
From this, it is not difficult for us to find that the film is actually a cruel social picture under the appearance of inspiration. It greatly magnifies the unsatisfactory and incomplete life, so that the core narrative of the lion dance becomes the driving force behind Ah Juan's life.
The personal bitterness of the little people is almost everywhere. From small villages to big cities, Ah Juan has encountered many moments of resentment. In the small village, he was bullied by the strong and ridiculed as a "sick cat". In the big city, he was bullied by his co-workers, stayed out of bed, and became a man.
Whenever he experienced this, he was depressed in his heart and could not bear it.
Because he wants to keep a low profile, to avoid trouble, to raise money for his father's treatment.
Therefore, how much Depression Ajuan in the front is depressed, and how high the lion dance in the back is.
The lion dance is not only the only outlet for Ah Juan to vent his emotions, but also the only stage for him to practice value.
In addition to Ah Juan, the salted fish qiang in the movie has also been put into a lot of realistic care.
Salty Fish Qiang was once a lion dance master on the Ling side, but in the eyes of the villagers, he was regarded as a typical example of unlearned and unskilled.
Because the lion dance can not make a living, he can only bow to reality in the end, reduced to an ordinary salted fishmonger.
The "Moon and Sixpence" problem encountered by Ah Juan and Salty Fish Qiang, which many ordinary people have encountered, can easily bring out the emotional resonance of the audience.
From this point of view, the greatest significance of "Lion Boy" is not only that it tells a story of a teenager who chases dreams and counterattacks, but also that it is based on reality, restoring individuals to their universal positions, allowing them to find their long-lost dream-chasing experience, and in this way to achieve reconciliation with themselves.
It writes about people throughout, not about people in the collective capitalization, not about the symbolic people in ideology, not about the people who dare to change the sun and the moon for a new day, but about an ordinary person who can't change anything and can only reconcile with himself.
This kind of self-reconciliation is a very poignant narrative emotion, which not only constitutes the tear-jerking place of the film, but also makes the film take the theme expression to a higher level.
With this seemingly casual but powerful personal reconciliation, this film is worth seeing more people.
Because through it, each of us can see the self that has worked hard, given up the effort, or is trying.
When the second brush is brushed, when everyone drums and cheers for him, he will still cry and will be moved. Sincerely recommend to everyone.