The violent aesthetic and montage beauty of the Korean drama "My Name"

Author: Zhang Jingran

In today's TV dramas pay more and more attention to reflecting the atmosphere of women's consciousness awakening, the Korean drama "My Name" has opened up its own path in the Korean drama file at the end of the year with the blessing of violent aesthetics, with crisp and clean fight scenes and tense and exciting gunfight plots. The bold use of color, the montage technique of straightforward narrative, and the black style that make people's blood veins shine have created such a big heroine Korean drama. Korean dramas have always been good at warm narratives, and although "My Name" inherits the fast-paced characteristics of American dramas in form, it still retains the spiritual core of Asian culture in terms of content. In the early years, the American dramas represented by "Extremely Cold City" opened up female-dominated action films, and later it seems that only "Eternal Guard" and "Kate" can barely match them. Now, as an unexpected work, "My Name" has opened up a new model of Korean drama, triggering a wave of drama viewing in this winter.

The blessing of the aesthetics of violence

The Korean drama "My Name" broke the Netflix record with 111 million on-demand views, and once again attracted the attention of global audiences after "Squid Games". Twenty minutes before the opening of the first episode, the audience's point of view was captured with a fierce fight, and it was also under the blessing of this effect that the character personality and character relationship jumped on the screen. In order to maintain her father, the heroine Zhiyou singled out the bullying girl group in the class in the enclosed space, and finally returned the bullying girl's mobile phone to show the personality characteristics of the heroine's external cold and internal heat. And the character modeling is the core charm of this film. There are many fight scenes in the film, rotating the camera plus the top-light shooting technique, fast-paced camera movement, and one-shot shooting techniques - the difference in strength between women and men is vividly expressed. In the early years, Korean movies and TV dramas borrowed more from the style of Hong Kong and Japanese film and television dramas, and the shadow of Hong Kong gangster movies can indeed be seen in the drama, which is quite characteristic of Wu Yusen's violent aesthetics, which also adds a retro color to the violent aesthetic culture in Asia. This ultra-realistic violent aesthetic could have set off a wave of enthusiasm, but because the ending added unnecessary emotional lines for no reason, it lowered the style of the whole play.

The beauty of montage harmony

In recent years, Korean dramas have focused on the pursuit of picture composition and color matching. In the play, the heroine Zhiyou spoke to her father for the last time, and the picture was transformed in a sound manner, coupled with the contrast between the warm colors at home and the cool environment in which the father was located, alternately presenting the emotional link between father and daughter in the two time and space contexts. This parallel montage processing, combined with the ultimate grasp of the camera, makes this short twenty-second scene present the texture and charm of the film. The heroine Zhiyou takes a bath after the first killing, the bright red blood in the bathroom and the cool color of the room form a strong contrast, and then in the form of camera conversion, the audience is brought into her dream, showing the heroine's fear of killing and the struggle to break free from the inner cage. This way of moving mirrors, with different audiovisual languages, and based on the creation and editing method of montage under the conflict of plots, not only has the functions of narrative and ideography, but also has a strong role in shaping the dimension of time and space and mobilizing the audience's senses. In addition, the play uses 90s retro disco electronic music, which reinforces the rhythm of the play under the melody of bass remake. Every time the soundtrack melody sounds, it seems to play the exclusive battle song of Zhiyou, which makes people surging with blood. The director's super control of the montage makes the picture music complement each other and bring a visual feast to the audience.

The plot of the TV series is reversed layer by layer, complicated and natural, and Zhiyou gradually pulls away the truth, hovering between justice and darkness, adding some realistic poignancy and euphemism to the whole drama. The drama generally revolves around the theme of revenge, but because of the fast pace of the plot, coupled with the charming photography skills, the icing on the cake soundtrack can be described as well-made and well-intentioned, and it can also be regarded as a shot in the arm for the big heroine action movies that have frequently opened high and low in recent years. Although the emotional line at the end falls into the cliché, creating some confusion in the overall pattern and narrative, the show brings a glimmer of hope to the Asian feminist TV series, from which we can see the development potential of Asian feminist TV series.

(The author Zhang Jingran is a master of film and television editing and directing at Nanjing University of the Arts)

Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel