<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > this article is selected from the "Blizzard Collection" of the book "The Wisdom of Cinema". </h1>
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At the beginning of "The Unknown Generation", it uses a large overhead shot, which seems to be falling from a high altitude, which is thrilling.
This is God's perspective on the human world, and it is also the perspective of human beings looking down on the ants.
"The Unknown Generation" is such a movie:
An urban dark fairy tale, a group of people who live like ants. Some shafts, some stupid, some mean, some adulterous, but all are still trying to find human dignity in their own way.
That said, some people may think that this movie is not good, but it is not.
"The Unknown Generation" is likely to be the best domestic movie of the year, although there is neither chicken blood nor pseudo-folklore, but it can make you laugh and make you cry.
If you want to use food analogy, "The Unknown Generation" is a spicy hot pot in the snow season, which will make you feel warm and spicy your tears, and after the lights are on, it will also make you reminisce endlessly.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">02</h1>
Speaking of which, it is time to briefly introduce the plot of "The Unknown Generation" -
In a small mountain town in southwest Qianxi, a pair of low-end robbers, a down-and-out security guard, a poisonous tongue woman who can only curse people in a wheelchair, a massage woman who lies continuously, and a series of small people living in all corners of society, on a seemingly ordinary day, because of a lost old gun and a robbery in the city that happened that day, their life trajectory was twisted together by yin and yang, and a ridiculous comedy occurred.
In "The Unknown Generation", the male and female protagonists are undoubtedly poor, but what bothers them more than poverty is a life without dignity, no one looks up to them, and no one even pays attention to their existence.
In today's era of information flooding and consumerism, life without dignity and no one paying attention to is suffocating, so two "skinny" stupid thieves, Hu Guangsheng (Zhang Yu) and Li Datou (Pan Binlong), appear and try to break the predicament in the most stupid way of robbery.
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Among these two people, if Li Datou also has a clear utilitarian purpose, that is, he intends to use the stolen money to marry his favorite massage girl Zhaohongxia (Ma Yinyin), Hu Guangsheng's pursuit is completely spiritual, and he imagines himself as a "murderous bandit" who lives a "domineering" and respectable life.
They took guns, wore helmets, and did not rush to the bank close at hand, but chose the mobile phone shop next door, on the grounds that they wanted to "grow from small to large, step by step, bigger and stronger" - this is the success of ma yun, Wang Jianlin, Pan Shiyi in various places - but in their bones are timid and cowardly, mixed with a little anyway, there is nothing to lose, so they can ignore everything.
Li Datou and Hu Guangsheng are such people, they are completely abandoned by the mainstream society of "cooking oil on fire, flowers are shining", their world and mainstream society are two worlds, but they do not have their own value and discourse system, they are completely dominated culturally, they can not find the meaning of life in their own world, and can only give meaning to their lives with the help of the discourse and coordinate system of mainstream society.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">04</h1>
In the Soviet novel How Steel is Made, which has influenced generations of Chinese, Paul and his first love, Tonya, are from the working class and the Bourgeois class, respectively, each with its own value system, unable to integrate or rule over each other. Paul attends the Communist Youth League party with the pearlescent Tonya, and Tonya's evening dress appears in the middle of the military uniforms and overalls of the Members of the Communist Youth League, and they both feel that the other is too outlier.
Unable to compromise on their values, Paul and Tonya had to break up.
But in real life, except in the turbulent revolutionary years, the culture of "high society" was always dominant. The culture of the Bourgeois class has always been able to dominate the working class and other working mass classes, and the Bourgeoisie called their preferences "universal humanity."
Being culturally ruled by a class or strata that does not belong to oneself often leads to tragic consequences.
Hu Guangsheng's struggle always reminds me of the heroine of Maupassant's novel "The Necklace", Mathilde, who is the wife of the lower petty bourgeoisie, but is obsessed with the vanity of the upper class big bourgeoisie and the nobility, and a fake necklace makes her pay a whole decade of hardship.
Hu Guangsheng's fate is even worse than Mathilde's, and the price he pays will be more than ten years in prison. In addition, Mathilde at least made a splash at the minister's dinners and balls, and Hu Guangsheng did not even get this short-term satisfaction, and the space left for him by life was too tight.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">05</h1>
Hu Guangsheng soon found that the pocket mobile phone that he and Li Datou had risked their lives to support his status as a "gangster" was nothing more than a model machine used for display at the counter, worthless!
His adventures did not frighten mainstream society, but made them feel funny.
Local TV news has hyped up the oolong robbery that has become an entertainment event, he and Li Datou were quickly elected as the "stupidest robbers of the year", and the surveillance video taken by the mobile phone store was transmitted to the Internet, and it was pranked by netizens as a ghost animal video, and the ridiculed bullet screen flew all over the sky.
Faced with such a huge humiliation of "stripping off the bottoms", Hu Guangsheng collapsed and went crazy! "You can beat Lao Tzu and scold Lao Tzu for grabbing Lao Tzu and killing Lao Tzu, but you can't play Lao Tzu like this." He even took a gun to kill a TV host who teased him.
Before becoming a robber, he was not worthy of attention; after becoming a robber, he was even less worthy of attention! Why is life so desperate?
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If in the previous era of reform and opening up, he could have dried a bronze in the fields of the people's commune, and he could even be widely respected as a battalion commander of the basic militia and a young commando, and he did not have to look for a position of "bandit" in the consumer society.
Now that the people's communes have disappeared into the depths of history, young people like Hu Guangsheng and Li Datou can no longer find their own community, they are not recognized, and they cannot find an object of identification.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">07</h1>
The man who has lost his dignity is not only him.
All the nobody in The Unknown Has no dignity.
Ma Xianyong (Chen Jianbin), a security guard of a real estate company, was once an assistant police officer on the edge of the system, and on the eve of the upcoming turnaround, due to the tragic consequences of the death of his wife due to drunk driving and the high paraplegia of his sister Ma Jiaqi (Ren Suxi), all chickens and eggs were beaten, and they could only go to work as security guards.
He dreamed of buying a house with an elevator for his sister, but the developer went bankrupt and his borrowed down payment of 100,000 yuan was stuck.
Unable to make up for his daughter's tuition and dormitory fees, Ma Xianyong can only use an almost lazy way to grind hard bubbles with the teacher, and even try to bribe the teacher with a bag of dates owed on credit, and all this ugly and humble performance occurs in the shameful gaze of his daughter Ma Yiyi (Deng Enxi).
As a father, his dignity was gone. When her daughter found out that he had actually gone to "prostitute", she did not hesitate to give him a slap.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">08</h1>
At this moment when Hu Guangsheng lost face, there was the sound of ticking water. The woman next to him, Ma Jiaqi, who was paraplegic but arrogant and had a poisonous tongue like a poisonous snake, urinated incontinence in front of two strange men.
Ma Jiaqi truly realized that it was better to live than to die, she completely lost her reservedness and composure, and hoarsely let Li Datou and Hu Guangsheng roll away, and she couldn't move anywhere below her neck, so she had to spit at them.
But this extremely embarrassing scene became an opportunity for each of them to find themselves.
The same is the end of the world fell people, when they met, why should they have known each other.
Hu Guangsheng was a little surprised, and suddenly understood the reason why this woman wanted to die in every way. Such a loss of dignity and pity for the disease made him temporarily forget the ghost animal video on the Internet, and despite her more vicious and ugly insults with a crying voice, he helped her change her diapers, and when he did all this, he also intimately blindfolded her.
From this time on, they gradually found that they did not need mainstream recognition, did not need to be successful, developed, did not need to become "bandits", as long as there was kindness and sincerity, they could find the meaning of life.
In this small, own world, they broke free from the shackles of the mainstream value system and established a value system of their own, in which they found a sense of being respected, loved, and needed.
At this moment, they felt free.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">09</h1>
There is a small detail that is quite touching: on the roof, Hu Guangsheng took the cigarette from Ma Jiaqi's mouth and smoked it himself.
Ma Jiaqi's eyes flickered suddenly, a little surprised and a little excited.
It was the moment when a young girl's heart suddenly sprouted, just like the stream that had not yet broken the ice in early spring had water flowing through, although it was very small, but it would always break the cold ice, and winter would go to spring.
Ren Suxi and Zhang Yu's acting skills are really great, and this emotional line adds a lot to the whole movie.
By the second half of the film, there is less laughter, and many viewers are quietly wiping away tears from the corners of their eyes.
Kindness and warmth touch the softest part of the mainstream film audience's heart.
The mainstream movie audience in the city can be counted as the middle class, or the self-imagined middle class, and what they encounter most in their lives is selfishness and indifference, and what they lack most is kindness and warmth.
All the contradictions at the beginning of the film are resolved in the name of kindness, warmth and love:
Hu Guangsheng wants to accompany Ma Jiaqi to "walk the rest of the bridge";
Li Datou and Zhao Hongxia successfully held hands and met baitou until they were old, even if Li Datou went to prison, Zhaohongxia would propose marriage during the prison visit;
Ma Xianyong finally won the forgiveness of his daughter Ma Yiyi, who had once slapped his hand, and now stroked the redness and swelling of his face with a hard-boiled egg that had peeled off its shell...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">10</h1>
Of course, this kind of solution is only an imaginary and soothing solution, a solution that can only be achieved in movies.
In reality, none of the problems that led to their loss of dignity — poverty, social status, lack of community identity, etc. — could be solved.
Hu Guangsheng, Li Datou is likely to pay the price of a lifetime for a reckless robbery; Ma Jiaqi will continue to live a life worse than death in a wheelchair, and Zhao Hongxia is very likely to continue to work as a massage girl in another place, and Ma Xianyong, who has been seriously injured, will continue to play crazy for his daughter's tuition fees...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">11</h1>
At the end of the film, Ma Xianyong, Hu Guangsheng, and Li Datou coincidentally appeared on an ambulance, and under the tense confrontation, Hu Guangsheng shot Ma Xianyong, and Hu Guangsheng was arrested.
In fact, this story once had another ending: Hu Guangsheng was immediately shot and killed.
In the famous French director Claude Chabrol's 1995 film "Cold Sacrifice", the cultural differences between different classes hurt the dignity of the maids, which eventually led to a bloody massacre without warning.
Perhaps, this is the end that conforms to the logic of life and reality.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">12</h1>
Neither kindness, warmth, or love can save the dignity of the ant's life, one world cannot rule the other world for long, and the fundamental way to avoid the opposition of the two worlds is to create an equal and unified world - of course, this is already a topic outside the film.