◎ Cao Xuemeng
In a high-end apartment in New York, a death case broke into the lives of three occupants. Former actor Charles, down-and-out director Oliver and a young woman with a mysterious background, Meeb, met because they were obsessed with the same mystery solving podcast show, and driven by curiosity, they formed a detective trio and started their own podcast to investigate the murder case disguised as suicide.
Although the plot of "Murder in the Apartment Building" focuses on "the murder that happened in an apartment building", unlike the previous fires of "Your Turn" and "Skyscraper", there is no curious plot, interlocking advancement, large-scale eye-catching elements, and the detective journey of three amateur detectives full of jokes constitutes a suspense comedy. Compared with professional reasoning dramas, the series is a bit less exciting in terms of the excitement of the case, the elegance of the details and the meticulousness of the logic, but it is addictive to see the end of each episode. Following the plot step by step, what attracts people to watch is far from this not a clever murder, the case and clues are just shells, and the object of the series to extract the cocoon is not the truth that is not difficult to understand, but the life of the urban people represented by the detective trio.
Murder in an Apartment Building presents a rather retro "murder in a secret room." Late at night, the residents of the apartment building were evacuated outside due to fire alarms, and one of the occupants, Tim Kono, was found dead in his house. The evidence was overwhelming, and the police determined he had committed suicide. But the detective trio believes that when they met Tim in the elevator an hour ago, he didn't look at all like someone preparing to commit suicide. The investigation began here.
The tall apartment building is spacious and magnificent, and there are many residents in the building, including celebrities, business tycoons and other famous and surnamed figures. People come and go every day, coming and going in a hurry, and the elevators that keep going up and down show the busyness of the building. The building is also deserted, and behind the doors is like a small independent world, isolating people from each other. Only the security guard and the caretaker recognize each resident, and mutual acquaintance and indifference and alienation are the norm among neighbors.
This time, thanks to Tim's death, the neighbors in the building finally got together for a memorial service organized for him. However, the gathering magnifies the separation between people and the world. At the memorial service, the psychiatrist in the apartment immediately seized the opportunity to advertise on the spot, the neighbor's first reaction was that he could finally use the fireplace freely without caring about Tim's asthma, and the next door resident wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to occupy his room... No one expressed nostalgia, no warm fragments of the past were mentioned, and people congratulated him on his departure. What's even more ironic is that when someone finally wept at the memorial service, it was because their cat died on the same day. At this time, the neighbors attending the memorial service suddenly had a look of pain, talking about how cute the cat was, regretting that it had suddenly left, as if completely forgetting that they were sitting at Tim's memorial service.
"When everything becomes commonplace, there's always something unexpected going on." Tim's death is like a magnifying glass, and the warmth and cold of the city's human feelings are clearly visible, making people begin to rethink the commonplace daily life. It is also this case, in the form of a "murder in the chamber of secrets" that becomes a key, opening the door of the "chamber of secrets" that is irrelevant and isolated from each other, and seeing the story of everyone behind the door rejoicing or sad, lively or lonely, brilliant or dim.
As the three protagonists enter each other's homes to discuss the case, their respective doors open, and the answer to "who are they?" begins with the quest to find "Who is Tim Kono?" Well-trained and gifted are the standard for the protagonists in most speculative detective works, while the detective trio in "Murder in the Apartment Building" is an ordinary person without an aura, and even to some extent, they are frustrated.
Charles, a gray-haired man who has taken care of himself meticulously, became a household name many years ago with a TV series. Since then, however, he has not had any other successful masterpieces, and he has not been able to make a comeback when he is still auditioning every day at an old age. Not only did his career fail, but the once unforgettable love also ended without a problem, becoming his heart knot for many years.
Oliver, the famous director of the past, has directed many successful theatrical works, but a failure not only caused him to fall off the altar, but also took the tuition fee originally given to his son, losing his career and losing his family. He still wants someone to invest in his ideas, but he has repeatedly failed, and the financial constraints can often ask his son for money, and even the arrears of property fees are warned by the administrator.
Young Meb, who lived in this upscale apartment building because of renovations for her aunt, has been hiding a secret - she has actually known Tim since she was a child. A crash that occurred on the roof of this building ten years ago not only made them lose their mutual friends, but also their friendship fell apart, and this building is her sad place.
As the series opens, "Aren't each of us like orphans?" Try to find your place in the city. "Oliver, Charles, and Meb all have reasons to solve the case — either to reclaim the highlights of the old days, or to go out of the past and redeem themselves." For the three, the murder restarts their lives, life is comforted again, and the process of making the podcast both records the progress of the investigation and imitates their desire to return to control.
Solving crimes and achieving justice is the heroic dream of many people in ordinary life. The world was already a miserable place, there was no grass, there was no mourning, they were trapped in dissatisfaction and continued to fall, and they were wrapped in helplessness and powerlessness to move forward. The sudden murder stirred up a pool of stagnant water, and the dusty life had a different color, as if there was light.
At the beginning, Oliver mentioned that he had seen a stream-of-consciousness dance, a man who kept going up the steps and falling down, and he always had a way to keep getting up and repeating, over and over again, endlessly. After the case, when Charles and Meb find important evidence to be more certain that Tim did not commit suicide, Oliver, who has just failed to ask his son for money, receives a message with a smile on his lips. The next second, with Debussy's Moonlight, a freehand theatrical form of the series echoes the dance mentioned in the opening paragraph, showing the change of their mentality: Oliver falls from the high steps and stands up, and Charles's omelette pot falls and returns to the palm of his hand. The new discoveries not only push the investigation in a new direction, but also push life in a new direction, and they seem to have the initiative in life again.
Like they say in the podcast, secrets are the funniest part. It's easy to spy on other people's secrets, but it's a lot trickier to keep your own. In the process of solving the case, they explored the secrets of others, and unconsciously, the secrets that they cut and sorted out gradually found the thread. Oliver regained his former self-confidence, won sponsorship for podcasts, and had a group of fans; Charles's inner ice gradually melted and harvested love again; Mebb finally understood the truth of the year, got rid of nightmares, and unloaded his baggage.
In the midst of loneliness and difficulties, they looked at themselves so deeply and directly for the first time in this overwhelming metropolis, through the opportunity to peek into the lives of the deceased. This trio of two old and one young, seemingly out of tune, sometimes gags, sometimes swords, stumbling and warming each other, healing each other, falling and getting up again, will hope to enter the door. Their stories are full of joy and relaxation, and in a few words, people can see the indelible folds and heavy weight of life, as Oliver said, "Isn't this a true portrayal of each of us living in a big city?" ”
Compared with speculative detectives, "Murder in the Apartment Building" is more like an urban fable, the case is not exciting and bizarre, but it is well-intentioned: to get out of loneliness is not to become a hero of the world, but to learn to reconcile with the world and with the self in the ordinary life of ups and downs.