In the summer of 2018, Huang Bo's debut film "A Good Drama" was released in theaters and received unanimous praise. The plot mainly tells the story of a group of people riding a yellow duck surf car to the vast sea to carry out the company's team building activities, and the sudden meteorite falling from the sky set off a huge wave of 100 meters to make them fall to a desert island. After the dazed call for help and the fruitlessness of self-help, they thought that the outside world was also tragically destroyed, so they formulated new rules of order, but soon after the stage was set up, the curtain was opened, and the life of the characters was newly set, the sea whistle sounded, and everything returned to the reality of the story. In this film, Huang Bo shows his "ambition", of course, superb expression and deep cultural expression.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >: The atypical nature of the desert island theme: the social-power-human logic</h1>
Huang Bo's "A Good Drama" is inspired by the disaster movie "2012", he tries to conceive of a picture of human survival after the disaster occurred and boarded Noah's Ark, carried out a human survival experiment in an isolated desert island and a social "test tube", and then completed the deep thinking of director Huang Bo and screenwriter Huang Bohai on society, power and human nature through the theme of desert island. The typical narrative characteristics of desert island films are nothing more than two types - the cruel game between man and nature, forced to break away from the traditional social identity after the contradictions and conflicts between individuals and individuals, individuals and groups, and groups and groups. The thematic tendencies behind it also focus on the growth of individual minds, the re-examination of the relationship between humans and ecology, and the exploration of the nature of human nature. From the perspective of the historical transmutation of the subject matter, we can see that "Robinson Crusoe" and "Lord of the Flies" represent a new turn of intention, and are in the "change" of the flow of film ideas. Other classic desert island films, such as "The Rest of the Desert Island", "Six Days and Six Nights", "Lost", etc., are limited to the "flow" of the flow, these films do not depart from the typical narrative of the desert island movie, the characters, plots, intentions, the degree of viewing is better than the degree of thinking, that is, the good looks and depth of the film are not standing side by side.
We look at Robinson Crusoe, and the film is consistent with the novel. Its contribution lies in creating a precedent for desert island literature and desert island film, creating the traditional creative mode of "desert island becoming paradise" and the theme of western traditional civilization, and the film realistically promotes the self-improvement and civilizational self-confidence of the British bourgeoisie in the period of rising, that is, how civilization changes barbarism. The Lord of the Flies does not continue this mode of creation, and the novel uses irony to turn the theme of "civilization" to "barbarism", as the original author Golding said: "The potential evil in their nature makes them increasingly barbaric and cannibalistic." The kind and intelligent Beech and the friendly and benevolent Simon are killed, Ralph is also nearly killed by Jack, and civilization and reason are pale and powerless in the struggle against primitive impulses and wildness. ”
But in the film, the director's intention turns to how primitive humans derived social structures, that is, how barbarism reconstructed civilization. From how civilization affects barbarism to how barbarism reconstructs civilization, "Robinson Crusoe" and "Lord of the Flies" have opened up and turned the desert island theme, and clearly showed the dispute between the theme in terms of ideological intention, the dispute between typical and atypical, thus shaping the two paths of similar themes. Huang Bo chose the same theme, in fact, he had to take a lot of risks. But the good news is that although Huang Bo did not jump out of the traditional framework of the theme of survival on a desert island, it opened up another path beyond "Robinson Crusoe" and "Lord of the Flies", that is, deep thinking about the relationship between society, power and human nature, and finally settling on the measurement of human nature.
"A Good Drama" lasts for more than two hours, Huang Bo constructs a brief history of human society, placing the originally closed power structure (that is, the real-world company team) into a new social ecology (that is, desert island society) to reconstruct, in the social relationship that is constantly collapsing and reconstructing, power is also constantly changing and alternating, and the background of human nature is peeled off layer by layer in this change. The company's 30 people enter the desert island to form a miniature social group, and the film concisely deduces the human history of primitive society to class society to utopian society, which corresponds to human physiological and security needs, material needs, emotional and spiritual needs. In the "primitive stage" of the desert island, the little king who knows the way of survival becomes the leader of the people who have no worries about food and clothing; The "class society" of the desert island, Occasionally found that Zhang Zong, who had inverted a large cruise ship, firmly controlled all the means of production and living on the ship, became the actual controller of power, and successfully sat on the throne of the big capitalists; In the "utopian period" of the desert island, Ma Jin, who had 60 million broken dreams and was snubbed and humiliated by Zhang Zong, finally succeeded in provoking the armed struggle between the Xiao Wang camp and the Zhang zong camp with the fish rain that fell from the sky and Xiao Xing's skillful repair technology. Through the chaos, Ma Jin stood passionately in front of the stage to give a speech about establishing a belief system of hope, became the spiritual leader of the people, and successfully harvested love.
Social changes, more power overlap, and finally settle in human nature. From the real tour guide Xiao Wang to the "big king" of "primitive society", showing the humility and expansion of human nature in the face of status and power; Zhang Zong, who is a controlled and commanded member of a tribe to a capitalist who sets rules and plays money (cards), shows the fascination of human nature with money and power; From wandering outside the "system" to taking the initiative to establish new social relations, Ma Jin shows the pursuit of equality, care and love by human nature. What is more interesting is that the destruction of the world is the premise for the existence of this desert island society, when Ma Jin, Xiao Wang, and Xiao Xing find that the world is still there, the human considerations in the painful decision that they will lose everything when they return to reality are the most memorable, and the dramatic tension of the film also reaches its peak here. In the end, Huang Bo made humanity move from the confusion of society, power, and money to return and redemption. At the end of the film, XiaoXing's amnesia may be a kind of goodwill protection for the goodness of human nature, reflecting a warm comfort.
"A Good Drama" epitomizes the thousand-year evolutionary history of mankind in the movie, not only presents the evolution of human beings from the primitive era of manual labor to the slave society of intellectual production to the capitalist society of technological production, but also reveals the topic of "human nature" in different societies and power changes, and intricately reflects the deep thinking of anthropology, sociology and economics. In recent years, the film market has been permeated with the commercial orientation supported by big data, from IP production, actor selection, and publicity effects, all of which are filled with a strong atmosphere of capital. Huang Bo's directorial debut is undoubtedly full of ambition, but this ambition stems more from the return of film rationality and the excavation of film depth, even including the integration of business and literature. How to present a good story, and to what extent, and what kind of audience group is targeted, these thoughts and practices are incorporated into Huang Bo's "A Good Drama". He uses the allegory of human "history" and the appropriate magic realism technique, through a variety of meta-canonical metaphors and natural metaphors, to place the changes in the "human face" and the topic of "human nature" in the "Hundred Days History" of different natures, and combines the grand intention with the subtle expression, and the topics of man and politics, economy, society, and psychology can be presented vertically and horizontally. It can be said that the film better completes the "desire" of Huang Bo's ambition.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > second, comedy scale and cultural depth: the balance between business and art</h1>
The positioning of "A Good Drama" is very high, and there are not many domestic films similar to its grand proposition type, and Huang Bo can be said to have filled in the gaps. We know that in the era of consumerism, as a commercial investment, film, while expressing its artistry, also needs to cater to the mainstream of mass culture and make it have a certain degree of entertainment. Propositions that are too obscure or too depressing and profound narratives are, after all, high and low. Huang Bo's debut work takes a good balance between business and art, and it uses a relatively light and humorous narrative to express a deep cultural core. Huang Bo is a comedian, he found Wang Baoqiang, Wang Xun and other actors who have a lot of appeal in comedy movies, which strengthens the comedy of the film, which is also Huang Bo's consideration of commercial value. Of course, the appeal of the actor is not equal to the quality of the movie, and Huang Bo knows this very well, so he pays more attention to polishing the tragicomic characteristics of the characters. In addition to Mr. Zhang and Professor Shi, everyone else is a small character image, which is also a type of character that Huang Bo is well versed in. Since Huang Bo starred in the movie in 2000, he has acted in about 30 movies, and the rest of the characters are small characters except for the angel played in "Love Call Transfer 2 Love Or So" and the Role of Sun Wukong in "Journey to the West and Descending Demons".
In the construction of the small character model, one of the significant features is the popular entertainment, the small character played by Huang Bo is to a certain extent a reflection of life and a true display of ordinary people, the small characters often have humorous and self-deprecating, inferior and arrogant, cowardly and capable of some human characteristics, these characteristics are properly refined, enough to form a comedic effect of laughing without being contrived. "A Good Drama" accurately captures this way of character building. For example, Xiao Wang, played by Wang Baoqiang in the movie, is exaggerated and loves to play some inferior humor, as well as Lao Pan's wall-head grass style, Sister Qi was used by Shu Qi in ignorance as a shield to refuse Ma Jin, plus she occasionally blurted out some meat paragraphs, which made people can't help but laugh. In addition, there is Ma Jin, played by Huang Bo, who is poor in real life, and after winning the 60 million lottery ticket, he is so excited that he can't help but dance uninhibitedly, singing Northeast folk songs, and the joy of the little people's salted fish turning over has been fully displayed. The film's favor for the culture of small people stems from the resonance of the film narrative with the reality of the times.
However, in the process of commercialization, transformation and consumption of small people, if the scale is not accurate, it is easy to move towards "pranks". "Spoof" actually has two directions, one is vulgar farce, partial to ugliness, but it is difficult to achieve the aesthetic effect of ugly; The other is deconstruction, that is, a deconstructive act of small people's self-discourse through images, such as Niu Er, played by Huang Bo in "Bullfighting", after capturing Japanese soldiers, imitating the action of wiping sabers before killing Japanese people, showing a strong deconstruction meaning.
In "A Good Play", Huang Bo effectively avoided these two directions, because he knew what the film wanted to express, in the grasp of the scale of the characters, he tried to let the small characters show the characteristics of life, and the humorous effect allowed the characters to be released in natural words and deeds, although the treatment of some paragraphs was biased towards the "sense of design", such as Qi Jie's ridicule and ambiguity of Ma Jin, but it did not fall into vulgarity. These sober, restrained treatments allow the film to maintain a mild, not too dramatic comedic effect. It is also important to explain here that the little people are a group of people who can hardly obtain any benefit in the social order, and can only obey the discipline of the actual order. As Zhao Xiaomin recounts in Contemporary Chinese Women's Cinema from the Perspective of Postmodernism: "The core theory of modernism is to determine the functional rationality of things, and the way to achieve this is to maintain the stability of society or thought with prescribed order and discipline." But this single constraint and discipline is wrong in the eyes of the postmodernists, who believe that any standard or order is in the service of the ruling class and the powerful groups and individuals. "Therefore, when people are exiled to desert islands and the social order is reintegrated, the performance of the little people when they have the opportunity to ascend to power and gain control also form a huge contrast with the real world, showing a contrasting comedic effect in behavior."
In addition, the establishment of the love line also creates a relaxed and humorous atmosphere for the film. Some commentators said that as far as the entire story line is concerned, the love line between Huang Bo and Shu Qi is somewhat redundant. But in the movie, it is not difficult to see that the several decisions made by Huang Bo have a lot to do with the belief in love in his heart. Moreover, when Professor Shi proposed a eugenics plan in consideration of the long-term development of the desert island, Huang Bo categorically refused, saying that he forgot that human beings have a greater emotion, that is, the existence of love, which is the difference between human beings and animals. The existence of this emotional line also adds a little color and dream to the original unfortunate disaster life. In the play, Huang Bo repeatedly expressed his love to Shu Qi, but was cleverly rejected by Shu Qi in various ways, and Huang Bo's slightly embarrassed reaction created a humorous and romantic little mood. Moreover, the absurd presentation is also the humor of the movie, the yellow duck surf car driving into the vast sea, the addition of disaster elements, the rain of fish, Shu Qi giving birth to the wings of angels, and so on. These elements build the commercial value of the film.
However, these rather comedic commercial elements are not the ultimate goal of the film, huang Bo's ambition is great, he is not willing to indulge in comedy film to do unnecessary repetition, as he said: "In fact, you have gained a lot from the film market and the development of Chinese films." So when you go to create, shouldn't you be a little bit responsible? On the road of the predecessors, even if you widen it by one centimeter, one millimeter, and then go forward a little bit. "How does a film achieve a story with cultural depth? Huang Bo made three attempts, the first is the breakthrough of the theme, as mentioned in the first part of the above article, "A Good Drama" is precisely intended to explore the transmutation of human nature under the change of society and power, is human nature good or evil? Is it selfish or selfless? The film does not give an absolute answer, but shows the psychological changes and human transmutations based on social relations and power change from a sociological perspective.
Except for Xiao Xing, whose human nature gradually evolves into evil in the end, the other characters do not appear collectively violent and cruel as shown in "Lord of the Flies". It can be seen that the film does not want to show the simple human nature of good and evil, but is more concerned about the game between human nature and others. Second, the allegorical approach of human beings. Although this technique is the shell of the story, it has a transcendent use. The allegorical time of desert island films starting from "Robinson Crusoe" is generally limited to a certain period or a certain social form, and even some do not have any allegorical time at all, but only exist as a kind of desert island adventure genre. "A Good Drama" promotes three social forms in more than two hours, and its contradictions and conflicts are obviously not as good as other films, after all, the length of the scene narrative and contradiction preparation is effective, but this highlights the allegorical style of the film, that is, abandoning the concentrated, explosive, and spectacle conflicts, and focusing on the expression of the film's moral. This is also Huang Bo's greatest ambition. It can be said that Huang Bo has integrated into a field he is not aware of with the comedy techniques he is familiar with, fortunately, the scale of comedy and the depth of culture, the film is still relatively perfect, basically achieving an effective balance between commercial value and artistic value.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > iii. Symbolism and Metaphor: The Absurd Writing of Social Fables</h1>
"Absurd" is essentially, first and foremost, a relation between man and object, which includes not only the external environment, but also others and themselves. Using Heidegger's terms "here" and "in", Yu Hong said that absurdity refers to "the state between the meaningful 'this' disillusionment and the face of the meaningless 'being'". There is also a central meaning here, that is, in the relationship between "this" and "in", man is the core factor, "if people separate man from the world, the absurdity is neither in man nor in the world." That is to say, the absurd is essentially about a certain alienated, deviated, or fallacious state experience of man. "A Good Play" is a social fable that tells a story of human nature full of absurd meaning, and the desert island becomes a testing ground for human nature. The sense of absurdity in the film mainly comes from two aspects, one is the absurdity of the story itself, and the other is a large number of metaphors and symbols.
The theme of desert islands itself implies the isolation of the real world in which people live, which is an instinctive contrast and strangeness with people's habitual experience. Conquest and subjugation, alienation and alienation, or the struggle between human nature, form a "bonsai-style" social existence, which is separated from the real world formed by thousands of years of regulation, and reconstructs a pattern or order in a strange and alien primitive society. "Robinson Crusoe" in a person conquering nature, "Escape from the Ice Devil Island" a group of similar but discrete prisoners on the isolated island to divide, aggregate and reorganize the human nature of the fight, "Lord of the Flies" in the teenagers from the initial mild to the brutality of human nature and then to establish the social structure of the violent struggle process, including "A Good Play" in the process of people wandering to the desert island to experience the process of three social forms of human fission, etc., the story framework, the story takes place is not for the sake of the story, but because of the story to express the image core, This core is either a political concept, or an ideology, or a reflection on social life. The story content of the film often forms a certain intertextual existence with history and primitive impulses, but it contradicts the existence of real civilization.
In "A Good Drama", what is the core of Huang Bo's expression? In the film, Huang Bo deliberately eliminates many external pressures that can affect the direction of the characters, such as ferocious beasts, terrible cannibal tribes, or some strange isolated island events, and its purpose is to attribute all the narrative impetus to human nature, and to put people on a desert island to perform a game about human nature. This makes the absurdity of the story itself presented in the face that is closest to reality, which is very easy to resonate and reflect on the audience.
In addition to the absurdity of the story itself, a large number of metaphors, symbolic images or plots appear in the film. For example, after the Great Wave Disaster, the first sight seen by the audience on the desert island is from the perspective of the lizard (in fact, it is the perspective of god), and the lizard will appear from time to time in the subsequent film plot, and this image arrangement is not accidental. As a cold-blooded reptile, the lizard is first and foremost a symbol of cold-bloodedness. As mentioned earlier, the first task at the beginning of a disaster is to conserve physical strength and maintain life. At this time, they unanimously agreed with the survival skills of the driver Xiao Wang, looking for water and food under his leadership, and surviving was the biggest truth. Therefore, when dealing with the "black sheep" represented by Ma Jin, who are bent on seeking a way out for personal gain and not working, the way of the king is also very rude and cold-blooded, and he often scolds and scolds for not giving food, and even uses force. In addition, after recognizing Zhang Zong's capitalist psychology, Huang Bo ran away in anger, and was beaten up when he turned back to borrow a fishing net from Zhang Zong. In extreme circumstances, people who re-establish new relationships no longer care about the warmth of being human, but become as cold-blooded and ruthless as the lizards in the picture. It can be said that the lizard is a portrait of the humanity of all of them.
Secondly, lizards also symbolize camouflage. Creatures living independently in nature have their own survival skills, lizards' strength is that they have good adaptability to the environment, and in the case of chameleons, they can change their skin color according to different environments in order to protect themselves. Similarly, if human beings want to consolidate their position in the newly established social relationship structure, this skill of the lizard is even more indispensable, which is fully expressed in the character played by Zhang Yixing. In the beginning, he was innocent, and after several deceptions and insults, his heart changed a lot. At this time, he was not satisfied with having a meal and a fish for himself to live, he also had to become the master of life, to become a bright self-respecting existence like ice cream. To this end, he gradually adapted to the dangers of survival, disguised himself, and put on the sheep's clothing of goodness to exercise evil: he obviously saw the appearance of the search and rescue ship at sea, but he advised his cousin to keep silent to the crowd, and also thought that everyone thought that the little king who saw the ship was crazy and talking nonsense. In addition, he also seized On Zhang's weakness to defraud him of his property. What's more, he only wanted to take his cousin and leave alone and destroy the supplies they depended on before they drunkenly destroyed them, leaving them to fend for themselves. Interestingly, looking at the sentient beings living on the island through the eyes of the lizard seems to be an allusion to the return of humans to animal nature.
Not only that, but the film also borrows the imagery of the biblical story. In terms of plot arrangement, the huge waves at the beginning of the film are the same as the great floods of the Old Testament Genesis of the Bible, and the Yellow Duck Surf Car is the Noah's Ark that saves them, so that people can survive the disaster and the survivors can create their own new world. From the analysis of the characters, it can be said that Huang Bo, who has a wooden staff, is like the embodiment of Moses. When he was on the verge of despair, God gave him a rain of fish, just like in the Book of Exodus, Huang Bo was instructed to become the Lord of Faith to save the people of the island, and after that, the drama also sounded mysterious religious music. The people of the "utopian age", after breaking the divisions and uniting into a family, dressed uniformly, and the picture of them sitting together on a big tree, are directly adapted to the classic scenes in the Bible.
It is worth mentioning that although the inverted ship found by Mr. Zhang is the result of disaster, the inverted lens given by the photographer after people enter the cabin is a design with ulterior motives. It is not difficult for people with a little knowledge of economics to see that the new rules of the game established by Mr. Zhang after breaking away from Xiao Wang's barbaric labor group are like a microcosm and mirror of the establishment of human capital. Although such new rules can meet people's temporary material needs, they are like upside-down ships, although they are rich in storage, they actually hide hidden dangers. Although the armed struggle between the group headed by Wang and Zhang Zong's people was provoked by Huang Bo and others, this kind of provocation was only a fuse that accelerated the ignition, and the struggle between the two sides was inevitable, only sooner or later.
As of now, the box office performance of "A Good Drama" can be described as gratifying, and director Huang Bo won the first battle. Naturally, the box office is not a measure of the value of a movie. However, the gratifying economic benefits of this kind of low-cost and high-art film still have a great incentive effect on our domestic films. "A Good Drama" is a highly completed film from the overall point of view, it presents serious content in an absurd form, thinking about the theme of society and human nature. Although the perception of the theme is inevitably rough, the audience can still truly feel Huang Bo's sense of responsibility and ambition. When the film was released, it did not track hot topics, nor did it rely on selling feelings and consuming tears, Huang Bo started with an unpopular theme, told a story in a complete way with an all-encompassing social fable, and tried to achieve resonance with the audience with a sincere story and trigger thinking. It can be said that this film allows us to see the successful reconciliation of Huang Bo's commercial star and cultural elite identity of "acting and excellent director".