Author | Lights
Source | Ten points of character history
ID | sdrenwu
The Spring Festival holiday is idle, which is the most suitable for revisiting old dramas.
It was cold outside the window, the home was warm as spring, choose a series of dramas from morning to night, and then grab a handful of melon seeds, a pound of sugar oranges, and the day passed slowly.
If you don't know what to watch, join me in reliving an old 15-year-old classic, The Golden Wedding.
In 2007, the TV series "Golden Wedding" was a hit, and the rating of a single episode exceeded 20%, which not only set off a wave of "golden wedding" ceremonies for their parents across the country, but even the national divorce rate that continued to rise also declined to a certain extent.
Before the broadcast, a reporter asked director Zheng Xiaolong if he was worried that the marriage story of the older generation would be difficult to attract the younger generation of viewers.
Zheng Xiaolong replied: "Every generation will encounter similar marriage problems, and the essence of "Golden Marriage" is a fable. ”
Golden married for 50 years
The protagonists of "Golden Marriage", Tong Zhi (Zhang Guoguo) and Wen Li (Jiang Wenli), are the most ordinary and typical couple in China in the 1950s.
Tong Zhi is a native of Sichuan, grew up in the countryside, and after graduation, he was assigned to a heavy industry machinery factory in Beijing as a technician, working diligently and honestly;
Wen Li is a teacher at the factory staff primary school, born in a family of intellectuals in Beijing, with a good face and a romantic nature, and is a pampered old man in the family.
In 1956, Tong Zhi and Wen Li met because of a farce, fell in love for eight months and married, thus beginning the 50-year married life in "Golden Marriage".
At the beginning of the new marriage, the couple was like glue, and the love was sweet.
Tong Zhi worked overtime, wen li had to wait until he returned to sleep; Wen Li did not like the smell of smoke, Tong Zhi would rather be bitten by mosquitoes, but also crouched in the corridor to smoke and then return to the house.
Compared with other male characters in the play, Tong Zhi can be called a good husband who is considerate and tolerant.
Wen Li is not good at doing housework, Tong Zhi consciously wrapped up the task of cooking and washing dishes; the mother-in-law accused Wen Li of being clumsy and clumsy, and would not live a life, Tong Zhi maintained everywhere, "Wen Li has a lot of advantages, you know her will like her."
More than ten years after marriage, the successive births of three daughters, coupled with three years of natural disasters, let Tong Zhi and Wen Li, who were new parents, taste the hardships of life.
The two quarreled continuously, but there were few overnight feuds, and often they reconciled as before night.
Wang Wanping, the screenwriter of "Golden Marriage", once explained:
"For young couples, sex will dilute some contradictions, and those years can be described as a romantic period of bedside quarrels and bedside quarrels.
And when people reach middle age, the pressure of work and life, coupled with the boredom of both parties, will make the marriage come to a dangerous period of easy disintegration."
Tong Zhi and Wen Li's real marital crisis appeared in the 17th year of marriage.
This year, the youngest son Dabao was born, Wen Li had a middle-aged son, he couldn't help himself, he was full of eyes only his son, not only did he ignore his daughters, but even Tong Zhi could not escape the fate of beating the floor night and night.
During the "third-line construction" period, his wife's snub, coupled with the dilemma of his career, made the depressed Tong Zhi determined to try new possibilities in the third-line factory.
This time, not only has the career improved, but also the beauty has thrown herself into the arms - Tong Zhi met Li Tianjiao, a technician who is equally beautiful and romantic as Wen Li when he was young.
Li Tianjiao's fierce and fierce love ignited Tong Zhi's middle-aged life like a pool of stagnant water, and although the two did not have substantial over-the-top behavior, rumors gradually spread in the factory.
Wen Li, who was alone in Beijing to pull four children, heard about her husband's "extramarital affair", became sad and indignant, and found the factory leaders to make a big fuss and demanded an end to the separation between the two places.
A paper transfer order made Tong Zhi's originally good future in vain.
One of the famous scenes in the play is Tong Zhichong Wenli, who had no choice but to return to Beijing, roaring angrily: "I didn't even touch her hand!" ”
Wen Li roared back with wide eyes, "You didn't touch her hand, but did you touch her heart?!" ”
In the next twenty years, Li Tianjiao became an unrootable thorn between Tong Zhi and Wen Li.
The former loving couple has become enemies, Wen Li hates Tong Zhi for being unfaithful, and Tong Zhi hates Wen Li for ruining his career again and again.
At one point, the two went into the Civil Affairs Bureau to go through divorce procedures, but the mother-in-law hid the household registration book, and the marriage did not leave.
What prevents them from divorcing is, of course, not only the mother-in-law, but also responsibility, morality, children, and their feelings that have not completely disappeared.
After half a lifetime of entanglement and confrontation, Tong Zhi and Wen Li became elderly people.
After surviving the love enemy, surviving retirement, surviving until the children have all started their own families, the two have restored the sweetness and harmony of their first love.
Tong Zhi leaned back on the couch and snoozed, Wen Li touched his face, and must hear his long breathing to be relieved;
Wen Li was diagnosed with cancer, and Tong Zhi stayed in front of the hospital bed, holding her hand and tears in her eyes;
Hearing his son Dabao comment that his parents' quarrels and noises in this life were not interesting, Tong Zhi forcefully retorted, "My mother and I have experienced ups and downs in this life, and we have had a very good time!" ”
"Few couples come to the old partner", screenwriter Wang Wanping sighed, "many young people and middle-aged people feel that they can't pass the hurdles, and when they get old, they feel that it is not a big deal, but there is a kind of happiness that has been run-in for many years."
Chinese civilian history
Director Zheng Xiaolong once said in an interview that the inspiration for "Golden Marriage" came from a fight between his parents.
Zheng Xiaolong's parents are both soldiers, and whenever they quarrel over trivial matters in life after retirement, they always have to call their sons back to preside over justice.
Once, zheng Xiaolong finished his persuasion work as usual, and on the way back to Beijing, a thought suddenly appeared:
If you take the 50-year marriage of an old couple in the form of a chronicle of "one episode and one year", it should be very interesting.
After returning to Beijing, Zheng Xiaolong found screenwriter Wang Wanping and talked about his ideas.
Wang Wanping had previously written "Happiness Is Like a Flower", and he was very experienced in the theme of marriage and love, and the two hit it off immediately, and then formed a planning team of six or seven people.
"Starting from life and having a sense of life" is Zheng Xiaolong's biggest requirement for the script.
Many of the bridges in the play are derived from the real experience of the main creative team, such as Tong Zhi finally gave birth to a son after giving birth to three daughters, and when he was happy, he almost threw his son to the ground, which is the real scene when Zheng Xiaolong was born.
The plot of Wen Li's "white ear pearl cream" allergy that resonates with many middle-aged women is Wang Wanping's experience.
Wang Wanping put many details of his life in the tube building and the courtyard into the play, and the entire planning team also organized a symposium for the golden marriage elderly in the community to listen to their opinions, which were the important reasons why "Golden Marriage" was later evaluated by the audience as "real and perceptible".
As a director with a grand sense of the times, Zheng Xiaolong also deliberately integrated many major national events from 1956 to 2005 into the plot, such as the Cultural Revolution, the construction of the third line, reform and opening up, the Tangshan earthquake and "SARS".
Some difficult to show events, Zheng Xiaolong is very skillful.
In this episode of 1967, Wen Li and Tong Zhi traveled to live in a guest house on a business trip, because there was no photo on the marriage certificate, it could not be confirmed that they were husband and wife, and they were arrested by the rebels and said that they "broke their shoes", which showed the real life of ordinary people during the Cultural Revolution from the side.
In order to present the characteristics of the era of China's 50 years of development, the shooting location of "Golden Wedding" is mostly real scenes, and from the start of the camera, the costume and props department has tried to collect a large number of costumes and daily necessities from the people.
As big as the buses in the 50s, as small as the wall calendar and bicycle tickets on the wall, even the newspapers have specially designed 100 sheets according to the year, and the blue cotton jackets in Zhang Guoguo's plays are all gifts from the old workers.
When she starred in "Golden Wedding", Jiang Wenli was 40 years old and Zhang Guoli was 51 years old.
Wen Li's role was tailor-made for Jiang Wenli, and when Wang Wanping wrote the script, he pasted a photo of Jiang Wenli in front of the computer, and naturally brought in Jiang Wenli's tone and expression when writing.
But when she first received Zheng Xiaolong's invitation, Jiang Wenli refused, on the grounds that she had just finished acting in "Chinese-style Divorce", "It is this kind of marriage drama again, I don't act, and if I continue like this, my drama path will be fixed to death."
Zheng Xiaolong advised her to look at the script first, "There are probably few actresses who can play this fifty-year span, why don't you challenge it?" ”
Facts have proved that Jiang Wenli is indeed wenli's best candidate.
Zheng Xiaolong later praised Jiang Wenli's performance method of being close to life, "In the process of saying her lines, she always had to find some work for herself, washing dishes, dragging the floor, cooking rice, and the plot was explained."
In order to act from the age of 25 to the age of 75, the most important thing the lead actor does on the set every day is to change clothes.
Zhang Guoli revealed in an interview that the busiest one, a day to change 7 sets of makeup, "I asked the director to shoot middle-aged, elderly scenes first, and finally shoot young people, the result is because of the shooting progress and seasons, scenes, can only be strung together, resulting in the morning is still 26 years old, at night 57 years old."
After the broadcast of "Golden Wedding", it won the ratings championship of the year, and won more than 20 awards such as the Feitian Award, the Golden Eagle Award, and the Hundred Flowers Award.
Foreign media described it as "the civilian history of the Chinese", and there was also a wave of "golden wedding" ceremonies held by children for their parents across the country, and the staff of the Women's Federation even called to tell Zheng Xiaolong that because of the popularity of this drama, the divorce rate of that year had dropped to a certain extent.
"The two words 'golden marriage' represent the most traditional and primitive yearning of most people", screenwriter Wang Wanping summed up the popularity of "Golden Marriage" at that time, "no matter how high the divorce rate is at present, most people still hope to be able to hold the hand of their children and grow old with their children."
Why is "Golden Wedding" worth revisiting?
15 years have passed since the premiere of "Golden Wedding".
Nowadays, when people mention "Golden Marriage", they always love to compare it with the era drama "Parental Love", which is also a theme of marriage and family.
In the Douban short review of "Golden Marriage", there is no shortage of comments such as "suffocating", "more afraid of marriage after watching", "or prefer "Parental Love".
Indeed, compared with the "one life and one couple" fairy tale written in "Parental Love", the chicken feathers in "Golden Marriage" are far less beautiful, but it is precisely this almost cruel truth that writes through the reasons for the low divorce rate of the previous generation.
50 years of marriage, whether it is for the people in the play or the audience, is a process of yearning, disenchantment, and real understanding of marriage.
Before marriage, Wen Li was a literary and artistic young woman who pursued romance, loved to read Soviet romance novels the most, and hung up Engels's famous saying for many years, "Marriage without love is immoral."
When they first got married, they would cry in order to argue with Tong Zhi about "whether they should wash their feet before going to bed", believing that couples who loved each other should not quarrel.
More than half a hundred years old, in the face of Tong Zhi's spiritual derailment, Wen Li no longer let her daughters read novels, because "I can't let my daughter follow my old path."
In order to maintain the integrity of the family, she buried herself in the sand like an ostrich, pretending not to see the huge rift in the marriage, even if the mother's family advised her not to put up with it anymore, Wen Li only replied faintly, "Aren't all men like this?" ”
In the old age, the trauma and knot of that year finally became a joke.
Tong Zhi called Wen Li in the master bedroom, pretending to be the object of Nian Wenli's gossip: "I am Xiao Xia! Wen Li laughed and replied in the second bedroom, "I am Li Tianjiao!" ”
Shen Yifei, an emotional expert, once said that every rift will make the intimate relationship more solid.
Put in "Golden Marriage", the use of cracks to describe are too light, Tong Zhi and Wen Li are how much discord, hatred, and regret have passed before they can reach the end.
There are no perfect characters in "Golden Marriage", and there are no heinous characters, only three-dimensional, complex people.
Take Tong Zhi, who "slagged" after middle age, he and Li Tianjiao broke the thread for more than ten years, which indeed made countless audiences hate their teeth and itch, and Wen Li was not worth it.
But this did not erase Tong Zhi's kindness to Wen Li.
Wen Li was spoiled from an early age and was not good at housework, Tong Zhi undertook the task of cooking, washing dishes, and washing diapers for children, and his mother-in-law and daughter-in-law had conflicts, and he always tried his best to mediate, most of the time he stood on the side of his wife.
When the young people around him squeezed Tong Zhi's "strict wife management" and "no dignity", Tong Zhi would never show off his might in front of Wen Li for the sake of face, but just replied with a sentence of "When you become a family, you will know how difficult it is for men", which is particularly rare in that era when men and women are not really equal.
Even in the worst years of the relationship between husband and wife, Tong Zhi never thought of leaving this home.
The eldest daughter Yanni asked Tong Zhi, do you love Li Tianjiao? Tong Zhi's answer is meaningful:
"She's completely different from your mom. She is like this symphony, when no one listens to it, she feels very peaceful in her heart, and then she goes back to life. ”
Many of the issues discussed in the play still have reference significance to this day, in addition to extramarital affairs, mid-life crisis, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships, as well as the education of the original family.
The second daughter, Nanfang, grew up with her grandmother at an early age, and was sent back to her parents when she was almost 7 years old, and has been emotionally estranged from her parents since she became an adult;
The third daughter Duoduo was born in a patriarchal family, but the upper sister is not better than the younger brother, and when she grows up, she is rebellious and uninhibited, and she resents Wen Li countless times for why she let herself come to this world;
The youngest son Dabao is the fuse of the breakdown of his parents' feelings, since he can remember, he has not seen his father's good face for a day, disappointed in love, pessimistic about marriage, saying that he does not want to get married, and only wants to play a lifetime...
Like every pair of ordinary parents, the child is the source of the contradiction between Tong Zhi and Wen Li, but it can always become the glue of the two people working together to the outside world.
Marriage needs to be managed, can not be allowed, this is Zheng Xiaolong's deepest feeling after witnessing his parents' 50-year marriage, "Marriage in different eras has commonalities, from this point of view, "Golden Marriage" is an allegorical story."
At the end of "The Golden Wedding", the descendants held a grand celebration for Tong Zhi and Wen Li, congratulating them on their 50 years of marriage.
Two white-haired old men walked arm in arm in the snow, remembering the long 50 years in their minds like a marquee.
Is such a lifetime worth it? Happy?
No one else can assert it.
Perhaps only every "Tong Zhi" and "Wen Li" know the answer.
Author | This article is sourced from Ten Points of Personality (ID: sdrenwu).
Image | Originated from the Internet, if there is infringement, please contact to delete.
Information——
1. Character "You Can't Get Love Around Pain"
2. Sanlian Life Weekly "Zheng Xiaolong: 20 Years of TV Past"
3. Sina Entertainment "Wang Wanping: Golden Marriage is the Most Primitive Yearning"