The last time, "Watching a Movie" 2021 Chinese Top Ten Film List, only to elaborate on five.
They are:
[Love Myth]
[Xiao Wei]
[Auspicious]
[Above the Cliff]
[Assassination of a Novelist]
They were selected for different reasons.
Some are picking up the small details of life.
Some are a contemplation of reality.
Some are precise grasps of the requirements of genre films.
There are also the next cities in the film industry.
Today, the second half of the top ten Chinese films, the remaining five, are inadvertently realism to some extent – maybe this is the film made for each of us ordinary people.
Or to tell the helplessness of honest people, or to talk about the sacrifice of a generation of "sisters", or to touch on historical scars such as post-war orphans.
You may have guessed which ones there are.
It doesn't matter if you can't guess it, and look down.
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Eleventh time
Directed by Chen Jianbin
Starring Chen Jianbin / Zhou Xun / Dapeng / Dou Jingtong / Spring and Summer
Genre Drama/Comedy
Bullying honest people
[The eleventh time] is the second work directed by Chen Jianbin.
Compared to his debut [a spoon], Cass is more luxurious, more mature and smooth audio-visual, but still exudes a strong personal style.
The film revolves around the two words "overturning the case".
A brake murder case 30 years ago was adapted into a stage play by the Municipal Repertory Theatre, and the repetition of the old incident broke the peaceful life of the parties involved in the case, Ma Fuli.
In order to prove his innocence, this honest man argued with the director of the drama troupe, Hu Quentin, and the doorman Gou, tirelessly correcting the various mistakes of the play, and whether art and truth should cross the line.
Sandwiched between his sword-wrenching wife and daughter, he carefully reconciled the family's relationship that had become more tense by the affair.
At the other end, hu Quentin, a director with empty ambitions and lack of talent, is also a mess under the influence of this matter, and he is a scumbag and suffocated person with his tail between his lover and his wife.
There are also lawyers who occasionally flash moral appearances, rich rich people who believe in Buddhism today and believe in Christ tomorrow, and even abortion doctors who nagged Chinese and Western medicine miscellaneous families, who sat on the tone of the film's black humor in the character setting.
As the name suggests, the film is divided into eleven small sections in the form of chapters, each of which is summarized by two fixed poems, which is quite a bit of irony.
There are a lot of lines in the film that are worth playing.
For example, the doorman Gou Yawu said of the head and deputy commander, "You can call them by their names, but you can't call them by their places." ”
There are also many unspoken rules that are fascinating.
For example, the different attitudes of the head of the repertory theater towards Ma Fuli, Boss Li and the director;
For example, after the various compromises of artistic creation in front of different people, after smiling, there are also parts worth pondering.
Compared with 2015's "One Spoon", [Eleventh Time] is obviously more ambitious, no longer satisfied with a single category of small theater, and incorporates more elements and more extremes.
There are both horse-catching comedies represented by Dapeng, family entanglements represented by Zhou Xun, and youth pains represented by Dou Jingtong;
The small people of the city represented by Chen Jianbin and the black humor represented by Boss Li and Gou Doorman integrate metaphysical imagery into the real life of oil, salt, sauce and vinegar.
Ma Fuli and the pulling strips of the year are all good old people who can hit the south wall for a reason, a fairness, and they are all "fools" who are outside of shrewdness.
In the end, it is no longer important to see how the truth of the case was, but it is more interesting to see the process of overturning the case and the Rashomon-style defense made by all parties out of their own positions.
As the director said through the mouth of Quentin Hu:
"I hope that my play is not life itself, it is like a mirror that reflects the relationship between people, the relationship between people and the times, and the relationship between people and life." 」
Midsummer future
Directed by Chen Zhengdao
Starring Zhang Zifeng / Wu Lei / Hao Lei / Zu Feng / Liu Xiaohai
Genre Drama
To grow is to not get
In 2021, of course, youth films will not be absent.
But this time, [Midsummer Future] seems to make us see something different.
Not indulgence, not nostalgia, nor clinging to the 17-year-old, but accepting it calmly, growing up is not getting it, is to swallow regrets and continue to move forward.
This story is wrapped in a layer of sugar coating for the beginning of the girl's love sinus.
On the eve of the college entrance examination, the young girl Chen Chen found that the family was not as happy as imagined, and she deliberately "played abnormally" in the examination, hoping to match her parents in the year of re-study.
But in this year, her parents did not get together, but she accidentally got closer and closer to the boy Zheng Yuxing.
The ambiguous relationship between Zheng Yuxing and Chen Chen corresponds to their relationship with the world.
They are all "against" their families, explicitly or implicitly, trying to put everything on the right track as they see fit.
This is the so-called youthful spirit, unwilling to accept unsatisfactory family relations and unwilling to accept an incomplete world.
Through this similar love, Chen Chen and Zheng Yuxing were relieved.
Love, in their growth, is a means, not an end.
Zheng Yuxing and Chen Chen "eloped" to Hainan to watch Zheng Yuxing's "old love" Ming DJ performance at the Electric Syllable Festival.
This became big news in the school, and both parents also followed the school teachers to kill the pair of "little Mandarin ducks" in Hainan.
But this is not the "early love" imagined by teachers and parents.
At the electric syllable festival, Zheng Yuxing said to Chen Chen, If only I could like you.
They went through this experience and finally learned that life is full of force majeure, and if it does not look just right, it will definitely develop according to their wishes.
When you are a child, you can be paranoid about the toy city, if you don't get the toy car, you won't go, and if you are older, you may just refuse to accept it, your parents are separated, and love and marriage have an end.
You think that as long as you are determined enough, the toy car will be on your desk, and you think that as long as you work hard enough, your parents will definitely return to the good.
But growing up means that you finally accept that things in the world can't be as you want, and you can't do as you want.
We have watched a lot of "until death is a teenager" youth film in the past few years, and at first we will be touched by the persistence of teenagers, but after plots such as "marriage robbery" are repeatedly staged, we can't help but wonder:
Is this affection for another person, or is it a resentment of your own inability to control your life;
Whether it is still hot blood, or unwilling to grow up, whether the youth film is growing up, or the unforgettable intention of people who have aged.
2021's [Midsummer Future] may be the beginning, to portray a half-ripe to mature youth, rather than decaying before it grows up.
My sister
Directed by Yin Ruoxin
Starring Zhang Zifeng / Xiao Yang / Zhu Yuanyuan / Duan Bowen / Liang Jingkang
Genre Drama/Family
The sister who was seen
[My sister] set off a discussion in 2021 that broke through the film circle.
It breaks the circle because it uncovers a wound that has been neglected: a Chinese sister who has been sacrificed and forgotten.
Just a few plots that show the traditional family's preference for sons and daughters can pierce into the hearts of a generation of "sisters".
The mother has already given birth to two daughters, risking her life to have another boy; the father asks the daughter to pretend to be lame, so as to exchange for a "birth permit" and add a male "heir".
And so on, even if it is not smart, unlike a precise scalpel, it is a sharp blade that is enough to cut open the wound.
It's not just a generation of sisters who have been sacrificed.
Enron still has the opportunity to struggle, whether to forgive his parents who have passed away, to raise a brother he doesn't know at all, or to let go and pursue the future he deserves.
And the previous generation of "sisters", Enron's aunt has long had no choice.
She had the opportunity to go to Russia to do business, but gave up for her brother.
Now she is an ordinary housewife, and the only connection with the dream Russian businesswoman is a matryoshka doll that she hastily bought.
What the sisters gave up was their own life in order to complete their brothers.
However, the Chinese-style younger brother who grew up in the sacrifice of his sister often became enron's uncle again, confused and did not know how to take responsibility for his own life.
When he was young, he enlarged the girl's belly, married early, and could go from immature to being a father, and when he reached middle age, he was addicted to gambling, and even his daughter looked down on him.
[My sister] portrays a typical traditional patriarchal family in various ways.
The silent, enormous sacrifice of the sisters, often systematically ignored, is so common that it is considered normal, and the breezy phrase "sister should take care of her brother" obscures their deprived life.
[My sister] dug this common but forgotten story out of the dusty lives of generations of sisters, uncovering bloody wounds that were so real that they tingled.
It is precisely because it is too real that the ending of the film disappoints many viewers.
The sister finally chooses to raise her younger brother, and the story ends in a soft light full of hope.
Too many "sisters" look forward to finding an outlet in this other person's story, but in the end they only see their own hurtful endings beautified.
The dilemma of cinema is that even knowingly, in the face of too many complex realities and real pains, love is not the answer.
But in the face of this unsolvable social disease, it has no way but to kill a carbine after saying all the dilemmas and pains, and embellish it with a little hope.
Letting what has been overlooked be seen is already its meaning.
See also Nara
Directed by Peng Fei
Starring Wu Yanshu / Hidezawa / Hayabusa Kunimura / Masatoshi Nagase / Pengfei
Write a mournful journey of family in joy
[See also Nara] is a film that uses a light and humorous grammar to tell a soulful and heart-wrenching journey of family.
The beginning of the film is in the form of an animation to tell the problem of post-war orphans in northeast China after the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the light pleasure and flatness of the paper people are used to minimize the heaviness and sadness of the historical past.
It forms an inexplicable unity with the tonality of the whole film.
Orphans after the war are a group that is rarely noticed, and they may not have heard of it anywhere else.
When it is re-mentioned and told, it is not only a look back and reflection on history, but also an examination and care for the current situation of these people and their descendants.
The theme of the film is "Search", and several characters also have direct or indirect connections with "post-war orphans".
Grandma Chen, who flew to Nara to look for a daughter, represented the Chinese who adopted orphans that year, although there was no blood relationship, but there was a decades-long nurturing family affection, which could not be given up and could not be put down.
Ozawa, who works at an izakaya house, represents the second generation who lives in Japan without embarrassment, and at the beginning of the film she says that she is "Japanese", but whether she is in love or living, she has a Chinese habit engraved in her bones.
The deaf-mute administrators in the temple, the forklift driver who helped Grandma Chen, the traffic coordinator with a northeastern accent, and the aunt who can sing a passage of "Lin Hai Xueyuan" represent the group of post-war orphans who have returned from familiar hometowns to unfamiliar hometowns.
The Japanese people in blood are spiritually Chinese, and it seems that the leaves have fallen back to their roots, but in fact, they are more like living in a foreign country.
Like the signal pot on the roof of the orphaned home, it seems to be integrated into this land, but at a glance, it is different.
Even the only innocent Japanese policeman in the film is burdened with the loneliness of "missing contact" with his child, and he is like an "orphan" on another level, taking care of the motif of "searching" in a large scope.
Judging from the video style, [see Nara again] is a bit of a Kore-eda feeling, through the incessant search of several actors, a cut-off of the current situation of Japan's post-war orphans.
The director intersperses many cold and humorous passages in the film.
Grandma Chen wanted to release the sea crab, but threw it into the freshwater lake, causing the confusion of "killing".
Ozawa's ex-boyfriend came to get something, and she spoke Russian to someone nervously, which aggravated the embarrassment of chicken and duck talk.
On the contrary, it is more effective to put aside the communication of language.
For example, she uses animal cries to distinguish meat in the butcher shop, with a bit of hilarity about each other.
The film uses this daily briskness and gentleness to cover up the hidden pain of historical problems, and it has already hinted in various details that the search for the final result of the disease, let people see, laugh, cry, and fall into a sullen silence.
Lion Boy
Directed by Sun Haipeng
Starring Da Xin / Daxiong / Guo Hao / Li Meng / Li Jiasi
Genre Drama/Comedy/Animation
Always be a lion
[Lion Boy] is the dark horse killed in the last half month of 2021, and in the case that everyone thinks that this year's Chinese movie is "like this", it has rushed into the camp of the top ten of the year.
However, contrary to the popularity of the industry's "tap water" fans at the time of the screening, [Lion Boy] suffered a double waterloo of box office and word of mouth after its large-scale release because of its controversy over the role modeling.
In the face of this accusation of peeping leopards in the tube, some people roared, some people fought back, and the liveliness of the war of words isolated more people from the film, forming an emotional catharsis that had nothing to do with the movie.
Different from the domestic animation that has emerged in the past two years, [Lion Boy] cuts off the content support of ancient myths and folklore for domestic animation, and positions the tone of the film as "realism".
The film revolves around the story of several left-behind children in rural Guangdong learning lion dances with their master who sells salted fish.
On the one hand, there are weak children, on the other hand, there are failed adults, although they have a burning of life and dreams, but there is no subversive sense of changing their lives against the sky in the hot-blooded teenager comics.
In the movie, the lion's head and the dropped kapok are two very important props with strong symbolic meaning.
As a kind of image that combines ancient and national tide, tradition and excitement, the meaning of "awakening the lion to awaken the soul of the country, beating the drum to invigorate the spirit" on the lion dance is seamlessly in line with the theme of hard work and blood, youth and national strength shown in the movie.
In order to find out the structure and skeleton of the lion's head, the team of [Male Lion Boy] broke many lion heads during the creation process, and used almost anatomical research to show layer by layer from the skin to the bone phase on the big screen.
In the part of the lion dance competition in the film, Ah Juan's lion head is broken, revealing the inner structure of bamboo grate, gauze, rice paper, cloth and so on, restoring and respecting the traditional handicraft culture from the details.
And kapok, as a "hero flower", also carries a kind of inspirational blessing in itself. In order to make a real and natural kapok, the director and special effects artists also took a lot of effort.
At first, I just found a kapok tree to observe, and did it from memory, but the shape arrived, but the god was almost there.
Later, the director directly dragged the special effects supervisor's desk and computer to the outside under the kapok tree, letting him watch the living kapok work overhead, and use this sketching method to capture the charm of kapok in the branches and in the wind.
When the special effects artist who was "exiled" was finally finished, not only the appearance of the flowers was qualified, but even the heavy sense of weight that fell down was in place.
As the most controversial place in the film, the character modeling of [Lion Boy] has achieved its aesthetic uniqueness, and has also attracted many viewers' criticism.
In fact, from a professional point of view, this is a cartoon problem.
Generally speaking, the higher the degree of cartoonism, the larger the character's head and the larger the eyes, which looks more cute.
The corresponding is photo-level realism, close to real people but also prone to the "uncanny valley effect".
The director has tried different animation styles, and there are also heads and eyes that are bigger, but the cartoonism is too high, and it is easy to play in a realistic background environment.
In the end, this version of the character was determined between the two extremes, and the facial ratio was as close as possible to the real person, but not to the level of "Uncanny Valley".
In addition to professional considerations, this style is also in line with the personality and growth process of the three left-behind teenagers.
Beanie eyes are a common way to show the cuteness of characters in animation, and the slightly larger eye distance gives people a feeling of being soft and bullying visually.
At first, Ah Juan was weak and intimidated, and he was messing around in the village, which was very much in line with his original personality.
Later, he went out of the countryside to work in the city, running on the construction site and the street every day, and his role has changed and grown significantly.
The sick and intimidating Ah Juan is gone, replaced by a mature version of Ah Juan with slightly dark skin, a sharp flat head and a muscular arm, exuding a spirit and resolute toughness and handsomeness.
As the most bloody bullet at the end of the year, [Lion Boy] is very "burning".
This kind of burning is not the protagonist with the aura full of roaring against the sky to change his life, but the ordinary people who struggle in the mud, knowing that they will not counterattack life, but still want to fight for themselves to fight a "no recognition".
The first half of the movie is a very old story routine, the protagonist of the weak little character wants to change himself by learning the lion dance, worships a sweeping monk-like master to learn the art, and little by little sheds the soft shell and becomes strong and strong.
It's almost a chicken blood tablet that can see the end at a glance, and if it were only like that, [the lion boy] wouldn't be sought after by so much "tap water".
The film's brilliance comes from the second half.
Ah Juan has been looking forward to the return of her parents, as a migrant worker father fell off the high platform, seriously injured and comatose, the first half of the simple and pure inspiration to end here, in order to support the family, Ah Juan carried her bags into the city to work, a foot from the fairy tale into reality.
Suffering is really bitter, tired is also really tired, the adult world has always been full of all kinds of sourness and helplessness.
But what makes [The Lion Boy] moving is that even if he has experienced the harshest reality, he has not chosen to pass or fly the dog, and he will still practice the lion dance alone on the roof of the dawn with his former dream, greeting the arrival of the first morning light between the high-rise buildings.
This in itself is a kind of "burning" that does not recognize life and does not want to be changed by the world.
The paragraph at the end of the optimus prime is another brilliant and even sublimated part of this film.
Optimus Prime, a spiritual symbol, it is not used to dance, but means the industry admonition that "a mountain is more than a mountain", life always has a peak that cannot be passed, warning the lion dancers to always have a reverential heart.
In order to meet a miracle and pray for her unconscious father to wake up, Ah Juan decided to jump optimus prime.
This paragraph is not easy to handle, if he jumps on it, from a realistic point of view, it is neither scientific nor realistic, if he can't jump up, the movie renders more than an hour of blood and flashpoint will be greatly discounted.
Fortunately, the film perfectly solves this dilemma. The young man in the lion dance jumped hard, and the lion's head landed steadily on the Optimus Prime, but Ah Juan fell from mid-air and fell into the water.
Mortals are ultimately confined to reality, but the spirit of "denial" can live on forever.
In the Easter egg, Ah Juan still went to Shanghai to work, continuing her hard and ordinary life, as if nothing had changed, but we just knew that some things had completely changed.
Those who have walked and met have been silently carved into the blood, always boiling.
Whether we succeed or fail, the effort itself is a powerful struggle against fate, as long as the drum in our hearts can still sound, we are a lion.
No matter how many times you have been ravaged by this world, how many times you have been disgusted, don't admit it!