Introduction: It's not that I don't know what the world is like, I just want to try it.
From the drama stage to the big screen, Happy Twist continues to develop in exploration, not only creating the most influential comedy brand in the Chinese stage drama market, but also appearing on the Spring Festival Gala stage for many times, giving humorous and touching comedy sketches to the national audience in thirty nights, and through the development of multi-platform multimedia ideas, embarking on the road of screen, creating surprises for fans while also forming its own brand effect, and this effect is reflected in Shen Teng, Ma Li, Chang Yuan, The invisible image link between actors such as Allen and Happy Twist, as well as the traces of cross-media adaptations of Happy Twist's unique drama to film and television works.
"Half a Comedy" is a comedy love movie produced by the Happy Twist team at the end of 2019, the film is adapted from Happy Twist's stage play "If I Am Not Me", which tells the story of the elderly young woman Momo who met zheng duoduo, a middle school student, and fell into the love trap of Zheng Duoduo under her pursuit of attack, at the same time, Zheng Duoduo's roommate and friend Sun Tong protected the former crush object, and now Zheng Duoduo's fiancée Gao Lu obstructed Momo's interaction with Zheng Duoduo and told Momo the truth, and the two fell in love in continuous exchanges. However, this relationship was not only opposed by Zheng Duoduo, but also rifted under the coercion and inducement of Sun Tong's mother. The film focuses on the young people who have just entered the workplace in contemporary Beijing, showing the different views of young people on marriage and love, and illuminating reality into the screen in a series of dislocated narratives.
1. Space and characters under the dislocation narrative
Zhou Shen and Liu Lu, directors of "Half a Comedy", constantly mentioned the word "dislocation" in an interview, starting from the film and television presentation and narrative structure of the entire film, it can be found that in addition to continuing the strong characteristics of dramatic conflict under a single space in the dramatic performance, the film also starts from the two parts of space and characters, and continues to use the "dislocation" narrative technique commonly used on the theater stage to form a narrative construction and meaning spillover under a strong visual conflict. The first is the dislocation of space, the film does not tell the plot in a big way, but peels off the core of the truth layer by layer through the relationships and dialogues between the characters. Therefore, the first scene chooses a semi-closed "family" scene, from a strange woman next to Zheng Duoduo who wakes up in bed to Momo who rings the doorbell outside the door, the "two women and one man" mode constitutes a strong dramatic conflict, thus causing the audience to reverie. The reason why the environment is called semi-closed is because although the strange woman at the end of the contradiction enters the same space as Momo, the director skillfully resolves the contradiction through the dislocation of the space, so that the strange woman can retreat completely, and such a space is a hoax for the protagonist, but it has formed a strong comedic effect for the audience.
The second is the dislocation of the characters, the dislocation narrative of the bedroom space is the cause of the dislocation of the character's identity, and the dislocation of the character's identity also induces the result of the dislocation of the complex character relationship, which is also the director's ingenuity. Starting from the spatial dislocation, Momo and Zheng Duoduo entered a complex relationship dislocation with Sun Tong, that is, in Momo's eyes, Zheng Duoduo was a suitor, Sun Tong was a bastard with a chaotic private life, and in Gao Lu's eyes, Momo was Sun Tong's girlfriend, such a relationship dislocation made Sun Tong have to cover up the lie with lies, and the emotional investment under the lie superposition finally snowballed like a huge love tragedy at the wedding.
The most clever display of the dislocation narrative is the dislocation narrative of the character expression and body language formed under the mirror reflection in the optical shop. Under the reflection of the mirror, the body in the mirror and the facial expression outside the mirror are juxtaposed under the same lens, so that the juxtaposition is not only the juxtaposition of male and female genders and the juxtaposition of body language, but also the juxtaposition of emotions outside the body language. In terms of picture composition, the body language in the mirror reflection accounts for two-thirds of the picture, thus revealing the meaning of emphasis, while the dialogue and body language constitute a reverse correspondence, and the inner changes and thoughts of the characters under the attack of other people's language are unobstructed. The panoramic presentation of the characters from the inside out allows the audience to easily capture the subtle changes in the relationship between the characters and the true thoughts of the characters' hearts, and the leap from the relationship between the opposite head to the lover is also detached from the sense of rigidity under such a set of lens narratives.
Second, the departure and return of the self
From the main theme of the film, it is not difficult to see that "Half a Comedy" is not only to express the different views of marriage and love among young people and their collisions, but also in the cruel social competition, how should we keep our original intentions and do our own problems when we first enter the workplace, and the exploration of this problem is cleverly placed on the life concept of Momo and Sun Tong. Momo's character construction is single, no matter how cruel the reality is, Momo always insists on not telling lies and presents an idealized character state, on the contrary, Sun Tong shows different coping methods under the transformation of different situations and reality, and after experiencing the self-exodus under the pressure of reality, in the continuous struggle of psychology, and finally achieve self-return. Therefore, sun tong's character design adopts a common and extraordinary construction method.
Sun Tong is different from Zheng Duoduo, who is born superior, has a strong background, an ordinary family, an ordinary life, and strives not to be eliminated by the world in the cruel competition of society, and will not easily let go of the opportunity for the Beijing hukou, Sun Tong is not only a character image in the film, but also the epitome of tens of millions of North Drifters, and it is also such a character positioning, compared to Zheng Duoduo and Momo, Sun Tong can cause the audience to empathize. It is this kind of empathic character, the entanglement and pain in the face of the realistic options of household registration and work and the emotional options of love are easier for the audience to enter, and the screen has lost its closed role, and every audience has become Sun Tong. Therefore, when Sun Tong straightened up from "a dog of Zheng Duoduo", took the initiative to give up the work and hukou given by Zheng Duoduo, and resolutely decided to be himself, although Sun Tong's return to himself was an idealized film and television effect, it was also a painful blow to thousands of "Sun Tong" villains who bullied people in the "Zheng Duoduo" style.
End
From the drama stage to the big screen, "Half a Comedy" does not easily ridicule the life of modern people, the arrogant powerful people in the movie, the bullying bosses who are afraid of the hard and the injustices seen everywhere have not been weakened and ugly by the comedy type of the movie, the director uses the camera to look at the ugly, and Sun Tong's transformation and victory also bring warm help to the workers who are still at the bottom.