CCTV's new year-end drama "The World" was broadcast more than halfway, and audience praise poured in. "The World of Man" is just like the mighty flow of life on a river, writing about the majestic changes in national development and ordinary people's lives in the meandering of 50 years, in which the infinite love between people deeply touches and warms the hearts of the audience, which can be called a contemporary Chinese epic of images and souls. The so-called "touching people, Mo Xianhu feelings, Mo Shi Hu words, Mo Cuts hu sound, Mo Deep Meaning", "The World of Man" has reached a high artistic balance between this love, righteousness and language, highlighting the new height of major reality TV series in the theme creation.
Starting from the light character film, the sentient world of "The World of Man" is interwoven
TV dramas are good at showing daily life, and there are already pearls such as "Ordinary World", "Golden Marriage", "Parental Love" in the front, but the uniqueness of "Human World" is that it can integrate the magnificent epic and delicate emotions of the aforementioned classics, and cast the epitome of contemporary Chinese urban development and people's lives represented by the historical fate of light character films in the interweaving of longitude and latitude.
What "The World" wants to express is the homogeneous destiny between individuals, families and groups, and cities. "Guangzi Tablets" is a marginal shantytown in Jichun City in the north, where there are timber factories, soy sauce factories, tractor factories, military factories, etc., most of which are inhabited by the first generation of workers in New China. In these families, there are construction workers like Zhou Zhigang who support the construction of the third line, there are also "second generation workers" such as "six little gentlemen", and third generations such as Zhou Nan, Zhou Yue and Zhou Cong. It is synonymous with glory and dream, and it is also a synonym for confusion and hardship. Starting from the 1969 zhou family's children going to the mountains and going to the countryside as the starting point of the story, the TV series gradually unfolds the magnificent picture of the development and evolution of the republic in the past 50 years, which involves important nodes and events in the development of the country and social development, such as going to the mountains and going to the countryside, the construction of the third line, the restoration of the college entrance examination, the return of young people to the city, the reform and opening up, the anti-corruption and honesty promotion, etc., and the historical fate of these workers' families in the play also goes ups and downs. In this way, the light character film has a very typical meaning, becoming a "sparrow" in the development of Chinese cities in the past 50 years, and the TV series has transcended the family story in the general sense and become a real "Chinese story".
While paying attention to the historical depth brought by the long span, "The World of Man" also expands the breadth of the story from the perspective of space. The light piece is like a dandelion flower holder, and as the person with the light word piece sets off from here, it is like a seed floating outward. With Zhou Zhigang, we came to the undulating mountains of the front line of Sichuan's third-line construction; with Zhou Bingyi, we saw the snow mountain farm of the production and construction corps; with Zhou Rong, we saw the green landscape of Guizhou; with Luo Shibin and the water flow, we witnessed the rapid rise of Shenzhen. The diverse space constructs a dandelion-like radiation and drifting story world for the TV series through the involvement of character relationships, reinforcing the energy level of the TV series to accommodate social history. The diagonal line from the north to the south draws not only the fates of the characters in the play, but also the variation curves and tones of national development. But in the end, these people who had drifted away from the light character pieces all returned to this land where they were born and raised to witness the disappearance of the light character pieces -- this is not only the expectation of the ordinary people of the light character pieces for several generations, but also the fulfillment of the solemn promises of the party and the government to the people's beautiful life represented by Governor Hao and Zhou Bingyi, represented by the two generations of Communist Party cadres.
Of course, the world in "The World of Man" is not completely harmonious and beautiful, but also full of various contradictions and conflicts, ideological confusion and complexity of human nature, but what is rare is that people in this world have never lost their persistent yearning for a better life, striving to pursue and support each other, so that this side of the world has become a sentient world worthy of nostalgia.
With the Zhou family as the core, it conveys the goodness and true meaning of "The World of Man"
"The World of Man" abandons the legendary nature, depicts the characters from the perspective of the people around him, and creates a credible, cute and amiable image of ordinary people.
Father Zhou was the first generation of construction workers in New China, which made him proud, and he had no complaints about gathering less and more with his family in the decades of third-line construction work. He has the arbitrariness of Chinese parents and the expectations of Jackie Chan, but he is by no means a feudal parent. The highest standard for judging people in his value system is "good people." Therefore, when he confirmed that Feng Huacheng and Zheng Juan were "good people", he and his daughter and son were released from the previous suspicions.
Under the premise of being a "good person", the personality of the three brothers and sisters of the Zhou family has their own colors. Brother Bingyi has the ideal feeling of traditional knowledge elements ruling the country together and Communist Party members serving the people. In the face of the historical opportunity to change his destiny, he chose to be loyal to love; he chose to understand in the face of the conflict between his own family and his father-in-law's family; he chose to face difficulties in the face of the reform of the military factory; he chose to be patient in the face of fierce public opinion; and finally he took the initiative to return to Jichun to complete the transformation of the light character piece and realize his father-in-law and his ideals. He is a cadre who emphasizes the principle of party spirit, but he is not a screw that the six relatives do not recognize. From the perspective of political personality, although he received a lot of education from his father-in-law, it is better to say that he is more like Secretary Qu. Sister Zhou Rong is obviously romantic. Whether it is correspondence and love with a Beijing poet when she was young, or marrying Feng Huacheng in Guizhou without saying goodbye, or resolutely divorcing Feng Huacheng and remarrying Cai Xiaoguang, etc., all clearly show the determination and love of freedom in her personality. The younger brother Bingkun had the sympathy, tolerance and wisdom common to his class, and more clearly embodied the spiritual values of the civilian class. In the face of the desperate Zheng Juan family, the flame of love that he sprouted from sympathy and help burned more and more vigorously, and even in the face of the opposition of the whole family, he had no hesitation in marrying Zheng Juan. He did not have the same ability as his brother and sister, but he kept the two old houses of the light character film to take care of his mother and became the main backbone of the brothers, and then he succeeded by opening a restaurant and a bookstore to buy a house, and also won the affirmation of his father. This "old pimple" seems stupid, treating other people's children as their own babies, and also hurting people and imprisoning them for more than ten years, but this is the simple belief of an ordinary person to be a "good person" to guard his family.
Zheng Juan is also a character that the creators have vigorously portrayed. This weak woman, who has a miserable life and has not worked all her life to take care of her family, has no regard for love. When she identified Bingkun, she paid no matter what. But Zheng Juan is clearly not Liu Huifang, and she warns Sun Xiaoning without hesitation in the face of Sun Xiaoning's challenge to the only family she owns. Zheng Juan guarded the family and happiness with a pair of hands and a heart. Therefore, Zhou Mu told her that the "Ji" of Bingkun that she got was actually her Zheng Juan's "Ji".
The TV series also portrays a group of Bingkun's friends, as well as senior cadres such as Lao Ma and Secretary Qu. These characters have their own arc of personality, and they also have their own values and moral bottom lines. Even characters such as Luo Shibin and Shui Ziliu also embody the dialectical logic of a certain level of the times, which also have aesthetic value, and there is no absolute "bad guy". They are all striving to move forward in the torrent of history, for themselves for the family, but also for the city for the country. The goodness and tenacity in them are the most precious true meanings in Chinese for thousands of years, and they are also the most solid foundation for our nation and country to move forward steadily.
The narrative speed and the careful configuration of the heavy scenes form the targeted empathy of "The World"
"The World of Man" paves the way for the artistic reality of the story with ubiquitous details and truths, but what is more worth discussing is that the TV series greatly enhances the artistic appeal of the TV series through narrative speed and careful configuration of heavy scenes.
In the past 50 years, TV dramas have consciously chosen some nodes to unfold, such as 1969, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1988, etc., through compression and extension to form a staggered narrative speed, but also designed a large number of heavy scenes to echo it. At the beginning of the TV series, the separation of family members, the shooting of prisoners, etc. took the lead. Later, Zhou's father Guizhou saw Zhou Rong, returned home to see Zheng Juan, and Zhou's mother woke up and other passages also touched countless audiences. Among them, the Zhou family's Spring Festival in 1980 was particularly exciting, which can be called the colorful music of Chinese TV dramas. The story of this paragraph is only seven or eight days long, but it is described in 5 episodes. On the one hand, Bingyi's parents-in-law have made twists and turns on the issue of meeting with the Zhou family. The various considerations of the parents-in-law's deep hearts, the helplessness of Bingyi and Dongmei sandwiched in the middle, the misunderstanding caused by the sudden illness of the secretary of the governor of the province to send the tea back, the pride and loss of the Zhou family, the open conflict between Dongmei and her mother, the collision between Bingkun and Bingyi and her father, the open and honest discussion between Bingyi and Dongmei, etc., the TV series are all carefully expressed, showing the conflict of position value and emotional turmoil brought about by the in-law relationship between a civilian family and a high-ranking family. On the other hand, Father Zhou led the family out to worship the sentient beings. Zhou's father's pride and showing off because of his son's daughter's admission to Peking University, bingkun and Zheng Juan's embarrassment, the envy and jealousy of the neighbors, and the various careful thoughts and micro-expressions of the characters are all presented to the audience through the capture of the camera and the wonderful performances of the actors, which stimulates the audience's daily experience to resonate with it, making people shoot the case. This scene not only fully unfolds the relationship between the characters and emotional feedback, concentrates the dramatic conflict, but also clearly presents the value orientation of the TV series: Bingyi and Dongmei, the Zhou family and the Hao family have a little more mutual understanding, while Bingkun has a gap with his father and Bingyi, thus promoting the continued development of the plot and characters of the TV series.
This artistic means of regulating narrative expression through narrative speed and constantly causing wonderful passages is very clever, requiring bold artistic conception and skillful video narrative skills, and of course, high-quality performances by actors. It is precisely because of this that "The World of Man" has a deep charm in the expression of ordinary people's ordinary life, is extremely emotionally tense and value infectious, and can avoid the audience's "double speed viewing".
Author: Zhang Bin (Professor and Vice Dean of Shanghai Film Academy, Shanghai University)
Planner: Shao Ling
Editor: Zhou Minxian
Editor-in-Charge: Li Ting
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.