The greatest common divisor of the main theme, realistic themes, and commerciality
"I remember my teacher once said to me, 'After you shoot 'Medicine God', you have to remember that you will make your debut film all your life,' and I will definitely do it."
These are the words left by Wen Muye at the Golden Rooster Awards ceremony in 2019, and now, the second work "Miracle Stupid Child" has come out, and he has fulfilled the promise he made two years ago.
With a Douban score of 9.0 and a box office of 3.099 billion, sweeping the Chinese Film Awards, "I Am Not a Medicine God" is an absolutely high starting point for any director. A new director's previous works often reflect the process of precipitation and clarity of his personal style. Halfway through, "Miracle Stupid Kid" is a kind of inheritance and evolution for director Wen Muye, and it is also a new stage of personal branding.
The important value of "I Am Not a Medicine God" is the balance between reality and business. As the thirteenth domestic film in the history of mainland film box office, "I Am Not a Medicine God" broke the ceiling of the box office of domestic reality movies. This creative concept continued after "Miracle Stupid Child", and the expression of realistic themes was warmer and more peaceful, and it also provided another way of writing for the main theme film.
Realistic themes do not mean turning their backs on the market and the mainstream. Films that conform to mainstream values also need to reflect the real encounters and concerns of ordinary people and achieve commercial success. Wen Muye is one of the few people in the Chinese film market who can provide a solution to this proposition. The success of "Miracle Stupid Child" lies not only in the box office and word-of-mouth, but also in the greatest common divisor it has achieved in the three dimensions of main theme, realistic theme and commerciality.
At a time when the word-of-mouth effect of movies is more obvious, the new generation of directors need personal style to enhance the influence of movies, and this ability to "take the greatest common denominator" is making Wen Muye a director brand recognized by fans and the general public.
Another kind of writing of the main theme
The creation of the main theme is becoming the new mainstream of the Chinese film market, and "Miracle Stupid Child" may provide the most subtle sample.
From the early "Armageddon" and "The Great Cause of Building the Army" to "Chosin Lake", which hit a new high at the mainland box office last year, war films have always been the main way of creating films with the main theme of the mainland. Providing visual spectacle through hongdae's war scenes, while completing the transmission of the spirit of the main theme in historical events, this main theme genre has achieved great success in the mainland market in recent years.
In addition to the theme of historical war to defend the family and defend the country, the life of ordinary people at present is also an important path for the creation of the main theme. For example, the movie "When Happiness Knocks on the Door" conveys the "American Dream" model of achieving ideals and pursuits through personal unremitting struggle, which is the creation of an "American main theme film".
Starting from the "My and My" trilogy, domestic films have gradually begun to start from the lives of ordinary people and establish the main theme of expression. The trilogy's depiction of the fate of ordinary people in different eras and the portrayal of group portraits has been well received. "Miracle Stupid Child" is a new paradigm of this path, through the story of individual entrepreneurship, showing the people's pursuit of a happy life in the new era.
Wen Muye once said in an interview about the basis of creation, "First of all, we lower our perspective, that is, we are not talking about success, we are talking about happiness. Success is a higher thing, a farther thing, but happiness is close. In the process of chasing happiness, if we can achieve success, it is also the added value of happiness, and happiness is not the added value of success. ”
Reflected in "Miracle Stupid Child", the protagonist Jing Hao has taken several desperate risks to start a business, and his motivation for behavior does not come from the desire for "success", but only from the "happy" life that cures his sister's illness. The setting of this motivation allows the color of "quick success and quick profit" in the motif of entrepreneurship to be washed away, but it has more warm background colors, forming a more accurate and appropriate main melody expression.
At the same time, the portrayal and use of group portraits has also become an important part of the main theme expression. From "I Am Not a Medicine God" to "Miracle Stupid Child", Wen Muye's films never let the protagonist fight alone when portraying difficult realistic tasks, but have a group of "good comrades" who help each other.
They may form a partnership because of their own interests, but in the end they will all know each other because of their emotional connection. Such an element of "collective breakthrough" is not only a commonly used expression method in commercial films, but also a collectivist spirit that has always been emphasized in the main theme of China, and it is also another way of depicting group portraits of Chinese in addition to platter films.
There is no grand scene, delicate and warm little people's emotions, but also show the beauty of the big era. Therefore, when Jing Hao, who pursues happiness, meets a group of workers living at the bottom of society and works together to finally get through the difficulties, the main theme does not directly "open his mouth", but it has been contained in the growth process of the characters and passed on to the audience.
Mild realistic themes
There are not many mainland directors engaged in the creation of realistic themes, but not many can balance authorship and popularity.
Many creators of realistic themes are trapped in the dilemma of the subject matter, and often combine the realistic theme with the critical cognition, but Wen Muye believes that this is not absolute. He loves to watch "Please Answer 1988", and whenever he sees such works, he thinks, those excellent artistic creations are not actually the opposite of the so-called censorship, but why don't we make them?
"No matter what the subject matter, no matter what kind of space, no matter which country the mainstream, whether the film was in the past, in the present, or in the future, it is to provide a beam of light." That light is a praise of truth, goodness, and beauty. ”
From "Medicine God" to "Miracle", "praise for truth, goodness and beauty" has created a gentle realistic theme of Wen Muye, who always plunges into the soil first and then blooms warm flowers.
Entrepreneurial films are a category of biographical films, and what makes Miracle Stupid Kids special is that its characters have no realistic archetypes. How a realistic film without a prototype can make the audience feel that it is not suspended and not false, which is a great test of the director's and screenwriter's ability to perceive reality.
The first choice is space. In Shenzhen, where the story takes place, Wen Muye deeply felt the "Shenzhen speed". Set between 2013 and 2014, the film tells the story of what happened over the course of the year. But when the director team went to Shenzhen to find Huaqiangbei, "we found that they had all been changed to sell beauty." Therefore, the development speed of Shenzhen is very fast, from 2013 Huaqiang North began to enter the transformation period to the present, basically it has dispersed a centralized electronic city to the whole of Shenzhen. We couldn't find anything we wanted to find in 2013. ”
The difficulties of reality did not make Wen Muye stop, and the vanished Hua Qiangbei was recovered from the remaining images, "We found a lot of photos of that year, the image materials of that year, and then deliberately went to find some social photographers who were shooting migrant workers and Shenzhen ecology at that time." Go to their homes and watch their albums, search for materials that support our art style, video style, and music style. ”
The team also went to the local factory to do a lot of interviews and fieldwork, and the accumulated materials were used to support the creation of the characters. It is precisely after such an investigation that Wen Muye found the fulcrum of the plot direction, "The entrepreneurship we think of may be sitting in the office or conducting business negotiations in many cases, but in fact, the real entrepreneurs experience things that are nothing strange, whether it is chasing fights, big life and death, this movie presents a relatively real and most intense, action-like part of the thing." ”
By the shooting stage, the precise design of the spatial narrative under the real-life shooting enhanced the realistic texture of the film. According to the special edition released by the filmmakers, 95% of the film was filmed in real time. Wen Muye pays special attention to the shaping of the film space, and uses the transformation of space to advance the story. For example, in the climactic part of the car chase scene in the early stage of the film, Jing Hao spent 30 minutes to cross the small half of Shenzhen, and was injured all over in exchange for 10 minutes of talking with the boss on the train. At the same time, it shows the helplessness of the little people who have no way back in the face of fleeting opportunities.
Space is an important dimension in shaping the sense of reality, and on this foundation, the test is the balance and balance of dramatic conflict and daily life. Compared with the spectacle of the theme of the debut film "I Am Not a Medicine God", Wen Muye in "Miracle Stupid Child" proves that he still has a mature text control ability after leaving the theme dividend.
"I Am Not a Medicine God" discusses the long-term social problem of "capitalists maintain copyright income, and ordinary people cannot afford to eat medicine", which exists widely in people's lives, but few film and television works show it, so the resonance of its theme itself brings a certain degree of "filter" to the film.
"Miracle Stupid Child" does not rely on a social issue to unfold, but focuses on Jing Hao's personal situation, and what is needed is a more delicate and internalized emotional display. For example, the brother-sister friendship between Jing Hao and his sister uses a large number of pages to show the details of the two people's daily life, so that the audience gradually believes in the characters and has feelings with the characters, so that the audience can bring them into the perspective of the characters as much as possible.
It is precisely with the support of mature creative techniques and rigorous creative attitudes that Wen Muye can "praise the truth, goodness and beauty" at the same time, without losing the real sense of reality, but also let most of the audience understand.
Commercial films that resonate
For Wen Muye, the realistic theme has never been an isolated genre, but a basis for genre presentation. As he himself said, "The subject matter of reality is a piece of soil, and the type is the flower that grows on it." The more fertile the soil and the stronger the director's skill, the more beautiful the flowers will be. ”
How to understand the relationship between flowers and soil, Wen Muye has a more precise explanation, "I think the realistic theme is a kind of material, such as wood or metal when building a table. For example, a science fiction film with a realistic theme may make you feel more connected to the technology around you. So when I identify some type paragraphs, I will also strengthen the sense of material in reality, so that the type paragraphs are relatively less distorted when stepping on the ground. ”
Simply put, reality is the nourishment for the typological expression of Wen Makino. The reason why Wen Muye is Wen Muye is not only that he has the same "soil" as others, but also because of his ability to "plant flowers". This ability to "plant flowers" has begun to emerge from "I Am Not a Medicine God", and has been further upgraded in "Miracle Stupid Child".
When the script of "I Am Not a Medicine God" was first handed over to Wen Muye, it was still a script for a literary film. "At the beginning, it was a relatively literary and plain story, and there was a huge power in the plainness. But presenting it is more dull for the public. Wen Muye said, "When this script was given to me, I only had one idea, to market it." Therefore, to do popular expression, it is relatively popular and has commonality. ”
Therefore, Wen Muye changed the name of the protagonist from Lu Yong in the prototype of the story to Cheng Yong, and the identity of the original leukemia patient was also replaced by a male health product vendor who did not suffer from leukemia. In Bun makino's understanding, "the protagonist's class is pushed down to the owner of an Indian oil shop, leaving him full of problems." At that time, the low starting point of the character and the high landing point at the end of the back will form a huge arc of light. On the other hand, through the perspective of Cheng Yong, a non-patient, the audience can more easily enter the world of the patient group without a sense of estrangement. ”
In "Miracle Stupid Child", the director's grasp of the character setting and the relationship between the characters has reached a higher level. It does not create the positive and negative duality of traditional popcorn movies, there is no clear, facetious, stereotyped villain role in the whole film, and each character just stands on its own position and makes choices that are in its own interests. In "I Am Not a Medicine God", the villain is a greedy capitalist, and in "Miracle Stupid Child", the biggest villain is actually life itself, which is also a reflection of the real life of most viewers.
Instead of relying on the usual commercial film display methods, through strong settings and strong plots, it uses its own delicate emotional expression and rich visual language to narrow the distance with the audience, which is the display of the director's ability and the more appropriate expression of the realistic theme of commercial films.
Balance is a creative concept that has always been rooted in the heart of Wen Muye, and he often emphasizes the balance between sociality, soul and entertainment in film creation. Sociality refers to the connection between the film and the current world; soul refers to the fact that it is placed in any era, and it is a yearning for human nature, hope, freedom, love and beauty, etc., which is a yearning for people at the root; at the same time, the film must also have a certain degree of appreciation, and it will not be tired from beginning to end when watching. "Sometimes there will be a relationship between them, the higher the entertainment, the lower the sociality and soul, to look good to be lively, the serious part will be a little lighter." 」 Wen Muye said.
The balance between the "three sexes", in the context of the domestic film market, just constitutes the creative requirements of commercial films with the main theme of realistic themes, and "Miracle Stupid Child" is also the fruit of this requirement. As a newcomer director, Wen Muye used his second work to prove that he was not short-lived, and also filled a gap in the domestic market with a more mature solution.
12 years ago, in the variety show "I Want to Make a Movie", Wen Muye said that he wanted to make a film that was more literary but commercial. At that time, the judges said that the Chinese market was to take sides, either literary directors or commercial directors, so he was eliminated by the program.
12 years later, this road that few people can take successfully is at the feet of Wen Muye.
Text | Liu Nandou
Edit | Zhang Youfa