In recent years, there have not been many Hong Kong dramas that can impress the public.
If you remove those "kings of cold rice", there are only a few left.
However, "The Golden Night Building" is definitely eligible to be included.
This fantasy thriller written by TVB gold-medal screenwriter Luo Peiqing, with mediocre ratings in the early stage and a contrarian trend by word of mouth in the later stage, belongs to the well-deserved dark horse of the year.
After three years, the sequel "Golden Night Building 2" returned, and it scored a high score of 8.4 in a menacing manner.
It seems that this year's "Chinese Drama Inner Volume Contest" can be regarded as wonderful.
01.
All the stories must start from the Golden Night Building.
It is said that this building is quite mysterious, and there are various supernatural stories about the headless Japanese army cutting people in the middle of the night and the dancers playing cards and returning to the west.
The jianghu people call it, "Fierce Ghost Building".
Even with high salaries, the building cannot recruit security guards.
Others are afraid, but the male protagonist of the first season, Ah Xiao (Chen Shancong), does not matter.
Whether he has ghosts or not, let's eat first.
After being introduced, Ah Xiao came to the Golden Night Building to apply for a job and worked as a security guard.
Who knows, after joining the job, Ah Xiao's side is really strange, each one is creepy, and the back is cold.
Late at night, the bathtub of the hotel is dripping with blood, the pipes above everyone's heads make a strange noise, and the air is constantly smelling of blood;
In the garbage heap, lying is not garbage, but an inflatable doll that can speak human words;
In the surveillance footage, the child named Dongdong suddenly disappears, and then even his family forgets his existence;
When patrolling the building, Ah Xiao would always encounter Mrs. He who was pushing a stroller and talking.
Until one day, he inadvertently learned that the "tempeh boy" that the woman hung on her lips was long gone, and she pushed an empty car every day.
Even so, her refrigerator was stuffed with pumped breast milk.
Sometimes, there is a "bang, bang, bang" sound in the room...
You think, if ordinary people encounter these things, they are bold enough not to be scared half to death.
But the strange thing is that the old residents have become accustomed to the supernatural phenomena here, and most of them are not strange.
If I had to say something more bizarre, it belonged to the mysterious black cat Liangbao.
Whenever a mysterious event occurs, it is like the spokesperson and messenger of the Golden Night Building, always appearing at the first time, and sometimes specially guiding Ah Xiao to the scene.
Its eyes seem to be snooping, and it seems to be scrutinizing, and the object of scrutiny is those human beings who have committed sins.
In this ghostly, foggy mansion, the most terrifying thing is often not ghosts, but people who are twisted and deformed by desire, obsession, and pain.
Soon after his birth, his son unfortunately died, and the mentally traumatized He Tai firmly believed that his son had been reincarnated.
Therefore, she deliberately approached The pregnant Xu Tai, invaded each other's lives step by step, and finally succeeded in occupying the magpie's nest;
Mia, who lives on the seventh floor, often feels something is wrong, as if someone is staring at her behind her.
She didn't know that behind the ghostly eye on the wall, there was a keyboard man who liked to peep and lust at female neighbors;
Since learning of the tragic death of the Filipino maid Louisa, the employer and his wife have treated her as their own daughter and served her well.
But the longer she lived, the more confused Louisa became, and she vaguely felt that she was being transformed into another person, whether it was looking, dressing, or talking.
In the end, Louisa, who had no time to escape, was stripped of her original personality and returned to her parents instead of the deceased Lulu.
The next second, the camera freezes, and in the warm and eerie family portrait, the story ushers in "Happy Ending".
02.
Just as Li Bihua's stories of idiot men and women and urban monsters always debunk the nothingness and grotesqueness under Hong Kong's flashy appearance from a clever angle, revealing an insight into the hearts of the world.
The "Golden Night Mansion" series, which focuses on unit dramas, also inherits this "Hong Kong-style strange flavor".
The script takes urban weird talk as the table, takes humanistic care as the inside, and uses the usual joking tone to break through many diseases of modern society and the anxiety and even hidden diseases of Hong Kong people.
The house is not only the fire of Hong Kong people's desire and the light of life, but also the motif that can never be avoided in literary and artistic creation.
It is said that the new society turns ghosts into people, and Hong Kong's property market is even more ruthless, it can turn people into ghosts.
Take, for example, the three generations of grandchildren who run an illegal columbarium in "Seventh Floor and a Half.".
50 years ago, Chen Bo and three partners signed a "long life contract" and agreed that the person who survived to the end would inherit this property worth tens of millions.
In order to win this tug-of-war, Chen Bo's family took pains to not only force Chen Bo to quit all the three high foods, but also secretly harmed People's Yang Shou.
As a result, Chen Bo was tragically eaten back, poked his eyeballs by the straw of bubble tea, took an old life, and fell to death.
Shortly after his death, Chen Bo suddenly faked the corpse and transformed into an ignorant zombie.
To avoid the plan, the father and son decided to tie him to the room and let him rot and grow maggots until the death of the other partner.
People who have always calculated how to squeeze the value of the dead before they die, after death, they finally become the object of exploitation.
To the living, Chen Bo's son has always been a promise, and has been cosplaying a great filial piety for many years.
Facing a walking corpse, he simply stopped acting.
He poked his father in the chest and scolded: You only ask for money, play cards, and play women's waste.
In the blue sky, the living are in the same room with zombies.
However, the viciousness and cruelty of the human heart make it impossible to distinguish whether it is a human being or a ghost, and only feel trance.
However, the viciousness and cruelty of the human heart make it impossible to distinguish whether it is a human being or a ghost, and only feel trance.
A piece of paper deed reflects the darkest and most subtle side of human nature.
Similarly, there is "The Raven", a story that exposes the cruelty of money supremacy society and the alienation of people in the inner volume.
In the play, Dongdong's parents are from the bottom, and they firmly believe that as long as their son can be admitted to a prestigious school as desired, he can become an elite and enter the upper class.
Some people are born to be cattle and horses, and some people are born in Rome.
The Dongdong family painstakingly concocted the characters and supporting scripts of successful people, while at the other end, The Second Generation of The True Rich easily obtained admission tickets with donations.
In the face of the huge gap between rich and poor and the ability to pay money, the efforts of the civilians at the bottom are meaningless at all, and at best they can only accompany the run.
Seeing that the dream had come to naught, the couple quarreled on the spot and began to accuse each other of not working hard enough.
Dongdong, who was left aside, suddenly felt a sense of grievance of being abandoned by his family.
At this moment, the legendary crow crow appeared.
Although he was reluctant to leave his parents, Dongdong quickly figured out that instead of suffering in the "pressure cooker" for a lifetime, it was better to follow the crow to another dimensional space.
There, he can be a happy child who does not have to grow up and has no worries, and does not have to experience the hell of graduation, unemployment, and hard repayment of loans for decades.
If so, the above story still has a hint of banter and black humor.
Then "Pisces", which tells the story of the difficult survival of a low-level mother and daughter, appears to have sharp brushstrokes and a cold painting style.
When she was a child, She was disfigured by her father's pouring of sulfuric acid, and after the divorce, Sister Fen suffered a lot in order to take care of her daughter.
But whenever they meet, the neighbors always do not forget to lament the greatness of Sister Fen and praise the well-behaved and sensible.
But behind the illusion of "motherly kindness and filial piety" is a deformed symbiotic mother-daughter relationship:
Sister Fen needs to use the other party to achieve the so-called "maternal love aura", and her job is to take her daughter everywhere to "open business" in exchange for charitable donations.
The insignificant needs the care of the mother, and the price is freedom.
On weekdays, her words and deeds are firmly controlled, and she is not allowed to grow long hair, is not allowed to leave the wheelchair, and is not allowed to go out at will.
Why can't I have the right to choose my life? Why should I be bound to this broken house forever?
Realizing that her daughter had rebellious thoughts, Sister Fen's desire for control began to intensify, forcing her to flee the house.
After her daughter left, under the influence of mysterious forces, Sister Fen recalled the truth that had been deliberately forgotten - the culprit who caused her daughter's disfigurement was actually her, and She cooperated with her to lie because she did not want her mother to be taken away by the police.
The stain on the wall that can never be erased is the bloody handprint left by her daughter.
In order to return her daughter's freedom, she decided to atone for her sins with death.
At this point in the story, if Sister Fen's suicide is successful, then this human tragedy will end in time.
However, a car accident leads the story to a darker ending.
Just like the original Sister Fen, Xiao Xiao took care of each other's living conditions while taking her paralyzed mother around to be interviewed on TV.
Facing the camera, she tightly grasped Sister Fen's hand, revealing just the right amount of sadness.
The caregiver and the caregiver, the controller and the tamed, the two sides achieve a reversal of identity and power.
For the rest of their lives, they will be destined to continue to love and kill each other and torture each other.
Even better, before the end, the screenwriter's pen turned sharply, pointing the spearhead at a deeper social crux.
In a highly capitalist society, everything can be priced and consumed, including human values:
"How can other people feel happy without someone as unfortunate as us to compare?"
"Live optimistically and encourage others, and our existence is valuable, right?"
Onlookers are ostensibly giving love, but in essence they are consuming suffering and gaining a sense of superiority from it.
For example, the two of them are like free players in online games, and their existence is to enhance the kryptonite game experience.
Sadly, they know this, but they are willing to eat it.
Without him, in this society that ignores the poor and does not have a bottom, selling misery is the only way out for the two of them.
Give a lot of ink to the marginalized groups and describe their suffering positively.
From this point of view, the "Golden Curtain Building" series can be called a lament dedicated to the people at the bottom.
03.
Obviously, the creator of this drama has the intention to make the "Golden Night Building" into an IP, or even the "Golden Night Universe".
To this end, the overall tone of "Golden Night Building 2" is consistent with the previous work, and only slight fine-tuning has been made.
For example, pay more attention to creating a sense of atmosphere and suspense (let's say, bonsai friends who like to stay up late to chase dramas can watch cautiously).
As of now, the plot progress bar is more than halfway, but the main line is always cloudy, just unlocking a few new clues from time to time, which is appetizing.
For another example, the screenwriter added a lot of drama to the "Golden Night Building".
In the second season, it is not only linked to the core suspense of the story, but even becomes a kind of metaphor, pointing to the desire and dark side of the human heart, further highlighting the horror dark nature of the whole show.
What changes the soup and does not change the medicine is that the screenwriter still likes to play the tricks of the past life and the intertextuality of the past and the present.
In the first season, the protagonists are each other's dream lovers.
From childhood to adulthood, Ah Xiao would repeatedly dream of dancers wearing cheongsams, sometimes close at hand, sometimes just a hazy back.
Until he arrived at the Golden Night Building, he immediately determined that the flight attendant Alex was the mysterious woman who haunted his dreams.
And Coco on another timeline, she always dreams of the future Ah Xiao.
In the dream, the two have an ambiguous relationship and make an appointment to see a meteor shower.
After waking up from the dream, she met Xu Hui, a policeman who looked exactly like Ah Xiao, in the dance hall, and gradually became fond of him.
By the second season, the plot became more and more confusing.
Overnight, her long-time boyfriend suddenly disappears, and just as Ella (Lee Shi-wai) is heartbroken and thinks she has met a scumbag, she picks up a naked Maurice (Chen Shancong) on the roof of the building.
But the strange thing is that the boyfriend in front of him is like a different person, and he doesn't remember the past at all.
Who is this "Maurice"?
Also, what was the "seventh and a half floor" mentioned by the boyfriend before the disappearance? Why did he want Ella to forget him?
These are mysteries to be solved by Ella.
In another timeline from the 60s, a man who looks exactly like Maurice (Chen Shancong) is talking to a psychiatrist (Li Shiwei), who claims to be from the future.
The reason why he appeared was to find a female doctor.
Although it has not been revealed for the time being, it is not difficult to guess that there is also an otherworldly relationship between the CP and the man is most likely the original Maurice in the future line.
From the "Johnson Dream Butterfly" in the first season to the mirror world in the second season, the story spans multiple time and space: dreams, reality, past, and future.
As the most critical "McGuffin" in the entire series, the Golden Curtain Building also serves as the junction of reality and dream, past and future.
When Ah Xiao walked into the Golden Night Song Hall, countless pictures poured into his mind:
It was a memory that belonged to police officer Chen Xuhui, about the golden night dance hall, about Hong Kong 50 years ago, and about a sweet love embellished with death.
True and false, virtual and real, the illusion of the past and the destruction of the present are intertwined, like a dream, confused and chaotic.
The ghosts of the old times flash from time to time, along with ghosts from the past.
At the end of the day, it's both a sentiment and a myth.
On and off the screen, What Hong Kong people miss is the golden night song hall that was once in the past, and it is also the old era of drunken gold fans, and it is also the pearl of the Orient that is proud of Asia and shrouded in aura.
Unfortunately, the more nostalgic and indulgent in the glory of the past, the more it sets off people's anxiety and confusion about the future, as well as the indescribable sense of loss.
Even if the wind, flowers, snow, moon, singing and dancing, there are often mesmerizing sounds around, and there will eventually be a day when they are awakened by reality——
Reality is the poor people who abandon their humanity in order to survive and the marginal people who make a living begging under the overpass; it is also another Hong Kong under the bright appearance, a piece of soil that perfectly conforms to the cyberpunk "high-tech, low-life" worldview.
This contradiction and complex mentality also affected the underlying logic of the creation of "Golden Night Building".
If you don't believe it, you can look back at the dialogue between the male protagonist and the attending doctor on the past timeline, which is quite intriguing.
In addition to electrotherapy, the psychotherapy of the other party is accompanied by harsh torture - do you know, your name? Is the future tense of Hong Kong you remember just an illusion?
All this may just be a dream this evening.
Think about it again, traveling through different time and space, trying to ask who "I" really is, where should "I" go, and why is it not just the male protagonist?
This kind of "no better today than in the past" lament and lament just constitutes a subtle intertextuality or overlap with the embarrassing situation faced by TVB in reality.
Compared with ViuTV, which is eclectic, insists on innovation, and dares to broadcast together with the sex theme "Uncle's Love", TVB, which is overly conservative and rigid in thinking, has been unable to retain the hearts of young audiences.
Even if there are still many old (cold) books (meals) to eat, it is an indisputable fact that the ratings have declined and the cultural radiation has weakened.
In this regard, TVB's major shareholder Li Ruigang also bluntly said, "The past decade has been a decade in which the direction strategy has been lost."
Back to "Golden Night Building".
At the beginning, TVB executives hated that its cost was too low, could not afford to be a big coffee, and was not optimistic about the potential of this drama.
Fortunately, the series is still a successful project.
Later, seeing that the word of mouth was good, the ratings exceeded expectations, and the sequel was quickly arranged.
There is no doubt that for TVB, which is old and strong, but lacks fresh vitality, this IP is definitely a good card worthy of attention.
As Ye Zhenhui, executive producer of "Golden Night Building 2", said, "The changes of the times will inevitably have the alternation of the old and the new, and we cannot control it." ”
The glory of the past cannot be traced.
But half of the sky of future Hong Kong dramas will eventually have to rely on TVB to support it.
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