The following contains spoilers, so please read with caution
"Life Events" has been released for a week, with a cat's eye rating of 9.6, Douban 7.4, and a box office of nearly 500 million. This is the first domestic film that dares to "eat crabs" in theaters since the epidemic repeated this year. Although it is not perfect, both the box office and word of mouth are enough to make it the best domestic film in the first half of 2022.
Director Liu Jiangjiang has always wanted to write a funeral movie. This subject matter is niche, sensitive, and even very literary, and it is difficult to satisfy the taste of the public. But Liu Jiangjiang has a more interesting view of "funerals". In the interview, he mentioned his own growth experience when he was a child, he grew up in the countryside, the second grandfather is the "white thing big" in the village, the village funeral to dress the deceased into the funeral, and the follow-up of a whole set of ceremonial work is the responsibility of the second grandfather. Since he was a child, Liu Jiangjiang followed his second master to eat at the funeral in the village, listen to plays, and watch movies, which became the director's literary and artistic life enlightenment. In a child's perspective, "death" is not a passing away and parting, but a romantic and lively childhood past.
With this perspective, the story of "Life Events" presents a special temperament - the hope and romance in the fireworks. The story was filmed in Wuhan, where a funeral shop "going to heaven" opened in the lively streets and alleys. Zhu Yilong is a native of Wuhan, and in the play, he broke through the past gentle and elegant image, calling himself "Lao Tzu", speaking an authentic dialect, and the image of a street slipper alive is still quite surprising.
In real life, the work of a funeralist always makes people feel very mysterious, and there are some taboos that are unclear and unclear. But in "Life Events", the third brother of the funeral master is in Xiaowen's view, "the person who planted stars". When he was a child, Liu Jiangjiang's grandmother told him, "If there is one less person on the ground, there will be one more star in the sky." Therefore, in the whole story, the end of life is no longer a painful thing, it reflects the sadness and joy of people who are still alive in the world. This tone avoids dullness, and the film is full of warmth, healing, and even good crying.
Stills from "Life Events"
Redemption: "Father-Daughter Love"
At the beginning of the movie, Mo Sanmei (Zhu Yilong), who inherited her father's mantle, crossed the downtown area of Wuhan and rushed to a family to deal with the aftermath. He moved sharply, covering the old man's stiff joints with a hot towel, and little by little reducing the already stiff joints. "Wide feet wear shoes to walk the road, safely walk across the NaiHe Bridge" one-stop service slogan is also extremely skilled. But his behavior and style seem to be flowing. Flat head, flower shirt, gold necklace, a cigarette pinned to the ear, chewing gum in the mouth, inattentive. Zhu Yilong's performance captured the audience in five minutes, how did a streeter who had just been released from prison become a funeral worker?
Mo San mei is a big name, friends call him the third brother, the father who has done a lifelong funeral is extremely dissatisfied with him, had to use the real estate certificate of "going to heaven" to induce him to inherit the mantle, the third brother has witnessed countless deaths and funerals with his father since he was a child, he is prejudiced against this industry like most people, he does not think that this is a meaningful and decent job, the girlfriend dislikes his profession, and also has a child with the love enemy who harmed him in prison, what he thinks every day is that after the old man transfers the house, he closes this "obscure" shop. His failed life and his "low self-esteem" self-doubt from childhood left him to flaunt the market with the behavior and attitude of Hanger Lang Dang, as if this could cover up his loss.
Xiaowen, who lost her dependent grandmother, is another frustrated person, she does not know who her father is, her mother has disappeared since she was born, and her grandmother raised her from an early age. Grandma left, and Xiaowen didn't have time to discern the true meaning of death. To some extent, Xiaowen is a childhood replica of the third brother, who is disliked by people, does not know how to be gentle and loving, encounters problems, can only bite people like a fierce little beast, holding a red gun, with a pill head on his head, is a small Nezha who is angry.
Xiao Wen entangled with the third brother, and she asked him to return to her grandmother. In this way, two strangers began to get along from the mode of mutual hatred. The hidden proposition of death in the film is actually a booster for the continuous progress of "father-daughter love". Five funerals are presented in the film, and at the beginning, the third brother is very disgusted with Xiaowen's entanglement and treats her as a broom star. The first time Xiaowen cried loudly, it was the third brother who revealed to her, "What is death?" "The truth of that," your grandmother sent to the crematorium, burned, turned into smoke, drifted to the sky, disappeared, disappeared, and you will never see her again!" This was a cruel death education, and from this day on, Xiaowen knew that his grandmother would never come back.
Xiao Wen continued to "cause trouble" to the third brother, she painted a lot of stars on the urn of the girl of her own age, which angered the third brother, but these seemingly random children's graffiti made the parents who lost their children feel comforted, because their daughters, like Xiao Wen, like to draw, this is titled with the meaning of "people who grow stars", and slowly let the third brother understand that as a funeralist, it can actually bring final relief to the living.
In order to make the third brother earn money, Xiaowen introduced him to his grandmother's dance partner. The old man wanted to spend 300,000 yuan to give himself an emperor-sized living funeral, and at the funeral, the children made a big fuss about the "funeral", and the old man told the truth, preferring to spend the money for demolition than to break the heads of his children for money. The funeral became a farce, absurd, except for birth and death, and no major events.
The general direction of this story is not difficult to guess, "redemption" is the main line of this movie. The third brother and Xiaowen, who are also fallen people in the end of the world, cherish each other, rely on each other, accompany and achieve each other's growth. This kind of "prodigal son returns" and "innocent child" between each other's redemption film, even if you calculate accurately and guess every link, you still can't resist its poke.
It reminds me of clint Eastwood's film Perfect World, in which a fugitive who has just escaped from prison takes a boy hostage and embarks on an escape journey. An innocent fugitive sees himself in the boy, and both are missing fathers in childhood. The fugitive could not help but feel pity for the disease, and invisibly assumed the role of father. There is also a road movie "Kikujiro's Summer" is also the redemption configuration of uncle + Shota, Kitano Takeshi plays a sinker at the bottom of society, that summer, the idle Kikujiro decided to accompany some autistic elementary school students To visit his mother who lives in other towns, which evoked Kikujiro's memories of his father.
Back to the film, although there is no blood relationship between the third brother and Xiaowen, this relationship is more precious than those bad original families. For adults, life gives you a hard shell and a mask, but when confronted with innocence, you soften or even get hit. Just like the third brother, who seems to be a hanging child, listening to Xiaowen chanting "Grandma told me..." over and over again, gradually falling.
The last two funerals in the film are to groom the "love enemy" and complete the "father's" last wishes. The former says that the dead are great, and life can be reconciled and put down after death. The latter is a test question given to him by his father, who wants a different funeral, come cleanly, walk cleanly, and don't spend more money. The third brother turned his father's ashes into fireworks blooming in the sky, and the funeral was nothing more than a ritual and comfort for the living to the living. "Father did not disappear, it just became a star in the sky, illuminating the way forward."
There are hard wounds, all by emotion to fill the pit
"Life Events" has its own problems in the story structure. For example, after two-thirds of the plot, there are many more blunt plots, and the two friends of the third brother, Yin Baixue and Wang Jianren, have nominally adopted Xiaowen after they got married. Suddenly, Xiao Wen's biological mother appeared, and the third brother, who had cultivated feelings for Xiao Wen, decided to secretly return Xiao Wen to her biological mother after a night of ideological struggle, and as a result, Xiao Wen woke up in the car, crying and shouting to get out of the car, and the third brother suddenly regretted it and ran several streets after the car. This kind of plot is full of dramatic conflicts, but I always feel that it is to create a bridge section for the final climax preparation, if according to the character analysis in the play, the third brother should know xiaowen's temperament, xiaowen will definitely run back even if he is sent away, not to mention that there are already formal adoption procedures, so easily returned to his mother? There's a bit of a child's play.
There are actually many "strong plots" like this, but the whole movie looks down, although it is the expected story direction, but you can still see a lot of flashing surprises, there will be emotions that cannot be pressed. Later, I thought about it, and I think a big reason is that the director himself is familiar with this proposition, and maintains a real and strong emotion in the details.
This is Liu Jiangjiang's debut work, and his childhood observations, memories and emotions of the second master and uncle have given him the determination to face "life and death" frankly. In addition to childhood memories, Liu Jiangjiang collected many real cases when he was doing news gathering on TV, such as the absurdity of the "funeral of the living" in the movie, and how the body catcher salvaged a child. Therefore, all the stories that take place in "Upper Heaven" complete the director's intense narrative in a strong contrast, and many unfinished metaphors are worth playing back.
For example, "Heaven" is in the downtown area, next door is the wedding shop, a joy and a funeral, as if it is the beginning and end of life, and you can't escape, can't leave. For another example, the shaping of the two characters uses the intertextual method of "Nezha" and "Sun Wukong", and there is no need for too much speech, which naturally makes the characters in the play stand up. Nezha Xiaowen and the third brother of Sun Wukong, who was suppressed by the Five Finger Mountain, are both characters who are afraid of the earth and disobey the fate arrangement, and most people feel evil when they see it, but the two know each other's true integrity and goodwill more and more.
Liu Jiangjiang once talked about a key picture of deciding to write this story in an interview. At that time, he was still working at a TELEVISION station, and he saw a car parked in front of the shouyi shop in front of the unit, with wreaths and urns, and through the doors and windows, he could see a little girl writing homework. Perhaps because of his father's relationship, he was suddenly touched by this picture, as if he saw a "feeling of spring".
Although many of the poignant plots in the film are small, the people who become parents are suddenly unable to do it. The third brother gave Xiao Wen a small braid; The third brother wore a suit for the first time to go to a parent-teacher conference; In order to keep Xiaowen's grandmother's voice, he tried his best to sew the voice into Xiaowen's toy; When deciding to adopt Xiaowen, he said, "I just can't stand the demons and ghosts bullying people"; There is also a very comedic clip, in which Xiaowen swallows the toy by mistake, and a group of people crouch outside the toilet with chopsticks waiting for her to discharge the toy, which stems from the personal experience of Liu Jiangjiang and his son. It is said that at the scene, when filming the scene of the third brother and Xiaowen, Liu Jiangjiang often turned back and found that the field record and the producers on the side were wiping tears. The film's executive producer is Han Yan, who once directed "Get Out!" Tumor Jun" and "Send You a Little Red Flower", death is the motif he is good at, and the expression of laughter and tears is also the consensus of him and Liu Jiangjiang.
I don't know when the topic of death became a taboo. I once saw a saying that "the topic of death makes the talker feel a kind of 'disappearing threat', which in turn creates a sense of fear and meaninglessness, which leads to a kind of inner rejection", watching the ashes of the third brother's father after cremation finally become fireworks that bloom in the sky, and for a second, my heart was very calm, and the light of the fire illuminated the dark night sky and the faces of everyone. It seems that death is not so terrible anymore, and the important thing is to live better.
Feel good friends, help to point out the praise Oh, thank you for raising your hand!