Zeng Yuli
Note: This article contains serious spoilers
The first thing that makes "Broken Bridge" feel particularly cattle is its photography. The film's director of photography, Zeng Jian, is Lou Ye's royal cinematographer and has also collaborated with director Li Yu on Guanyin Mountain. Zeng Jian's film works as a photographer can accurately reflect the atmosphere and character of a city. The story of "Broken Bridge" takes place in the land of Bashu, and the low-saturation picture, the dark tones, together with the continuous rainy days and hazy fog, let the audience quickly integrate into this dilapidated town, feeling a certain confusion, impermanence and depression. "Broken Bridge" retains the consistent characteristics of Zeng Jian's photography, such as a preference for natural light, handheld photography, emphasis on the sense of scene and capture; Some relatively new lenses, such as distorted fisheye lenses and close-ups that deliberately distort and deform the shape of the face, are impressive. So, regardless of how well the story is told, photography itself provides a strong enough sense of immersion.
Poster of "Broken Bridge"
The film begins with the death of an idealist. More precisely, it was his death that was found as the beginning up to 8 years after his death.
His name is Wen Liang (a name that may conjure up some conjures up) and he is the father of Wen Xiaoyu (Ma Sichun). Eight years ago, he was the engineer of a local cross-sea bridge, and because he found that the project cut corners, he wrote a whistleblower letter, and was killed by his old classmate Zhu Fangzheng (Fan Wei), an official in charge of urban construction. Smell was buried alive in the piers of the bridge. After that, Zhu Fangzheng went around claiming that Wen Liang had eloped with other women, which led to Wen Liang's wife (Liu Lin) marrying another woman, and Wen Xiaoyu became Zhu Fangzheng's dry daughter. Wen Xiaoyu not only misses his father, but also has hatred for his father's abandoned wife and daughter.
Wen Xiaoyu (played by Ma Sichun)
Eight years later, the bridge of tofu slag collapsed, and workers accidentally dug up the smelling corpse. As a whistleblower, an upright and righteous idealist, his fate was miserable. His flesh was already glued to the cement and could not be disassembled at all, and he died in a struggling kneeling position, still clutching the report letter in his hand. He is like a contemplative sculpture.
Smelling remains
Under all kinds of blindfolds, Wen Liang is believed to have been killed by the head of the construction company, and the person in charge has committed suicide in fear of sin, and the matter seems to be over. But at this time, a dirty and depressed teenager Meng Chao (Wang Junkai) told Wen Xiaoyu that the night Wen Liang disappeared, he was with Zhu Fang, and they had an argument. Wen Xiaoyu and Meng Chao joined forces to investigate, and finally discovered the truth.
Meng Chao (played by Wang Junkai)
Although before the release of "Broken Bridge", the focus was more on Ma Sichun and Wang Junkai, I really watched the movie and found that the support point of this movie was on Fan Wei. Fan Wei once again contributed god-like acting skills, which made Ma Sichun, who had slowly recovered to his best state, look out of reach, let alone others.
Zhu Fangzheng (played by Fan Wei)
If the death of The Smelling Light and the rupture of the bridge are metaphors for the death of idealism, then Zhu Fangzheng is the executioner who kills the idealists. It is precisely because of the existence of such people that idealists eventually die, and the world falls into a state of moral disintegration, mutual deception, the predation of the weak, and drunken dreams of death.
Zhu Fangzheng's terrible, on the one hand, is his selfishness, greed, and ferocity, who stands in his way, he will do whatever it takes to get rid of the other party; On the other hand, he is too hypocritical and too disguised. The real villain, everyone can see, everyone has more vigilance, but the real villain with the face of a gentleman will let the people around him unload their defenses against him, and if they are cold, they will fall into the trap he laid, and then he will show a vicious face and swallow people up. When Zhu Fangzheng first appeared, he was so kind and meticulous to Wen Xiaoyu that people mistakenly thought that this was a gentle and kind elder; When things were revealed, such as the moment when Wen Xiaoyu and Meng Chao discovered the truth about his murder, his fierce and astonished zombie expression was frightening.
Zhu Fangzheng is too good at disguise
But it is difficult to say that Zhu Fangzheng was born like this, perhaps he was once the same as Wen Liang. Before he perished, he shouted at Meng Chao the phrase "we are all poor boys", which has an inhumane mental journey behind it, and he is not the master of his own destiny. Before he gave a hard hand to Gan Xiaoyang (Zeng Meihuizi), who blackmailed him, he asked Vice Mayor Tang (Fang Li), who wanted to promise Gan Xiaoyang to give her a 3 million sealing fee, but Vice Mayor Tang did not agree, And Vice Mayor Tang did not say it explicitly, but his attitude was very resolute: Zhu Fangzheng must kill her.
Of course, this is not to defend Zhu Fangzheng - he is unforgivable, after all, how many small people have suffered setbacks and have not become demons like him, and people should not abandon their upward subjective initiative. But "Broken Bridge" still shows an extremely strong critical realism: it does not sympathize with Zhu Fangzheng, but it also tries to think about what kind of operating mechanism gives birth to demons.
Meng Chao's experience also proves the shortcomings of the mechanism. The sister who only lives in Meng Chao's narration is also an idealist, right? She loved to read poetry and was supposed to be beautiful, but she was raped by the village bullies and died. Meng Chao stabbed the village bully to death, fled outside for 8 years, hid his name, had no identity, worked odd jobs, and lived like an ant in a rotten tail building. Judging from Meng Chao's final choice, he is also an idealist, even if he is deeply mired in the mud, he still has to shoulder the dark floodgates and send Wen Xiaoyu to the bright place.
Sadly, none of the idealists in the film have a good ending.
When the idealists disappear, there are more people in this world, either Zhu Fangzheng or Wen Xiaoyu. Although Wen Xiaoyu is the first protagonist, this does not mean that she is perfect. She has been in a state of "lost consciousness", a bit of a walking dead, going with the flow; She has no clear values, is not ideal, but she is not a bad person. But once she is captured by desire, it is difficult to say that she will not be another Zhu Fangzheng, and she did almost become Zhu Fangzheng under the impulse of revenge.
It can be understood that the screenwriter's intention is to warn everyone with Wen Xiaoyu: even if you can't become an idealist, don't be with the devil, don't become a slave to desire, don't become the next Zhu Fangzheng; At the same time, the screenwriter wants to provide a bright and warm ending for the film with Meng Chao's determination to die and the cliff of smelling the rain, and enrich the commercial elements of the film with the redemption emotions of the "brother and sister".
Wen Xiaoyu and Meng Chao redeemed each other
The problem lies precisely here: the logic of the second half of the plot loses its credibility in order to avoid the minefield, force warmth, and hard redemption (the so-called "night to me, dawn to you"). For example, an obvious question is: Ming MingWen Xiaoyu has obtained the surveillance video of Zhu Fangzheng framing his father, why doesn't she call the police? Why did she obviously go into the police station to call the police, and Zhu Fangzheng gave up calling the police when he invited her to give him a birthday call? The police almost caught Meng Chao, why didn't Meng Chao directly hand over the surveillance video to the police? When Meng Chao learned that Zhu Fangzheng had kidnapped Wen Xiaoyu, why did he still not call the police and chose to go to the rescue alone? Zhu Fangzheng was obviously so afraid of death, why did he choose such a dangerous confrontation at the last moment?
On the first day of the movie's release, "Broken Bridge, Plot Reduction" once landed first in hot search. The statement of "reducing wisdom" is indeed too harsh, but these doubts from the audience are not unreasonable. Of course, we can give a reasonable explanation: for example, the background of the story is 2011, when the anti-gang crime eradication is not as strong as the present, Vice Mayor Tang single-handedly covers the sky, and the police may also be Mayor Tang's person, so they cannot call the police; For example, Meng Chao fled for 8 years, the police could not catch anyone, and as a result, Zhu Fangzheng, who only looked at him, could find Meng Chao's detailed information in a few days (quite exaggerated), indicating that he used a certain aspect of the force, Yunyun.
Unfortunately, "Broken Bridge" did not lay all this in place in clear and effective details, and could only rely on the audience to make up and imagine themselves. Fans can say that Zhu Fangzheng has great supernatural powers, so the investigation has obtained Information from Meng Chao; The audience can also say that this is a plot bug, 8 years can not catch the person, Zhu Fangzheng took a look at it and remembered? Both sides of the explanation make sense, because the plot does not give other auxiliary information.
Therefore, many non-fan audiences are confused about the direction of the plot, it is difficult for them to empathize with Xiao Yu's revenge, and once they cannot empathize, a series of plots after the revenge bridge will fall into a state of collapse. You can't always put the responsibility on the audience, blame the audience for not understanding, right? As a commercial film, when a large part of the people express their incomprehension of the plot, it more or less shows that the screenwriter's handling is not in place.
"Broken Bridge" is more like a half-play. Fan Wei, Ma Sichun, Wang Junkai and others supported the first half of the journey together, but the second half did not choose a series of entanglements that called the police, the narrative foundation was unstable, and the starting and turning laying the foundation was not solid enough and in place, and the persuasiveness was lacking. After the "brain supplement", the motivations of several main characters can be justified, and the fans can understand the exaggeration; However, ordinary audiences pay attention to the immediate viewing experience in the theater, rather than watching a movie and going to Weibo to read the explanations of the creators and fans, so the audience's criticism is also reasonable.
In any case, "Broken Bridge" is still a fairly vigorous work in the current Chinese film industry, and such critical realism works are relatively rare. Whether it is the demise of the idealist or the wonderful discussion about "fish" (you think the fish in the sea is free and finally on the dinner table), it is enough to see the difficulty of survival of small people like ants and grass in a cruel real world.
It's talking about fish, but it's also talking about people
Li Yu's films have always had strong feminine characteristics, and "Broken Bridge" also constructs female group portraits in a few strokes, reflecting the common situation of women being insulted, damaged, and ignored with a peeping leopard. For example, the former female classmate "Wan Qian" has now become a song and dance girl, and the song and dance girl "Zeng Mei Huizi" has not escaped the fate of being bullied, and they all constitute the epitome of this imperfect world.
Wonderful female group portraits
But also for well-known reasons, the film presents a series of problems, but when revealing the root of the problem, it is inevitable to cover up the truth, and even lead to the derailment of the second half of the plot, lacking a core and powerful foothold. I don't know if it's the screenwriter who has a greater responsibility or the environment.
In short, "Broken Bridge" can still be seen, it is like half a pair of scissors that have lost their center point, although it is only half, but the light on the blade is still chilling.
Senior Editor of this issue Zhou Yuhua