Time Contributor | County Howe
Older youth in a cinema.
Some time ago, a girl was raped online because she dyed her pink hair, and finally died of depression.
Previously, she took the master's admission notice to visit her grandfather in the ward, but this scene was rumored by some netizens as a bad love.
The rumor-mongers questioned her as a graduate student for dyeing her hair like a bar drinker.
Although the girl spent all her savings to keep the file and save evidence, she tried to get the online abuser to apologize, but in the end she failed.
Recently, there was a domestic theatrical film aimed at the topic of "online rumors".
"Keep You Safe"
This is the fourth feature film directed by Dapeng.
At the end of last year, the film premiered at the Hainan Island International Film Festival as the opening film, which received a lot of praise, and now it has officially landed in theaters, and it has continued its good reputation at that time.
The film gathers Dapeng, Li Xueqin, Yin Zheng, Wang Xun, Ma Li, Jia Bing and other familiar faces of comedy, and at the same time, Wang Shengdi (Pupu in "Hidden Corner"), Song Qian, Bai Yu and other actors joined, and the cast is strong.
After many adjustments, the film was finally set in this relatively unpopular schedule, and it is very critical whether the quality is hard or not.
A story of peace
This time, Dapeng still cooperated with the royal screenwriter Su Biao to write a comedy story with strong dramatic conflict.
Wei Pingan (played by Dapeng) is a cemetery salesman.
He loves to be fashionable, dyed with green hair, and live broadcast "feng shui treasure land".
He has a customer, Han Lu (played by Song Qian), a young girl, who has entered the soil, was an orphan before her death, and donated all her property of 1.36 million yuan before her death, so she got the name of "naked donor sister".
After Han Lu's death, there was a big event, and some people rumored on the Internet that she was a lady sitting on the platform before her death, so she made so much money.
Therefore, the cemetery owner Feng Zong (played by Ma Li) asked that Han Lu's ashes be removed, and Wei Pingan stopped working.
Wei Pingan did not believe that Han Lu was a lady sitting on the platform, and also thought that moving the grave was disrespectful to the deceased, so he took the initiative to ask for four days to find out the truth that Han Lu was "fabricated".
So, Wei Pingan began a journey of truth tracking in which chickens and dogs jumped and laughed.
This is just the main story of "Keep You Safe", and the film also has a superimposed line and a branch line.
In the process of Wei Pingan's "whitewashing" for Han Lu, his relationship with Han Lu also attracted the attention of netizens, and gradually, Wei Pingan also fell into online violence.
The fans who supported him were called "Wei Mumian Er", and the black fans who questioned him were called "Enemy Wei".
The online controversy against Wei Pingan is precisely derived from rumors about Han Lu, Wei Pingan is not mixed, it's okay, once mixed, it is difficult to get out, this is the superposition effect of the online violence world.
The branch line refers to Wei Pingan's family.
Wei Ping'an, nicknamed "Gu'an Broken-tailed Tiger" (Gu'an is the place where the story takes place), once divorced for a "righteous" character, went to prison, and his family was already shaky.
Now, because of Han Lu's affairs, his daughter Wei Motong (played by Wang Shengdi) has been bullied at school, and his relationship with his ex-wife has become more and more tense.
Fortunately, his daughter supported him in "doing the right thing".
These three lines of the film are outlined together, presenting a "dream-like story of the underlying characters".
That is, a cemetery sale that is despised by others and regarded as an alien, and does not hesitate to ride into his own life and family for the sake of a deceased who meets in the water.
Obviously, at a time when most people pursue refined egoism, Wei Pingan is an ideal little person who seems to belong only to the screen.
This is where "Keep You Safe" as a movie comes in.
The expression of the film
Although "Keep You Safe" is a comedy, it contains Dapeng's observation of the symptoms of the times and a fusion narrative ambition.
The film's observation of the times is mainly reflected in its "net sense" and its chivalrous care for ordinary people.
The film involves negative network ecological conditions such as online rumors, online violence, and pink and black wars, and school bullying also brings out the communication effect of the Internet era in the form of short videos.
The network hides everyone's real face and recreates countless virtual identities with blurred faces, and the people behind these identities have low or no harm costs, but the degree of harm is quite high.
These are all shown in the dialogue of "Keep You Safe".
For example, "just eat a melon, so rigorous what to do".
This is actually the mentality of most netizens, but precisely because I also eat a melon, he also eats a melon, and the harm that eventually gathers and inflicts on the parties is immeasurable.
Another example is Mr. Feng's sentence "Why doesn't anyone say I'm sitting on the stage", and Wang Xun's Qi Zhifu's sentence "What evidence do you want for this thing", which is a common mentality of netizens when eating melons.
That is, there is no wind and no waves, what is sought is a stimulus, and as for the truth, it does not matter at all.
The design of "Keep You Safe" is relatively gentle, at least, the main story of the party has passed away, has no family, and has a damaged reputation, but does not have to face the emotional damage.
This design also provides an outlet for Wei Pingan's "chivalrous spirit".
In fact, as long as the contract is signed and the cemetery is sold, Wei Pingan's work will be over, but when he is overwhelmed, he insists on providing customers with a "difficult after-sales service".
This reflects the "chivalry of small people".
This kind of "chivalrous spirit of small people" is rare in traditional Chinese narratives that focus on "the great of chivalry".
"Keep You Safe" is also based on the era of information explosion where "the Internet can amplify everything", and only then has it found a balance between "little people" and "big heroes".
For example, in the face of the question of "what is the picture", Wei Pingan's answer is-
Picture a trust, picture a peace of mind, picture personal true feelings.
At first glance, it sounds vulgar, false and empty, but put it in the specific plot of Wei Pingan's fancy search for the truth, these three "pictures" radiate a very pure chivalrous quality.
In terms of the external narrative that the audience can directly perceive, "Keep You Safe" has done enough genre integration.
In addition to the "main course" comedy, Dapeng also designed common genre elements such as thriller horror (haunted house NPCs), action scenes (parkour, car chase, fighting), and suspense reversal in the film.
The smooth connection between these elements shows the maturity and vividness of the film's expression.
Dapeng's attack
The absurdity of the rumor-mongering truth in "Keep You Safe" and the accident of the Easter egg at the end of the film (no spoilers will be made here) are the embodiment of Dapeng's narrative ingenuity.
But what really represents Dapeng's transformation in the film and reflects his ideological and artistic pursuit is a white horse.
The white horse appeared on the street and led Wei Pingan to the orphanage where Han Lu grew up, which Wei Ping'an interpreted as Han Lu's entrustment.
Later, when Wei Pingan's car broke down in the wilderness, the horse reappeared and led him out of his current predicament.
Although both scenes are peculiar, for Wei Pingan, the former is relatively realistic, representing a very specific trust of the deceased, and the latter is relatively dreamy, representing a spiritual guiding power.
Either way, Hakuba has an ethereal divinity in such a comedy.
It makes Wei Ping'an's life no longer drown in the troubled bottom time and space, but from the bottom unbearable, a pure spirit that supports life is withdrawn.
It makes "Keep You Safe" special enough, and this is the advanced secret that Dapeng has distilled in the story of small characters all along.
From the original short drama "Dicky Men", to the feature film debut "Pancake Man", to "Sewing Machine Band" and now "Keep You Safe", it can be seen that director Dapeng's creative keywords: small people, comedy.
Although the well-known work "Auspicious Ruyi" in 2020 is an exceptional art film, it still belongs to Dapeng's small character creation sequence.
"Auspicious Ruyi"
Looking at the four directorial feature films that Dapeng has launched so far, we can glimpse his creative tendencies -
In the early days, he used relatively pure comedy to figure out the basic video rules and accumulate audience popularity, and then used serious dramas to explore his own ideological and artistic depth, and now he has begun to integrate and create a Peng-style film with his own obvious style.
As he said behind the scenes: ("Keep You Safe") try not to let everyone see the grammar of some familiar comedies.
Exploring fresh comedy grammar is exactly what Dapeng pursues.
White horse is one of the manifestations of this new grammar.
In addition to directing, Dapeng also tried the interpretation of various roles in films such as "I Am Not Pan Jinlian", "Beneficiary", and "Nameless", and these interpretations were also used to enrich his understanding and expansion of characters when directing films.
For example, another Dapeng directorial work "Warm" to be released this year may conjure a new dimension of "blood against the wind" on the basis of its past films.
Therefore, although Dapeng's film works seem to be chaotic and conjuring up various suits on the basis of comedy, in fact, these films are jointly building a clear path of artistic pursuit.
Come to think of it, this is due to the self-targeted market positioning of director Dapeng.
And whether "Keep You Safe" can withstand the test of the film market, Time Jun and everyone will wait and see.