Wen 丨 half a cup of tea
On March 10, the comedy "Keep You Safe" starring Dapeng and Li Xueqin was officially released. Previously, after many rounds of screenings, the word-of-mouth reputation of "Keep You Safe" was gradually released, and on the first day of release, the film Douban scored 7.8 points, becoming a word-of-mouth work in the current market.
The whole film revolves around the narrative of his customer Han Lu (played by Song Qian) being fabricated after his death through the perspective of cemetery sales Wei Pingan (played by Dapeng), and cuts into online violence and school bullying along the vein of rumors. The perspective of the little characters and the comedy background make the film reflect the absurdity of the full screen, and under the absurdity, it is all the irony of reality.
(This article contains spoilers)
Real absurdity
From the perspective of the lineup alone, Dapeng, Li Xueqin, Ma Li, Jia Bing, Yin Zheng... "Keep You Safe" is undoubtedly a comedy, but the point that makes people laugh in the film, in addition to the comedy skills, lies in the absurdity it presents.
At the beginning of the movie, Wei Pingan receives a phone call that one of his customers, Han Lu, was forced to move his grave by the company because the family of the customer who "lives" next door to him heard rumors that Han Lu was a sitting woman and dirty her own feng shui. And because Han Lu's donation of 1.36 million yuan to the orphanage was on the news, this rumor became bigger and bigger.
As a result, the absurd incident involved two opposites, on the one hand, the capital side that the cemetery developer was unable to contend with, and on the other hand, Wei Pingan, who had just been released from prison and had no background.
As a small person, Wei Pingan, dyed with green hair, frivolous, full of problems, and has been imprisoned for helping his brother fight, is no different from the "gangster" often defined, but he who has personally contacted Han Lu does not believe that Han Lu is a sitting woman. And at this time, Han Lu also became a person who lived under rumors like Wei Pingan, and before that, the reason why Wei Pingan was in prison had long been unrecognizable in rumors.
For the sake of his conscience, for the dignity of the deceased, Wei Pingan decided to help this "dead man", so he set out to find the source of the rumor. This process is even more absurd, and among the people who spread the rumors, there are not only pet shop owners, supermarket vendors, but also group executives, square dance aunts... A wide variety of people are involved, and together they create an influential social spread.
However, most viewers will believe that such absurd events can be real.
Because in reality, in most cases, it is "money can make ghosts push and grind", and the injustice under the difference in wealth will always exist. The online world is indeed witnessing the formation of absurd events one after another. People don't care about the truth, only about the happiness of "eating melons". Even in the formation of two opposing camps in the rumors, most people in the camp do not care whether they are on the side of the truth, but more about whether their camp can get a greater say.
In the end, Wei Pingan found the "murderer" who originally spread the rumors thousands of miles away, and asked the reason, just to post an eye-catching comment, because this can be exchanged for points to get the opportunity to chase the novel for free, and it costs 9.9 yuan to open a membership.
The absurdity is not that the reason for the rumor-mongering is so insignificant, but that in the eyes of many people, the reputation of strangers and the dignity of strangers who have died are simply insignificant.
Ironic courage
If you only sketch an absurd comedy, "Keep You Safe" may not bring people as much as it does now, and the film has a lot of casual irony under the absurd atmosphere.
For example, the current society's threshold for a woman to create yellow rumors is so low: "When you open your mouth and say that a woman is a miss, whether she is or not, she is already there"; For example, even his own sister, when he learned that Wei Pingan was running for Han Lu, his subconscious reaction was "Are you in that kind of relationship with her"; For example, if you are powerful, you can tear down other people's graves; For example, queuing for hours can't say a word to some leaders; For example, some self-media unscrupulous means in order to live broadcast traffic...
"Keep You Safe" is a satire of common sense or rules that seem "conventional" but not reasonable.
Take 10,000 steps back and say, even if Han Lu is really a "sitting daughter", can't she buy herself a good cemetery after she dies?
People wear colored glasses because of the label of "sitting on the platform", and even erase the value of Han Lu's donation to the welfare home, in fact, there is no essential difference from the ancient "responsible businesswoman of the dead country", and the "difference in occupation" makes her lose the opportunity to be rated as a good person, even if the evaluation rules themselves are biased.
But that's what it is.
Just like Wei Pingan did go to prison, he could not look for a job normally like "a good person", and even chose to divorce his wife and make his daughter someone else's daughter in order to avoid the prejudice that people may have against the family of the "criminal". It is also because of his previous convictions, when he first helped Han Lu, most people did not believe that he was on the side of justice.
After all, in the eyes of more people, those who commit crimes to uphold justice and those who commit crimes against society are "bad people" who have been imprisoned.
At the end of the film, the rumor-monger was sentenced to 7 days of detention and fined 500 yuan, while Wei Pingan was detained for 15 days for various violations in the process. The cost of justice is already terrifyingly high, how should it be judged whether it is worth it or not?
Therefore, becoming a person like Wei Pingan requires courage, and it also requires paying a price, just as "Keep You Safe" has strong irony in the cracks, and it also requires the courage to criticize. But what is more ironic is that most people in life are not like this, and the phenomenon of film irony is the norm of life.
The back of the comedy
Although "Keep You Safe" is based on "Wei Ping'an refutes rumors", the film wants to explore more than that.
In "Keep You Safe", Wei Pingan's daughter Wei Motong (played by Wang Shengdi) also has a separate line of events, she witnessed a planting between classmates at school, and after a period of entanglement, Wei Moring chose to tell the truth, and suffered school bullying because of this.
Although there is no direct connection between the two lines, it can be seen that the film attempts to explore the attitudes of two generations towards the verbal violence around them. Of course, from the current film processing, the "school bullying" line is a bit overwhelming, and there are some flaws in the parallel rhythm processing of the two lines, but the overall flaws are not hidden.
And in this process, the issues that "Keep You Safe" are actually very heavy. If there are not many comedy elements interspersed, the film will most likely make people very depressed. And the brilliance of "Keep You Safe" lies in the fact that by gathering comedians and the integration of new memes such as escape rooms and live broadcasts, the comedy color of the film is amplified, and those heavy problems are wrapped in laughs and processed into the back of comedy.
But the back of the comedy is the core of what the film wants to express, and it is also the key to the heart.
At least in the current environment, a lot of malice is generated in plain sight. What everyone has may be wealth, experience, quality and other concrete or abstract things, which may cause people around them or even those who have never met to produce malice for no reason.
Zhao Yuxuan was planted on campus because the abuser thought that her family had money, so she was treated favorably everywhere; Han Lu was fabricated because she donated a huge amount of money and looked good; Wei Pingan was criticized because he had been in prison... The terrible thing is that many people are unconsciously involved in an online violence, and when they generate or spread these malice, they will not think that these may bring great harm to others, and those "sharp swords" are just talking after drinking and eating.
In reality, such things happen frequently. Liu Xuezhou before and the "pink-haired" girl not long ago are all revenants under these "sharp swords". What is valuable now is that Wei Pingan, a small character full of market atmosphere in "Keep You Safe", refuses such "talking points", and perhaps in the future, more "Wei Pingan" will begin to refuse such "talking points".
Mirror Entertainment (ID: jingxiangyuler) original
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