"Keep You Safe" is optimistic about the long term, how to make Chinese funeral-themed movies?

Sunday's box office reversed, and the Douban score rose from 7.8 to 7.9, all of which happened to Dapeng, which was not so optimistic by everyone, and "Keep You Safe" was also destined to become the box office champion of new domestic films released in March in the mainland over the years.

At last year's Island Film Festival, "Keep You Safe" as the opening film received a lot of praise, and was also recognized by the audience during the roadshow and screening in many cities some time ago. Although the current market popularity is very low, judging from the performance of the film last weekend, "Keep You Safe" still hopes to maintain a stable box office trend.

At present, "Keep You Safe" has become one of the new films released this year with a higher overall score, even if it is compared with "The Wandering Earth" and "Manjiang Red", which have a good reputation during the Spring Festival, its ratings on Douban, Maoyan and Taobao Ticket are also eye-catching.

As a realistic film, in fact, "Keep You Safe" could have entered a more popular schedule, and the film side also hoped that it would become the next "Life Event", so for the current mainland film environment, how to make funeral-themed films?

The best works of Dapeng

The best balance between business and thought

After the Spring Festival, the popularity of the mainland film market is not high, and many head and waist films are more inclined to set May Day and summer files. In March, the film industry used to rely more on imported films to support, and in the past, only "Zootopia" and "Sad Story Than Sad Than Sadness" (imported film indicators) had good box office performance, and the pure domestic film box office results were probably only "Beijing Meets Seattle" (2013) and "Ip Man 3" (2016).

The timely appearance of "Keep You Safe" breaks the convention of the past March off-season, may compare the traffic of the popular schedule, the film can eventually hit a billion is not a big hit, but for such a work, no matter how exaggerated the praise is not excessive, this is not only a praise for Dapeng, but also an affirmation of the film's daring to set the file in the off-season.

The seriously underrated "Sewing Machine Band"

It is not difficult to compare and find that "Keep You Safe" is already the highest-rated one of Dapeng's directorial works, from "Pancake Man" to "Sewing Machine Band", and then from "Auspicious Ruyi" to "Keep You Safe", Dapeng's growth is visible to the naked eye, and this is also the one with the highest ideological depth in Dapeng's commercial films.

Whether it is "Pancake Man" or "Sewing Machine Band", including this "Keep You Safe", Dapeng's role is more or less playing the ideal "warrior", especially this time Wei Pingan. As the starting point for the audience to question Wei Pingan, everyone cannot doubt Wei Pingan's kindness and courage, after all, this may be an unattainable behavior for everyone.

"Internet rumors" and "running off legs to refute rumors" are important dramatic conflict points of the film, and it is also the starting point for most audiences to choose to watch this film, after all, we have all experienced the storm of online rumors, more or less actively or passively spread and spread online rumors.

But the ideological and artistic node of the film lies in Wei Pingan's heart always believing that a person should come innocently and then walk cleanly. Perhaps in "Life Events" more emphasis is on "life events, either life or death", but "Keep You Safe" tells us more bluntly that "a person's fame is not only important during his lifetime, but also should not be stigmatized by anyone after he leaves this world", which is the point and idea that the film wants to express the most.

A funeral movie with mixed joy and sorrow

There is comedy, there is thinking, there is literature

Although not everyone is optimistic about "Keep You Safe", after all, in the online wind review, Dapeng still has not come out of the shadow brought by "Pancake Man", and many viewers have a certain resistance when they see "Director Dapeng".

However, the distributor of the film still has strong confidence in this film, and Li Jie, president of Ali Pictures, also said in an interview with the movie channel that he is very optimistic about this "Keep You Safe" because it really warms and heals positive energy. For distributors, the March box office title is just a small step, and their goal may be "Life Events" last summer.

Many people will regard "Life Events" as the first funeral-themed film in the mainland, and the publicity party did not deliberately promote it, but in fact, there are not few funeral-related film and television works in the mainland, and some films have also achieved good market results and feedback.

In addition to "The Undertaker" that generally exists in the hearts of many fans, the mainland actually filmed the pure comedy "Filial Piety and Virtuous Sun Waiting" (starring Chen Peisi and Zhao Lirong) very early, and at the same time, like Feng Xiaogang, he also filmed the ironic and playful "Big Shot", these comedy films use a relaxed and absurd way to resolve the serious and sad funeral theme.

"Tell them I went by white crane" movie channel video screenshot

Of course, in addition to comedy, serious films and literary films also have some very good funeral related genres, among which the more famous representative films include "Hidden in the Dust" Li Ruijun's work "Tell Them, I Went by White Crane", and the 2014 surprise film "Heart Labyrinth" (also known as "Funeral Coffin").

In addition to these big-screen works, last year Station B produced a well-rated drama "Sanyue Has a New Job", which shows funeral work from a young perspective, and the heroine of the series is set as a post-95 girl. In the past two years, Tencent Video has also successively launched two works of the Northeast Comedy Network "Northeast Farewell to the Heavenly Group". It can be seen that the funeral theme, which has not received much attention in the past, has still produced many excellent works in the past two years.

The main reason why there is not much mention of funeral films in other countries here may be that the cultural environment, customs, religious beliefs and funeral customs of Chinese mainland are quite different from overseas, even if Japan is similar in cultural inheritance, you can still see that there are many aspects different from China in "The Undertaker".

Judging from the above-mentioned films, the types of funeral movies in the mainland are still very rich, and perhaps the Chinese people are really not so secretive about this topic.

Having a core good story and correct value orientation is especially important not only for funeral films, but also for films with funeral content, and life and death are eternal topics in literary and artistic works.

Not long ago, Huayi Brothers also exposed their funeral-themed films, as the "One Dragon" in the five chapters of the fifth chapter of its "H Plan" seventh season list, will be directed by Tian Yusheng, who successfully created the "Former Raiders" series of films, and the screenwriter is also Shi Chenyun, the partner of Director Tian's "Former Raiders".

It seems that after "Life Events" and "Keep You Safe", mainland funeral-themed films still have a certain continuity.

Dig deep into core values

Establish a concept of life and death that truly belongs to Chinese

In fact, before the release of "Life Events", the film's sequel "Life Events 2" has been planned, which is somewhat unexpected, under normal circumstances, very few original films will start to develop sequels before release, which shows that the film's producer Lianrui Pictures has full confidence in the quality of the theme film and "Life Events".

Counting the aforementioned Huayi Brothers' "One Dragon" and this "Life Events 2", perhaps there will still be many funeral-themed film and television works surfacing in the future, including "Northeast Farewell Heavenly Group" with good evaluation and income, and it may also be possible to continue filming.

The Undertaker (2008) Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film

In fact, from the above funeral movies, it seems that we are still trying to get rid of the special "mourning" atmosphere of Japanese funeral movies, and use more life-oriented comedy to drive the plot, of course, it is indispensable to Chinese understanding and perception of life and death.

Judging from several funeral-themed films that have achieved both commercial and word-of-mouth harvests, such as "Life Events" and "Keep You Safe" are closely related to the realistic theme, their advantages naturally need not be talked about, the solid script bears the brunt, and the part that calls for the goodness in human nature is also the top priority, perhaps this is also the key to empathy with the audience.

Of course, the bridge of comedy is also essential, which is also an important part of being able to quickly attract passers-by to the audience, after all, the funeral theme will still make a considerable part of the audience resistant, perhaps in the moment it is necessary to use the shell of "comedy" to nest a story that is easier to attract the audience.

But like literary films and feature films, they may be able to achieve higher artistic achievements, can win higher reputation and high-end fans, but it is extremely difficult to obtain better market feedback, and many similar films objectively, their demands and original intentions may not have much to do with funerals.

Even if a film such as "Heart Labyrinth" has achieved a good box office return, for the current investment community, the probability of this accidental success is not high, perhaps expanding investment will make the film have a relatively good return, but it is still better to invest in other commercial films with more return value.

This is not to deny funeral-themed films like "Heart Labyrinth" and "Tell Them, I Went by White Crane", on the contrary, the diversification and diversity of investment is what we have always advocated, but in the medium and long term, films close to realism will definitely be good for the long term, no matter what changes in the type and theme of the film, whether it is a funeral-themed film or not, clinging to and exalting realism will definitely not be a problem in the general direction.

Perhaps "Keep You Safe" may be more difficult to impact the volume of "Life Events", but it is already the most successful domestic new film released in March ever, perhaps its release in March is a dimensionality reduction blow to other films, if it really has a good box office performance, it is of extraordinary significance for future high-quality new films to dare to set in the traditional off-season.