Author | Ashu
A girl donated a huge amount of money to the orphanage before she died, but she was made up to be a lady sitting on the platform, which blew up a group of demons and ghosts in the Internet age.
This is a story that is rarely told: online rumors in the post-truth era, and furthermore, stigmatization of women, "slut shaming", were filmed by Dapeng - this is the story of the recently released movie "Keep You Safe".
Looking at the short comments of Douban, people are saying, "Dapeng has improved."
This is true. The crudeness of "Pancake Man" and the loss of control of "Sewing Machine Band" are all I have in mind. When it came to "Keep You Safe", I couldn't fault anything.
"Keep You Safe" poster
In the face of this subject that has been paid attention to and discussed, Dapeng, who was born at the grassroots, is not as obsessed and charming as Chen Kaige, so "Keep You Safe" is not as twisted as "Search". This is his best comedy bridge, although it is a bit of a whistle, but it is not overdone; The narrative is straightforward, but the victory is steady, and there is an honest energy.
Dapeng is very clear that he only wants to talk about a good person and good deed that seems insignificant, but it has a lot to do with it, it has to do with a girl's personality, and it is so important that he will fight for his life.
Dapeng wants to be moved. But this emotion does not stand up to reflection. If you have seen Dapeng's previous work - "Auspicious Ruyi", you may understand that this is somewhat self-touching.
Absent victims
"Keep You Safe" presents a rare and unique landscape of the current era.
Live streaming goods, Internet celebrities and black and red, hot searches, keyboard warriors, rice circle culture and bloodthirsty traffic, online grave digging (black history is "human flesh"), yellow rumors, online violence, and even installed a side line of school bullying.
The story begins with a rumor: Han Lu, a girl who has died, is considered by netizens to be a lady sitting on the platform, which leads to her facing the situation of being "dug up".
The deceased girl Han Lu was made up of yellow rumors
The protagonist is a middle-aged man who broadcasts the cemetery - Wei Pingan - which in itself has a bit of an absurd reality. Han Lu is a customer of his live broadcast room. The intersection of the two, nothing more. The main line revolves around how Wei Pingan proves his innocence.
People say that Dapeng is a person with a sense of networking, and although the word does not sound like a trumpet, it is a bit like swearing, but he does pay attention to areas that many creators disdain.
Faced with various wonders of the Internet, Dapeng tried to reconstruct images. In the film, grave digging and network grave digging form an obvious intertext, and even interspersed with a rather ingenious escape room scene: demons and ghosts, pretending to be ghosts, and Internet culture forms another secret intertext.
The film borrows Li Xueqin's mouth and says a line: When you open your mouth and say that a woman is a lady sitting on the platform, whether she is or not, she is.
This is very similar to Wang Xiaobo's style. In "Golden Age", Han Lu's situation is similar to Chen Qingyang. Wang Xiaobo borrowed Wang Er's mouth and said something similar: The so-called shoe breaker is an allegation, everyone says that you are a broken shoe, you are a broken shoe, there is no reason to talk about it.
Rumors and online violence, such as locusts transiting, will not spare any potential target that can suck blood, no one can stay out of the matter, and finally drown the protagonist Wei Pingan.
The irrational of the group is an eternal and complex theme. Throughout the ages, many philosophers and artists have tried to peek into the essence of human nature. In the age of social media, everything has become more chaotic and frantic.
But Dapeng does not plan to go deeper, he has no intention of filming "The Beautiful Legend of Sicily" in the 5G era, or "Enlargement" in the short video era, and he may even dislike the judgmental posture shown in Chen Kaige's "Search" - he has to give the era a pulse, so it is deep.
Marlena in "The Beautiful Legend of Sicily" was slandered because she was too beautiful, fell into the whirlpool and sank step by step
In this film, the wonders of the social media era are not objects of examination, but just horse lamps, reduced to instrumental narrative elements, serving the heroic shaping of the protagonist.
But do heroes exist to save people, or do they exist for the sake of existence?
In this film, Han Lu, as an object of salvation, is actually absent.
In "Rose for Emily", Faulkner also writes about a small-town woman whose life after her death is full of praise, sympathy, criticism and condemnation from the townspeople. The woman has never appeared in her true face, at the level of textual discourse she is absent, but always present in the subject.
Or rather, the drowning of words is a theme in itself.
"Keep You Safe" on the contrary, on the surface, everything is about Han Lu, but in fact everything has nothing to do with her. Han Lu can be anyone, as long as she has a grievance and deserves to be saved, it is enough. Dapeng only wants to talk about the great righteousness of a small citizen in the city, and his dedication to life.
This film is still Dapeng can't let go: the nature of small people, the middle two of "men are teenagers until death". The "romance" he can think of is a grassroots character making a movie and a band in a bizarre way. This is self-defeating.
In this world, for the sake of a strange woman, he stuck a knife in both ribs, and he did not give up.
Dapeng's fairy tale
If you doubt the motives of the characters in "Keep You Safe", the narrative logic or something, look at it from another angle and treat it as a martial arts film, will it stand up?
I have to say that it really has traces of the creation of martial arts films.
Wei Ping'an is a humble little man, but he sticks to the bottom line that is out of place and has a natural sense of justice.
Wei Pingan, a little person with a natural sense of justice
Of course, the naturalness of morality may come from the inheritance of cultural genes—Mencius's "compassion." In the logic of the play, it is a construction of archetypes.
The so-called prototype, to put it bluntly, is to agree on such a setting or narrative element. In some types of narratives, morality is natural. The most typical is martial arts films. Wu, forbidden by force, chivalrous, light wealth and righteousness. The core prototype of martial arts films is absolute justice, and the protagonists naturally carry some kind of mission.
Wei Ping'an is like this, according to his character's previous history, he is the kind of person who is not used to seeing it and directly does it, and he has been in prison for several years. Now, the dead girl Han Lu was "dug a grave", he was filled with righteous indignation and stood up again, which was established based on the power of martial arts archetypes.
This also presupposes that he will never have recourse to the law to achieve the justice he firmly believes in.
Wei Pingan had a prison record
Forbidden by martial arts is not only the meaning of martial arts, but also its core element - the functional experience brought about by selling "martial arts". Wei Pingan held a box of ashes, chasing "fierce" for thousands of miles, it looked a little incredible, but it happened like this. The same logic.
The film created a bluffing climactic scene, with a murderer in front and a police officer in the back, Wei Pingan went on a rampage all the way, a drag racing scene, a radiant hero.
Is this necessary? Perhaps, in the context of martial arts, Teacher Dapeng may insist that this is quite romantic.
Then use martial arts to round the logic of this film, which is a bit of a supplement for Teacher Dapeng. What I want to say is that "Keep You Safe", or Dapeng, who is the director, screenwriter and star, is immersed in a romantic imagination of urban chivalry.
Wei Pingan and Han Lu are just the relationship between merchants and customers. Out of professionalism, or out of human morality, how Wei Pingan maintained the peace of the deceased is logical.
Wei Ping'an sold the cemetery to Han Lu, and a connection was formed
But after learning the "truth", Wei Pingan's sense of morality began to explode: his rescue of the deceased girl became hopeless and hopeless. He carries the girl's ashes and becomes a lone hero.
At any time, a moral explosion can be dangerous. The essence of morality should be marked by scrutiny and introspection.
"Keep You Safe" has an interesting line to the effect that if she is not a lady sitting on the platform, do whatever you want. Many people grabbed this sentence to refute Dapeng's identity discrimination: If she is really a lady sitting on the platform, then she deserves to be "dug a grave"?
This is somewhat sinful.
Grabbing someone's fox's tail by a morally explosive person is not another thing to be wary of. In my opinion, Dapeng's stereotype is not in this casual outpouring, but in the more secret unconscious: he is a person who is obsessed with being a hero.
"Keep You Safe" stills
Many people praised the realism of this film. But you must know that realism has no heroes, and if reality can be easily saved, it will be a fairy tale.
The mathematician Hua Luogeng told Liang Yusheng that martial arts novels are fairy tales for adults. "Keep You Safe" is not a fairy tale of Dapeng.
Meet our nobility
"Auspicious Ruyi" is Dapeng's most special work.
His sincerity and self-touching are not as cheap as "Pancake Man" and "Sewing Machine Band", very plain, very moving, but also contain a creative ambition, I even felt the director's artistic consciousness.
The story is close to a step documentary. As a comedy director, Dapeng returned to the northeast countryside for the New Year, but his grandmother's death caused a series of family disputes. In the absence of a family member, a professional actor takes advantage of it.
"Auspicious Ruyi" poster
Truth and fiction make peace in a strange way, which is a bold attempt at Dapeng's self-exploration, bringing a kind of artistic still-water deep current, which is very infectious.
Unfortunately, that's only half the story. Then, in the second part, Dapeng did not hesitate to restore his great ideas one by one through tidbits and methods. It seems that a poor student scored 80 points one day, and he can't wait to share this joy with all his classmates.
Artists have always been good at disguising themselves, hiding themselves, and dissolving themselves, so as to explore a more complex self. The same autobiographical work, think about how Fellini filmed "Eight and a Half", and how Kurosawa Akira filmed "Dream".
From "Auspicious Ruyi" to "Keep You Safe", the two works are very different, but this transformation (or return) is also logical. With more than a hundred years of film history, thousands of directors, those who dare to turn their backs on the audience and are not afraid of loneliness are only a few of the few.
Of course, compared with "Pancake Man" and "Sewing Machine Band", the embarrassment and excessive sensationalism of the rotten terrier have also converged a lot. From this point of view, Dapeng is indeed improving.
"Pancake Man" and "Sewing Machine Band" poster
Compared with "Auspicious Ruyi", this time, he also put away his artistic ambitions.
It's a work with a clear goal, and Dapeng is aware of the problem, but he doesn't want to be a questioner, but he knows what he wants, and he believes in a simple credo: move others, move yourself first.
I would like to believe that this Northeast boy is sincere. He sincerely created an image of a small citizen hero who fought unevenly. There may also be some instructive significance to this. After all, "Keep You Safe" really doesn't have any significant speculative overtones.
There are two extremes of narrative art, one is to write (shoot) everything is other people, all sentient beings. The second is to write (shoot) everything is the self.
Obviously, Dapeng belongs to the latter.
From "Pancake Man" to "Good Luck" to "Keep You Safe", Dapeng has always been that Dapeng. He talks about his dreams, his struggles, his kindness.
For him, creation is not to see heaven and earth, not to see sentient beings, but to see himself. That's okay, at least, for the narrative theme of dreams and family, excessive self-awareness will not eat back. But entering the field of social morality, the role of Wei Pingan is somewhat clichéd.
Fortunately, Dapeng did not have much value, and "Keep You Safe" braked the car. If you go further, this similar story of saving the wind and dust really becomes a malecentric self-lust.
In terms of viewing experience, the audience recognizes Dapeng's self-projection, perhaps, they will probably like this work. The essence of movies is the illusion of dreams, satisfying our desires and satisfying our nobility.
Edit | Wu Qing
Typesetting | Sissy
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