Time Contributor | Chlory
Eagerly celebrate pop culture.
After "Crazy", Zhang Songwen's new work is finally going to meet the public-
"More than Endless".
The film is directed by Wang Jing, produced by Jia Zhangke, starring Bai Ke, Miao Miao and Zhang Songwen.
A rare realistic theme in recent years, adapted from real events, focusing on news media and hepatitis B discrimination.
In 2020, he won the Best Director Award at the 4th Pingyao International Film Festival, and was also nominated for Best Director in the Horizon Unit of the Venice Film Festival in the same year.
After 3 years, this highly anticipated movie is finally going to be released on March 24.
I believe many people are wondering, will it be a silly squib, or a deafening gunshot?
A masterpiece of reality
"More Than Endless" is set in Beijing in 2003, the golden age of the newspaper industry.
The haze of SARS has not yet dissipated, and the wave of the Internet has not swept everything.
Newspapers are the only way for most people to feel secure in a complex world, and an ideal that many people are willing to fight for all their lives -
Han Dong (played by Bai Ke) is one of them.
In the film, Han Dong's personal experience carries a rebellion against secular discipline.
After graduating from junior high school, because of his love for journalism, he resolutely quit his job in his hometown to work hard in Beijing.
Holding Cheng Huan's published works, but because of a diploma, he was looked at coldly countless times and turned away.
After 30 years, Han Dong's traits can still be glimpsed in the lives of today's youth.
It is a kind of confusion that has nowhere to be in the big city, and the loneliness of going against the wind in the trend of the times.
But after all, we live in different worlds -
In 2003, the construction of order was somewhat looser.
Han Dong was appreciated by the well-known reporter Huang Jiang (played by Zhang Songwen), who gave him a chance to enter the newspaper internship and become a real reporter.
This is a time when hard work may still pay off.
And in 2023, advocating that things do not concern oneself, hanging high, more is Han Dong, less is Huangjiang.
At the social level, the "anti-discrimination proposition of 100 million people" developed from the perspective of Han Dong is even more questioning the world.
These 100 million people refer to people with hepatitis B.
"Why accept a mistake and not change it?" 's questioning appears in three trailers of "More than Endless", which must be the most central content in the film.
This mistake may point to "common sense": the contagiousness of hepatitis B is exaggerated, so that many hepatitis B carriers cannot work normally, go to school, and even live.
It may also point to the law: whether it fails to protect the legitimate rights and interests of people with hepatitis B so that they cannot live in the sun.
Standing opposite the hepatitis B patient and Han Dong is a sacred and inviolable authority.
Bold and sharp realism, the trailer rarely reveals an angry temperament, denouncing blatant injustice.
You can see the profundity of "More than Endless": small individual choices, hidden social foci, unquenchable humanistic care... It's all expressions it wants to get involved in.
There are even many reflections on journalism: the-for-tat debate between Huang Jiang and Han Dong makes people rethink the positioning and significance of the media.
Whether from the individual or social level, the content and orientation it expresses is not just realism, but praises an idealism built on realism.
Whether such a naïve and stubborn film is valid depends on the motivation of the characters -
Does Han Dong have enough ability and belief to help hepatitis B patients who have nothing to do with him regain their lives and dignity, so that the audience in front of the screen can also feel the purity and solitude of believing in it.
At the narrative level, I wonder what kind of reason the film will give Han Dong.
Lineup of potential stocks
Three years ago, even if the perspective was sharp, but looking at the lineup alone, "More than Endless" was a very "popular" film.
Starring Bai Ke, better known as "Wang Sledgehammer".
Starting from online dramas and jumping to the field of film, his road to the mainstream film and television industry is not easy, often playing some borderline roles.
the scruffy man in 2014's "After the Meeting"; Xiaobai, a tourist in "Mermaid" in 2016, Qu Qiubai in "The Great Cause of Building an Army" in 2017, a little person who does not even have a name in "Revolutionary" in 2021...
His ambition is evident from the change in orientation of guest appearances alone: more than comedy.
Quantitative change leads to qualitative change.
In 2019, Baike starred for the first time in the realistic theme of "More Than End"; "Looking for Her" with Shu Qi on the theme of women in 2021; In November of the same year, "Door Lock" cooperated with Bai Lily was released; In 2022, the suspense film "Jiang Zhao Dawn" starring Ma Sichun was once out of the circle...
This year, his guest appearance "Gentle Shell" is once again competing in Pingyao, and the old work "More than Endless", which won awards in Pingyao, will finally be released.
It is difficult to say that fate does not have its own arrangement -
"More than Endless" is the starting point of Baike's transformation, and it is likely to be the end of his accumulation.
Teacher Zhang Songwen needless to say.
In "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind", he caught everyone's attention the moment he appeared.
White shirt, small belly, baldness, and a slightly oily face, you can tell at a glance that it is an official.
Shouting at the residents with a loudspeaker, he began to speak word by word, as if he really stood with the people; When it comes to being happy, he unconsciously exudes an official tone and has the posture of a person in power.
A scene documentary-like drama made Zhang Songwen's acting skills shine.
"Hidden Corner" makes people discover that Zhang Songwen can not only act, but also design.
It was he who proposed to the director that a small boss like Zhu Yongping would not play mahjong in his leisure time in the afternoon, but would play poker so that he could get out in time when something happened.
It was also he who specially adjusted the scene of eating wontons.
After her daughter died, she went to the wonton stall she used to eat or subconsciously ordered three wontons.
I want to throw it away, I can't bear it, I don't throw it away, I am afraid that my wife will see sadness, so he sits down alone to swallow the wontons and the bitterness of losing his beloved daughter.
Later, it was "Crazy" that we all know.
Their combination seems novel, but they all belong to acting as actors who open up a little popularity.
For the first time, the backlog of the film for three years made people not know whether to say it was a blessing or a curse.
The skyrocketing popularity of the two actors three years later will undoubtedly make the film's attention soar.
The quality and style of the film will not change, and to a greater extent in the hands of two other names that cannot be ignored -
Director Wang Jing, executive producer Jia Zhangke.
This Wang Jing is not Wang Jing, but the young Wang Jing who has been following Jia Zhangke.
He has served as the executive director of "Destiny", "Mountains and Rivers Departed" and "Children of the Rivers and Lakes".
Right: Wang Jing
Therefore, the lens of "More than Endless" is in the same vein as the presentation, with Jia Zhangke's strong sense of "searching".
Just as Jia Zhangke dangled the camera in "Xiaowu" to find Xiaowu wandering on the street, and in "Platform" to find Cui Mingming, who was squeezed and could only cower in the corner and light the dead grass.
This time, with the help of Jia Zhangke, Wang Jing found Han Dong, a young man from Beipiao in Beijing's shared house and bus, and found hepatitis B patients hiding in shadows, tail alleys, and lies.
The same is the two directors' care for the fate of the little people who are wrapped up in the tide of the times, the difference is that Wang Jing has more surreal expressions in the lens language.
There is a scene in the trailer that impressed Time Jun: Yang Liwei, who landed in space on the TV, flew up with a pen in his hand, and the pen in Han Dong's hand in reality also floated in the air.
This expression of this stream of consciousness hardly appears in Jia Zhangke's films, which prefer long shots and even use montage rarely.
In the interview, Wang Jing said that this is a reflection of individual vision and grand narrative.
This kind of realistic and illusory shooting method makes people have a second curiosity about how Wang Jing wants to tell Han Dong's story.
The second "God of Medicine"?
Three years ago, "More Than Endless" was evaluated as the "second "I Am Not the God of Medicine" as soon as it came out.
Also focusing on vulnerable groups afflicted by illness, there is also a heroic figure who braves the world's condemnation to go against the trend.
Before the official release of "More Than End", the content and focus were still not clear, but what Time Jun cared more about was another more tangible similarity between it and "I Am the God of Medicine" -
Debut.
The super commerciality and completion of "I Am Not the God of Medicine" makes people almost can't believe that this is Wen Muye's first feature film.
And "More Than Endless" is also Wang Jing's first directed and painstakingly worked first work.
The debut novel, at first glance, sounds like an excuse for people to lower their standards and give newcomers a little chance and tolerance.
What you may not know is that many bright works in recent years are the debut films of new directors -
The "Corridor of Justice" in front of you is still warm.
It is also the configuration of the old-timer Weng Ziguang and the newcomer director He Juetian.
"The Corridor of Justice" is adapted from a real case, and does not shy away from showing the bloody violence of the case itself and the inability of the justice court to detect the truth.
He Juetian also showed amazing audiovisual talent, breaking the fourth wall to put everyone into the crime scene or the murderer's inner world.
The viewing experience of watching the movie the closer to the murderer, the farther away from the truth and the more frightening, cleverly intertextualizes with the content of the film, which cannot be described as ingenious.
Further down, in 2022, Shi Zhiyu's "Youth Metamorphosis".
"Someone else's child" Meimei recently discovered that she would suddenly become a red bear.
With a setting like turning into a furry bear, it externalizes the girl's menarche, and even more externalizes the ambivalence of adolescent girls looking for self-positioning, which is the gentleness and delicacy of a female director alone.
In 2021, Shao Yihui's "Love Myth", several Shanghai women's fierce anger pierced men's hearts and closed women's stomachs.
The weight lifts lightly allows us to see the different style of mature women, which promotes the further arrival of the era of middle-aged women.
"Hello, Li Huanying" makes Jia Ling the world's highest-grossing female director tells us only the simplest truth: sincerity is invincible.
But some directors spend their entire lives unable to regain the perfect state and mood they had when they made their first film.
It is usually the most personal and lustful expression.
Judging from the sharpness of the subject matter and the casting lineup, Wang Jing is obviously a director with a specific orientation and ambition.
Looking forward to him and "More than Endless", which can bring a little new atmosphere to the theater.
-END-
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