Author|Xie Minghong
Editor|Li Chunhui
If you want to understand or recall the 90s through film and television, this round of popular nostalgic suspense dramas may be a better choice than the nostalgic youth dramas that were popular a few years ago. Compared with the latter's scattered cultural imagination and self-contained time filter, the former throws out a more compact plot, but the inside is full of poetry, carving the two sides of that galloping era.
From last year's "Coward" and "Daughter Back", to "Moses on the Plain" and "Who Is He" in the spring of this year, to the two new dramas "Thirteen Years in the Dust" and "Long Season" in April, suspense dramas collectively aim at the 90s, which obviously cannot be attributed to the collective unconscious, but to create a motive.
"In the past, murder cases will be solved, and we dare not guarantee it. Now technical means have greatly improved our possibility of solving cases, monitoring has been carried out, and DNA testing has been obtained. ”
The words of the old leader in "Thirteen Years of Dust" can explain why today's suspense dramas are so partial to the 90s at the operational level. Because there is no surveillance, and there is no DNA testing, this is the soil of the era when unsolved cases occur.
The silver killers brutally murdered 11 women in a 14-year period from 1988 to 2002, and early investigations have not yielded substantial breakthroughs. Until 2016, the Gansu Public Security Department restarted the investigation work, through DNA testing found that the Gao family in Chenghe Village was suspected of committing a crime, and when fingerprints were entered one by one, it was found that Gao Chengyong was panicked, and he was arrested after fingerprints and DNA comparison.
In the mega homosexual assault and homicide cases in Henan in the 90s, the victims were all men with dementia or mental abnormalities. In fact, in the first case in 1991, the victim showed signs of sexual assault. But this key evidence was not discovered by the police until 1993, because the social consciousness of that year was not reached, and everyone would not think about sexual assault.
On the one hand, the times dictate that unsolved cases must go back in time. On the other hand, nostalgia has spread from family period dramas to suspense themes. Under the rampant words and deeds and impunity of criminals, we not only look back at the chaos and madness of the 90s, but also relive the warmth and strength of the 90s.
Even if the suspense part is not so exciting, it is good to follow those people and things and miss the 90s.
Rock your heart and start nostalgia
In "Who Is He", there is a "gatekeeper" of a motor factory, Chen Yougui, who resolutely opposes the factory being acquired by the big man Nie Baohua, and is not optimistic about the general trend of marketization in this era. Fortunately, Nie Baohua was killed later, and this did not happen. In "The Long Season", Wang Xiang, the master of the Huagang train played by Fan Wei, failed to escape the impact of the times and changed from a train driver to a taxi driver.
It can be said that Chen Yougui and Fan Wei are both somewhat "old-fashioned" figures. But "Who Is He" is more rigid, and "The Long Season" calmly uses more space to show the individual's fluttering in the tide of the times.
When he learned from Gong Biao (Qin Hao) that he was on the "laid-off list", Wang Xiang, a model worker and security section activist, couldn't sit still. He tried to get a city-level reward by participating in the detection of the shredding case, and won the gold medal of death-free to continue working.
There is a detail in the play, when Gong Biao revealed the list of layoffs, Wang Xiang was wrapping meat in the fryer. Hearing the news, the meat in Wang Xiang's pot was almost paste. Fan Wei's acting skills can be described as brilliant, showing the internal logic and behavioral motivation of Wang Xiang's character to the fullest. His father was a backbone worker when Huagang built the factory, and he himself was also an advanced model worker, so he couldn't be laid off! It's not just about livelihoods, it's about the face of the people of that era.
"The Long Season" is clearly not about portraying one person, but the story of a group of people in an era. Gong Biao, a young man who was once beautiful and amorous, has become an uncle who sleeps soundly due to elevated blood sugar at every turn; the elder of the security department who sneaked and played tricks, hung a urine bag around his waist, and resold fake license plates; The dashing criminal police, incarnated as the disco dance king and the aunts sang a song; Wang Xiang was finally laid off and continued to live with the hidden pain of losing his son.
This contrast between the past and the present is also reflected in "Thirteen Years of Dust". In the 13 years from 1997 to 2010, Chen Xiao's Lu Xingzhi changed from a stunned blue to a police leader, and the charging Wei Zhengrong (played by Chen Jianbin) became a Gu family uncle carrying a vegetable basket. Once Wei Zhengrong was very able to eat spicy, laughing Lu Xing knew if he could do it. Later, when the noodle stall reunited, Lu Xingzhi asked the master why he didn't eat spicy, and Lao Wei smiled and said, "The stomach can't do it." ”
The tower that Lu Xingzhi often gazes at has not changed, but the entire city has changed. Using the fixed position of the relative position of the person and the tower, "Thirteen Years of Dust" switches two time points, obviously deliberately using this traversal lens to create a sense of contrast and alienation. The rock youth of that era, the big Hong Kong singers of that era, and the small businessmen who went to the sea to sell wigs in that era seem to have never left us.
The reason why we say that suspense dramas began to be nostalgic is not because they are rich in 90s pictures, but in the contrast of the two timelines, they often show an aesthetic fact that cannot be declared - the 90s, which will no longer come, are quite dangerous and charming, and the current is boring and insignificant.
Both "Dusty" and "The Long" have two or more timelines, but "thick and thin" is very obvious. They are also Fan Wei's cubs, the eldest son in the 90s still has literary dreams, and will read poetry to the girl he loves. More than ten years later, the youngest son was already thinking about the exam and was completely wrapped up in reality.
There must be a sense of form
The current suspense dramas have too much sense of form. In the past, watching suspense, Hard Candy Jun would choose to skip the title directly. Don't dare to do that now, because you don't know what kind of clues the director will bury in front of you. If we don't want to miss these Easter eggs, we have to honestly absorb multiple sources of information beyond the plot - including the prologue, soundtrack, shots, etc.
For example, "Thirteen Years in the Dust", each episode has a subtitle, and this subtitle is either important evidence of the episode or an invisible spoiler. Of course, it may just be the director's sudden "literary disease".
Episode 1, "Pencil", is an important clue throughout the show. The murderer will drop a 2B pencil when committing the crime, how important is it? There was a forgery case behind, because the murderer did not know the specific details, the imitation was not in place, and the HB pencil was dropped, which made the police suspect that it was not the original murderer.
The 22nd episode "Lushan Love" really shocked the audience. It turns out that the goddess in Chen Jianbin's heart is Bai Xiaofu played by Zuo Xiaoqing, and his virtuous wife Liu Mintao at home is just firewood, rice, oil and salt, but there is no spiritual resonance! However, this can also explain the marriage problems between Bai Xiaofu and Zhang Sicheng and the bad family environment that affects Wu Jia. That year in the cinema, Zuo Xiaoqing wanted to watch "Lushan Love", and Chen Jianbin wanted to watch "Garland Under the Mountain", which actually delayed the movie for more than ten years.
There is also the problem of crime, it is clear that the murderer has been imitating the famous painting "Paradise on Earth" by Jeronimis Bosch, but because the investigators have no literary and artistic cells, they missed key clues. Finally, the discussion of Wu Jia going down the evil road is a bit of a matter of not being close enough to the hearts of the characters. "Genes load bullets, personalities aim at targets, and environment pulls the trigger. But many children of criminal families, after being adopted by happy families, also live a normal life. "It's too much like the end of Today's Story!
The sense of form of "The Long Season" is reflected in 12 episodes and 12 completely different opening music. When Wang Yang, Wang Xiang's eldest son, saw Shen Mo for the first time, he instantly switched from a sunny afternoon to a cloudy day with heavy rain. This shows the switching of characters' personalities, while suggesting that there is a haze behind the light.
The whole drama presents a disorderly, mixed, stream-of-consciousness narrative experience, often a casual detail can pull the characters' memories to more than ten years ago. In a large number of small talk and gags, the decline of the northeast economy, the transformation of the market model, and the drastic changes in the fate of the characters were brought out.
The eldest sister is beautiful in Gong Biao's house, Gong Biao said that your family has a good mix of bellflowers, do you still do it now? The eldest sister understated that she didn't do it earlier, and now her mother is doing it. Quietly, the aging of service industry employees in the northeast is highlighted. Obviously, it should be that the mother does not do what the eldest sister does, but the facts are just reversed, can you sigh? Linked to the news reports of the loss and "flight" of young workers in the northeast in recent years, I feel that the "Long" picture is not only suspenseful.
A large number of northeastern dialects in the film form the basis of the sense of form, and seamlessly bridge with the reality in the audience's memory. The period when Wang Xiang and Gong Biao beat Xing Jianchun can be regarded as local news in the northeast.
Has the focus of suspense dramas changed?
"Why didn't I understand after watching two episodes, where is the suspense, or I didn't watch it." In the Long Season review, this is not a "niche" opinion that is intentionally contradictory. Of course, audiences who love this drama also have rebuttal arguments: there is a fragment of broken corpses in the first episode, and the suspense of the show is who killed Shen Mo and Wang Yang.
Three years ago, "Hidden Corner" successfully brought Xin Shuang into the public's field of vision, and also made "family ethics suspense" surface and become increasingly popular. But the difference between the two is that "Hidden Corner" is a small family emotional dispute in the south, which is relatively personal. "The Long Season" is the past of the floating city in the northeast, and it is the scar literature of the wheel of the times that has crushed everyone.
According to Hard Candy Jun, the core focus of "The Long Season" is not suspense, suspense is only an introduction or means of its storytelling, and its real goal is to rewrite the image of the past in the northeast. According to Xin Shuang's own account, what attracted him to the original script was its literary nature. "It's obviously a very heavy thing, but you can dissolve it with very living things."
At the earliest moments when contemporary literature entered the old industrial area of the northeast, the imaginative presentation of industrial ruins was the writing of historical allegories in the sense of Benjamin. Shuang Xuetao's suspenseful murder with a factory as the background, Zheng Zhi's mental hysteria, is not the same. And when film and television dramas begin to reshape the northeast, the first story to be told must also be group portrait.
In "Thirteen Years in the Dust", this regionality is erased. Audiences familiar with Chongqing can clearly perceive that the play was filmed here (it has been verified that it is indeed in Chongqing), but because the protagonists Chen Xiao and Chen Jianbin both speak Mandarin, the cultural attributes of Chongqing as the place where the story takes place are castrated. Of course, we can also think that the director wants to put the background in place, so that the audience feels that the story can take place in any southern city.
Unlike "The Long Season", which depicts family and society in a large number of pages, "Thirteen Years in the Dust" still focuses on traditional criminal investigation and carries some hot topics such as the original family. Si Ni, who plays Chen Xiao's wife in the play, is different from the police wife in common film and television works, she unconditionally supports her husband's work, which makes Chen Xiao have no worries and makes Hard Candy Jun feel comfortable.
The only character line that makes people feel redundant is Yang Zhe, and his design of being influenced by his family and then putting sunshine in front of Wei Ni is really not very necessary. Audiences familiar with the routine of suspense dramas can easily find him a distraction in the middle of the term. It should be said that "Thirteen Years of Dust" would be better if it could take a purer criminal investigation route. But Hard Candy Jun still feels that the script deserves more attention and discussion, and after thinking about it, it can only be attributed to "Who Is He" for giving the audience an unsatisfactory ending. Tired of "Dusty", which followed closely, took over the tired audience as soon as it came up.
From the perspective of the market in recent years, the dilution of suspense dramas, suspense and reasoning elements, the invasion of family and society and other times and even the hustle and bustle have become invisible trends. Just like the Taiwan drama "The First Lantern", a whole season to die a person can also hang the audience's appetite. You just need to remember the glory of yesterday when the four Asian tigers are gone forever in the soft singing of "The Moon Represents My Heart".
After all, further bloody violence, a step back nostalgic depth, of course, the latter is more flattering and fully malleable. And for pure suspense lovers, I'm afraid I have to endure it temporarily.