Author| fig
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In this era, creators who have the ability to make the current high-threshold audience eagerly await, Xin Shuang must be counted as one.
Holding the red Qin Hao and the suspense "three little ones", making the children's song "Little White Boat", and climbing the mountain no longer a simple meaning of "Hidden Corner", unknowingly three years have passed since then. In three years, no suspense drama of the same magnitude has crossed this peak. Recently, director Xin Shuang's second suspense drama "Long Season" lived up to expectations, scoring 9.2 points on Douban in six days of broadcasting, surpassing the 8.8 points of the previous work "Hidden Corner" and becoming the highest scoring drama this year.
In terms of network popularity, "Long Season" surpasses the same type of "Dusty Thirteen Years", second only to the fairy drama "Long Moon Ember Ming".
This time, Xin Shuang still cooperates with his old partner Qin Hao, and can also see familiar faces such as Liu Lin and Shi Pengyuan, and the newly added performances of Fan Wei, Chen Minghao and Lin Xiaojie are very heavyweight, Liu Yitie who plays Wang Yang and Li Gengxi who plays Shen Mo are young actors who play the role. This time, in addition to the familiar birch steel mill in the Northeast suspense story, the bright and warm yellow and white light replaces the usual cold and humid gloomy tone of the suspense drama, and the special character of the Northeasterners and the sense of humor of the language are also inconspicuously integrated into a story with a tragic background.
It seems that "The Long Season" is challenging a very new suspense drama.
In addition, the special feature of "The Long Season" is that, first, its broadcast platform this time is not iQiyi's "Misty Theater", but Tencent Video alone. Second, although it tells the story of the northeast, the filming location of the series is located in Kunming, Yunnan, and the director actually shot the bright and dry feeling of autumn in the northeast in the south. Third, the starring Fan Wei and Qin Hao both used physical special effects makeup this time to restore the characters of different ages and different psychological states in two time and space, which makes the story very rich in layers and extremely tests the actors' performance skills.
However, in addition to many praiseworthy words, the reasoning of more than half of the plot cases has not yet entered the climax, the plot rhythm is too slow, the timeline is chaotic, Fan Wei's role homogenization and other evaluations have gradually emerged, can the high score of 9.2 last until the end? Whether "The Long Season" can rewrite the fate of suspense dramas that are easy to "rotten ends" must be drawn with a question mark.
Time ferments everything: "Look forward, don't look back"
Just when various suspense dramas habitually borrow horror film techniques, relying on sound effects, environment, and spectacle to scare the string and prepare the audience to jump, "Long Season" goes the other way, it does not rely on overly violent and bloody shots to bluff people, nor does it use gloomy and cold tones to set off the suspenseful atmosphere, but shows the autumn of the northeast with clear colors and full lighting, and even adds comedy elements that "hedge" with suspense nature, using Northeast slang and dialects particularly silky.
And when many suspense themes and social reasoning no longer know where to go, and from what angle to dig deep into the dark side of human nature, "The Long Season" also jumps out of the old routine, discussing "time" is this grander theme. From Qin Hao and Fan Wei's elderly costume from head to toe, to several wonderful transition shots spanning 20 years, to the birch forest ecology and character relationship between things and people in 20 years, it is difficult not to let people visualize the abstract concept of "time", which generates associations with the past life of themselves and those around them.
But the "sense of time" is not so easy to express properly in film and television, less is frivolous, more contrived. The first episode of "Crazy" expresses the sense of time on the two male protagonists accurately, so that it can hit the hearts of the audience in one fell swoop.
It can be seen that "Long Season"'s attitude towards the passage of time is restrained and realistic, with self-ridicule and enlightenment in the sigh, Wang Xiang, played by Fan Wei, lost his son in middle age and experienced the unbearable weight of life, but he has been chasing the murderer for many years and does not change his true colors, this is not to get by, but the days have to go on. He and Gong Biao, played by Qin Hao, and Ma Desheng, played by Chen Minghao, formed an elderly murder investigation team to continue to track down the real murderer of Wang Yang, and three "old stinkers" tried to solve the unsolved case that had been sealed for many years.
The plot follows three unreliable people to start at any time, but due to the increase in age, the whole exudes an aura of "enlightenment" and "relief", and there is a kind of "over the hill" weight, just as the People's Daily issued two days ago "look forward, don't look back".
"Ma Dashuai" is a divine drama that the director Xin Shuang has watched repeatedly, among which Fan Wei's "Brother Biao" Fan Debiao is a classic role that cannot be missed. Therefore, you can see that whether it is Fan Wei or Qin Hao in "The Long Season", there is a shadow of Fan Debiao on their bodies, who loves face, warm-hearted, loves to brag, and the harder they work, the more unlucky, and often attract ridicule because of excessive force.
And in "The Long Season", the old-fashioned, rough, loud Northeast humor did not appear again, replaced by a kind of understanding, rationality, and cold humor from the perspective of the sidelines, this "harvest" makes the comedy link not noisy, but there is a thread pulling the audience, making people curious about the relationship between these characters who have been entangled with each other for twenty years, and the love and hate between them is sometimes even more than the case itself.
The contradiction between Wang Xiang and his deceased son Wang Yang lies in the contradiction between the older generation who are accustomed to being arranged and the generation that longs to jump out of the circle and yearn for freedom and love, the drama uses verses to metaphorically describe people, Wang Yang's new school poem Wang Xiang can't understand, Wang Xiang cares more about the rhyme of the verse, and gives Wang Yang's "snap your fingers" followed by "blowing a small trumpet, ticking and ticking", in the era when double-rally rap was not yet popular, Wang Xiang's behavior was authentic "daddy".
Judging from the way Wang Xiang later treated his second son Xiaobei, many years later, he has made a 180-degree turn in parenting, becoming flexible and open, Wang Xiang began to persuade Xiaobei to go to the big city to develop, call him out of the supermarket where he is working just to say a few words, never reprimand only encouragement, never irritable only warm, you can feel Wang Xiang's regret after losing his son. Time and major events are the strongest driving force to change a person, but time cannot go backwards, and everything can only look forward and move forward.
Refreshing suspense drama: the technical flow of "Savage Growth"
Good film and television works need to be supported by good stories, "Hidden Corner" is adapted from Zijin Chen's "Bad Boy", which tells a "small" story that takes place in a month from the perspective of three children, and the timeline is stacked more tightly and more condensed. This "Long Season" is adapted from the novel of the same name by Northeast writer Ban Yu, who became famous with "Winter Swimming", telling a large chapter spanning 20 years from the perspective of three elderly men, the same life flow suspense, the difference is that the strong contrast between the two dramas one old and one young, one south and one north, one long and one short, can also highlight the director's ideas and skills.
Writing the life of a generation is an ambition. We also do see the changes brought about by time in "The Long Season", from the relationship between people and people to the relationship between people and society, the relationship between people and destiny.
In the Weibo comment area of Xin Shuang's latest "Thank you audience", some netizens commented, "Sensitive skin test, art and music are liked, and will continue to repurchase." Indeed, in the years of suspense dramas "rolled up", the audience threshold has become higher and higher, and the perception of art has become more and more sensitive. Therefore, in addition to fighting content and main creation, suspense dramas also spell shots, art, music, and poster design, in short, hardware and technology have become necessary supporting facilities for suspense dramas. Among them, there are many film directors and new directors from the 80s and 90s who have brought a new atmosphere.
From "White Night Chasing" and "Undocumented Crime", to "Hidden Corner" and "Skyscraper", as well as "Octagonal Pavilion Fog", "Double Detective", "Daughter Back", "Thirteen Years of Dust" and "Long Season" in the past two years, there are first glance surprises, new angles of wonder, and loneliness after expectation, and the advancement of starting again.
"The Long Season" adopts a difficult three-fold space-time narrative, 20 years ago and 20 years later is a big contrast, 20 years ago is divided into before and after the incident, on the one hand clockwise advance of the plot, on the other hand, reverse reasoning about the case, and the timeline of the story is not divided by straightforward text labels, but deliberately transitions with different styles of transitions. For this kind of narrative structure that requires bold and careful and logical rigor, some people are amazed, and some people see it in the clouds, but the overall view is ultimately a dangerous victory with artistic effects.
For example, at the beginning of the series, the middle-aged Wang Xiang 20 years ago drove a majestic train speeding through the cornfield, and then compared with the elderly Wang Xiang who parked the taxi in the field 20 years later, it is easy to sigh at a staggered glance, "Why did Fan Wei suddenly become so old"; Another example is the transformation of Wang Yang, who was looking forward to the rain center 20 years ago, and Wang Yang, who later experienced changes and stood in the rain and cried; Similarly, 20 years ago, Wang Xiang and Ma Desheng had dinner at a dumpling restaurant to discuss the case, comparing the two who were already old at the same table after the passage of time to discuss the case of stealing license plates; and the scene where Wang Xiang and his son Wang Yang had dinner together, but when the camera turned, it was his son's portrait.
With the habit of the narrative mode of the series, many viewers have gone from being uncomfortable to keen to capture these silky transitions, and through these transitions to get important clues to the plot.
Ding Ke's soundtrack was well received in "Hidden Corner", and the soundtrack of "The Long Season" was once again praised. The 12 episodes are paired with 12 completely different opening music, just like the "gong opening" on the drama stage, and the 9 ending songs also have their own style. According to Xin Shuang, the northeast town of Birch Forest is designed to have some western feeling, Blues, Funk, surf music, with the progress of the plot sometimes free, loose, sometimes passionate, sometimes literary and romantic, together formed the unique musical style of "The Long Season".
Xin Shuang once interpreted the northeastern temperament he wanted to express at the press conference of "The Long Season": "Even if life has become a ruin, you can still face it happily." ”
As a 12-episode short drama, the characters who should have appeared have appeared, the puzzle that should be solved has long surfaced, and there are still 4 episodes to go, and the challenge of each episode of one and a half hours is not small, while expecting more surprises and reversals, I can't help but sweat for the show, hoping to maintain the high quality to the end.