"In the warm and long autumn of the northeast and the roar of the wheels of the times, the "Northeast Old F4" has done its best to find an inextinguishable dawn in the tattered life."
(This article contains a slight spoiler, please read it with caution.) ）
Recently, the popularity of the life suspense drama "Long Season" has continued to rise.
(TV series "Long Season" Douban score)
The director of the play, Xin Shuang, once became famous for directing "Hidden Corner". As another masterpiece of Xinxing, since the launch of "The Long Season", the score has climbed from 9.0 to 9.2 in just three days, and nearly seventy percent of the audience has scored five-star praise, and the outstanding results are enough to prove the reputation and quality of the show.
The story in the play takes place in the northeast industrial town of "Birch Forest", in the interlacing of three timelines of 1997, 1998 and 2016, starting with the incident of Gong Biao's newly purchased taxi played by Qin Hao in the play being decked, leading to a case of shredding corpses involving several families eighteen years ago.
Gripping plot, superb performance, cinematic shots, ingenious soundtrack... As the story slowly unfolds, "The Long Season" leads the audience to review a memory of the times that is very rich in the characteristics of the Northeast region.
The ingenious integration of suspense drama and life flow allows the audience to glimpse the life of ordinary people from the treacherous atmosphere.
After the pains of the transformation of the times, how should the frustrated "marginalized groups" deal with themselves? "The Long Season" handed the audience an answer sheet with "Northeast characteristics".
01
Distant factory memories,
"Revived" Tohoku culture
One of the stories told in "The Long Season" takes place in 1998, a small industrial town in the northeast, "Birch Forest". This year, Gong Biao (played by Qin Hao) in the play hummed the song "Meet in 1998" to sing people's hopes for a better future in the changing social development.
(Wang Xiang faces layoffs in the play)
This year, the state-owned enterprise "Hualin Steel Factory" that supports countless Hualin families is no longer brilliant, the "iron rice bowl" in the hands of a large number of employees has been broken, and the former "model worker" Wang Xiang (played by Fan Wei) is now inevitably reduced to a wave in the wave of layoffs.
The vigorous wave of layoffs of state-owned enterprises and the difficult transformation after social unrest all correspond to the actual situation. The birch forest depicted in the play is reminiscent of the northeast, known as the "eldest son of the Republic", and people's thoughts cannot help but be brought back to the vast plain
In the early days of New China, this fertile land gathered the absolute heavy industry in the country, and its GDP ranked among the best for many years, becoming the "pillar" of the economy. As the "market economy" gradually entered people's sight, the northeastern generation rooted in state-owned enterprises at that time had to wake up from the dream of food and clothing, and the reform of state-owned enterprises subverted the fate of a generation.
(Former Tohoku Heavy Industry Base)
At the end of the nineties, a large number of workers were "laid off", and during the long winter of state-owned enterprises, the "Huagang people" were no longer useful for their proud skills, and their ambitions were nowhere to be placed.
("Wild Wolf Disco", which has been popular all over the country)
As the economy rises and falls, the cultural flourishing of the Tohoku region is always evident. With the song "Wild Wolf Disco" popular all over the country, a "Northeast Renaissance" swept the country with great momentum. Among them, the "Three Masters of the Northeast Renaissance" mostly refers to Shuang Xuetao, Zheng Zhi, Ban Yu, three post-80s Shenyang writers, and one of them, Ban Yu, is the literary planner of the play "Long Season".
(Film and television works with a regional background in Tohoku)
Literary works such as the novels "Winter Swimming" and "Moses on the Plain" and the movie "Daylight Fireworks" are labeled as "Northeast Renaissance", which try to let people break away from the vague and general imagination of Northeast China and re-understand the black land on the banks of the Songhua River and the ordinary people on this land.
"The Long Season" focuses on the "frustrateds" represented by Wang Xiang, Gong Biao, and Ma Desheng. The ingenious integration of life flow and suspense drama allows us to glimpse the life history of ordinary people from the treacherous and suspenseful atmosphere, and see how the lonely "marginalized groups" rectify themselves and start again after the pain of the transformation of the times.
02
After the roar,
How do the motes in the times deal with themselves?
(Screenshot from the TV series "The Long Season")
Wang Xiang, a once respected technical backbone, has experienced multiple blows such as a wave of layoffs, the pain of losing a child, and the death of his wife, and after more than ten years, he has become a gray-haired old man who makes a living by running rents. The story in "The Long Season" is told through the memories of this old man who has gone through vicissitudes.
The uneven road of life and the neglected "marginal characters", Wang Xiang in the play can't help but think of Yu Hua's Fugui. Fugui interpreted the word "alive" with his life baptized by suffering. Fugui's almost boundless life of suffering has made him a symbol of "vitality" and a hero of "existence" in people's minds.
(Stills from the movie "Alive")
There is Fugui in the front, and Wang Xiang in the back. As bystanders to their ensuing suffering, what else can we think about in addition to compassion and pity?
Some viewers said that "The Long Season" is more like an "elegy of the times" than a suspense drama. In addition to the confusing plot, it takes us back to those turbulent years and witnesses the helplessness of the little people in the big time.
"A grain of sand of the times falls on everyone's head is a mountain", the development and changes of the times affect the life trajectory of each individual, and the choices of individuals all highlight the imprint of the times. Wang Xiang in the play verifies this sentence with his real situation in the face of bleak reality.
(Screenshot from the TV series "The Long Season")
With the old industrial area of Northeast China becoming twilight and the glory no longer gone, if you want to be rich and smooth in the birch forest at that time, you naturally have to know how to "judge the time and size up the situation", in the play led by Director Song of the steel mill employees and other material dealers secretly carry out profit transmission, in the Hualin steel mill that is deeply harmed by Hong Kong capital and money, whether the technical level is excellent and whether the work is dedicated seems to become no longer important, "going down the river" can live comfortably, and Wang Xiang, who is in it, has always adhered to the integrity of "out of place".
Time has passed, and this "untimely" integrity has made him suffer in the past, but it has not allowed him to be sinned now.
In the writer's pen or the lens of film and television workers, the protagonists are often ill-fated, but the display of the suffering they carry does not necessarily mean resentment of the times, or the celebration of "enduring suffering".
Times inevitably create regrets, each has its own limitations, and people's suffering itself is not worthy of praise.
In addition to sighing, we may not be able to discuss suffering in the context of the times, the pain of the times may be universal, but the choices of the people in it are active, or they adapt to it, or struggle to fight, and people seek ways to live with pain in the big time.
03
"Northeast style" in the face of suffering:
Happiness in gloom, warmth in slaughter
The laying out of the three story lines in "The Long Season" is not a list of the sufferings borne by the protagonists in the play, but focuses on the story of each real and specific individual in the context of the big time. They may be as small as a speck of dust raised by the wheels of the rolling era, but they also do their best to just "live stronger".
Director Xin Shuang once said in an interview that in his opinion, "In all stories, people are always the most important." Whether past or present, wherever it takes place, the essence of the story is to tell how man confronts forces that can be his inner self, his external other, or a more abstract destiny. ”
(The four protagonists in the play who are called "Northeast Old F4" by the audience)
Talking about the creative logic of life suspense dramas, director Xin Shuang joked: "If you let Lars von Trier shoot "Ma Dashuai", what will be the effect? The strong atmosphere of life in this suspense drama makes the audience's eyes shine, even in the tense first crime scene, you can see a funny life plot similar to "Sister Chen and the sewer worker".
The characteristics of the protagonist characters in the play, the setting of the lines, and the processing of the details of the scene allow the audience to be repeatedly amused in the gloomy suspense plot, and then realize the northeast fireworks.
(Screenshot from the TV series "The Long Season")
In the face of the sloppiness and bleakness in life, Northeasterners may be like the "Northeast Old F4" in the play to have a small barbecue, and hold their friends' shoulders in drunkenness and shout relief: "There is no hurdle in life that cannot be passed!" ”
Some netizens said that the northeast in his eyes has a kind of "happiness under gloom". "The Long Season" creates a typical northeasterner's image represented by Wang Xiang and Gong Biao, who have innate humor genes and optimistic personalities. No matter how heavy the suffering is in the eyes of ordinary people, through the mouth of Northeasterners, it can be gradually dissolved by the joy brought by Northeast dialect, and then blown away in the wind.
Real life has been destroyed, and you can still laugh and joke about suffering. As Stetson said, "Since suffering has pushed me to the edge of the cliff, let me sit down on the edge of this cliff, look at the mist under the cliff, and sing a song to you." ”
When we think of the northeast, we often think of her being shrouded in goose feathers and snow, killing the cold. But in director Xin Shuang's view, in the warm and long autumn of the northeast and the roar of the wheels of the times rolling forward, the "Northeast Old F4" can strive to find an undying dawn in the tattered life.
"Tohoku also has four seasons. It can also be colorful, the sky can be very sunny, and everyone lives actively. ”
(Image from the Internet)
Resources:
[1] "The Long Season" director Xin Shuang talked and shared: from the perspective of the elderly, tell a generation and their life
https://movie.douban.com/review/15126882/
[2] "Northeast Renaissance", embracing the overboard of the times
https://www.163.com/dy/article/GH6PAR1K0541TBNQ.html