Because of the success of the previous work "Hidden Corner", Xin Shuang's new drama "Long Season" has gained both huge attention and a lot of pressure. But "The Long Season" did not drop the chain, Douban scored 9 points, and then the score rose slightly, and the score rose to 9.5 points in the finale.
Xin Shuang surpasses himself, "The Long Season" is a work of art, it is also a precious piece of amber in the era, recording pain, recording those most precious feelings and righteousness.
"The Long Season" poster
1. Artwork with viewability
In recent years, "Northeast" has become the most popular regional background for suspense dramas, and the changes in the Northeast era around the 1990s constitute the hidden motive for the occurrence of unsolved cases. At first glance, "The Long Season" seems to be another genre work of this process. The story takes place in a small northeastern industrial city called "Birch Forest", which begins with a taxi deck incident in 2016, leading to a shredded corpse case that occurred eighteen years ago, and three time clues intertwined with each other in 1997, 1998 and 2016.
But audiences can quickly discover the difference in "The Long Season". In terms of audiovisual language, "The Long Season" surpasses most works on the market, it is a kind of creative and artistic craftsmanship, from color, photography, composition, editing to soundtrack, it presents the texture of film.
For example, the connection of the three timelines in the play, "The Long Season" adopts a very adventurous approach, it does not even mark the timeline to the audience, the audience does not have to worry about not understanding, in addition to the fascinating transitions, the texture inside the story can allow the audience to naturally slide into different time and space contexts, we have a movie-like viewing experience immersed in a dark cinema.
"The Long Season" breaks through the stereotypes of previous Northeast crime stories, such as the gloomy sky, vast snowfield, down-and-out industrial base, bleak atmosphere, and cold that challenges the limits of the human body. The story takes place in the late autumn of the northeast, always with a golden hue, like a piece of crystal clear amber, polished smooth and delicate, without impurities and no rough folds.
The story of the northeast is not only icy white, but also has an amber-like golden yellow
What is rare is that although "The Long Season" is a "movie-like TV series", Xin Shuang tries to reduce the narcissism and self-centeredness of some personalized directors while maintaining personal characteristics. "The Long Season" is not the kind of "private drama", it has a strong popularity, and the first 10 episodes of various Northeast comedy elements are all over the place, which can always make the audience smile (the last two episodes make the audience cry storm, this is a later story).
"The Long Season" does not distinguish the general public with its high artistry, it takes the audience into its artistic structure. In the capital-heavy and high-risk film and television industry, it is a virtue of directors to balance artistic and commercial aspects of works.
2 mark the pain of the era
There is no content-independent form. "The Long Season" can be "canonized" in essence because it tells a good story, and it tells a good story well.
When a work focuses on the story of the northeast before the new century, it is almost impossible to skip the "wave of layoffs", and "The Long Season" is not exempt from vulgarity. Like many industrial cities in Northeast China at that time, Birch Forest was born around a large state-owned factory Birch Steel, with family buildings, factory-run hospitals, factory-run schools, etc., and workers' families had factory pockets from birth to death, and workers' sense of happiness and belonging was once particularly strong. However, after the 1990s, state-owned enterprises were riddled with inefficient development, poor product competitiveness, difficulties in enterprise management, and overwhelmed social security systems, and the time had come when they had to be reformed.
Wang Xiang (played by Fan Wei) is a worker who grew up with the factory, he has experienced the golden age of the factory, has a strong sense of collective mission and honor, and has taken all kinds of advanced things, and loves the factory as home. Although he is a little rigid, noble, face-loving and machismo, Wang Xianggengjie is honest, affectionate and righteous, he has a lot of prestige in the factory, and he is also a good father who loves his family and has responsibilities. The wheel of the times is rumbling and about to run over, Wang Xiang is still sure that the factory has only encountered temporary difficulties, everything will be fine, and he also thinks about arranging his son Wang Yang (played by Liu Yitie), who graduated from high school, to work in the factory.
Wang Xiang, who loves the factory like home, "reprimanded" retired old employees who turned over garbage
As a rare college student in the 1990s, Gong Biao (played by Qin Hao) was assigned to work in the factory office, he could speak well and wanted to show his ambitions. He also did not realize the arrival of the crisis and felt that his future was immeasurable. Gong Biao is pursuing Huang Liru (played by Wang Jiajia), a nurse in a factory-run hospital, and it just so happens that Huang Liru is the cousin of Wang Xiang's wife. With this relationship, Gong Biao and Wang Xiang were very close, and the two people with feelings also hit it off.
Gong Biao (played by Qin Hao) is pursuing Huang Liru (played by Wang Jiajia)
The times are cold and catch people off guard. In 1998, the factory first accidentally found the corpse, and the wave of layoffs finally arrived, and Wang Xiang and Gong Biao, who angrily beat the factory director, became the first batch of laid-off people, and then an even more devastating blow came - Wang Yang's body was found in the river.
The interval between 1998 and 2016 is a long gap, and the series seems to say nothing, but in the situation of everyone in 2016, the audience clearly sees the traces left by the wheel of the times.
In 2016, Wang Xiang had white sideburns, used to drive a train, but now he drives a taxi and relies on his adopted youngest son Wang Bei (played by Shi Pengyuan), who gives him the belief that he can survive. But he has been trapped in the "long season" when Wang Yang died, and he believes that Wang Yang was killed by him, and he hopes to find the murderer.
Wang Xiang, whose hair was already gray
Gong Biao, the proud son of the former Heavenly Child, is now a down-and-out middle-aged taxi driver whose diabetes has made him fat and bloated. Although he married Huang Liru as he wished, his life has been muddy for more than ten years, and the relationship between husband and wife has dropped to freezing point.
Gong Biao in 2016 has indeed changed a lot
The lives of some people around them do not seem to have become much better. 18 years ago, Ma Desheng (played by Chen Minghao), a policeman in the police station who investigated the corpse case, stopped doing it in a fit of anger, and now he has become a tsundere Latin dance master in the old people's dance hall, dashing and lonely.
Ma Desheng in 1998 and 2016
18 years ago, Li Qiaoyun (played by Liu Lin), a female worker in the factory's weighing room, felt the chill of life earlier than others: her son suffering from leukemia, her disabled husband, and four elderly people overwhelmed her, and the efficiency of the factory became more and more depressed, she could only go to the dance hall as a drinking girl, secretly called her son to sing the little stars for him in the gap between work to coax him to sleep, and the tears in the corners of her eyes could not stop flowing. 18 years later, she still has to worry about retirement at the Social Security Bureau...
Li Qiaoyun (played by Liu Lin)
How the times will change is indeed beyond the control of ordinary people, but this is not a reason why we can only choose to obey and forget, some deep marrow sorrow needs to be remembered, and some heart-wrenching pain needs to be soothed. Forgetting the past means betrayal because the lack of reflection and relief from the perspective of the weak may allow some misfortunes to repeat themselves, and it is often the most vulnerable who bear the bad luck. For example, before the wave of layoffs arrived, Shen Mo (played by Li Gengxi) and Fu Weijun (played by Jiang Qiming) had suffered a lot; When the wave of layoffs comes, workers suffer; By 2016, Wang Xiang, Gong Biao and others were still at the bottom of life...
Oblivion has always happened, and "The Long Season" wants to become the amber of the times, it wants to leave a painful specimen for the times, remind people how the previous generation lived, what they went through, what they endured, remind us today, what a tortuous road our fathers have walked, and remind how a grain of sand of the times has become a giant mountain on the heads of some ordinary people.
3. Preserve the most precious love and righteousness
If "The Long Season" only tells the story of the first two parts, then it is not enough to "seal the gods", because it is a series of crime suspense dramas set against the background of the Northeast Layoff Tide, and the general narrative of a number of Northeastern-themed novels under the "Northeast Renaissance". In these crime stories, the murderers are often frustrated in the wave of layoffs, and their criminal actions will naturally not be forgiven, but the narrator can hardly hide his sympathy for them, trying to contrast a certain part of the era's failure with their failure.
"The Long Season" jumps out of this narrative routine that is about to overflow. The shredded corpse case and Wang Yang's death have always dragged the audience, but the final direction of the two murders is unexpected and reasonable. Although the corpse crushing case has been revealed later in the plot, Wang Yang's death was not revealed until the finale. In other words, in terms of the suspense setting itself, "The Long Season" has done quite a good job.
But suspense is not the whole of this show, the rush and powerlessness of individual fate crushed by the wheel of the times is not the only focus of this show, the core part of "The Long Season" is still Xin Shuang's words, "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 Long Season" does offer viewers a very different way of fighting.
How do ordinary people fight against the times? What we say most often, and which is repeatedly mentioned in the play through the mouths of the characters, is "look forward". On the positive side, "looking forward" is an encouragement to forget their grief, work hard and start a normal life.
For example, in "The Long Season", Gong Biao's wife Huang Liru is a very typical "looking forward" person, she used to have an affair with the factory director, and was exposed and broke off marrying Gong Biao, and the husband and wife relationship with Gong Biao came to an end, and she had a new "partner", and she also decisively divorced when it was time to divorce. It can't be said that Huang Liru's choice is wrong, she is pragmatic, she is the majority of the world, and she still looks forward to living well with him in the next life.
But sometimes, "looking forward" means people's active forgetting, when we leave pain behind, we also abandon love, some people may become "better to die than to live", survive to become the first, others can give up betrayal. For example, Yin Hong (played by Wang Yidi), another escort girl who framed Shen Mo in the past, did everything to "look forward", and Shen Mo also "looked forward" incognito...
"Looking forward" is a pragmatic choice of the times and most people, and it is unknown how many people can still keep the bottom line of their hearts when "looking forward". Therefore, those who can hold on to the most precious part of an era are more likely to be some people who "can't get by".
They may not be able to live with the times, they may not be able to live with others, they may not be able to live with themselves, they want to ask a "why", they insist on seeking a truth, they want to keep those ancient and basic moral bottom lines. When most of the people in the crowd are bustling and "looking forward", they seem so axis, so strange, so failed, but they do not care, because there is indeed something more precious in the world than "looking forward" in the world.
In the 11th episode of "The Long Season", the layers of emotions in the plot finally had an explosion, and Wang Xiang, Gong Biao and Ma Desheng, who could not "look forward", released the most bright moment in their human nature. It was Wang Xiang in a taxi, talking about others and telling Li Qiaoyun what he really said to her, "(She) is a very good person, this life is not easy, to be strong, but let's do it when other lesbians always cry when they encounter something, she is happy, quite admirable." ”
Li Qiaoyun asked, then you didn't think of taking a step forward with her. Wang Xiang said, "No matter how well people live, what kind of life they live, they can look forward, I can't, I can't go that hard, I heard that my friend is doing very well now, hard work, very happy for her, I just want her to live a comfortable life for the rest of her life, don't worry and be afraid with my little old man, hold back." ”
Li Qiaoyun in the back seat has already burst into tears, why not the audience?
Wang Xiang's "confession" and farewell to Li Qiaoyun
Gong Biao seems to be the kind of person who can "look forward", he has a precious blunt feeling, silly and silly, as if nothing comes to him. But in fact, he is always in the same place, and he has an untimely simplicity and heavy feelings.
So he insisted on investigating with Wang Xiang, he put down the stick in his hand that he was intended to use to beat his partner because of the smile on his wife's face, he chose to divorce and leave the house, he released the racing pigeon he raised as a child... He won the lottery I don't know if it's true or not, and the big truck that crashed into him doesn't know whether it was an accident or Gong Biao's "intention".
Gong Biao's "letting go"
And Ma Desheng, who is irascible and difficult to mess with, always burns the fire of justice in his heart. 18 years ago, he could ignore his personal future and smash his angry fist at Uncle Shen Mo, who violated Shen Mo, and 18 years later, when Wang Xiang wanted to compromise and accept his life after going around in circles, he could decisively give Wang Xiang the last strength, "There are some things I can't forget, this is not your business alone, I specify this matter to the end"...
Ma Desheng, who is also unable to get by
Three frustrated people who were left behind by the times danced in the KTV, making people feel ridiculous for them and heartbroken for them. Love and righteousness are worth thousands of dollars, and no one would have thought that among the warriors and righteous warriors who shouldered the dark gate, there were also three people who looked so downcast and unreliable. They stayed where they were and let us swarm "looking forward." And their painful "can't get by", why is it not a brave way of "resistance"?
At the end of the story, when Ma Desheng cried out in the police station like a child after solving the case, when Wang Xiang really walked through this long season, when they waited for belated justice and truth for themselves, for us, and for the times, they could finally "look forward". "Looking forward", how many people make easy choices, but it is the luxury choice of this group of suffering little people, and it is also the best blessing for them.
Finally, everyone can "look forward"
In the amber of the times, the most precious and touching part is the persistence of this love and righteousness, and the "look forward, don't look back" after thousands of sails and a clear conscience. Where we couldn't do it, The Long Season helped us keep it.