The box office broke 200 million in three days after its release, netizens: The best domestic film so far this year

After a long time, "Wading Through the Sea of Anger", which has been in Tibet for four years, has finally come out of the sheath.

I don't know what you're expecting from this movie, but I've always been clear:

Two words, Zhou Xun.

In the trailer, she has a fierce look in her eyes, like a beast with bared teeth.

The filmmaker wants to scare you again: watch carefully under the age of eighteen.

Just asked, how long has it been since there has been such a crazy woman in internal entertainment?

"Crazy" is the most popular concept nowadays, and it is also used as an introductory lesson for explosive acting, and in the hands of a high-achieving student like Zhou Gongzi, it is naturally a good time for us to inspect the work.

By the way, why is it that everyone is crazy nowadays, but there are still only a few corners in your circle, and they can perform the impression of being worth the ticket price?

不免先聊回《涉海》本身。

Without much spoiler, the following information has been revealed in the trailer:

The girl Nana died unexpectedly, her boyfriend Miao Miao was suspected of murder, Nana's father, fisherman Lao Jin (played by Huang Bo) went crazy to retaliate, and Miao Miao's mother, rich woman Jing Lan (played by Zhou Xun) desperately protected her son.

Bottom line, this is a story of parents who are crazy about their children.

Because it was Cao Baoping's handwriting, I was mentally prepared to be burned by anger in advance, but the anxiety that the movie itself gave me came more from my incomprehension of the plot logic and character design.

For example, in many scenes of chasing the murderer in the film, no one in the Chinese and Japanese security systems combined could hold him down, and even the security guards on the front foot were still playing to stop him, and the next moment he was allowed to jump into the track.

To put it bluntly, the script is actually a bit suspicious of "drama making way for people", and in order to match the rhythm of the actors, it doesn't hurt that the background board deviates slightly from common sense.

And to let the bug be ignored, in turn, it is necessary to use the light of the actor to cover it.

The male and female protagonists of "Wading the Sea" are known for their madness, but the number of roads is not quite the same.

In the film, Lao Jin, played by Huang Bo, went to the sky and the sea all the way, broke into private houses with a knife, and jumped on the subway to climb the rooftop.

This is explicit, externalized "madness".

This kind of "madness" has traces to follow, and it also gives him a lot of room to play.

And Jing Lan played by Zhou Xun is the opposite.

Half an hour into the movie, she wore sunglasses, carried a brand-name bag, and walked into the audience's sight with elegant and generous steps.

is in stark contrast to Huang Bo's embarrassed appearance in the fight at the beginning of the movie.

One word comes to mind: class.

In the face of Lao Jin's hysteria, Jing Lan usually shook his head in two and two and fought back in a frivolous negotiation tone.

Every sentence that came out of her mouth sounded very decent and proper, but there was a needle in every word.

It is like an intellectuals in the debate arena who use an unflinching aura to intimidate their opponents.

In the play, she was followed by Lao Jin, but she took the initiative to get into the enemy's truck, pointed out that Lao Jin was hiding the murder weapon, and directly provoked his thoughts, and then moved with affection, knew how to climb the relationship, made promises, and finally showed the fangs of the she-wolf, reminding the other party that she was not easy to mess with.

alludes to a classic line she said with her ex-husband:

You should run into a she-wolf

It's urgent

I'm going to see blood

seems to wag the tail to seek peace, but in fact it is dangerous and abnormal, and it is definitely one of the most wonderful performances of Zhou Xun in the whole film.

The definition of "madness" is actually very simple: a departure from social rationality and rules.

At first glance, Jing Lan's character is actually very decent and rational.

But her horror lies in the fact that on the surface, the party who is both morally and legally at fault is extremely natural to provoke and ignore the rules.

There is no mention of Jing Lan's identity in the film, but there is a plot where she made a few phone calls to apply for a visa for the son of the suspect who fled across the country, which shows the hard background of her background.

So to be more precise, she does not deviate from the rules of society, but only obeys her own rules.

This is also "madness", but more subtle and internalized.

When her son went crazy and shot and injured people, she only had to comfort her son, completely ignoring right and wrong.

How can you not be "crazy" if you are so indifferent to the lives of human beings?

In the film, under the guise of "revenge for women", Lao Jin wraps himself with justice, but in fact, it is to hide the debt and anxiety in his heart, so this kind of "madness" has more or less an element of performance. He just wants to prove that he is a good father and goes crazy by any means necessary.

And Jing Lan is the "crazy" who really cares for the calves and dares to go to extremes.

It is difficult to perform the externalized "madness", but it is even more difficult to perform the kind of "madness" that is internalized in the heart and is silent.

Zhou Xun's madness in the film is released layer by layer with the plot.

When Lao Jin broke into the house, she first pretended to be nervous and blocked the basement door with her body, inducing Lao Jin to be suspicious and thus stepping into the trap. She trapped Lao Jin in one fell swoop, bought time for her son, and was as calm as a hunter throughout the whole process.

and then in the car chase scene of "Rain of Fish from the Sky", in the face of the pursuit of police cars, she gradually took off her disguise, turned into an outlaw, and dirty the police at the fork in the road.

And the moment when Jing Lan fully revealed her true identity was when she learned that her son was lynched by Lao Jin, she immediately drove into Lao Jin and asked him to fight for her son.

When the car drove to the edge of the cliff, she looked ahead and chose to jump into the sea directly.

When I saw this clip, I couldn't help but sigh that it is not enough to destroy the enemy, but also to destroy myself, which is really "crazy".

Jing Lan is like a fireball that is burning more and more, and the moment when she jumps off the cliff into the sea is also the time when the anger of the whole film is at its peak.

As I said earlier, I think "Involving the Sea" is a film where "people are greater than drama".

This is not a shortcoming, good actors play the main role, which is the best signboard, no matter drama, film and television have always been like this.

On the other hand, it shows the ability of actors like Zhou Xun.

The actor is a mirror that reflects the truth of humanity through himself.

And Zhou Xun's confidence as a top actor is that she not only plays the general rationality, but also is good at playing a few irrationalities, which is very rare in the entire Chinese film industry.

And these dark images are on the other side of society, but they can make us look back at human nature more reflexively.

The role of Jing Lan can be seen as a continuation of the marginalized role in Zhou Xun's career. Although there are not many scenes, they are quite calm.

Nana, who Zhou still plays in "Wading the Sea", is a neurotic girl who is crazy about love, but compared to Zhou Xun's perverse roles in the early years, it is still a bad breath.

The peony in "Suzhou River" is a girl who is in love with her brain and has no reservations, her clear eyes are a little obedient, her love is going to be taken out, and every minute is going to burn people.

This is also the public's initial screen memory of Zhou Xun:

An idiot who falls in love and can't extricate himself.

Smart, capricious, infatuated.

is almost a fallen girl's play, she copied and pasted it in "Hong Kong Has a Hollywood".

It's just that Chen Guo's ghostly aura and gloom are contaminated, and her enthusiasm begins to transform to the opposite.

can play a good girl, it's more about God rewarding food.

In "Night Banquet", she relied on this qualification, and her role was a generation worse than that of Zhang Niangniang of the same generation.

Zhou Xun is definitely the chosen girl, with no offensive facial features, a pair of talking eyes, dynamic eccentric, static and pitiful.

But she doesn't stick to that.

The years are unforgiving, except for Liu Xiaoqing, no one can play a girl for a lifetime.

More importantly, find the core that does not change between rheological characters.

Zhou Xun's unique thing in the world is usually called "aura", but these two words are empty.

In my opinion, "aura" refers to the ability to reach out to the most perverse parts of human nature and to give motivation and credibility to all the actions of a character.

It's stupidity, it's madness, it's madness, it's crazy and neurotic, it's desperate and obstinate.

is like the prostitute who is good at playing fairy jumping in "Hollywood", innocent and ruthless, can light up the alleys with beauty, and can also suck human blood by cruelty.

This kind of alternative and complex drama, few of them can be qualified, let alone the beauty of the performance.

and the fox demon in "Painted Skin", she was originally profound and cultivated, but she would rather sacrifice her life to feel the taste of love, completely ignoring the cost performance.

This kind of grotesque paranoia can only be convincing with Zhou Xun's face.

and then "Li Mi's Conjecture", which I collaborated with Cao Baoping for the first time in 09, is a work that I think Zhou Xun really got rid of the childishness of a girl.

Throughout the film, her hair is unkempt, her lips are dried in two, her eyes are full of nervous breakdown, and she is often smoking a cigarette, as if she is an empty shell that has lost her mind.

After the girlish aura dissipated, Perverse turned into the ultimate madness.

She searched for her missing lover Fang Wen, but after a long time, she almost forgot her original intention, and just repeated it mechanically.

In four years, she gave up her youth and buried herself, and she could only stay in place and wait emptyly, with only numbness left in her eyes.

When she met Fang Wen who appeared again, she could completely ignore passers-by, chase him and read the letters from the past, crying blood every word.

She cried and shouted to vent her emotions, but when she said it emotionally, she smiled, completely uncontrollable.

When she finally saw the tape left by Fang Wen, she seemed to return to her self when she was a girl, and raised a shy smile at her lover again, and then tears slowly rolled in her eyes, she knew that Fang Wen still loved her, and she also knew that he would never come back.

The camera of laughing and crying for a few seconds turns back and forth, and you can see the complexity of emotions, and you can see Li Mi from a girl to a young man.

Zhou Xun completed his personal rebirth in 2009, but he did not change his bones.

Because this exploration of the ultimate in human nature is still the most powerful part of her performance.

Whether it is Li Mi, who has formed a heart disease for love, or Gu Xiaomeng, who is shining in the dead end, they are all excellent answers that she has spent ten years of hard work handing over.

In cliché words, if you don't go crazy, you won't survive.

An actor like Zhou Xun was originally born for the most tricky role.

In Western opera, there is a term called "crazy scene", and the heroine will have a special crazy scene, which is often the climax of the whole play.

In crazy scenes, actresses will take the opportunity to soar the high notes and contribute the most tense performances, in short, to show off their skills and attract attention.

Laura Claycom's Rukia of Lagamemore

It's the same with ourselves.

"Crazy" has always been the most exciting part of opera, such as "Lost Son and Crazy" by the Peking Opera Shang School and "Tears of the Barren Mountain" by the Cheng School, both of which regard the heroine's mental disorder as the brilliance of the whole play, and the actors also need to show all their stunts.

Shang Xiaoyun "Lost a Child and Gone Crazy"

Completely different sects, but they all coincidentally worship the same martial arts as a unique learning.

It can be seen that "madness" is a long-standing aesthetic orientation.

The reason is also simple, first, as mentioned earlier, it is the best subject for actors to prove their strength.

Second, "abnormality" is always more tense and intriguing than "normal".

Wanrong, played by Chen Chong in "The Last Emperor", was taken away by the Japanese army after losing her child, fell into a smoke building, and was already mentally disturbed when she came back.

She dragged her crumbling and crippled body, and even her husband who had gone through the great changes in history together could not be recognized, but she did not forget to spit on the face of every puppet soldier.

Chen Chong "The Last Emperor"

The forgotten love is certainly regrettable, but her bitter hatred that has turned into energy is even more shocking.

In fact, this kind of abnormality has long been traced:

When Wanrong faced the breakdown of her marriage, she pulled out the petals of the flowers alone, stuffed them into her mouth, chewed for a moment and pulled out a wry smile.

Desperate to the extreme, probably this is silently waiting for rot.

What she eats is not only flowers, but the dark emptiness that lasts day and night, the extreme depression of feudal etiquette, and the self forced to fragments by fate.

Such thrilling performances used to abound.

Gong Li in "The Red Lantern Hangs High" went insane in a fiery red that symbolized women's blood and tears, and she finally became a puppet-like dead thing under the encroachment of the world.

He Saifei in "Fengyue" has the most deformed and grotesque personality, but he complains of deep pain when he cries blood.

There is also a crazy woman played by Lin Meizhao (the baby-sounding sister Meizhao in "Kangxi") in the selfish movie "Scarecrow".

She lost her husband and her mind in the war, but ironically became the only free person in the mountains and rivers.

Her dance in a blood-red wedding dress is the most striking scar left by history on this land.

Broaden your horizons to the world's top actresses such as Adjani and Huppert, all of whom have created miracles due to madness.

Aka Yu "Wearing Demon"

Huppert's self-harm scene at the end of "The Piano Teacher" is recognized as a god-level performance.

I didn't get it at first, I just thought it was scary and grotesque. But take a closer look:

She screamed first, and then stabbed the other.

Her female body can no longer bear the burden of the world, screaming not because of pain, but because it is unbearable, and this knife is her release and relief.

A great performance can tell the truth of this world with the most marginal personality.

And I don't know when it began, it is rare to see such a role in China.

"Crazy scenes" are no longer a stage for top actors, but have become a special theme for sprinkling dog blood and attracting attention.

Interestingly, "madness" has always connected the poles of the performing arts:

Some people rely on it to go down in history and become immortals.

Some people can't even enjoy "Top Floor", so they can only become a laughing stock.

Therefore, although "Wading in the Sea" still has shortcomings in my opinion, I am still willing to applaud it.

Not for anything else, but also for actors like Zhou Xun to finally jump out of the encirclement of second-rate roles and find their lost ground.

Such a thick character is placed in the current internal entertainment, even if there are few scenes, it is difficult to hide its brilliance.

Foucault once defended madness in Madness and Civilization in this way:

"Insanity is a form of suffering... Honoring madness is not to interpret it as an involuntary, inevitable sudden illness, but to acknowledge the lowest limits of this human truth. ”

To perform the spirit of this generation, perhaps this is an inevitable lesson.

Sometimes the closer you get to madness, the more the truth is revealed.