As a tear-jerking healing masterpiece jointly presented by Hui Yinghong and Liu Haocun, the plot of the movie "Splendid Her" that is being released is bloody and forcibly sensational, which not only failed to make people cry, but made the audience feel like pins and needles. In recent years, domestic tear-jerking movies have been one after another, but the box office appeal has visibly declined. The "crying film" that is too routine can only be disgusting, making the audience shed tears of true feelings, and the creators still need to go to heart.
The actor's performance fell into a sensational routine
"Tears are like tap water, as if ordered by the director: one, two, three, cry!" "The strings start, the actors cry, the audience, follow up." "Sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism, pinch the watch to make you cry, but unfortunately everyone doesn't eat this set anymore." Although the Douban score has not yet been opened, the short review page of the movie "Splendid Her" has been crowded with negative reviews from netizens. As a film about the family relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, the film not only did not have the emotion that the audience expected, but was full of a lot of deliberate and ineffective sensationalism.
With the death of her father and the remarriage of her mother, the little girl and her grandmother depended on each other, but an accident went missing, leaving her and her grandmother separated for 12 years. After the reunion, the grandmother saved money for the girl to go to school and pursue her dreams, and the grandparents and grandchildren redeemed each other, but in the end, the grandmother also had Alzheimer's disease...... Film critic Jing Runcheng bluntly said that the plot of "Splendid Her" is too bloody, and basically uses all the common routines of domestic bitter films. "The film has been sensational. After a while, the soft light and a lyrical music came, and the two heroines began to cry, but they failed to make the audience empathize, and they felt very uncomfortable. ”
Film market analyst Zhu Qingtian commented that there are many unreasonable plots in the plot of "Splendid Her", and the plot of "reducing intelligence" makes the characters suspended and unable to impress the audience. "At the beginning, the girl played by Liu Haocun and her partner were coerced by bad people and did some bad things, such as selling fake drugs. But they have mobile phones, and judging from the scene, they can easily escape through the window, but they have been controlled by two bad guys for a long time. After the girls successfully escaped, the bad guys still went to them, aren't they afraid to call the police? The heroine's father cheated on his daughter's identity in order to cheat the insurance, is the insurance company so easy to fool? These logics don't make sense, and the plot twist is too blunt. ”
The two female leads, Hui Yinghong and Liu Haocun, one fell into a routine, and the other was still immature. "Hui Yinghong's recent works "I Love You!", "Saving the Suspect", and "Hiding from the Sky and Crossing the Sea" are all women who are mothers and are strong, and if they act too much, they will be standardized, not so amazing. In "Splendid Her", her non-standard Mandarin makes people play, and it is not very close to play the grandmother of the fishing village, and the traces of her performance are heavier. Zhu Qingtian said.
Excessive sensationalism makes the audience aesthetically fatigued
As of March 22, the cumulative total box office of "Splendid Her" has just exceeded 70 million yuan. Even if the filmmaker throws "tear gas", the audience will no longer be "pressed on their heads to cry". If tear-jerking movies want to get a high box office, they still need to seek self-breakthroughs.
Tear-jerking films, or more figuratively "crying films", refer to movies with tear-jerking as the main attraction. In the past few years, tear-jerking movies were mainly romance films, "Predecessor 3: Goodbye Ex", "Later Us", and "A Story More Sad Than Sadness", although the evaluation is generally not high, but with the gimmick of "a pack of tissues is not enough", they all sold well at the box office. In recent years, the "tears" of this kind of movie have been taken more extensively, and family affection, cute pets, birth, old age, sickness and death have all been filmed into the movie, becoming a "big killer" to earn the audience's tears. Han Yan's "Life Trilogy" ("Get Out! Tumor", "Send You a Little Red Flower", "Let's Shake the Sun Together"), "I Love You!" and "Life Events" he supervised made him the first domestic tear-jerking film in recent years.
However, when the "crying films" are piled up, the sensationalism is excessive and routine, and the audience doesn't buy it. "Goodbye, Li Kele", "The Sadness That Can't Cry", "As Long as You Live Better Than Me", "Priceless", "Amazing Dad", "All About My Mother" and other films are relatively average at the box office. Some films use "tear-jerking" as a marketing template, and put clips of the audience or well-known actors in tears on the short video platform, and even promote the dog crying when they see it, which further aggravates the audience's disgust.
"This kind of movie is easy to fall into mistakes in creation, putting all the suffering and misfortune on the characters, like Korean dramas in the early years, 'car accidents and terminal illnesses can't be cured', the characters and plots are too old-fashioned. The sensational techniques are also sensory, with soundtracks, flashbacks, and actors crying...... The audience must be aesthetically tired after watching too much, and the work can't help but be reminiscent. Jing Runcheng said.
Film critic Zige believes that most of the films that rely on the body or life and death to tear are shallow tragedies, while the tragedy in the pure sense is metaphysical, a tragedy about fate that acts on the spirit. "The protagonist makes all kinds of efforts, but in the end he can't resist fate, and no one will even be injured or die from beginning to end, but his spirit is broken. For example, Stephen Chow's "The King of Comedy" is the distance between dreams and reality that the protagonist can never reach. ”
Creation needs to be based on social emotions
Sensationalism is only a means, not an end. A good tear-jerking movie is not simply to make the audience cry, but to make them have an aftertaste, think and gain after having a strong emotional resonance.
"Purely sensational tear-jerking movies provide very poor emotional value to the audience. If a tragic movie wants to get a good market response, it will not only make the audience cry, but it will definitely have a relationship with the prevailing social mood now. The tear-jerking routine of "Splendid Her" is too traditional, and everyone will not have any associations with their own lives, so it no longer works. If you tie it to a certain social emotion, the effect is much better. Zige said.
Director Han Yan's creation of this kind of work provides a good example for practitioners. Jing Runcheng analyzed, whether it is "Life Trilogy" or "I Love You!", Han Yan not only tears jerking, but also added topics such as love, family affection, ethics, and medical treatment, which is rich in life texture. The tone of the film is not blindly sad, but incorporates a lot of comedy elements, and the perception is laughter and tears.
"Creators should not stop at showing suffering and misfortune, but should also further inquire and analyze the social issues behind these tragedies, so as to enhance the depth and practical significance of their works. Film critic Li Yi said that the theme of bitterness should jump out of the mode of earning people's tears, and bring more and deeper thinking about society and life. "Each part of the 'Life Trilogy' has progressed. "Get Out! Tumor" is also more comic, "Send You a Little Red Flower" joins love, and "Let's Shake the Sun Together" is more realistic, the daily state of seriously ill patients, the discrimination they face, and the helpless medical problems all make this work more full and moving. ”