In the past Qingming file, several new films at home and abroad jointly created a box office performance of 840 million yuan, among which "The World of Grass and Trees" was the highest-grossing domestic film during the period. As of 20 o'clock on April 8, the cumulative box office of "The World of Grass and Trees" reached 63.93 million yuan. Maoyan Professional Edition predicts that its total box office in the mainland will exceed 100 million, which is already a good result in the field of literary films.
The lineup composed of well-known actors such as Wu Lei, Jiang Qinqin, and Chen Jianbin has brought starlight to this film. Before and after the release of the film, the marketing level made efforts to expand in the sinking market, and from the perspective of market performance, the results were good.
Director Gu Xiaogang won the Kurosawa Prize, becoming the third Chinese-speaking director to win the award after Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chen Kaige, and the youngest winner of the award since its inception in 2004.
Five years ago, Gu Xiaogang's first feature film "Spring River Plumbing" was affirmed by domestic and foreign film festivals. The film is like a scroll painting, changing the scenery step by step, slowly spreading the natural landscape and humanistic features of Fuyang, Hangzhou, and achieving a harmonious integration of Chinese landscape charm and secular humanity in the film.
Unfortunately, this film, which was born for the big screen, was not released in theaters that year, and was only broadcast online. However, the film's unique aesthetic style has made Gu Xiaogang famous in the industry, and his second feature film "The World of Grass and Trees" not only upgraded the cast, but also expanded the main creative team, and invited Mei Linmao to serve as the soundtrack of the film.
Compared with the scattered perspective of landscape painting in "Spring River Plumbing", "The World of Grass and Trees" focuses on the social topic of pyramid schemes, introduces genre elements in the middle of the film, sets up strong dramatic conflicts and emotional impacts, and continues the aesthetic characteristics of the previous work at the beginning and end of the film. However, the switching of two different styles of language seems to have the impression of collision and separation, which also has a certain impact on the film's reputation. It can be seen that when the film lineup, cost is upgraded, and there are commercial appeals, how to properly integrate personal style into the narrative is a test that every new director will face in the second and third feature films.
It is worth affirming that "The World of Grass and Trees" does not use MLM as a gimmick, nor does it rudely shoot a purely commercial film with the main purpose of stimulating people's senses from a curious perspective, but leaves more ink to details such as how MLM organizations control the minds of victims and change people's behaviors and thoughts. What the film wants to express is that people are deceived not because of lack of intelligence, but because their spirit and emotions are not fully satisfied, and they are not supported by society. Scams like MLM are not isolated cases, but are relevant to everyone.
A sophisticated deception that leads people into the game
The first scene of the film begins with the mountain shouting ceremony unique to Chinese tea culture. At dawn before the arrival of spring, tea pickers climb the tea mountain along the path by starlight, shouting to the still sleeping mountain, under the aerial shot, the harmony and closeness between people and the countryside, the spirituality and sacredness of nature can be seen at a glance.
Then, the perspective of the film shifted to focus on the tea picker Wu Mosshua. Ten years after her husband disappeared, Moss finally decided to take a new life, but fate pushed her to another desperate situation. Her relationship with the tea merchant Lao Qian was thwarted, and she decided to leave the tea garden to restart her life, but was pulled into the pyramid marketing organization "Butterfly International" by her sister Jin Lan. Seeing the great changes in his mother's words and deeds, and after realizing that she had been deceived by a pyramid scheme, his son Mulian was so anxious that he decided to do everything he could to save his mother after seeing his mother fall deeper and deeper.
One of the inspirations for the film came from the Buddhist story "Mu Lian Saves His Mother". Unlike the stingy and greedy Mrs. Qingti in the original story, the mother Wu Taohua in the film is from a humble background, hardworking and kind, and has never taken the initiative to do evil, but was induced by the pyramid scheme organization to deviate from the right track. As a victim of a pyramid scheme, Wu Moshua was deceived not because of her greedy nature, but because of her miserable fate and the eagerness of her beloved son, she was at a loss.
Compared with other films of a similar genre, "The World of Grass and Trees" does not focus on the clue of how to rescue the victim. In the film, witnessing her mother's loss of control, Mu Lian was helpless for a while, and when she asked the police for help, she was persuaded to return due to insufficient evidence. Most of the time, the "rescue" operation cannot be carried forward, and all that is seen is the confusion and pain of the inability to communicate between the victim and his loved ones. Gu Xiaogang once witnessed a family member being deceived, and he also persuaded the other party to no avail like Mulian in the film. To this end, he has followed the buses of MLM organizations and learned about all aspects of their operations.
The film depicts the layers of traps carefully arranged by MLM organizations in a large space, restores the curriculum, products, systems and culture, and simulates the real MLM scene. The scam of MLM is done in a progressive way: first it moves people with emotion, makes the victims unguard themselves and gains their trust in a closed environment, then learns words with success, belittles their personality and value, stimulates their emotions, breaks their will, and exercises mental control over them, and then launches a product model packaged as a "sharing economy", so that members can establish a sense of belonging to the organization, pay a lot of money to buy products, and then sell them to the people around them to develop downlines.
It is in such a sophisticated deception that Wu Moshua went from hesitation to excitement in the bizarre lights, and she was manipulated by words such as "becoming an independent woman" and "not accepting her fate" with an unhappy marriage and a miserable life, and was controlled by the MLM organization step by step, she offered the most enthusiastic applause, and also gave her precious trust and all her wealth. Like Wu Mosshua, the blindness of most of the victims is because they are already at a low point in their lives, and their physical, emotional and will are relatively weak, and the MLM organization captures everyone's desires and weaknesses and amplifies them. It also means that it's possible for each of us to get caught up in it and not be able to get out.
Break through the illusion and find your true self
Jiang Qinqin, who is well-known to the public for starring in costume dramas, has a relatively solidified screen image over the years. In addition, she has returned to family life for many years and only appears as a wife in variety shows, which makes her more able to enter Wu Moshua's heart. In "The World of Grass and Trees", Jiang Qinqin contributed a performance that subverted the image of the past, portraying an ordinary woman who went crazy because she was deeply involved in pyramid schemes, and won the Best Actress at the 17th Asian Film Awards.
A few days ago, in a post-screening talk held at Shanghai University, Jiang Qinqin talked about her understanding of the role. In her opinion, the reason why Wu Moshua fell into a frenzy is because she needs to be recognized by society too much: "A middle-aged woman in the countryside, she longs for awakening and realizing her self-worth, and that kind of power makes me admire it very much." She said that although Wu Moshua fell into a pyramid scheme, she was not a joke or a loser: "She is a brave person I admire." ”
From the perspective of human nature, Jiang Qinqin can understand the reason why Wu Moshua is deeply trapped in pyramid schemes and cannot extricate herself. In her view, MLM is like opium, and a similar comparison can be found in life. "I already have hundreds of lipsticks at home, and I still want this and that, which is actually a kind of dissatisfaction, a desire, and even an emptiness. Jiang Qinqin said, "You hope that it will bring you pleasure, but in fact, that pleasure is very short-lived." True satisfaction is spiritual satisfaction, financial independence, and the ability to think independently. ”
Chen Jianbin plays the role of Lao Qian, a tea merchant in the film, a kind but somewhat cowardly man who loves Wu Moss but has no courage to break through the worldly concept. Chen Jianbin does not have many scenes, and thinks that he acts "very ordinary, very ordinary", when he enters the film as an audience, he sees people who are very familiar in life become extremely strange in the film, and he can better understand the huge mental damage caused by the pyramid scheme expressed in the movie.
In the climax of the film, Mu Lian, played by Wu Lei, tries her best to wake up her mother, Wu Taohua, but the mother doesn't want to believe the fact that she is deeply involved in a pyramid scheme, she feels that her son has never understood her, and even thinks that when her desire and value are finally realized, she is destroyed by her son. She couldn't realize that it was just an illusion constructed by lies and deception.
"She has become a person she doesn't know, alienated by something, black and white, beauty and ugliness, and she can't even wake up her own children. "We will face a lot of temptations in our lives, and when we can't treat these temptations and our own desires correctly, these desires and temptations will in turn devour you until you are unrecognizable." ”
At the end of the film, Mu Lian returns to Chashan with her mother, who has had a nervous breakdown, hoping that the plants, trees and creatures can awaken her mother's will. Under a thousand-year-old tree, the mother and son entered a dream, in which Wu Moshua saw a fierce tiger, she was frightened at first, and then struggled to get up and glared angrily, and drank the tiger away. At that moment, Wu Mosshua's face showed an unprecedented expression, and it burst out with terrifying power. There are many interpretations of this surreal ending, and Jiang Qinqin has his own understanding of this.
Jiang Qinqin said that when she read the script, she saw the tiger as if she saw herself: "Everyone has a beast in their hearts, a fierce tiger, which may represent your desire, greed, hatred, anger, and even evil." At that time, Moss Hua saw the tiger, like another self standing in front of her, the new self she thought she had established, the independent and confident Wu Mosshua. ”
Wu Moshua finally realized that it was a fictional self: "She is very obsessed with that fictional self and longs to become so powerful. But it was illusory, not something she had sought through real effort, so at that moment, she was struggling with herself. In that moment, she made a break with that imaginary self. ”
(This article is from Yicai)