Author: Sun Yonghui Source: IT Times
On the wet street, Wu Moshua (played by Jiang Qinqin) "snapped" angrily at her son He Mulian (played by Wu Lei), and had a stretch of extreme tugging with him: "Get out! You want me to die, you call the police to your mother?" I just can't earn a penny, I'm happy, I'm happy......" Wu Moshua in red has messy hair and makeup, and behaves crazy, she smashes chairs, roars, laughs, stands under the yellow light and scolds, and clapps wildly. Seeing that her mother became like two people because she mistakenly entered a pyramid scheme, He Mulian was frightened and distressed.
In the popular movie "The World of Grass and Trees", the actors' acting skills and contradictions and conflicts have been vividly demonstrated at this moment. This is the second work of the "Spring River Plumbing" director Gu Xiaogang's "Landscape Map" series, which mainly tells the story of the modern version of "Mulian Saves His Mother" - Ten years after He Shan (He Mulian's father) disappeared, Wu Moshua accompanied his son to Hangzhou to find his father, but his mother's fate has experienced two turns, one is that he was driven away from the tea garden by Lao Qian (played by Chen Jianbin ) mother, and second, he was deceived into the pyramid scheme organization "Butterfly International" by his closest sisters. She transformed, from her clothes to her words and deeds, she was like a "new life", fluttering like a butterfly in an ethereal dream. So, He Mulian decided to "go undercover" to collect evidence to save her mother.
After watching, walking out of the theater, some people talked about buying tickets because of actors, and some people said that this was "All or Nothing 2", thinking that there would be related anti-pyramid schemes and anti-fraud highlights. However, although the film is based on the slogan "One person enters the pyramid scheme, the whole family suffers", it has a deeper theme under the atmosphere of literary films - or lies in the exploration of life, family affection, hope and other elements.
Find the Tree of Life
"Life is a lifetime, grass and trees are autumn. ”
Novelist Milan Kundera once said, "Life is a tree full of possibilities." "There are similarities between a person's life and a life of trees, and every ring and every experience is the footprint of one's own growth. There is also an image of a tree in the film, and the story is told through the mouth of Ho Mulian: "Everyone has their own tree". Whether it is the protagonist or the supporting characters who are stuck in the quagmire of pyramid schemes, they all have a tree in their hearts, or to find their relatives, or to become self-confident and self-reliant, or to become a father who makes his children proud. This tree symbolizes a goal, a certain faith.
The beginning of the story is a "shouting mountain" ceremony.
The morning light is faint, and the sky is still a little dim, Wu Moss Hua and her fellow tea pickers are dressed in tea-picking equipment, talking and laughing on the shaking shuttle, and go to the green tea mountains to work together. Infested with snakes and other insects on the stone path, they arrived slowly, stood in a staggered position among the tea trees, held flashlights, and then "shouted" to the mountain. "The mountain lord who slept all winter, knowing that we are going up the mountain to pick tea, begged the mountain lord to bless us with safety and a bumper harvest ......" Wu Moshua expressed her inner wish.
The quiet, tranquil, and harmonious atmosphere in the early stage of the film contrasts with the chaos in the middle and late stages, and on the whole, a certain amount of space was spent in the early stage to explain the relationship between the characters and the background of the story.
Ten years after her husband disappeared, Wu Mohua and He Mulian depended on each other, but He Mulian did not give up looking for her father, and after learning that her father had run a boat in Hangzhou, he decided to stay in Hangzhou. Wu Moshua had feelings for Lao Qian, the boss of Chashan, and when she tried to ask her son if he supported the two of them, she received a negative response, as well as Lao Qian's mother.
The first turning point in the plot is that Wu Moshua is kicked out of the tea garden because of her relationship with Lao Qian by people around her who make a "small report" to her mother, and she is followed away by Jin Lan, who seems to be a good sister, but the character is the key person who leads the heroine into a trap. When she was still in the tea plantation, Jin Lan played the role of a "megaphone", keen to promote the foot stickers sold by her cousin in the dormitory, and pointed out that she had a high salary and a lot of money, and lived an exquisite life of a successful person. As everyone knows, the foot sticker is only a "fishing" prop for the MLM organization "Butterfly International". In another storyline, Mu Lian, who graduated from university, found a job selling health supplements in the local area, however, there are also many routines behind the job.
Wake up in the middle of a loss
"A hundred years of repair can be crossed in the same boat, and a thousand years of repair can be slept together, how many years will our fate have to be repaired?" This is the scene of Wu Moss Hua and Jin Lan leaving the tea garden and taking a bus to the headquarters of "Butterfly International". The audience also learned from the dialogue the way of joining the staff - "killing familiarity", that is, being introduced, recommended or led by relatives, friends, and fellow villagers.
Dressed in overalls printed with the words "You can go crazy, you can't accept your fate", the MLM staff created an extremely frenzied atmosphere with their passionate voices, and under the temptation of high bonuses, Wu Moshua and the others in the car slowly fell into the trap.
The film depicts the mental control of Wu Moshua by the MLM organization in this way: the first step is to constantly ask "Who are you?" to gradually disintegrate his inner self-confidence, the second step is to constantly stimulate him to collapse and suffer, and finally, to send love and gain his trust. The lines changed from "I am the abandoned Wu Moss, the Wu Moss Flower that no one likes" to "I want to be an independent and confident Wu Moss Flower". Under the inducement of the interlocking, the heroine sold the house and entered the game.
On the other hand, He Mulian also witnessed the model of the health care product company "trapping" the elderly group, and the characters in the film declared the four "magic weapons" of "accompanying, coaxing, scaring and guilty". "Accompanying" refers to accompanying laundry, cooking, and cleaning, which seems to be asking for warmth, but in fact it is to find out the details and prepare for subsequent fraud; "coaxing" refers to coaxing the elderly through sweet words; "scare" refers to threatening the elderly by exaggerating the facts, making them feel frightened and helpless; "guilt" refers to grasping the sympathy and guilt of the elderly, making them feel that they can't live up to their families.
He Mulian, who found the problem, woke up in time and chose to leave.
"Mom, ouch, I really don't recognize you anymore. This was the first thing He Mulian said when he met his mother again, but the person who was closest to him gave him a sense of strangeness. In the subsequent in-depth understanding, He Mulian discovered the clue and realized that her mother had entered the pyramid scheme, so she infiltrated the pyramid scheme to search for evidence to rescue her mother.
The question of the grass and trees
With the collapse of the MLM organization, the story enters the final part, but Wu Mosshua, who escaped from the MLM organization, falls into a long coma, in order to "wake up" her mother, He Mulian carries her into the mountains and forests, trying to return to nature and find the first memory.
In the green mountains and forests, a little bright red of Wu Moss's clothes faintly appeared. He Mulian accidentally fell while climbing, resulting in a finger injury, and after a simple bandage, he continued to carry his mother up the mountain. "When I was a child, I got lost, and it was my mother who found me. This time, Mom's lost and I took her home. He Mulian's line is touching.
When Wu Moshua woke up, she saw a huge tiger with a hideous face and roared at it. The setting is reminiscent of the tiger in director Ang Lee's masterpiece "Life of Pi", which is another incarnation of the male protagonist, his fantasy "horror chum", representing his bestiality, evil, fear and despair.
Regarding the setting of the tiger in this film, actor Jiang Qinqin interpreted it this way: "In fact, the tiger is me (Wu Mosshua) myself, everyone will have greed, evil, anger, and hatred in their hearts, which is the evil thoughts that we are most unwilling to face." After Moss Flower entered the MLM, she thought she had reinvented herself. At that time (the moment she saw the tiger and roared at it), she was actually fighting a decisive battle with herself to conquer her so-called desires and our dark side. ”
The film not only presents the natural scenery of the forest, but also has metaphors and mappings in the names of the characters, such as the "moss flower" in Wu Moss Flower and the "lotus" in He Mulian. "Plants and trees are probably very suitable for humans, with hope for life and exploration of Chinese culture. Shortly after the film was launched, Gu Xiaogang explained: "There is no way for plants and trees to choose the land they want to grow on, and there is no way for people to decide their origins. From the moment when the seeds of life do not know where to fall, all we can decide is to find the direction of the light and keep growing. If we are really unlucky, we will be reincarnated as 'moss', even in places where the sun does not shine, I hope we will not lose the courage to bloom. ”
Since its release, the film has received mixed reviews, but when the audience is watching the story of the plants and trees and the mother and son, they are actually watching themselves.