The 2024 42nd Hong Kong Film Awards were presented on April 14.
"The Bad Tongue Lawyer", Zheng Baorui ("Murder"), Tony Leung ("Goldfinger"), and Yu Xiangning ("Under the Day") won the Best Film, Director, Actor, and Actress awards respectively.
Tony Leung won the Best Actor award for the sixth time
Such a result has made many fans question whether this year's Academy Awards is suspected of seniority, and the new works of newcomers with outstanding standards have been ignored.
For example, this high-scoring masterpiece that received 12 nominations and only won the New Director Award in the end.
"Diary of a Youth"
The 8.6-point film, which debuted at the Shanghai International Film Festival last year and was released in Hong Kong, has finally been released in the mainland and is likely to become the highest-scoring Chinese-language film of the year. The film's director, Zhuo Yiqian, also beat director Pham Tien An (Vietnam), who won the Caméra d'Or (first film) award at this year's Asian Film Awards.
So, what is the magic of this film that focuses on teenage suicide?
From dare to bold
"Diary of a Youth" is the directorial debut of the post-85s Hong Kong filmmaker Zhuo Yiqian.
Previously, he had only directed a few short films such as "At least in a dream" and "Starry Night", but he has been in the industry for ten years and served as one of the screenwriters of "Kill the Wolf, Greedy Wolf" (2017).
At least in a dream (2011)
The creation of "Youth Diary" originated from a past event and a set of data. Director Zhuo once had a friend who was writing, he thought he was writing a script, but the next day he found out that the other party was writing a suicide note, and this friend eventually committed suicide.
He realized that people he knew might leave suddenly, and many netizens would blame the people who left, believing that they had poor psychological tolerance and a weak sense of responsibility. But in Zhuo Dao's view, the state of depression is not an option for those who leave.
According to data from the Centre for Suicide Prevention at the University of Hong Kong, the average number of suicides per day in Hong Kong is 2.71, and the age of suicides is decreasing year by year. According to Yip Siu-fai, associate dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Hong Kong, when the Suicide Prevention Research Center was established, many people thought that it was a wasted effort.
The proximity of life and thoughts makes telling a story of depression and suicide a must-do. Director Zhuo first found a film investor, but as soon as the bosses heard that he was going to commit suicide, they hurriedly persuaded him to change the subject, which invisibly reflected the general avoidance of mental health in Hong Kong society.
Director Zhuo Yiqian
In desperation, he could only use his script to participate in the first feature film project of the Hong Kong Film Development Fund, and finally won in the student group (and also the professional group) with a budget of 3.2 million Hong Kong dollars.
The First Feature Film Scheme has been held for seven years, funding a total of 24 films with a total investment of HK$120 million. "Ignorance", "Fallen People", "Hand Cigarettes", "Jindu", "I Wish People Long" and other small-cost Hong Kong-made films in recent years are all from this project.
During the filming process, these films were also escorted by famous directors such as Kwan Jinpeng, Chen Guo ("Made in Hong Kong"), Qiu Litao, and "Youth Diary" was supervised by Er Dongsheng. The film's script was conceived in 2015, the first draft was completed in 2018, and the film's official shooting took only 19 days.
Because there is no pressure to recover the cost, Zhuo Dao has completed the expression he wants. That is to say, the mental health problems that everyone talks about are clearly put on the screen, exposed, and analyzed, because only by facing them squarely can we solve the problem.
For example, in the film, the boy suffers from insomnia and asks his mother if he can see a psychiatrist, but his mother looks frightened and accuses you of being crazy, are you crazy?
The film is co-starring Lu Zhenye, Zheng Zhongji, Huang Zile, Wei Luosha, etc., among them, Lu Zhenye, who is also a post-85 generation, is the queen actor of Director Zhuo (he starred in several short films before). In Director Zhuo's view, Lu Zhenye has a natural sense of brokenness. This sense of brokenness is full of traces of muses between him and Lu Zhenye, just like between Cai Mingliang and Li Kangsheng.
Lu Zhenye
From gifted to mediocre
"Diary of a Youth" is only 95 minutes long, and the narrative structure is exquisite, which makes people sigh that they can tell a good story in 100 minutes. The story is mainly composed of two planes.
In the first plane (the current plane), a suicide note mentions the possession. The college entrance examination is approaching, and high school teacher Zheng Sir (played by Lu Zhenye) received an anonymous suicide note, although his life and feelings have been in ruins, he still decided to find the person who wrote the suicide note. A life cannot be passed away.
In the process of searching for the author of the suicide note, Zheng Sir opens a second time and space (past time and space) in his memories. The plane is painfully indulged in a yellowed diary. Zheng Sir's memories and this diary bring the audience into a typical middle-class family in Hong Kong.
The father who makes money to support the family Zheng Zixiong (played by Zheng Zhongji), the mother of a full-time housewife Zheng Li Jiaxin (played by Wei Luosha), the mediocre brother Zheng Youjie (played by Huang Zile), and the talented younger brother Zheng Youjun.
At first glance, the mediocrity of the elder brother ruined the harmony within the entire family. Because of his backward academic performance and the comic world, his father was angry and violent at every turn, his mother complained about his wife, and his younger brother was indifferent.
But in fact, it is the miniature class formed by these four people that destroys the harmony of the family. The father who said "I bought everything in this house" is the top of the class;
The mother who complains that "if I divorce it must be because of you", and the younger brother who covers his ears when he is beaten with his brother, is in the middle of the class;
The elder brother who always says "I'm sorry" and self-suggests "Zheng Youjie, you are trash" is at the bottom of the class.
So, how do these two time and space, the present and the past, link together, and do they have the same "anchor"? The mastery of the film's script lies in the fact that it uses narrative trickery to link the two time and space, and in the surprise and turn of "what you think is not what you think", it creates the deepest emotional impact and the most turbulent tears in the whole film.
The narrative technique originated from speculative literature often produces a narrative charm that subverts cognition in movies. For example, in Ning Hao's comedy "Heart Blossom Road" (2014), a signature wall links two different periods of time, and this wall is a kind of narrative technique, which has the magic of "misplacing time".
"Heart Flower Road"
Further jumping out of the superficial narratives of two time and space, family class, and time and space links, it can be found that what engulfs all this is actually a deformed part of the social environment. Diffusing this part is the never-ending contrast between people, and the involution formed by this contrast.
It can even be said that the development of society is wrongly believed to need to be driven by such contrasts and involution. It is this kind of "source power" that impacts the suicide notes, diaries, and middle-class families in the film.
Compared with the low-cost Hong Kong film expression trend represented by works such as "Ignorance", "Wheat Passerby" and "Narrow Road Dust", "Youth Diary" chooses the middle class for its own reasons. The director does not want the audience to look at the subject of depression and suicide with a critical and critical eye, but hopes that the audience will look at themselves and look at mental health problems with parallel eyes.
The father in the film climbs from the grassroots to the middle class, and also raises the question - does a socially gifted father allow a child who grows mediocre to exist? And when society and growth are contained in the family, shouldn't the contradiction between giftedness and mediocrity be naturally eliminated?
From child to parent
In recent years, the birth rate in almost all countries in East Asia has been declining, and this trend has been accompanied by sobering questions such as what exactly is a child, and what is the purpose of having a child?
The parents in "Diary of a Youth" are quite extreme because of the concentration and purification of drama, and after putting aside the dramatic elements, you will find that they are the embodiment of many ordinary parents.
The father, who has the financial power in the family, is keen on stick education, and the mother, who is dependent on the father, assists the father in the language of PUA for the child.
"Dad beats you for your good", "Dad studied very hard to earn so much money to support us", "Everything Mom and Dad bought for you is the best"......
Analyzing the father's behavior and the mother's language, it is easy to find that the so-called love of parents fails to touch the emotional core of the child as a human individual, but revolves around the periphery of material, face, and inheritance.
They are simply using the child as a tool to sustain and pass on to the body. Of course, this kind of love will be crumbling, and once the child does not meet their heart, the so-called love will disappear suddenly.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, many Asian films have been about having children.
Hirokazu Kore-eda's Nobody Knows (2004) depicts the disappearance of a mother and the self-fending of a group of children, which is full of compassion and depicts the silent defeat of family affection by existence;
The youngest daughter in "Nobody Knows" died suddenly due to her mother's runaway
Nadine Labaki's "What Is Home" (2018) indicts the selfishness of poor parents trying to improve their lives by having children through the rare story of a boy suing his biological parents;
The only time the little male protagonist smiled in "What Is Home".
Cao Baoping's "Wading in the Sea of Anger" (2023) uses the bizarre death of a girl in Japan to dissect the bloody reality that many parents love face more than their children......
These films, which are adapted from real events or novel texts, have a kind of rarity of survival environment or dramatic conflict for domestic audiences. "Diary of a Youth" abandons this rarity, and hides the selfishness and distortion of parents in the universality and routineness.
That is, in a family with a completely normal appearance, who knows what kind of cruel torture the children in it are enduring and? When evil is hidden in love and parasitic in the ordinary, it is difficult for outsiders, not to mention the parties themselves, to break through this thorny barrier.
As the English title of the film "Time Still Turns the Pages" indicates, "time is still turning the pages", even if this young diary is closed, the same kind of "ordinary tragedy" will not stop. It is like a body lesion hidden under healthy skin, stinging the heart between the inner texture and flesh.
For example, the character of the father Zheng Zixiong, when you think that he is a vicious and vicious person, he will return to his normal and ordinary side, like a chameleon, and naturally put away the frightening parts.
So, what exactly is a child? To paraphrase a popular phrase – you're not a sequel to your parents, you're not a prequel to your children, you have a script for your own life.
Children can often understand the meaning of this sentence. Unfortunately and sadly, in the current parent-child cultural environment, it is actually the parents who don't care about this sentence that should really understand its meaning.
Author: County Hao
Editor: Donnie Yen