Produced by | Tiger Sniff Youth Culture Group
Author | Mu Zitong
Editing, Cartography丨Slag County
This article was first published on the Tiger Sniff Youth Content public account "That NG" (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the faces, stories and attitudes of today's young people.
""New Life" is unfinished!"
The last episode has just finished broadcasting, and this year's first suspense drama "New Life", which is full of popular appearances, was scolded on the hot search.
Completely different from the tight and wonderful of the first 7 episodes, from the eighth episode onwards, the plot slides disfiguringly towards boredom and mediocrity. It seems that it is another crappy drama that stumbles in the balance of the review, and it has wasted the expectations of the audience since its launch.
But will a scam-themed series really end so simply? Or, this ending full of disobedience is the most successful hoax in the whole film.
(The following contains spoilers, please read with caution)
Take a look at the director's name to know what story "New Life" is about.
bid for the Olympic Games, directed "Beneficiary" and "All or Nothing", and was "far ahead" on the domestic anti-fraud track.
Not surprisingly, "New Life" revolves around the word "deception", 5 strangers are invited to the funeral of the same person, and then fall into Agatha's "Blizzard Villa"-style predicament.
A small island hanging off the coast, with no transportation and no signal. The people had to follow the instructions of the butler and tell the story between them and the protagonist of the funeral, "Fei Ke". After the story is told, the housekeeper will read Fei Ke's will and send everyone away.
Don't say you don't know, but be shocked when you say it. The five people found out that they knew five very different Fei Ke.
5 different WeChats, 5 different identities, the only thing that is the same is that they all seem to have been deceived by Fei Ke.
In front of coal boss Chen Shufa, Fei Ke is his son-in-law.
Brother Haigui is a high-achieving student, his father is an official of the Department of Soil and Mining, he is the right person, considerate and gentle to his daughter, and he is a fast son-in-law who can't be found with a lantern.
One day, Fei Ke suddenly disappeared and defrauded him of 40 million yuan, causing his daughter Chen Jiajia to commit suicide in depression.
In front of Cheng Hao, vice president of the fund company, Fei Ke is a "little friend".
A graduate of the Department of Materials of Chengjiang University, who has just entered the financial industry, is both smart and motivated, but also informed and interesting, can take care of housework inside, and is very decent to take it out, Cheng Hao acquiesced to him living in his own mansion.
Fei Ke took away 20 million yuan from him.
In front of Su Qian, the financial officer of the pharmaceutical company, Fei Ke is a hot young lover.
A graduate of the Department of Mathematics of Chengjiang University, a young investor with many golds, full of youthful vitality and passion for love.
Fei Ke not only defrauded her love and body, but also defrauded her of all her savings and the 10 million public funds that she temporarily embezzled.
In front of Zhang Xuaner, the sales of plastic surgery salons, Fei Ke was her first ex-boyfriend.
The senior of the Department of Information and Computing Science of Chengjiang University is a suave and high-level cadre, not only good at learning, but also well-connected.
Fei Ke did not cheat her out of her money, but cheated her "youth": for Fei Ke, she had plastic surgery, accompanied wine, mixed with society, and finally gave up the dance she once loved and interrupted her studies.
After everyone's story was told, everyone compared the timeline and found that there are no high-ranking cadres, where there are young people with more money, and there is only one resource handling master:
Chen Shufa's first meeting was in a high-end flat in a prime location. The luxury car keys naturally scattered on the table, and the non-selling national gift tea inadvertently took out, all made him more convinced of Fei Ke's "identity". As everyone knows, the big flat is Cheng Hao's, the luxury car is Cheng Hao's, and even the tea is given to Cheng Hao by others.
Fei Ke invited Chen Shufa to visit the investment project, and went to Su Qian's pharmaceutical company, as if he was in a no-man's land, because he was holding Su Qian's work card.
He is also Chen Shufa's son-in-law, Su Qian's boyfriend, and Cheng Hao's personal brother.
The energy of the deceived is fully "revitalized" in the hands of this master of time management, who skillfully leverages the resources of one person to the resources of another, and comes and goes freely in the rift of greed and fear.
On the domestic TV screen, there has not been such a charming image of a liar for a long time: steady and elegant, with ease, and endowed with 12 points of concentration and consideration to everyone, just like the most perfect lover in everyone's fantasy.
Such a handsome young man who can be salted and sweet, can attack and defend, so that the audience can't help but fall willingly: I don't hate Fei Ke to cheat money, I just hate that I don't make enough money, and I can't let him cheat me alone.
So far in the first 6 episodes of the series, it can be said that it is a biography of a genius liar. But then, after the fifth invitee, He Shan, spoke, the script turned to the second page of the reversal of all the staff.
Reporter He Shan, who apparently knows more than the others, throws out key evidence one after another, forcing the deceived to ask if the deceived people are really as innocent as they tell them.
It turned out that they were either greedy or conceited or lustful, and it was not so much that Fei Ke deliberately approached them, but that they rushed to swallow the hook because they "wanted something".
It turned out that Fei Ke became the son-in-law of the Chen family, not because Chen Jiajia was bent on marrying, but because Chen Shufa coveted his "identity" and forced another daughter he loved to forcibly marry. Cheng Hao is ambitious, Su Qian is lonely, and Zhang Xuan loves vanity, everyone is both a victim and an "accomplice" to the tragedy.
Fei Ke is no longer the "high-level pure deception warrior" who plays with all the good people in the palm of his hand, and has faded away from the aura of mythology. He doesn't have any superb deception skills, nor does he have any identity to rely on, but he just happens to appear next to people who are full of desire, is hurt by them, is used by them, and then turns around, pushes gently, and dials a thousand pounds.
All sentient beings are suffering, and deception is born from the heart. The film seems to be trying to tell the old saying: flies don't bite eggs.
In the first six episodes, Fei Ke deceived everyone, and in the seventh episode, everyone "deceived" Fei Ke, and played the audience back and forth, and it was a Rashomon-style "good deception".
Seeing that the suspense is full of expectations, the last three episodes must be another reversal of the climax, but I didn't expect that a good "fraud legend" suddenly turned to the legal channel illogically.
"It should be the law that punishes him, not lynching."
"We're not going to let Fei Ke go, but we're going to hand him over to the law."
At this big gathering with ghosts, when reporter He Shan suddenly said these words righteously, the audience laughed angrily. The change in painting style is abrupt, like the end credits of "Fight Club".
If the first 7 episodes are an exquisite suspense feast, then the last 3 episodes are like changing screenwriters to complete political tasks.
The reason why Fei Ke became Fei Ke in the two episodes is not because he is a natural criminal and a fraud criminal, but because his original family is unfortunate and society does not give him a chance.
The last episode talks about the liar Fei Ke repenting and reforming himself, dying to save He Shan, and all the other criminals are brought to justice.
Bright, correct, lackluster, the light of righteousness shines on the deep pit of the plot. After watching it, the audience couldn't calm down for a long time, not shocked, but angry:
"This is a scam drama, right? Immersive experience scammed. ”
"I just finished watching the ending, I feel OK every minute and every second, there's still time, wait, I have to reverse...
In the last 10 minutes, it's okay, there's still a chance, you see, He Shan is not that simple
In the last 1 minute, He Shan will definitely write the real truth in the dark corner, with an evil smile on the corner of her mouth, and the picture will all begin to reverse, and every detail will be fueled by her...
Then nothing happened, and I was the same as Li Zetian on the day I listened to the college entrance examination scores, and finally waited for Wen Zong 0. ”
Countless feelings of disobedience hovered in my heart: Can a miserable childhood lead us astray? Why did Fei Ke, who had cheated all his life, suddenly want to change his ways? A drama full of villains, why does He Shan be alone and act like a detective NPC from beginning to end?
If the story ends here, then "New Life" is undoubtedly a dead end.
But, is it really that simple? In every fraud case, we are repeatedly admonished: if a violation is well known, then there must be something wrong with it.
Never underestimating everyone's IQ is the ultimate weapon to break the scam.
This time, "New Life" deceived to the end. The seemingly unfinished ending is actually the key to the hidden ending "True End".
The details of the solution are hidden in the sense of disobedience of the feature film: why is it that all the villains in the whole drama are reversed, but He Shan is clean from beginning to end?
Because the writer of the story is He Shan.
History is a little girl who dresses up, and the story is even more. The final interpretation is in the hands of the storyteller.
All kinds of clues have already hinted that He Shan's reversal is the deepest hidden mechanism in the whole play.
The plot begins with He Shan receiving a call from Fei Ke, and ends with He Shan typing the last "(end)" on the computer. From beginning to end, the audience thinks that they are standing from God's perspective, but what they see is what they see is told from He Shan's perspective.
Another small detail once again corroborates this, after He Shan knocked down the word "(end)", a few lines of subtitles flashed on the screen to explain the characters' future conversations, and then, the screen displayed "The end of the whole play", before the film was officially announced. Two different "endings" are just hints that the first time is the end of He Shan's narration, and the second time is the real end of the series.
When everyone first told the story with Fei Ke, they all lied and beautified themselves, intentionally or unintentionally. So did He Shan distort and embellish the facts in her narration? Apparently there is.
The most obvious flaw is at the end of the episode. In He Shan's narration, she and Fei Ke once wrote a vow to be admitted to Chengda University together with chalk on the roof of the school, but in the flashback at the end of the film, the wall that should have been written with chalk words is actually empty.
If even the setting of the childhood sweetheart at the beginning is nothing, then how credible is He Shan's story?
Many of the plots in the last 3 episodes are abrupt precisely because they may all come from lies: Does Fei Ke really have feelings for He Shan? Did he really die voluntarily to save her? And, does He Shan really have no reporting fee to take the test?
The answer may be yes, or it may be that everything is just due to He Shan's "obscenity".
Combined with the original novel "Fei Ke's Dinner", He Shan is the two sides of "Fei Ke".
She is Fei Ke's high school classmate, but the two are not familiar with each other, especially Fei Ke does not think her existence is special.
"She is like a poplar scattered in spring, occasionally glimpsed, and then I don't know where it has gone, he doesn't care about her existence."
The only special thing about He Shan is that she knows Fei Ke well, and because of her professional relationship, she has intersected with several people that Fei Ke has deceived, but she has never poked Fei Ke's lies to these people.
Over the years, she had met him on different occasions and heard different people talk about him. He came and went in and out of her life, as familiar as a neighbor to the door. She was also used to it, and had been watching this man's performance indifferently, watching how he pretended and how he struggled to climb up.
The reason why she did this was because she was just as unwilling and cursed the ordinary as Fei Ke, eager to get ahead. It's just that Fei can practice those malicious fantasies with amazing shamelessness and guts, while He Shan stops at mediocrity.
She chose to remain silent about all his misdeeds, simply out of curiosity about where he would end up. Everything he did was beyond her reach. If she had the guts and brazenness of Fei Ke, she would have done the same.
In a sense, Fei Ke is like another herself, born in the ordinary, but finally able to break through that hood. In a sense, Fei Ke's success today is also caused by her. She is the hero behind the scenes, the genius who directs all the good plays. How could she have extinguished this unwilling ordinary desire and talent—the qualities that the two of them shared—at the very beginning?
As a result, the maintenance fee has become He Shan's instinct, and good words for him are like good words for himself.
In the original book, out of the intuition of the same kind, Fei Ke had insight into He Shan's mind and showed kindness to this fellow traveler when he was terminally ill and dying. So he gathered everyone to come and tell their story in front of He Shan, which was a gift from Fei Ke to He Shan, a good story.
For a journalist who aspires to fame, there is no better gift than this.
The "New Life" series has added many original plots, but He Shan has clearly retained the essence of the original book.
Hints about He Shan's identity are evident throughout.
Judging from the timeline of the main narrative, the first person to lie in the whole play is He Shan.
She said to Fei Ke, who was still called Li Zerui at that time, on the rooftop: "I told a white lie for the right purpose."
The opening song is composed of the faces of the main characters, and the last puzzle portrait is not the protagonist Fei Ke, but He Shan.
Since receiving a call from Fei Ke at the beginning of the episode, her voice recorder has been turned on from beginning to end.
In her narration, she seems to have feelings for Fei Ke, but in fact she has never reached out to save Fei Ke's fallen life.
After Fei Ke was expelled from school due to the substitute exam incident, she ignored it. After the steakhouse met the down-and-out Fei Ke, she didn't help. When the senior of the financial society questioned Fei Ke about pretending to be a student, she sat among the students of the financial society without saying a word.
The only time Fei Ke helped to cover up the list of students who climbed the mountain, it was not so much a concern as a hope that he could cheat a little longer.
Many viewers complained that He Shan's actor Zhou is still the actor with the most unsatisfactory acting skills in this drama. She has a pale little face and interrogates others with a blank face, not like a real person, but more like a stereotypical NPC who presides over the process in the script killing.
This may be intentional - she is not a flesh-and-blood He Shan, just a glorified and flawless He Shan hidden behind layers of words, an alienated "observer".
She has never reported Fei Ke for the exam, she has never covered up the scam for Fei Ke, she has no dark thoughts, and she has never secretly mocked the high-ranking magnates in the scam.
Because everything is a story written by her, a requiem song for her kind.
In the easter egg of "New Life", Zhou still responded positively to the interview camera:
"(He Shan) is not an NPC. It's to make everyone think I'm an NPC, but in fact I'm the last big boss. Because the story is in my pen, I can write it however I want. ”
The collapse of the second half of the story is the collapse of truth and logic, and the horse's feet have long been secretly exposed, just waiting for the keen audience to question it.
Everyone has positive and negative sides, and everyone will be reversed, but He Shan's reversal is the thinking palace of the brain rumination after the plot ends.
There is no self-description in the whole play, and there is a lot less basis for confirmation and falsification. What the truth is will only exist in the imagination of the audience.
The only thing that is certain is that "New Life" is not a bad ending, but a scripted killing game with the audience that includes a hidden ending.
It's just that the implication is buried too deep and hidden too far away, so that I almost got rid of it and was scolded.
In any case, under the general trend of suspense seriousness, I am still glad that such a series appears. Simply tell a good story, and be naughty once in a while.
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