Chen Zhengdao's new film "The Secret Visitor" has fallen a bit miserably, and I like this movie very much, but of course I also agree that the film's storytelling means can be a little cleverer.
And today's talk about this drama, it textbookly shows how to put a complex, multi-character suspense story, tell a wonderful, easy to understand and advanced.
Yes, that's right, making the audience understand is not kung fu, it can even be said to be a low-level showmanship, and the "easy to understand" with a sense of layering and exquisite storytelling is a high-level technique.
Coincidentally, this Spanish drama is similar to a domestic suspense drama produced by Chen Zhengdao last year, in terms of structure and the burial of the protagonist's suspense point.
This is the most recent Netflix Spanish drama:
The most innocent El inocente
The drama is the creative team of the Spanish blockbuster suspense film "The Invisible Guest", although I am not too cold to "The Invisible Guest" (I think the setting of the human skin mask is too tricky), but director Oriol Paul is a well-deserved master of suspense films, and his "Julia's Eyes" and "The Mystery of the Female Corpse" are very wonderful stories.
And he filmed a drama for Netflix this time, not only did not lose the rhythm, but made full use of the advantages of the series in terms of length, told the story out of the wonderful cocoon, and shaped the emotional abundance of each character.
Not the violent, blunt, reversal of the invisible guest.
There are many actors in the play, all of whom are old familiar faces in "The Invisible Guest".
But I would like to mention the heroine Olla Garrido, I recommended a niche love suspense film "Stockholm" starring her, and I have not seen amway again.
She looked like this:
In this play, she looks like this:
Why did I say earlier that there are many characters and clues in this drama, but it is not difficult to understand?
Because Paul's way of telling the story is to take out the most important 8 people in the whole incident, and each episode takes the audience into the story from their point of view.
This way of telling fundamentally solves the problem that the audience can't remember the characters and clarify the clues of the story, and because each episode is a first-person narration of a different character, the audience is not an all-knowing God's perspective, so the pleasure of solving the puzzle is very strong.
The feeling of piecing together the whole incident little by little is like building blocks.
This is also the greatest joy of watching suspense works.
This way of telling has a unique advantage for suspense building, that is, the audience knows its subjectivity and then remains skeptical of the narrator from the beginning.
So, yes, as with all successful suspense works, the story of "The Best of Innocence" ends up with the biggest point of interest not being who did it and how it was done, but why it was done.
The human heart is the greatest suspense.
As for the large-scale gimmicks that many film and television numbers exaggerate, in the face of rich stories, it is not worth mentioning.
But this way of telling also has a small drawback, that is, it starts to be a little slow and hot.
The first episode is to tell and recall the events he experienced from the perspective of the male protagonist.
Mario Casas, who plays the wealthy upstart in "The Invisible Guest", this time plays a mild-mannered law student. He has a bright future, but in a bar fight, he accidentally pushed down and killed a boy, and eventually went to prison and ruined his life.
But the story of the first episode is told too quickly, and he can't wait to spread out the various family changes he encountered in prison, after his release, and the many clues of his suspicious wife.
What did the male protagonist experience in prison? Why did his family change one after another? Why would his wife be videoned by another man without clothes? And, the suspense point that runs through the whole play: the accident in the bar, is he a murder by mistake, or is it subjective malice?
The amount of information is too dense, plus many details are deliberately "brushed over", so it is a little difficult for the audience to enter the state.
If anyone were to abandon the show, it would probably be at the end of the first episode.
And when you look at the second half of the whole series, you will find that any details that are passed or unsolved in the first episode are an important part of the whole story, and the director intensively writes about his life and encounters because there are more important stories and confusions thrown to the audience later.
The second episode is cut from the perspective of a female criminal police officer who has nothing to do with the male protagonist, similar to the first episode, her life, her career, and her personality are eagerly explained, seeing the second episode, the audience must have a doubt: What does this episode have to do with the first episode?
Don't worry, from the third episode onwards, the people and events in the core events are slowly connected.
The intense thrill of watching the drama will come.
Later in the story, I will not spoil.
The overall experience of watching the drama is: blindfolded, pushed somewhere by the joint efforts of characters from different directions, step by step to touch the most core and most seductive and sad truth.
And in this process, in everyone's subjective narration, the audience will also choose who to believe more, who to sympathize with, and who to doubt more.
"Secrets are like tumors, once they start to spread, they can be fatal."
In addition to the bizarre and logical self-consistent plot, "The Best of Innocence" is more clever than the unified character underlying emotional design.
The title is: Forgiveness and Redemption.
Or rather: look at different people, how to dissolve the hatred in their hearts.
The murderer said to the father of the deceased," "If I could, I'd rather die of me," do you believe his confession or do you think it's just the wording of his unpunished?
The sisters who escaped together quietly went away with a secret, do you believe that she is involuntary, or do you think that this is just another betrayal?
When you saw your father commit suicide by swallowing a gun, do you believe that your father must have worked hard, or do you think that everything is just his cowardice and irresponsibility?
Speaking of which, I can't help but compare the domestic dramas mentioned at the beginning again.
It is "Skyscraper" produced by Chen Zhengdao.
If it weren't for "Skyscraper" first, I would really suspect that it was a reference to "The Best of Innocence.".
In addition to the narrative structure of multiple characters independently cutting into, in an extremely dark story, creating an extremely simple and kind protagonist, this "reverse" creation method is also the same.
The suspense that follows brings the audience beyond the story is the same: is he/she really as pure and flawless as he/she says?
The answer to the last 1 minute of "The Best of Innocence" also makes this drama have a more memorable charm.
It is also an ending that domestic dramas cannot have.
Of course, although "Skyscraper" is weaker than "The Best of Innocence" for various reasons, whether in terms of scale, character shaping or acting, I still recommend students who have not seen it to watch it.
It's all good drama.