Friends, have you heard of Tiexi District?
Tiexi District is located in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, was once China's largest machinery processing industry base, and then Tiexi District declined with the old industrial base in the northeast, there is a documentary "Tiexi District", which is about what workers do when the factory closes, and also won the Golden Leopard Award of the Locarno International Film Festival (Category A, Europe's four major, bullish).
At the end of the 20th century, the reform of state-owned enterprises set off a wave of layoffs, not only in the northeast, but also swept the country. As soon as the system changes, the historical fate of an entire generation changes, and "Tiexi District" is the best mirror, but if you can't watch it for nine hours, I recommend you to watch another good meal replacement film.
go broke
"Horizontal and Vertical" is a bit interesting, it is neither a documentary nor a drama film. It is adapted from some real entrepreneurial experiences, but the story does not have many dramatic twists and turns, and it was chosen because director Wang Guangli felt that "this story is an ordinary legend".
Douban 8.0, only 462 people have seen it
"Horizontal and Vertical" is a story about laid-off workers in Shanghai who collectively went to the sea to start a business, but the protagonists of the story are not professional actors, but a group of really laid-off workers.
In the movie, Zhang Baozhong was originally a worker at the Jiangnan Shipyard, and after being laid off, he set up a construction company and ran the project with some co-workers. The factory has an iron rice bowl, the factory does not have a daily suit tie, talk about the business to count the banknotes, be the boss yourself, and look pretty good.
Happy boys must have a small comb
But in reality, the market economy is brutal, especially for a group of laid-off workers who started from scratch.
Once the project money went wrong, Zhang Baozhong was deceived into hundreds of thousands, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, the debt collection blocked the company's door, Baozhong found everyone to eat and discuss, they all felt that the future was blank, there was no way out.
The passage of eating here is particularly good, originally the film is in a documentary style, like a documentary, but here is interspersed with a poetic meaning: everyone can't pay their wages, they are still in debt, and they are immediately facing secondary unemployment, and the atmosphere is very heavy. As a result, after eating, everyone was gone, and the camera was still there, facing an empty table, and the leftovers were bubbling.
Life is still steaming.
After eating this meal, Zhang Baozhong did not go home for one night, wandering the streets of Shanghai, and the next day decided to cross and fight. Horizontal and vertical is the Shanghai dialect, which means horizontal down the heart, open out.
This is also too empathetic, every worker in the north of Guangzhou 996 will have this kind of time, after work looking at the city, thinking that I am too difficult, but also for the music dream to continue to insist, can not go back to the hometown to test the public bar ... But Zhang Baozhong is different, he himself is a Shanghainese, there is no land to escape, not even a way to retreat.
There are several places in the film that inadvertently show the relationship between people and the city, and the relationship between people and the city is either a dependency relationship or an antagonistic relationship, but the two have always been incompatible. Zhang Baozhong and his co-workers were not tolerated by Shanghai and were independent of the bustling metropolis.
The picture moves from the lost treasure to the night of the city
Taxi-illuminated Shanghai
After making up his mind, Zhang Baozhong and his co-workers were busy again, and at that time, there was a lottery fever in China, and Zhang Baozhong also bought a collective lottery ticket for everyone. The result really hit!
Turn, Oh, understand?
The lottery won 400,000, the company crisis eased, Baozhong feasted on guests, and friends raised a glass to hug and bragged, and even a sense of revelry for the rest of their lives. Because of such a lottery, the problem of capital turnover is solved, everyone does not have to lose their jobs again, and there is hope in life.
At the end of the film, at a construction site, a group of workers gather around to watch the performance, and one of them shouts "I won the lottery" and rushes out.
He also won the lottery, but the lottery ticket stuck to the door panel, and he tore it up, and finally he directly unloaded the door panel and carried it away...
Zhang Baozhong won 400,000 yuan, laid-off workers got new jobs, and another laid-off person had a lottery door, and they all had a bright future.
Towards the rising sun
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Director Wang Guangli making this film is like making a documentary, extremely restrained, like a bystander, what montage, scene scheduling and other fancy things, do not need, too delay objective.
In a normal movie, a character dialogue is shown, and the "positive and negative hit" camera position is often used, that is, two machines are set up to shoot the speech and reaction of both sides, which can see the drama. The shooting method is not only a matter of how to shoot the method, it is directly related to an attitude. In "Horizontal and Vertical", directly follow the shooting, who talks and shoots whom, the unique family DV flavor, very real.
Although the story of the film is somewhat bland and there is not much dramatic conflict, it is not boring, and it can see a complete picture of the life of the citizens of Shanghai at the end of the 20th century, which is very vivid.
There are also some very funny ordinary people's wisdom, or small wisdom.
Zhang Baozhong's decoration team worked for people and wanted to transport building materials upstairs, but they did not negotiate the price with the migrant workers, so they took matters into their own hands and went up the wooden planks layer by layer outside the building.
Jackie Chan per capita
There are also customers who say that they dream that feng shui is not good, and they want to smash the wall and reinstall it, and the workers say that they can get compensation fees.
Everyone calls the customer a senior engineer, a senior engineer, especially in China, when encountering problems, he said that he was not in a hurry, let's eat first, eat and say. At the dinner table and the workers' brothers to teach the secret of getting rich, a meal flickering, when the decoration is completed, the workers want compensation, the senior worker said, we have not eaten. cattle.
At the end of the film, there is a performance held at a construction site, mainly for the workers to see, the performance project includes acrobatics, playing with large knives, fire breathing, fashion catwalk, the performance is surrounded by scaffolding and construction of half of the building, too TM ridiculous, but also really alive, real life!
The film is so real, to a large extent, also thanks to the performance of the actors, they are really laid-off workers, playing themselves, very natural coordination, even Sun Chun said that "professional actors act at their best."
This is very interesting, there is a famous film in the history of cinema called "The Man Who Stole the Bicycle", which is the work of the Italian director de Sica, the actors of this film are also non-professional actors, the male protagonist is an unemployed worker, who was found by the director on the street to act in the movie, so that he also played an unemployed worker in the movie.
The story of "The Bicycle Thief" is not complicated, saying that a man finally finds a job, but the bicycle necessary for the job is lost, and in order to make a living, he decides to steal someone else's car.
When the face of the unemployed worker appeared on the screen, the effect was so shocking that anyone who watched it had to be heartbroken with him.
Although neither film is a documentary, not a newsreal, not a complete description of an event, not a real event, they both touch on a deeper truth: the truth of facts.
That is to say, they are fictional and arranged, but when you see them, you see the most essential social reality.
That's the power of reality.
Chief Jaco once famously said: "When a society is in a hurry to rush forward, you can't ignore the person who was knocked down by you because you want to go forward." ”
The sixth generation of directors like Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, Lou Ye, Zhang Yuan, etc. are dedicated to shooting individuals or groups who have sacrificed for social development, especially Jia Zhangke, who has left historical images for the rapidly changing China and represented China in a certain period. The sixth generation of directors, like him, is full of attention to reality in the film.
Wang Guangli, the director of "Horizontal and Vertical", is not a sixth-generation director in the strict sense, but like their style characteristics, social documentary, concerned about the difficult survival situation of ordinary people in reality.
Director Wang Guangli
His first experimental documentary, "Graduated", shows the various concepts of life, love and sex of that generation of young people in the mood of the 92nd graduating students in Beijing.
"Graduated"
In "Horizontal and Vertical", Wang Guangli turned the camera on the unemployed people who went to the sea.
By the end of 1999, a total of 6.52 million laid-off workers in state-owned enterprises nationwide had been laid off.
The reform of the state system has brought about a nationwide collective unemployment, and the social mood that was once again recovering from stability has stirred up panic. Wang Bing, the director of "Tiexi District", once said: "We wanted to create a world, but in the end the world collapsed." ”
In "Horizontal and Vertical", Zhang Baozhong was abandoned by the old world, the new world did not accept him, the market economy is not like a cauldron of rice, he was in debt, cheated, once turned around, hovering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Fortunately, the lottery ticket he bought won the lottery and solved his problems.
Lottery, lottery is an ideal consolation, is the imagination of the film satisfaction, and the realization of imaginative wishes. Reality is different from movies, there are countless people who want to win the lottery and get rich, but almost all of them silently become a sad denominator.
Lottery market in Horizontal and Vertical
At the end of the 20th century, there was indeed a lottery boom in China, when the welfare funds raised by Fucai announced that the welfare funds raised would be used to restore production and rebuild homes in flood-stricken areas, and used the slogan "Buy a set of lottery tickets, dedicate a love" to encourage citizens to buy lottery tickets.
In 1998, Shanghai's lottery tickets sold 20,000 sets per day, and welfare lottery tickets were sold in Shanghai for 240 million yuan.
1996, Taiyuan, Shanxi
The lottery itself is a betting game, representing a wealth dream, at the beginning of the new era established by the market economy, the lottery is the lowest cost way to become a rich person to become a new successful person, but also a broken attempt in the overall disappointment atmosphere of society, all like this, try it, in case it is useful.
But if zhang Baozhong is lucky, he may not be able to turn over, when his debt is the most difficult, he can still cross the horizontal, Shanghai has such a good geographical advantage and open policy, he can survive.
In comparison, the working-class brothers of the same period were in a more difficult situation. When the Shenyang industrial zone was prosperous, it was the first place in China to realize "upstairs and downstairs, electric lights and telephones", and the large layoffs brought them a huge gap, and it was even more difficult to slow down.
The northeast is at the end of China's traffic, there is no foreign trade outlet to the sea, there is no way to find another livelihood, and finally can only be like the teenagers in pink street in "Tiexi District", the future is at a loss, and every day they are bored in the ruins of the factory. Young women went to the sea en masse and sold themselves to support their families, so that during the period of great layoffs, such a folk song appeared in the northeast:
Laid-off sister, don't shed tears, straighten your chest into the nightclub; accompany the big money, earn tips, and don't add a burden to the country. Father and mother, half a life of bitterness, old age unemployed is very miserable; weak women, when self-reliant, develop the body to raise fathers and mothers.
In addition to "Iron West", there are many movies that also describe where the laid-off people who were eliminated went.
"Blessed are the Ears" laid off old Fan
"Under the Sea" stands on the street to support his family after losing his job
"The Piano of Steel" northeast old industrial zone
"Now I Announce the List of Layoffs"
In the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reform of state-owned enterprises, China's core class, the working class, faced with a historical upheaval, the collapse of the system, the shattering of faith, and the uncertainty of how to live in the future. At the same time, the process of reform and opening up has touched deep-water areas, a round of business in the sea has poured into the interior, private factories in coastal cities have risen, the pace of Urbanization in China has accelerated, and the gap between the rich and the poor has begun to appear...
At that time, the entire political economy was undergoing drastic changes, the social psychology was complex and obscure, and many of the major cases in the history of Chinese criminal investigation were concentrated in the 1990s, which was very evil.
Sex demon Li Zhaoming rape and murder case
Shenzhen Six Demon Female Immortals Jumping Murder Case
Nehe Jia Cultural Revolution rape and murder case
Guangzhou "Rainy Night Butcher" murder case
Jin Ru super big explosion case
The main creative year of "Horizontal and Vertical" director Wang Guangli is the 10 years from the 1990s to the beginning of the 21st century, just in time for the social chaos, but also in time for the sixth generation of collective appearances. There's something interesting about film directors, they create one by one.
Like the fifth generation of Chinese directors, represented by Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian Zhuangzhuang, the theme of their wave is historical reflection; in the sixth generation, the turn of the century changes, Zhang Yuan, Wang Xiaoshuai, Jia Zhangke, they are concerned about reality and reveal the dark side of society.
Wang Guangli once said: "I am not so serious. Even now, unlike many filmmakers who have a very sacred mission. I can do it, I can do it, and if I can't do it, I can forget it. "He doesn't have the heavy sense of social responsibility of the sixth generation of directors, and the film is not so bitter and vengeful."
"Horizontal and Vertical" is full of people abandoned by the state, the change of times, they just catch up with the cracks of history, can not survive, no one cares, this is a reality, is the mistake of society, but do not have to criticize social cruelty, they are also cruel.
Looking back at the 90s when the spiritual collective was empty, there were still lottery tickets to give unemployed workers spiritual pillars and hopes of making a windfall, so, smart, contemporary workers, you tell me, what do you have?
Design/Vision: SaiBO XiaOsI Men
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