Zhang Yimou's 23rd feature film was finally released on Friday after several twists and turns, and from the box office, the film was released for 5 days and achieved 86.4 million yuan, which was much inferior to the 295 million yuan box office of his previous "Homecoming". However, from the perspective of word of mouth, "One Second" is the same as "Homecoming", and now the rating on the Internet is 7.9 points, which is the word-of-mouth work of director Zhang Yimou in recent years.
Regardless of the theme of the film or the style of the image, "One Second" is similar to zhang Yimou's early films. The story of "One Second" is simple, but the absurdity of the times reflected behind the story gives this film a fabled character, which is similar to "Homecoming".
"One Second" is based on a clip from the writer Yan Geling's novel "Lu Gang Yan Zhi" in which Lu Yan Zhi escaped from the Laogai farm to watch his daughter's documentary. Director Zhang Yimou and screenwriter Zou Jingzhi re-expanded this detail on this basis, which has the current story. Judging from the current release version of "One Second", Zhang Jiusheng, the father played by Zhang Yi in the film, risked his life to run out of the laogai farm, just to see the "one second" daughter picture on the "News Bulletin" The motivation is still lacking in clear explanation, what happened to her daughter? There is no explicit statement in the movie, but the audience can understand the fate of the characters from the words of the projectionist Fan Film, played by Fan Wei.
The film actually tells the story of five fathers and children. In addition to Zhang Jiusheng and his own daughter, Liu Haocun's daughter-in-law and brother and the father who abandoned them and Fan Film's "father-son" relationship as the father and his son who drove the carriage, there is also the "hero's child" in the film, the movie theater screening," Wang Fang and his father Wang Wenqing thousands of miles away, and the "father-daughter" relationship between Zhang Jiusheng and Liu's daughter-in-law, which is a kind of relationship between the two when they first met.
From the results, the first three father-daughter relationship / father-son relationship are missing, Zhang Jiusheng and his daughter are separated from life and death, Liu's daughter and brother were abandoned by their father, Fan Film because of a mistake, gave his son a movie film cleaning liquid, resulting in damage to the son's brain, and finally intellectual insufficiency, regret for life. In the movie "Heroes and Children", Wang Fang finally recognized her father and ushered in a happy ending; at the end of "One Second", Zhang Jiusheng met liu's daughter who put on new clothes after being released from prison, so that the "father-daughter relationship" of the previous nonsense could be continued. These two relationships are meaningful. In the previous relationship, the film, as a dream-making machine, formed a sharp contrast with the contrast of reality; in the latter relationship, the emotional connection between Zhang Jiusheng and Liu's daughter in just one night made this initial nonsense father-daughter relationship a reality: a father who lost his daughter regained the connection of family affection in a daughter who had lost his father's love, and the powerful emotional soothing effect of the film was highlighted.
The footage of One Second has a powerful metaphorical function. At the beginning of the film, the endless desert contrasts sharply with the small figure of Zhang Jiusheng, which is reminiscent of a popular saying, "A grain of ash of the times falls on an individual's head is a mountain." Zhang Jiusheng's fight is like a domino, which eventually leads to a huge wave of his fate; and at the end of the film, Fan Film secretly cuts and gives him a film with a picture of her daughter, which is submerged by the flying yellow sand, which can't help but make people sigh, no matter how much the emotional waves of a small person are overturned, they will be buried in the vast desert in an instant, and no one knows.
Can today's young people understand the story of "One Second"? On the Internet, some netizens also feel that this story is "a bit fake". Now the theater mainly focuses on the main group of moviegoers under the age of 25, and the box office of the film has reflected this.
It's not hard to understand One Second, but it may take some experience to understand the story. For young audiences now, the tense pace of work and the huge pressure on the economy are the mountain in their hearts, compared with those grand narratives, the small fortunes in life are often more impressive to them, and the embarrassment and hardship of "One Second" in the era of material scarcity, as well as Zhang Jiusheng's adventure, have finally become the background of history. But this is also the value of this film, and it is also the respectable place for director Zhang Yimou.
Source Beijing Daily client | reporter Wang Jinyue
Edit: Guan Yiwen
Process Editor Tai Shaofeng