"Desperate Live" poster
Note: This article contains spoilers
The small and medium-budget independent film "Desperate Live" and "Star Wars Story: Rogue One" were introduced at the same time, and the proportion of the schedule and box office was pitiful. The film was released in the summer vacation slot of the North American market last year, and won nearly 40 million at the box office, which is considered to be a success in small and broad.
Due to the difference in release time, although the box office of "Desperate Live" in China is dismal, there are still many viewers who have seen the film: on douban, more than 17,000 netizens gave the film an average rating of 6.6 points, which is above the passing level.
Stills from "Desperate Live"
For Chinese audiences who have just passed the "first year of online live broadcasting", a film like "Desperate Live" has come at the right time. In the fictional live broadcast software of Nerve, it is not difficult for the audience to see the shadow of many domestic live broadcast software that has sprung up. Therefore, this pure foreign film has magically connected to China's "earth qi", and the audience is easy to empathize with and have a relationship.
In 2016, a screen-brushing public account article , "Cruel Underlying Story: A Chinese Countryside of Video Software", although somewhat curious and distorted, successfully drew the reader's attention to a large number of barbaric live broadcasting software that had never been stationed in the past, and the intricate world behind these software. Similarly, the plot of "Desperate Live" takes place on Staten Island in New York City, the most remote and brutal borough of the international metropolis of New York. The film tears apart the strange appearance of urban life and ruthlessly presents the bleak world of mediocrity and darkness under the appearance. A large number of shooting shots in the night scene grasp the realistic projection of New York as "Gotham City", and the complex temperament of the coexistence of red wine and dark and gloomy.
The film allows the male and female protagonists to fall into the quagmire of the "Big Adventure" game step by step, step by step, gradually strengthening the stimulation of the audience's adrenaline secretion, and successfully mobilizing the audience's nervousness. The design of several adventure missions, from "kissing strangers", to "escaping naked", to "blindfolded locomotive", and finally to "walking in the air" and "shooting in the paddock", layer by layer, the tone of the film, from the beginning of the youth light comedy, continues to deepen in the direction of darkness, to the end of the film has more or less shown the meaning of a cruel dystopian theme.
The film reflects a mature industrial standard in the scheduling of shots. The male and female protagonists and supporting actresses each have a "walking in the sky" scene, which is thrilling and not lost to another movie that focuses on visual effects, "Walking in the Clouds". As an American youth film, the soundtrack chooses to be fashionable and flattering, not a cliché that blindly stirs up the atmosphere. Although the film tells the invasion and penetration of online virtual life on real life, it still achieves restraint overall, and does not use cheap and exaggerated visual effects to express the "cyberspace", which also adds a sense of realism and substitution to a certain extent of the plot.
The scene of "walking in the sky" was filmed several times, and it was thrilling.
But the film's strengths also stop there: a smooth, qualified, popcorn-accompanied companion, American youth film. "Desperate Live" is keenly aware of the discovery and grasp of new issues, but it is so careless. Its skillful and sophisticated craftsmanship, not used to create fine dishes, only satisfied with the production of rapidly prototyping fast food, will inevitably waste creativity, big fuss.
The film is an excellent illustration of Andy Warhol's "everyone can be famous in 15 minutes" and "everyone can be famous for 15 minutes", but the film is vague about the human alienation that "fame" brings. The financial reward stimulation of nerve game "tip" mode, and the vanity inflation brought about by "fame", are the two major triggers that promote the heroine Vee and supporting actress Sydney to "stop" the game.
In the supporting actress's side line, the film portrays the "mutual grabbing the limelight" between the "girlfriends" of the comparison mentality, although the painting style is quite similar to "Small Times", it is quite meticulous and appropriate; on the contrary, on the main line of the heroine, the energy of the film is obviously mostly invested in the portrayal of the "game of breaking through", although the camera constantly prompts the temptation of the beating dollar "hanging red" on the heroine, but the heroine's family background is not more fully emphasized in the whole film, making her more like the "silly white sweet" captured by the nihilistic "sense of success" A young girl, not a poor girl who desperately wants to improve her family' situation. The audience's sympathy for her naturally plummeted.
It is also in this sense that Vee became a prisoner of the film's plot and failed to establish the character's own personality. Vee is not Hardy's Tess, nor is she Ge Weilong in Zhang Ailing's "First Burning Incense", nor is she even Andrea in "Fashion Witch" - at least the latter's awakening does not need to be given a stick of life and death.
As for the male protagonist Ian, it is even more ambiguous, and in the final reversal of the plot, he completely becomes a pawn-like character, which only plays a role in brineming the wit of Vee and his friends' team.
The climactic scene of the "paddock shooting".
The film shows that the anchor and the viewer in the live broadcast software "complement each other" and "love and kill each other", but the focus falls on the male and female protagonists as the live broadcaster, and there is not much ink on the viewers. Therefore, when the later part of the film enters the field of cruel dystopian themes, it is somewhat abrupt to make the audience feel abrupt. For the mob democracy in the era of consumption, the display and reflection in the film are still flashy. The resolution of the conflict depends on the "opening plug-in" of the heroine's friend, and the plot is also childish like "passing the family". In the same type of youth dystopian films, the "Hunger Games" series successfully set a benchmark, and I did not expect that the subsequent films would not have any good works.
The climactic scene of the movie is intended to warn the world, but the plot design of "opening the plug-in" is not naïve like "passing the family".
The most paradoxical thing is that the theme of "Desperate Live" is obviously to criticize the erosion and alienation of online virtual life on real life, but the method chosen is to repeatedly use thrilling pictures to stimulate the audience in front of the big screen. On the promotional poster of the movie, the slogan of "Invite you to live broadcast" was directly played. This is probably the biggest paradox and irony of consumer society.
The climax of the film is set in a circular stadium, which is also reminiscent of the Colosseum of ancient Rome. In the movie, masked spectators come from all directions, gathered into a dense wall of airtight people, all of them are elated, and the life and death of the hunters are at their fingertips; and once their identities are revealed, they scatter as birds and beasts, hiding in the vast sea of people. The twists and turns of the plot, though hasty and hasty, are still a highly ironic play: in the case of a pre-publicized murder, all those present, without exception, are accomplices.