Recently, a venice film festival finalist caught my attention.
Because usually I often jump with everyone on WeChat to chase the drama, and this new film just tells the story of the protagonists chasing the drama and chasing the chicken and the dog - "Tel Aviv is Burning".
The film opens with a sense of immediacy from a spy war blockbuster, set on the eve of the Third Middle East War.
At that time, a Palestinian female spy named Recho was ordered to sneak up on Israeli General Akhonda to gather intelligence.
To this end, she had to temporarily leave her boyfriend Mawan, who was also a spy.
Before leaving, the spy couple resolved to win the Israeli-Palestinian War, retake Jerusalem, and meet for a wedding after the war.
But suddenly, the camera is pulled away, and we find that the opening scene is the "scene within a play" of the film - Rachel and Mawan are actually characters in the TV series "Tel Aviv is Burning".
It's a Filmed Palestinian Soap Opera about a love triangle between the couple and an Israeli general. Although the plot sounds very bloody, it is enthusiastically pursued by audiences in Both Palestine and Israel.
The real male protagonist of the film is an Israeli youth named Sharham.
His uncle is a producer of "Tel Aviv is Burning" and has been filming in Palestine recently.
Since neither the writer nor the lead actor was Israeli and was not fluent in Hebrew, his uncle called Sharham as an assistant to correct the actor's pronunciation or pick the script lines wrong.
In the beginning, Sharum had to live a chaotic life, coming late and leaving early every day, going to work to touch fish.
Until one thing changed all that —
One day, When Sharum was driving through the border checkpoint to go to work in Palestine as usual, he was stopped by Israeli officers. The other party also took the script of the latest episode from his car.
It turned out that the officer's entire family was chasing "Tel Aviv is Burning."
In particular, his wife, a CP fan of the spy couple, waited in front of the TV every night to make sugar.
But the officer stood with the CP of the Israeli general and the heroine. Because in his view, as Israelis, supporting Palestinian spy couples is a bit "politically incorrect."
He struggled to control the direction of the plot until he discovered that Sharam was one of the screenwriters.
Therefore, he immediately had the idea of using his power to dismantle CP, withholding the script of the latest episode, and personally changing the script - writing the Israeli general as a gentleman and taking the heroine to a good romance.
Unexpectedly, this change not only made the director and producer shine, but also won the recognition of the lead actor, praising Shalam for changing the role to a full and three-dimensional.
Only the screenwriter himself strongly objected and resigned from the filmmakers in anger.
But the screenwriter's walk is even more god assisted.
The uncle naturally promoted the male protagonist and put him in charge of writing the lines of the Israeli general.
It is conceivable that Sharom, who was suddenly driven to the shelves by ducks, could not hold back a line of lines for half a day.
He had to find the officer at the border checkpoint and ask for his help in continuing to change the script.
As a result, after listening to it, the officer "sat on the ground and started the price", not only asking the male protagonist to help him buy Arab hummus, but also swearing that he would eventually let the female protagonist marry the Israeli general.
In order to keep his job, Sharum agreed to these conditions without even thinking about it.
So with the help of the officers, he was able to hand over a satisfactory script every day, and the glorified role of the general gradually won the love of a large number of audiences. He and the heroine's "Palestine-Israel CP" even achieved a counterattack and became the main official of the series...
But you know, this is a Palestinian TV series after all.
Such a plot direction soon attracted criticism from the local media. The sponsor was worried about the damage to the brand image, so he forcibly asked the crew to give Mawanga a play and dismantle the Pakistani-Israeli CP.
In this regard, Sharum had no choice, he had to arrange for the heroine to suffer from cancer and call for her boyfriend on the verge of death, which allowed the Pakistani spy Mawan to re-launch.
But needless to say, the operation angered the Israeli officer again—the sugar was fine, and suddenly the CP was dismantled, and the officer was really angry.
Without saying a word, he sent people to directly kidnap Sharham, threatening and robbing him of his passport, threatening him that he must write according to the established ending, otherwise he would not want to return to Israel.
What's even funnier is that the officer also made a childish and unreasonable request - to implant a picture of him at the end of the film so that he could show off his might in front of his wife...
Overall, this film is actually through the perspective of a rookie screenwriter and the opening of a dog blood soap opera to deconstruct the ethnic, religious, cultural and other differences behind the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
For example, an Israeli officer waved a big hand and added a kiss to the general in the play, and as a result, the Palestinian actor was bound by religious beliefs and could not kiss it when he came to his mouth;
For example, when the officers chased the drama, they had to stand in accordance with the political stance, but in front of the food, they put down their discipline and forced Sharum to buy traditional Arabic dishes for him.
This way of expression, on the one hand, dissolves the seriousness and heaviness of the subject matter itself, and conveys the voice of the people through the humorous passage of ridicule and absurdity.
For ordinary people, the so-called political stance, ethnic contradictions, historical grievances and other major national events are actually not as important as the stability and prosperity of the present world.
On the other hand, the film also mocks the various chaos of the film and television industry through Sharham's perspective -
For example, Sharum's uncle, who was a producer, was obviously a benchmark figure in the film and television circle, but he copied it openly when writing the script;
For example, As a screenwriter, Sharom has no creative autonomy, not only the director, producer, actor, and sponsor can interfere in the direction of the plot, but even the stylist is not willing to show weakness.
The film also satirizes some screenwriters who, in order to create dramatic conflicts, completely disregard reality, and write various suspended dog blood plots.
In fact, this phenomenon does not only appear in the crew of the film, but we have seen too many suspension dramas.
For example, when I watched the domestic drama "Take Dad to Study Abroad" before, I couldn't help but spit on various bizarre plot settings in WeChat.
For example, the recent word-of-mouth explosion of "Little Joy", even if it takes the care of reality as the selling point, there will still be anti-realistic operations such as "the family of the third year of high school students has a second child" from time to time.
After watching this piece, some viewers said that they were going to be gased out of the "second child PTSD" by domestic dramas...
But back to the movie we talked about today, in fact, we can see that the reason why the screenwriter Sharum, the male protagonist, is in a dilemma is indeed because he has too many people to deal with.
Officers at the border checkpoint threatened with passports, demanding that implant photos + Palestinian-Israeli CP weddings be arranged;
In order to warn young people not to forget history, the producer wants the heroine to be a human bomb and burn jade;
And he himself wants an open-ended ending so that the sponsors can renew the second season...
And guess what?
The male protagonist made a clever move and wrote an ending that satisfied everyone -
In the final episode, the heroine Rui Qiu first held a wedding with the general;
Then they are ready to start the remote control bomb and dedicate themselves to the country;
At this moment, the border checkpoint officer disguised as a Jewish wise man made a cameo appearance and tried to defuse the bomb crisis...
In this way, the ending is happy, and the second season is also scheduled to start shooting smoothly.
Sharom continued to serve as a screenwriter, the officer simply abandoned the art and played the male protagonist in the play, and the whole film ended satisfactorily with the play-within-a-play.
As a result, the film maintains a relaxed and witty tone throughout. But under the shell of comedy, it also answers such a question through a series of scorching encounters experienced by the male protagonist as a screenwriter -
It is necessary to comply with censorship norms, to cater to market demands, and to cooperate with the demands of producers, so that screenwriters can still write good works that insist on themselves?
To this, director Samech Zubi's answer is "yes".
Just as Sharom still exerts his creativity to deliver satisfactory answers when he is constrained by many parties on the script, dancing in shackles is indeed difficult, but it is not an excuse for the creator to give up his efforts and a reason to comfort himself.