Lei Jiayin: Just the right complex passages of love and human nature

At dusk more than ten years ago, when I was still studying at the Shanghai Theater Academy, I often walked to Anfu Road at night to see a play of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, and on the stage at that time, it was common to see these people who had not yet become famous in film and television dramas: Guo Jingfei, Zheng Kai, and Lei Jiayin.

It was a polished era, lei Jiayin graduated from the department of acting in the drama, that is, worked as an actor in the drama center for many years. On stage, his characters impressed theater-loving audiences, and in 2011, he won the "Zorin Award" for the most promising newcomer award known as the Oscar of the drama industry for the drama "12 People". But in the eyes of the public, he is an ordinary person who is not handsome in the actor group and has a bit of cute body language. A few years later, he not only became a front-line film and television actor, but also successfully performed a number of outstanding screen and screen images, including the unsung hero in the recently concluded TV series "Meritorious Service" - nuclear physicist Yu Min.

Debut on the silver screen

Deduce the state of humanity outside of typing

In 2011, Ning Hao searched for the male number one "Little Northeast" of "The Great Gold Robbery". Lei Jiayin, a northeasterner, got the role after the audition. For Lei Jiayin, stepping on the big screen and playing the protagonist is a very important turning point in life. After the release of "The Great Golden Robbery", he won the Best Actor Award at the 11th China Changchun Film Festival and the Best Emerging Actor Award at the 7th Chinese Youth Film Forum for this role. However, during this period, director Ning Hao was experiencing a period of depression after the explosion of "Crazy Stone", and "The Great Golden Robbery" also became a film work that Ning Hao was not optimistic about. Therefore, in addition to winning some awards, the role of "Little Northeast" did not open Lei Jiayin to greater popularity. But he at least succeeded in moving from drama actor to screen, and then successively played the role of multiple film and television dramas, but did not surpass "Little Northeast".

2017 is the real prosperity of Lei Jiayin, with the popularity of the TV series "The First Half of My Life", Lei Jiayin played the heroine's ex-husband - supporting role Chen Junsheng. The TV series "The First Half of My Life" is adapted from Yi Shu's novel, and after adaptation, it is positioned as a big female protagonist, and the main narrative line is the story of the housewife Luo Zijun rebuilding herself and life after her husband cheated on her and divorced.

Chen Junsheng, the "scumbag" role of modern Chen Shimei, made Lei Jiayin really catch fire. Chen Junsheng in the story, who looks honest and honest, but cheated on the company's colleague Ling Ling, and his wife Luo Zijun, who has been living comfortably, returned to zero after the divorce and started again. Chen Junsheng is a functional character, using him as a fulcrum to pry open the growth arc of the main characters, and using his new feelings as an opportunity to carry out the dramatization of the negative characters. In playing this role that was spurned at the beginning of the series, Lei Jiayin has an overall positioning of Chen Junsheng's image, he is not blindly facing the image of a cheating scumbag, but also performs his emotions, even in the workplace and in the new and old family helpless.

Lei Jiayin has her own opinion on this role - Chen Junsheng is not just a "labeled" scumbag in the play, but a microcosm of Chinese-style marriage. The TV series explores the problems of how everyone should choose love, emotion, and responsibility at different ages. He strives to perform the emotional details of characters outside of the genre. There is a plot in which Luo Zijun's mother died suddenly, Chen Junsheng came to pay tribute, showing deep sorrow from the bottom of his heart, and the marriage he voluntarily gave up also invested in the feelings of all his family. He wants to establish a new marriage, to change the order in the original family, to find the lost male dignity, but he can't find what he hopes to find. The phoenix nirvana of his ex-wife further sets off the crampedness and failure of his life.

Lei Jiayin performed the pity of the hateful person.

Through the TV series "The First Half of My Life", Lei Jiayin and director Shen Yan have a good cooperation, and when Shen Yan directed the Yu Min link in the TV series "Meritorious Service", he once again successfully cooperated with Lei Jiayin.

Also in 2017, a movie screen role that is very important to Lei Jiayin is Nanzhen Fusi Jinyi Wei Pei Lun in "Xiu Chun Dao II: Shuluo Battlefield". The movie is not a comedy, but Pei Lun is a role with a strong comedy setting, in order to perform this role, Lei Jiayin tried to lose twenty pounds in a month, which is a performance that particularly highlights his personal acting skills, holding it in place, humorous and brilliant, lighting up the tone of the whole movie, the foodie person in the movie is also an expansion of his personality, playing Lei Jiayin with the characteristics of a comedic personality, at the same time, it also combines other complexities of the character: although humorous, but very cute, but also planning, At the same time, it also has both righteousness and courtesy, determination and softness. The complex personality is displayed in such a small supporting role, which is very plump, and Lei Jiayin shows the complex human nature, among various scenes, such as interrogating Jinghai, eating, lighting cigarettes, tearing up records, all in one go.

The success of this cooperation between Lei Jiayin and Lu Yang also laid the foundation for starring in the movie "Assassination of a Novelist" a few years later.

Getting better

"Orange Cat" boyfriend and superpowered father

Over the years, Lei Jiayin has created a lot of roles on large and small screens, and has starred in many heavyweight film and television works, such as the movie "Living Together in Time", "Whistleblower", "Assassination of a Novelist", the drama series "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", "White Deer Plain" and so on.

I would like to highlight two important roles he played on the big screen: Lu Ming in "Living Together in Time" and the father who searched for his daughter in "Assassination of a Novelist".

"Living Together in Time" has earned more than 900 million at the box office in an era when simple love movies are not optimistic about the market. On the one hand, the cross-genre success of love and fantasy, on the other hand, thanks to the success of human design and the success of character shaping, the most important role in the film is the male protagonist played by Lei Jiayin - Lu Ming in two different time and space. In particular, lu ming, a warm man in 1999, can be called an "orange cat type" man.

The orange cat is a cat breed that is recognized as particularly well-fed. "Orange Cat Man" is the opposite of the domineering president, they do not have the appearance of small fresh meat, even slightly fat, do not sit on the material backing of the world, do not have the business war aura of arrogance, and even do not have a set of fixed assets to settle down, but they can give people a sense of home, a warm texture from daily stew, hair blowing, and careful care. This type of person is no longer common on the movie screen, and "Living Together in Time" creates an "orange cat man" and places it on the opposite side of the domineering president's "wolf man" - Lu Ming in 2018, who grew up with morality, which is a kind of discovery and retro. The success of this role is also related to Lei Jiayin's own temperament and acting skills, in 1999, he looked like a homely and warm orange cat type man, who was easy to feed at will, worked hard to pursue self-motivation, and spared no effort to take care of his family. Lu Ming, played by Lei Jiayin, did not deliberately say a word of love, and when he saved Gu Xiaojiao's father, he said a sentence "If you meet in different time and space, I will take good care of her." It is a sense of responsibility for the rest of life, down-to-earth and full-hearted, and it is also a weapon to impress girls who are wandering in the city.

Lei Jiayin needs to play two or even three different states in the movie: Lu Ming, the "Orange Cat Man" in 1999, Lu Ming, the "Wolf Sex Man" in 2018, and Lu Ming, who pretends to be another era. He moves freely through these three different states, holding on to them freely.

"Assassination of a Novelist" is the second collaboration between director Lu Yang and Lei Jiayin. This time, Lei Jiayin played the protagonist Guan Ning. But it is not a unique protagonist, the novelist Lu Kongwen played by Dong Zijian in the movie, and Tu Ling played by Yang Mi are also very important roles.

Lei Jiayin plays a desperate and hopeful person in a state of extreme exhaustion. The story takes Guan Ning's search for a daughter as the main line, connecting two different time and space. And the role of Guan Ning not only has literary drama, but also martial arts. The most important belief that underpins him is to find his daughter. Some of the characters in Assassination of a Novelist resemble the setting of a superhero movie, with their own superpowers. This setting includes the protagonist Guan Ning himself. Actors need to make some sacrifices for their proximity to the character. In this movie, in order to better shoot the state of martial arts, under the premise of protective measures, Lei Jiayin requires real shooting of scenes of being beaten and beaten, such as being hit by a beer bottle, and being hit by a chair, etc., and even in order to fit the tired and nervous state of the character, Lei Jiayin fell into Guan Ning's body, often did not eat, drink or sleep during filming, and completely entered the role through a "experiential" performance, through the suffering of flesh and blood, to obtain a high degree of spiritual recognition. Lei Jiayin felt closer to the image of the father who was holding pain and hope. Director Lu Yang commented: "Lei Jiayin is a character whose mental state is close to the limit in the play, so he often puts himself in that situation and then starts to perform."

At the same time, Lei Jiayin, as the protagonist, is the kind of person who can still play the role although he is the protagonist, that is, he can play a good protagonist at the same time, give other roles sufficient space, and his performance is particularly in place in terms of rhythm and scale, which can be a small role that gives people a bright eye, or a low-key protagonist.

Played Yu Min in "Meritorious Service"

As an actor and a fit with the characters of the great era

Yu Min, played by Lei Jiayin in the TV series "Meritorious Service", is a hero of China's nuclear bomb research, known as the father of China's hydrogen bomb, the so-called "do anonymity and bury celebrities, do earth-shattering things" . There is not much information about Yu Min, including: 28 years in anonymity; because of yu Min and his colleagues in the hydrogen bomb theory group, It took China only two years and eight months from the first atomic bomb explosion to the first hydrogen bomb explosion; when the first "Order of the Republic" was awarded in 2019, he was the only one of the eight deceased meritorious figures at that time. Playing such a great but extremely low-key unsung hero in his life is very difficult. The requirements for screenwriters, directors, and actors are extremely high. Zheng Xiaolong, the general director of "Meritorious Service", said that the crew of the eight units has a unanimous agreement: to respect the true logic of the times, but also to be loyal to the emotions of meritorious characters born into people. Only in this way can we shoot works that the people love to see.

Lei Jiayin successfully interpreted Yu Min's three states. Completed three performance tasks in a six-episode short series.

The first task: addiction. This task was given to Yu Min as a researcher.

Yu Min graduated from Peking University and is a genius in computing, and he also loves this work. His practical research requires a lot of calculus and non-stop mental arithmetic. In his daily state, Yu Min is often addicted to work, which is similar to that of mathematician Chen Jingrun, such as he will be late for calculating data on the way to a blind date, and he is also studying theory when catching fish by the river. He enters a state of operation at any point in time. In the interpretation of this state, Lei Jiayin contracted body language, converged any externalization, self-expression, hid the actor's outward tension and sharpness, converged into a point, and struck inward, showing a scientist obsessively investing all his energy in the research state. As a scientist, Yu Min is in a state of tension and sprinting at any time. He is stable in appearance and has very little body language, but his thinking is non-stop, rushing to the sea.

In shaping Yu Min as a husband and father, Lei Jiayin's performance focuses on love and indebtedness.

When he first saw his wife Yuqin, played by Ni Ni, he was late, Yuqin could not wait to grab the door and come out, he stood in the doorway, rubbing shoulders with her, he stared at her back, at that moment, he had fallen in love with her at first sight, but the scientist's love at first sight and ordinary people's love at first sight was still different, he had no emotion flowing and expression, but silently returned to the blind date table, like a child who did something wrong, let the introducer - his sister's number fall. But when he stared at the photo left by Yuqin, his eyes already revealed that he belonged.

He loved his wife and children deeply, but he felt sorry for them. His work is secret, it is also a secret to his family, and he cannot accompany him for many years, he needs to pull his legs at any time to leave, his wife is sick or even has children, he cannot accompany him. Yu Min has a confession to his wife, is a passage to return home after the completion of the last important work, to comfort his wife, he recalled the moment of falling in love with her, Lei Jiayin narrated this paragraph in a very ordinary tone, very calmly showing the deep affection of scientists, this confession soothed his wife Yuqin, but also soothed the audience who was distressed by Yuqin.

The nature of Yu Min's work determines that he is extremely devoted and rigorous in scientific research, and does not say anything about his work to the people closest to him in family life. Everything must be devoted, but the achievements and achievements cannot be publicized and announced.

Lei Jiayin has a particularly good performance, presenting Yu Min's proud, pursuit of perfection and lonely inner world: after the success of the hydrogen bomb explosion, the family of three saw the crowd celebrating in the street, he was excited but had to suppress it, but still wanted to enjoy the moment, he said to his wife, let's buy a roast duck, the wife did not know, on the grounds of recent tight expenses, he also nodded his head to accept. Back at home, his wife and children are asleep, Yu Min can't sleep, he shaved his beard for the first time in the play - a ritual moment, he can't hold back his inner excitement, and even silently cry. In this paragraph, Lei Jiayin uses his performance state to understand the people in that era and the special working state, that kind of sacrifice, not only hobbies, time with family, but also a sense of accomplishment that can be publicly appreciated and recognized. And many people in this industry have spent their lives in silence, which can be called great.

Here, Lei Jiayin's second performance task is to "press the pinch". In the presence of loved ones, do not reveal yourself, and in front of anyone, press your desires and egos.

At the same time, Lei Jiayin performed two opposite characteristics of the characters given by the play, on the one hand, he was particularly able to work hard according to his own desires and wishes, on the other hand, as the head of the hydrogen bomb theory group of the institute, he was very decisive, very bold, courageous, courageous, benevolent, and a rare good leader.

As a leader and manager, Yu Min in the play puts the importance of scientific research above the rule of man at all times, which makes him full of personality charm.

He dared to use talents, and after discovering the calculus genius Yuan Jinhong, he was told that he was often late in another unit, and he wore black leather shoes with a small head, paying too much attention to dressing, and the organization hoped not to use such a person. Yu Min said firmly, "I want him." At this moment, Lei Jiayin performed a completely different personalized color from Yu Min, who was in research and faced his wife and children, firm and bold.

When the entire institute faced pressure from its superiors, and some people raised the delay in producing results to an ideological problem, Yu Min pointed out that "the biggest problem in scientific research is the problem of scientific research." At this moment, Lei Jiayin's Interpretation of Yu Min is no longer the nerdy scientist before, but a bold, able to withstand the pressure of the leader, the machine has a fault, need to restart, he calmly said, restart on restart, it has been so long, do not care about such a moment. At the critical moment, he even dared to pat the table with the people sent by the organization, Yu Min's personality charm spontaneously emerged, it can be believed that it is yu Min as the leader, resisting the pressure, silently cultivating, he led a group of people who dedicated their lives to the cause of the motherland's nuclear bomb, like-minded, united and mutual understanding, mutual promotion, so that they can complete the great cause in difficult times.

In the interpersonal relationship of the institute, the relationship with the superior Lao Hao and the relationship with the subordinate people with different personalities have emotions and mutual support behind them, and these relationship chains together constitute a living image of Yu Min. At this time, he no longer imprisoned his emotions, but released, which can be reflected in his eyes and movements, but not the kind of completely externalized release. Be vivid and sharp, and be good at perceiving the emotions and needs of others. His kindness, determination, and considerate humanity have made him an important core figure in this scientific research team, so that they can work together and achieve success. As a result, Lei Jiayin completed Yu Min's third performance task: to take charge. At the same time, Lei Jiayin once again exerted his strong ability as a protagonist to set off the supporting role, and in the Yu Min link, which only has six episodes, Lu Jie, Lao Hao, and Yuan Jinhong have several vivid and vivid characters.

Lei Jiayin gives the typed characters a suitable and appropriate affection in her performance, and gives the positive characters more human passages. The characters are complex, vivid and rich, and get more resonance from the audience.

(Author: Cui Chen, Associate Professor, School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Source: Wen Wei Po