The family film "The Great Dad", which aims at Father's Day, has become a word-of-mouth work in the recent film market. Xiao Erdong (Zhang Youhao), a college student, inherits his late mother's love for marathons, but also inherits her fatal illness. His mother's efforts to come back after her illness but still died before the competition also became the internal motivation for Sholdon to choose his own life path. After his wife's death, Xiao Daming (Wang Yanhui), who drove a taxi alone to take care of his son, was bent on making all-round preparations for his son, he let his son adapt to the blind lane in advance, and also saved money to let his son, who had no musical hobbies, practice the piano, hoping that this would become a business for Xiao Erdong to make a living after he lost his sight. However, when the father and son have to truly face the fate of the arrangement, The marathon that Sholdon loves becomes the key to unraveling the father-son knot and allowing the two to face the challenge hand in hand.
The film combines the characteristics of sports and family themes. From a narrative point of view, the two marathon events became the skeleton of the plot, and also injected professionalism and bloody emotions into the film. Whether it is Sholdon's persistent practice outside the sports stadium in order to win the opportunity to compete, or the father overcoming his age and weight to participate in marathon training in order to be a good son's escort, these scenes greatly enhance the emotional intensity of the story. But on the other hand, "The Great Dad" also differs from the regular sports genre film, replacing the sports hero narrative with a realistic texture, organizing the plot around the family relationship between father and son. Therefore, there are no invincible opponents and desperate heroes in the film, we see how an ordinary family can re-understand each other; what they have to do is not to defeat their opponents, but to beat themselves through marathons and redefine the value of life.
It is the family theme and the relationship between father and son that make this film finally win in the emotional temperature. Wang Yanhui once again contributed wonderful acting skills in "The Great Father", portraying a middle-aged father who drove a taxi in a mountain city into a beautiful and painful portrait. The film truly shows the life of a poor family that is rare in the current commercial film and television drama, so that the relationship between the ordinary father and son has a solid and reliable life detail. Many well-designed plot points brought the audience to tears and provided the groundwork for a twist in the story. Before the recurrence of the disease, the father accepted his running shoes in order to prevent his son from participating, but Sholdong chose to run barefoot in order to be selected for the professional team, and after a few kilometers, his feet were already stained with blood; the father was distressed and rushed to the halfway to deliver shoes, but the determined Scholdong continued to run barefoot, and the feelings between father and son were completely broken. After the recurrence of the disease, Xiao Erdong still had a vision for his future and was unwilling to inject hormones, Xiao Daming used his fat body to suppress his son and let the doctor be able to inject, but he cried on the way home at night, making the audience feel the heart of his father's knife.
It is gratifying that this film does not blindly depict and render bitter feelings, and the small bridges and human warmth of youth films make "Great Dad" a film with a realistic style but at the same time "youth orientation". The battle of wits and courage between Sholdong and his father, and the "dead party" friendship between him and his friend Fang Dun, who runs a sporting goods store, make this film bring laughter in addition to tears. Father Xiao Daming's taxi driver friends are another highlight of the film, although there is not much ink, but Xiao Daming's life is full of concern from these ordinary laborer colleagues, whether it is a piece of meat on the dinner table, or help to lift the piano, or the teasing and companionship from colleagues in the final mountain marathon training, let us feel the warmth of the world. It is these warm forces that not only accompany Xiao Daming's father and son out of the haze, but also make this film have a touch of romanticism on the background of realism.
At present, the just-released "Great Dad" leads the first place in the domestic films of the Father's Day schedule, and also relies on excellent quality and warm power to gain the audience's word of mouth and mainstream media praise. With the continuous development and maturity of the Chinese film industry, "The Great Dad" conforms to the needs of the market and culture. First of all, this film vividly depicts the lives of ordinary contemporary Chinese people, resonates with ordinary audiences with the quality of realism, and tells the story of mortals shining with emotional light in the current Chinese social life for The Chinese people and even the world from one side. Compared with the bitter love and sadism that fills the screen and the strong dramatic narrative that flies into the sky, "The Great Father" presents contemporary China from the perspective of family relations, reflecting a unique cultural appeal. When we are all continuing to explore how to tell the Chinese story well, "The Great Father" will focus on reality and daily life, highlight the power of family and friendship, encourage people's care and kindness in life and the support of family, and convey the simple wisdom of life that has been relied on in the life of Chinese for a long time.
Secondly, the film introduces several genres of creative means into the realist story, so that the film is not only close to reality, but also close to the expectations of mainstream audiences. From the perspective of story structure, this is a story type with a weak dramatic twist and a lack of spectacle in the scene, and even a story that can guess the end after reading the beginning. However, the creators of the film solidly create the environment, shape the characters, enrich the details, successfully excavate the inner emotional power of the story, provide the audience with a psychological channel for catharsis and purification with the bright colors on the basis of realism, and provide the courage and reason to continue to pursue a happy life while recognizing the unfortunate difficulties of real life. Over the years, this creative method with both realist style and genre elements has become the mainstream orientation of small and medium-cost films, which integrates art and the market well, and also provides a unique literary and artistic expression for contemporary Chinese social life.
Text/Liang Junjian (Associate Professor, Doctoral Supervisor, School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University)
Editor/Bow Lifang