"The Party at South Station" is about how more than zero people who have been abandoned by society find their own value and dignity in the process of being abandoned.
Text | Qingyan Editing | Shen Xiaoshan
"The Party at South Station" is a fascinating cop movie.
The police film, which tells its story, tells the story of a wanted murderer who evades the black and white pursuit in the wild goose pond of Sanwu while hoping that his wife, who has not seen him for 5 years, will report that he has received a bounty of 300,000 yuan.
Charming, that is, its texture, full of poetic and romantic emotions, whether it is visual modeling, sound effects processing or lighting, as well as the environment in which the whole story takes place, all point to the lingering charm of the film without exception.
They are each other's faces, creating "The Party at South Station" into a thrilling and mournful way. Obviously, it is a bloody and sad story, but it sees a charming romance.
The police and bandits on the surface, like the blood gushing from Hu Ge's chest, are the stimulating elements that attract the audience, they are wet and viscous and have a rainy smell.
The charming atmosphere inside, wrapped in a variety of undercurrents of desire, is not only the ferocity of the underworld forces to kill them all, but also the police's wanton network of murder, as well as the betrayal of former friends, and the protagonist's entanglement with two women.
These chaotic and mixed images make the wuhan wild goose pond entangled in the rain become a huge metaphor: Hu Ge earned 300,000 yuan for his wife and children before his death, and the bright and dark appeals of the swimmer played by Gui Lunmeng, as well as the identity of the two of them who are also marginalized people in society, there is a subtle metaphor that echoes the overall reality of the current society, which cannot be punctured, but also does not need to be punctured.
However, in the current cultural context, director Diao Yinan cannot and does not need to aggravate this part. He only needs to take care of the roles of Hu Ge and Gui Lunmeng, and clarify how these two people who carry too many burdens are dangerous and eager to get close to each other, so that the story itself can maximize the literary nature of small words, that is:
How to find the value and dignity of more than zero people who have been abandoned by society in the process of being abandoned.
In "The Party at South Station", it is Zhou Zenong, played by Hu Ge, who swears to realize his self-worth at the last moment of his life. For Diao Yinan, there is something wild in everyone's heart, especially those who are weak in energy on the edge, who prove that their desires may be stronger, and their actions may be more extraordinary.
Therefore, Hu Ge in the movie, after believing that he could exchange his death for his wife and children for 300,000, went from the railway station to Wild Goose Pond to create strong conditions for his wife to report himself; he was shot in the shoulder blade but could escape for several days, and even be able to blade several people. Zhou Zenong, played by Hu Ge, although defined by the law as a heinous murderer, but the determination and action of trying to leave 30 for his wife and children made him an ethically good husband.
"The Party at South Station" uses a lot of imagery to argue again and again that the protagonist's identity is glued, such as the round-up and hunting in the tube building at the end of the film: Hu Ge turns the stairs and runs upwards, but the camera does not follow, but instead aims at the shadow that Hu Ge projects on the wall and seems to be standing still - Hu Ge who is trying to escape, and the shadow that has not moved, forming a wonderful irony: the harder you try to move, the more you stand still, the more futile.
Putting aside ethics, good and evil and legal right and wrong, and putting the protagonist in despair and struggle to explore the problem, the method runs through the few 4 works of Diao Yinan.
Diao Yinan's first work was 2003's "Uniform", and the male protagonist is also a confused person in his dual identity (real tailor and fake policeman). But it has thick traces of imitating realist films, making Diao Yinan look childish and blunt. By the time of 2007's "Night Train", Diao Yinan began to find a personal style: the protagonist was lonely and lonely to the point of cold and hard appearance, wrapped in the desire to have nowhere to put it.
By the time of 2014's "Daytime Fireworks", Diao Yinan's technique has matured: he is no longer completely addicted to the expression of his own cold emotions, but instead uses film noir that is more acceptable to the audience as a communication bridge; while completing the grafting of commercial films and literary films, his protagonists are more marginal and more desperate. The most subtle thing is his grasp of the state and relationship between the male and female protagonists, which is both ambiguous and traceable, both romantic and poetic and cold and cruel - this expression technique is not only more thoroughly executed in "The Party at South Station", but even played more chewy by Diao Yinan:
He first implemented the style of film noir, so that Hu Ge, who was at the bottom, lost the possibility of controlling the direction of fate in a series of yin and yang mistakes. As the audience follows Hu Ge on his way through the dark, damp, crowded wild goose pond, the moral and legal views before the audience enter the story begin to blur. Compared with the fact that the villain should be brought to justice, the audience's trepidation comes more from the uncertainty about Hu Ge in the future: when, where, and in what form will he be reported? Will he tie his hands and grab it, or will he be killed on the spot?
The second is Diao Yinan's infusion of martial arts style in the police story. This is not only to say that the film's action has the look of martial arts action, but also praises that when it creates an atmosphere, it has a kind of impact of "the jianghu is dangerous, the hero is not good". The most typical is not Hu Ge's fierceness and fierceness in Room 302 of the Tube Building, but the green lights, swinging curtains, rotating fans, and plainclothes that come quietly when he eats noodles in the restaurant. The kind of solemnity and xiao killing that overrides the scene of life makes it easy to mistakenly think that Hu Ge has broken into the golden and jade Dragon Gate Inn.
But the most unique thing about "The Party at South Station" is that Diao Yinan wantonly exudes his very favorite urban aesthetics, which elevates the status and value of the urban-rural combination in contemporary Chinese aesthetics. The strange neon lights, the rustic urbanization of the earth, the wild goose ponds mixed with fish and dragons, the empty circus, and the zoo where trapped animals gather, present the fierceness, darkness, bloodshed and coldness of the living conditions of marginal people.
Another example is Hu Ge's ambiguous pink neon when he collects his gun in the hotel room, the dim yellow street lamp when Huang Mao's head is cut off by a forklift, and the glowing soles of his shoes when plainclothes are rounded up in the square.
In particular, during the round-up section of the square, the "cannon hand-cranked popcorn machine" that made a loud noise from time to time presented the unique urban aesthetics of Chinese society almost in a documentary manner: reality and psychedelic, vanity and worldliness, absurdity in chaos, and emptiness in the loud noise.
The Wuhan ancient puzzle boys, led by Hu Ge, grew up in this ferocious environment of animals, instinctive and fierce, innocent and mysterious, and occasionally very tender. As marginal villains, Hu Ge and Gui Lunmeng have values that are very different from those of the civilized world: relying on instinct to judge, decide and survive.
In this seemingly simple and crude principle of survival, there is no right or wrong, and Director Diao Yinan has no intention of making such a false common sense judgment. He and the film are more concerned about the evil Hu Ge, how to exchange his life for his wife and children for the cost of living; how the sinister Gui Lun Magnesium finds the value and meaning of life under the oppression of various men.
In the artistic standards of director Diao Yinan, he does not care about good and evil in morality and ethics, nor does he care about right and wrong in social regulations. He was only concerned with the despair and struggle of those faint and small individuals when they were pushed by fate, and finally sighed a sigh:
In this world, how many secrets and sadness have been killed and buried by morality and law.
The Party at South Station (2019)
Genre: Drama/Crime
Country of Production: Chinese mainland/France
Language: Wuhan dialect
Source| Nandu Weekly
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