The new suspense reasoning work "Fame and Fame" has four signed screenwriters, namely Li Bashen, Zhang Benyu, Kodak and Liu Xunzimo.
Among them, Zhang Benyu and Kodak are familiar Actors of Wanhe Tianyi, and they are also the main actors of this film, and Liu Xunzimo is the director.
The logic of the story is rigorous, the layers are progressive, and there are many reversals, which can be seen that the 4 creators have burst out a lot of surprising ideas after many brainstorming sessions.
The film itself tells the story of a script that will uncover a shocking case, and the story model is the typical "snowstorm villa model".
According to records, the "Blizzard Mountain Villa Model" was pioneered by Agatha Christie, the queen of British mystery novels, in the novel "No One Survives".
It refers to a group of people gathered in a closed environment, such as a mansion isolated by a blizzard (rain), a secret room, an island, a boat, etc., which can neither communicate with the outside world nor external forces (temporarily) interfere.
Then, one strange thing happens or someone dies in this group of isolated people, and most importantly, the murderer is among them.
Everyone must protect themselves and at the same time clear their suspicions, or gangs, or conspiracies, or wisdom to protect themselves, or confuse the public, or expose the truth.
Generally speaking, the protagonist of "Blizzard Mountain Villa Mode" will be set up as a detective or secretion teller to perform a wonderful secret room reasoning process.
The "detective" mentioned here is a type of role rather than a profession, such as a policeman, prosecutor, investigator, reporter, etc., and all characters with investigative inquiry can become "detectives", which was innovatively played by a screenwriter in the movie "Fame and Fame".
In the detective story genre, there is a difference between the "Blizzard Mountain Villa mode" and another familiar "locked-room mystery" model.
The Chamber of Secrets case refers to cases where it seems impossible for the perpetrator to enter or leave the crime scene, while the "Blizzard Mountain Villa Model" derives from the "closed circle of suspects" genre in English-language detective fiction, the founder of which is also believed to be Agatha Christie. Her debut novel, The Strange Case of Styles Manor, was the first of its kind.
The biggest difference between it and the "Mystery of the Chamber" model is that a group of people are in an enclosed space, the murderer and the victim are in the same room, and everyone is suspected, forming a circle of suspects.
Because many houses or castles in the British countryside are surrounded by wasteland, the people in the castle are relatively isolated and closed, which gives birth to this type of detective literature.
One of the grandmasters of speculative literature, Agatha Christie
This mode is heavily used in the Conan series of reasoning animations, and the 2019 high-scoring masterpiece "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath" is also this mode, the niche film "Ultimate Interview" sets the scene as a closed interview scene, and one of the most successful cases used in Chinese film and television works is the spy war film "Wind Sound".
"The Sound of the Wind" is a typical "Blizzard Villa model" movie: several Nationalist officers are imprisoned in Qiuzhuang for censorship, including an underground party code-named "Old Ghost". "Old Ghost" is the equivalent of the "murderer" character in the mode, everyone is suspected, and the final ending is surprising.
After "The Sound of the Wind", "Fame and Fame" is the second domestic film that successfully uses the "Blizzard Villa Model".
On the basis of the traditional model, "Fame and Fame" has carried out micro-innovation.
Although the murderer played by Zhang Benyu is also with everyone, and almost reveals his identity at the beginning of the story, the plot direction is not the murderer who kills people, but the truth of the crime that the murderer has committed.
The movie gives everyone a motivation to explore the truth, that is, they are all filmmakers, and under the coercion of investor Lu Ye, they want to make a movie of the crime committed by the murderer.
The team lu ye found includes screenwriter Li Jiahui played by Yin Zheng, former actress Su Mengdi played by Deng Jiajia, silent film actor Guan Teacher, who was eliminated by sound films, Xiao Da, an action actor who was discriminated against in Hollywood, Zheng Dao, a bad film director played by Yu Entai, and the intern police officer Hai Hai and the murderer Qi Leshan.
Since the script is "the basis of a play", if you want to write a good story of the murderer, you must naturally dig into all aspects of the murderer, so the detective role naturally falls on the head of the screenwriter Lee Ka-fai.
Although there is a commonality of the "Blizzard Villa Model", the original plot of "Fame and Fame" is that the screenwriter Lee Ka-fai leads the minds of everyone to reveal the murderer Qi Leshan.
The viewing process is very interesting, because the whole mystery process is a cycle of "digging a pit - filling a pit - reversing", and the plot has set up a dead knot problem many times, and it has been solved and reversed many times.
For example, at the beginning, the convener Lu Ye only introduced the murderer Qi Leshan and the police dahai as the consultants of the script meeting, and everyone did not expect that Qi Leshan was the cruel murderer who committed the tragedy himself.
When revealing that Qileshan is the murderer, the Hitchcock-style suspense "bomb theory" is also used. First let the screenwriter Lee Ka-fai and the audience know that Qi Leshan is carrying the shackles of a death row prisoner, and not let the other participants know, so that the suspense will immediately stand out.
The next secret process is more powerful, everyone learned that they were in the same room with the murderer, they were already greatly frightened, and found that the place where the script meeting was held was actually the scene of the murderer's crime.
A secret room is covered with blood, three beach gangsters have died tragically, there are strange hooks in the four corners of the roof, a priceless French painting...
What happened to the chamber of secrets in this Blizzard Mountain? The film cleverly combines the two modes to make the suspense layer by layer.
After the murderer reveals his identity, the plot revolves around three mysteries: What is the identity of the murderer? What was the murderer's motive? Why did the murderer tie his hands?
The answers to these mysteries cannot be spoiled, and you must see them for yourself to experience the cleverness of the story of "Fame and Fame".
In addition to the use and innovation of the "Blizzard Villa Model", "Fame and Fame" also has a layer of creativity that is self-deprecating and borrowing from the past to the present film industry.
Because the surface of the plot is a few filmmakers with a bright surface but actually a downfall get together to discuss a new film, and the discussion process mentions such as "although the films are all bad films, but they all make money", the Chinese have a low status in Hollywood, when they are popular, they play big names, and they only promise after they have been popular... These are all phenomena that exist in reality.
For example, the actor Guan Teacher set up in the film was once popular and arrogant in the silent film era. But with the advent of sound films, silent actors were not necessarily suitable for sound films, and they declined.
There are corresponding cases in the history of cinema, and the silent film master Buster Keaton, who is on par with Chaplin, disappeared into the era of sound film.
Because silent films have no lines, they require actors to have exaggerated body movements and expressions, suitable for Keaton, who comes from acrobatic performance family.
When sound films arrived, there were more medium- and close-up and dialogue shots, and silent actors declined.
There is also ridicule that Chinese kung fu is not good, investors are heavily indebted, vulgar bad films are box office hits...
Many of the memes in "Fame and Fame" are typical of postmodern performances, which look very interesting, but after laughing and thinking about it carefully, you will feel a little helpless and bitter.
The filmmaker's self-mockery of the filmmaker makes "Fame and Fame" have a postmodernity similar to the style of Stephen Chow's films.
Postmodern art often adopts irony, absurdity, ridicule, blasphemy, mocking imitation and other techniques in its performance, showing the uncertainty and decomposition of the contemporary world.
At present, the film industry and the entertainment industry are also in a strong uncertainty and turbulent decomposition, and I believe that the audience will resonate when they see these jokes in the movie.
Finally, let's interpret the painting that appears in the movie and the poster. This prop is the most important metaphor in the whole film.
This painting is, as lu ye, the investor in the film, said, and is the representative work of the French romantic master Eugène de la Croix.
Delacroix, The Death of Saldanapal
The painting, called The Death of Saldanapal, is an oil painting on canvas now in the Louvre Museum in France.
The contrast of the red fabric in the painting with the snow-white carcass and the twisted killing action make the painting have a strong visual impact and is a typical Romantic painting.
The content of the painting is based on the events recorded in the history series of the ancient Greek historian Theodoros of Sicily, and the person who lay in bed and indifferently watched the killing was sardanapalus, the last king of the Assyrian Empire.
However, it has been verified that the last king of the Assyrian Empire was not this person, but more of a symbolic meaning, representing a lifelong indulgent and decadent emperor, which can be compared to the Chinese king's wine pond meat forest, absurd and corrupt, and extremely luxurious court life.
In the understanding of the painter Delacroix himself, this painting recreates the moment when Saldanapal and his maids, slaves, war horses, etc. perished together, and the whole picture is filled with a messy decadent and passionate aesthetic of violence.
The movie "Fame and Fame" chose this painting as the main prop, on the one hand, it is a metaphor for Qile mountain, after killing the three big guys in Shanghai Beach, just like the saldana pahl in the painting, calmly waiting for his own ending; on the other hand, this painting also reveals the motive of Qi Leshan's killing, and the three big guys are also Saldana Pale.
And why Qi Leshan killed the three elders, his motives and the truth behind him can only be found in the movie.
Before the release of the movie, "Deng Jiajia Crying Scene" and "Zhang Benyu Into the Play" two tidbits are on the hot search, this kind of story that occurs in a closed small space, it is difficult to create any visual spectacle, so the actor's performance is very important, must have a strong sense of substitution.
With conventional expectations and their own imagination, but the process of watching constantly subverts their previous expectations.
"Fame and Fame" is really different from what you imagined.
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