Poster for the movie "A Good Drama"
Atypical films of the age of the film industry
——The play as the name suggests, "A Good Play"
Li Qiang
Many people joke that "A Good Play" is very "famous as a person", and there is a Cunning of Huang Bo in his bones, because no matter what the film is, he can shoot his chest and say that his work is "a good play". As the leader of the Chinese film industry in the middle generation of stars, with the success cases of Xu Zheng and Chen Sicheng first, Huang Bo's leap from actor to director seems to be a natural success, but the film world has always been a cruel arena that only makes success or failure on heroes, if the ambition cannot be fulfilled, even if the slogan is shouted louder and the name is beautiful, it is just to win some eyeball traffic, increase laughter, so on the eve of the release, people are mostly only cautiously optimistic about this Huang Bo's directorial debut.
Stills from the movie "A Good Play"
Fortunately, "A Good Play" is a human allegorical film that not only has a wonderful story, but also has a superior production standard, although the excellent talent makes Huang Bo handy as an actor, but "A Good Play" is obviously not a film tailored for "actors", in the face of new problems and challenges, "A Good Play" makes people fully appreciate Huang Bo's sincerity and efforts for this cause as a director.
Inspired by the film "2012", Huang Bo tried to conceive from the "Noah's Ark after the disaster" as a starting point to think about how to carry out a human survival experiment in an isolated social "test tube", after 8 years of continuous polishing, a story of "survival on a desert island" came into being.
When it comes to the theme of "desert island survival", people may first think of classic works such as "The Rest of the Desert Island", "Six Days and Seven Nights", "Lord of the Flies" and "Lost". The narrative of this type of film often revolves around two levels – the brutal game between people and the external environment, and the dramatic contradiction between individuals/groups stripped of their traditional social identities. The theme of the film is related to the growth of the individual mind, the re-examination of man and nature and interpersonal relationships, and even the torture of social ecology and human nature. Although the story of "A Good Drama" does not jump out of the existing framework of the traditional "desert island survival" film, the film chooses the theme that is most difficult to grasp and express: the human logic behind social power - no ferocious beasts, no cannibal tribes, no strange events, the film deliberately eliminates most of the obvious external pressures that affect the characters, and almost all the narrative impetus comes from basic human motivation. Huang Bo tries to peel off and chew on the background of his humanity layer by showing the social relations of a group of people constantly collapsing and reconstructing. Obviously, this is a great test for the creator's ability to tell a good story.
People like to use "a brief history of human society" to summarize the theme of "A Good Drama". However, it is neither the story of the gradual derivation of social structures from "Primordial Humans" (teenagers) like "Lord of the Flies", nor the story of the continuous aggregation and reorganization of people (prisoners) with similar identities but discrete like "Escape from Ice Devil Island", "A Good Play" is to place the originally closed power structure (corporate team) into a new ecology and reconstruct it. From the moment when the original commanding Zhang Zong was mercilessly ridiculed by Xiao Wang, the continuous change of power became the theme of the film, and in this miniature social group of 30 people, the historical process from primitive society, class society to utopian society was concisely deduced, which corresponded to people's security and survival needs, material needs and spiritual needs, respectively. Xiao Wang, who was well versed in the way of survival, rightfully became the leader in the primitive stage when people were hungry; Zhang Zong, who accidentally discovered the treasure, firmly controlled all the means of life, thus successfully restoring, and engaged in the set of capitalist exploitation; Ma Jin, who was always outside the "system", after being snubbed, became a spiritual leader by relying on the fish rain that fell from the sky, the repair technology of Xiaoxing, and the exciting speech at the right time, and harvested love by the way. The interesting thing about the story is that "the world is gone" is the biggest premise for the existence of this "bonsai-style" society, so when Ma Jin and the other three find that "the world is still there", in the painful choice of "returning to the world is to lose everything", in the different realistic choices between him and Xiaoxing, the dramatic tension of the film is also pushed to the peak.
On the whole, "A Good Drama" is a highly completed work, behind the absurd form, is a rigorous narrative and serious themes, although the film's perception of society and human nature, there are its crude points, and to present such a grand theme in two hours, it is inevitable to have the limitations of peeping in the tube, but even those who are most absent-minded audiences should be able to feel Huang Bo's responsibility and ambition. Having the confidence and courage to show an all-encompassing social fable is particularly rare in today's domestic film creation environment that is generally intoxicated with the storm of water, and this film that observes human nature also shows Huang Bo's own creative view to some extent: although the film invites Wang Baoqiang, Shu Qi and other stars to sit, it is obviously not a film that is simply box office-oriented - at least it is not the product of consumer big data. "A Good Drama" does not track hot topics, does not graft hot IP, does not apply the traditional genre film model, does not follow Huang Bo's own familiar commercial comedy routines, there is no Internet buzzwords in the film, no nonsense funny, no show of feelings, no smashing knots, and no consumption of tears, it starts from an unpopular theme, with the goal of telling a story in its entirety, trying to find resonance in the audience's underlying consciousness and trigger thinking.
In short, this atypical male star Huang Bo, who was promoted by the film industry era, strives to create an atypical work of the film industry era. For Huang Bo, breaking free from the identity of the "movie emperor" surrounded by flowers, and truly creating a truly valuable work as a responsible filmmaker, "A Good Drama" has undoubtedly taken a successful step. The name of this movie is not a superficial rhetoric, Huang Bo really wants to make a good scene. From this, we can even see the possibility of stitching up the identities of business stars and cultural elites. For the reason, Huang Bo himself has expressed: "In fact, you have gained a lot of things from the film market and the development process of Chinese films. So when you go to create, shouldn't you be a little bit responsible? On the road of the predecessors, even if you widen it by one centimeter, one millimeter, and then go forward a little bit. ”