This year, we care about the world, the epidemic, food and vegetables, and the ups and downs of the entertainment industry. We also care about specific people, their fate held by the big age, their smiling faces hidden behind masks, the surprises and frustrations in their tired daily life, and the warmth and kindness they release intentionally or unintentionally.
This year, sincere expression has increasingly become a luxury. We met many people and thanked them for opening up and willing to tell us their stories. There are celebrities among them, but they are more ordinary people, those who are deep, low-key, in the corner, little-known but always vigorous and vigorous. Although their stories are not popular with traffic, they are often more moving.
This is also a year of rapid change. The uncertainty of the physical world and the virtual world may disrupt the familiar life trajectory of people at any time. So at this moment, we also want to care more about some long-term things, about the universal laws of the world, or people's confirmation of self-worth.
Only in this way can we leave a little trace of ourselves in this era of "passing by".
01
"Meritorious" is one of the best-known TV series in 2021.
I noticed it at first, just because of work. This drama has eight chapters. The first chapter is about the heroes of the Korean battlefield. They are enthusiastically liked and sought after by the audience, which also makes this drama a hit. Each chapter is an independent director. I saw Kang Honglei, who I like very much, and his chapter "The Obscure Zhang Fuqing".
As an audience, people like me don’t like great and macro things. They hate wars and war madmen. They can’t get close to the heroism and idealism. They habitually stay away from the collective, sacrifice, dedication, responsibility, discipline, responsibility, etc. Altruistic words. No longer young enough to believe in something, and not old enough to know something.
The story of Zhang Fuqing is outside my "knowing" and outside my "belief". Out of trust in the director Kang Honglei, and with a sense of distance, I entered this story.
The first ten minutes are indeed a bit confusing-because its opening is too much like a medical documentary. Moreover, don't you always find a bunch of big coffee guest appearances in the main theme tribute drama? But at the beginning, I didn't see a familiar actor, those unfamiliar faces still talked about Southern accent and Northern Tuning.
This is not the kind of man drama or war drama that made Kang Honglei famous—just like "Soldiers Assault" and "My Leader My Group". But this is his aesthetic work: the story is tough, the lines are tough, the characters are tough. Everything is like still water flowing deep, but not too pale.
Although I was still very cautious, I went online to find various videos and graphic reports on the prototype of the story in reality, confirmed more facts, and checked what had to be changed in the plot. Then, I knew and believed in the existence of some people and things.
I went to make an appointment with the director, and made up my mind to write the manuscript honestly, without playing tricks, and not trying to find some angles to package the manuscript. However, after finishing all this, Zhang Fuqing's six episodes were still obscured in the rest of the excitement of "The Meritorious". From time to time, I would go to the Douban short comment page of this TV series, and found that the page was always full of praise in the first and second chapters, and even the audience's criticism fell on several other chapters starred by big-name stars.
This is a TV series that doesn't try to wave to the audience.
As an outsider, I still feel bad about this. As the director, Kang Honglei, I am afraid that this kind of attention gap has long been known.
At that time, Director Kang agreed very happily, and quickly finalized the time and place-this kind of pleasure is really rare in domestic entertainment. He had only one request, that is, to make an appointment with the screenwriter Chen Ping-he did not regard this as a personal work show, but wanted to promote the story of Zhang Fuqing more, and the creation of it was inseparable from the screenwriter's efforts.
We talked for more than two hours in his office. Towards the end, I asked a little rashly: Director, why would you be willing to talk to us about this? He didn't hesitate to answer: "Because you were the first one to find it after the broadcast." He turned his head and smiled at Chen Ping and said: "Our play has obscurity in the name. We have to get used to obscurity."
That night, he specially sent a text message to exhort: "Write more about the nobility and greatness of Zhang Fuqing.
For many moments, I can feel that the director has a feeling of "being worthy of him" towards his protagonist.
Kang Honglei doesn't like the saying "I have nothing to owe in my life". When someone says this, he must stay away. "Because of a person's life, there must be a certain period of time that he feels owed." His owe is probably the feeling of seeing and passing, so he has to take pictures.
I don't know how many creators still have a heart of "owing" to people and things—perhaps most people just feel that the world owes themselves.
In Zhang Fuqing's story, "obscurity" was originally a propaganda attribute, but the director chose it as the value and aesthetic standard of the play. He didn't praise the war. He put the most intense part in the last episode. He didn't find big-name artists to attract traffic. He repeatedly asked the actors and told the camera to put the protagonist completely into the general population.
This is really a director who insists on going his own way. He is undoubtedly a first-line director, and his work has also reached the pinnacle of national dramas several times, but he also admitted that he "no drama can get the full support of all people in society".
He filmed the army-themed "Soldier Assault", but after hurting others for the first time, the pacesetter Xu Sanduo fell into a huge suspicion and a pause in his life. In "My Regiment, My Regiment", he talked about absurdity in the war and asked a group of deserters "full of humiliation" to think about "Where is the nation sick".
These two famous works also encountered a cold spot that year. "Soldier Assault" could not be starred on local channels at the beginning; "My Commander, My Regiment" got a high score of 9.5 on Douban, but the ratings of the first broadcast were very poor; "Tuina" did not change regardless of how the media pushed it. In 2013, winning is like not winning.
But Kang Honglei said in the early years that I don't want a thing to be a smoky cloud, and my thing is not a smoky cloud.
After so many years, the smoke and clouds of the era have passed by. We now talk about "Soldier Assault" and "My Leader My Group". The scenes were the most uncomfortable crying... What these works left behind is for us as audiences to talk about the words "collective", "belief" and "sacrifice" without being so blunt, so reluctant, so pretending to believe, and talking about " When "soul", "love", "failure", "hesitating" and "hesitating", be more calm.
【Review】Guiquan｜The director who filmed "Soldier Assault" pays tribute to the exploits of the 97-year-old Republic with his new work
02
One afternoon this summer, a teenager and I played billiards in the smoky basement. He is tall, with dark skin, and the club is light and dexterous in his hands. Of course, I lost several games in a row. That was his home court. The billiard hall was full of his acquaintances. Therefore, he spoke very little and wanted to maintain his cool "problem boy" image.
In that small town called Hushiha, he spent most of his three-year high school life in this way: smoking, drinking, fighting, playing billiards, and running all over the mountains. We first met at noon, and he just drank 10 bottles of beer. Earlier, I saw him and his classmates, a group of problem teenagers, performing a play at the Anaya Theater Festival. I wanted to come to Hushiha to see it.
This is not out of concern for people far away. In the beginning, I arrived entirely out of my own needs. I am eager to go to a scene, enter a real scene, and have enough time to understand and tell a story.
I knew from the beginning that this is not a story that meets the reading needs of this era. I found them and wrote a manuscript that no one cares about. It probably talked about how a group of problem teenagers changed their lives because of a drama, but after a brief glorious period, they returned to the life of doing nothing in the past. .
In the days that followed, I always remembered what happened that summer, and looked at what they were doing now from time to time. After school started, the young director took a few children to perform in other places, but the process was not smooth. A lot of things happened during this period, many things that made me infinitely sigh that fate is so complicated.
Because those things are too private, I only mentioned them to my friends around me. In my manuscript, the ending becomes a narrative technique, a selected stage ending. And life itself is so difficult to master, changeable, and full of surprises. I have some regrets about the more embarrassing parts that were not included. In addition, I still have a feeling that I swim from the deep sea to the shore until I am exhausted. When I look up, there is still too far away from the shore.
In fact, Hu Shiha’s life experience, the smoky underground billiard hall, and the problematic teenagers who smoke and fight are no strangers to me. I always think that adolescence is cruel, walking on the tip of a knife. For a long time, for me, the seaside town I grew up was just a neighborhood full of violence. I have witnessed the violent deaths of my peers, and my vision of the future life is very limited. During my adolescence, there was no such a drama, a group of teachers, and a young director who provided me with such an extremely shining moment—I mean, the eyes and applause on those stages seemed like a dream. Wonderful, illusory, yet so real, is the moment when individual value is greatly confirmed.
At the end of this dream, even the director wondered whether it was right to do this. He allowed them to see things they had never seen before, and received praises they had never received. Then what? If they cannot have any connection with them in their future lives, will those dreams that they once had but have lost make them painful?
For many people, the answer to similar questions is obvious, but I really thought about it for many, many years. In the past two years, a documentary called "Kill Matt, I Love You" has been widely circulated among the people. I have seen life scenes that I am very familiar with in it. When I was in middle school, I used to work summer vacations in a factory, surrounded by people like this-only after looking back, I realized that they were "killing Matt".
"Kill Matt, I Love You" records the personal lives of "Kill Matt" in depth
Their lives are squeezed on narrow machine tools, in crowded dormitories exuding sweat, on greasy small shop tables. In the workshop, a mouse once stepped on the back of my instep wearing slippers. I was so tired that I didn't respond. At that time, I felt that if people didn't think there was anything wrong with this kind of life, it would probably be fine.
Until now, looking back, I realized that they were aware that life was not right. That's why you have to dress yourself up with exaggerated hairstyles-this is a relatively cheap and easy way to show yourself.
At that time, the industrial area where I was located was like an isolated island. It is different from the aesthetics of the city where it is located. It is chaotic, vivid, mixed in smell, and self-contained. It is not far from the railway station, and there is an open-air ballroom under the tracks. For minors, it is simply a kind of vivid stimulation. The drums shook my heart, and the colorful lights revolved and sparkled. The female workers in hot pants and the male workers with the killer haircut came in and out. Every time I passed by, I asked myself to walk over without squinting. I was afraid He was accidentally dragged into this "winding hole".
It took me so long to understand why the young people in the factory need these, just like the problematic teenagers need to fight and the smoky underground billiard hall.
Sometimes I go back to my hometown, and occasionally I go back to the factory. In recent years, the entity is not easy to do. The factory director’s wife has changed her career to start a micro business, and the dance hall has long since disappeared. I watched the big brothers and sisters who killed Matt-many of my relatives, turned into patient middle-aged people, with the next generation. There is a condescending sympathy in my eyes when I look at them.
In this sense, my concern for Hushiha’s problematic teenagers and former workers is more like a concern for myself. Drama is the "contingency" of problem teenagers. And I don't know what the "contingency" in me is, what brought me to another life.
Even in my 30s, I often feel a kind of "imposter", as if my life was stolen, as if I should be like everyone in a small factory, spending time on the assembly line. I am constantly pulling between desire and a mentality of "I don't deserve".
At the end of October 2021, I went to see the last tour of that drama. Only two of the original crew were still performing. Some of the professional actors who were rescued had a conflict with the children and suddenly left the crew. The performance became extremely random, and everything gave me a shaky feeling. The young director is on the verge of losing control on stage. He is full of questions and destructiveness. He keeps asking the audience questions. He has a bitter sense of humor and no clear answer. The story is full of unknowns, but there is no conclusion. Maybe we need more time to understand where this story will take me and where it will take them.
【Review】Guiquan｜How can this 22-year-old actor tame a group of "problematic teenagers" who smoke, drink and fight?
03
If it weren't for the feature that was visible for half a year, I would probably find this passage from my Weibo and delete it silently. In the early morning of April 16, 2019, I wrote: "What were you doing on the night that Notre Dame de Paris burned down? While watching the news, I inexplicably thought of a breakfast in my memory, which was porridge and mustard. Fermented bean curd, a dish of edamame fried with diced ham, and a dish of dried tofu fried with bamboo shoots. Perhaps it is this turbulent night, this night where history is changing, and I want to wake up tomorrow morning if nothing happens and have the most common breakfast."
In the two years that the world has been changed by the new crown epidemic, I often think of this passage, think of it, but want to delete it. The writing is too hypocritical and shameful-when I write it honestly and sincerely, at that moment, I thought I was with history, and wherever I looked, it was related to me. Although history is not shifted by human will, it stays with the insignificance of our generation as dust. This may be a sequelae of long-term reporting, and it is impossible to suppress the self-movement brought by the huge sense of "presence". But that kind of self-improvement was destroyed by the epidemic: history is no longer the distant Notre Dame Cathedral, history is the masks that go out every day, the health code that goes in, and the nucleic acid checks from time to time. RO value, flow regulation, immune escape, antibody neutralization level, heterogeneous enhancement... New terms have smashed into life time and time again. I never thought that I was a person who could understand "vaccine adjuvants". But in this epidemic, I got this knowledge.
At other times, I would think of Kafka's words. He wrote in his diary on August 2, 1914, "Germany declared war on Russia-swimming in the afternoon". That was the day when the First World War began, and people's lives have since been split into two halves: war and daily life. Kafka's dash is a kind of rejection, between the two, he refuses to entrust his life to those huge things. But war has penetrated into every corner of his writing, and "The Metamorphosis" is recognized to write out the common survival dilemma of Europeans after the war-how isolated and fragile humans are.
Our relationship with those huge things has been a major theme in the past two years. "Compared with the epidemic, what is this?" is a sentence that often flashes in my mind. Sometimes it does not flash, but it also exists. Like no need to go