"Flowers" finally appeared on CCTV, and I heard that it was long-awaited!
This is a hit drama at the end of 2023, and the audience's expectations for it are simply bursting. Looking at its formation, you know that it is going to become this year's "drama king".
The director is Wong Kar-wai, wow, he has won the Cannes, Golden Horse and Academy Awards for Best Director!
The original work ** "Flowers" also won the Mao Dun Literature Award, and was praised as "the best in Shanghai".
Wong Kar-wai took a fancy to this ** at a glance and said that it was like experiencing a lifetime. He immediately bought the rights to the adaptation, wanting to translate the story into the language of the film so that audiences around the world could understand it.
It took 6 years to shoot the image to turn it into an image
He also recruited a large group of masters, such as visual director Bao Dexi, the photographer who filmed "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and won the Oscar for Best Cinematography!
and art director Tu Nan, who won the Best Art Award at the Chinese Film Golden Rooster Awards.
The cast is also quite strong, with Hu Ge , Ma Yili , Tang Yan , Xin Zhilei , You Benchang , Zheng Kai , Chen Long , Wu Yue , Dong Yong , Huang Jue , Zeng Meihuizi , Lin Xilei , more than 12 powerful factions joined.
Before the broadcast of "Flowers", there were 10 advance viewing parties in 3 cities, and a super grand premiere, and the homepage of the **platform was occupied by it.
This kind of publicity momentum is simply unprecedented in the TV drama industry!
After the broadcast, I heard that the ratings broke through 2 in just 10 minutes, and the peak reached 26, the ratings are the champion for two consecutive days!
won the popularity championship of the whole network, led 389 hot searches in total, and successfully topped the hot list 55 times.
I quickly watched this big production for the first time, and my feelings about this blockbuster are really full of flavors, and my mood is extremely complicated.
This drama is really unexpected, and it also brings some surprising elements, but it also causes some controversy, and we will talk about the parts about bluestone one by one.
When it comes to Wong Kar-wai, we have to talk about his unique creative style.
In Wong Kar-wai's works, elements such as light and shadow, color, and ** are often integrated with the story, narrating the story and showing the characters through a unique lens language.
Opening "Flowers", Wong Kar-wai's consistent style is immediately apparent.
The opening director presents the audience with the bustling and retro 1992 Shanghai Chinese New Year's Eve through an ingenious picture.
The neon lights on the streets flicker, reflecting the lively scene of red and fire, and the overall tone shows a noble and delicate gold, warm and vibrant.
Next, the male protagonist Ah Bao played by Hu Ge appeared on the stage, which perfectly showed the consistent atmosphere of Wong Kar Wai's films.
Po is dressed in a dark suit, and the golden lights against the background, colliding with his yellow cab, and the banknotes falling in the sky make for an intoxicating picture.
The picture texture and use of light and shadow in the series even reached the cinematic level, and the audience was deeply attracted by Wong Kar-wai's picture-like lens.
What's more worth mentioning is that these pictures are not only stunning, but Wong Kar-wai also gives them a deep story connotation.
For example, Po transforms into the role of Mr. Bao.
Po longs to run a business with his uncle (played by You Benchang), so his uncle finds someone to makeover Po.
When Po and Uncle confront each other with a new image, under Wong Kar-wai's unique interplay of light and shadow, there seems to be a sense of time dislocation in the picture.
For example, in one of the appearances of Li Lee, the proprietress of Zhizhen Garden, Xin Zhilei enters the picture in the shape of a mink coat, under Wong Kar-wai's trademark dim light and overhead perspective.
The close-up focuses on her back as she walks in a hurry, without showing her face, but exuding a powerful charm. Whether it is the back of Mr. Bao when the neon flashes, or the figure when the fireworks bloom during the New Year, they all show an inexplicable loneliness in the warm background, forming a strong contrast.
The scene designed for Ah Bao and Li Li in the TV series, through the eye contact between the two of them looking at each other through two layers of glass, did not have too many words, but they were worth a thousand words, successfully creating a tense atmosphere of masters.
Wong Kar-wai's films are also unique in their signature narrations and lines, such as "Today's sun can't shine tomorrow's clothes, time is everything" and "Shanghainese people do business, pay attention to style, gimmicks and signs".
If you've ever watched a Wong Kar-wai film, you'll be impressed by the unique style of the images. It is undeniable that Wong Kar-wai's joining has injected a new audio-visual enjoyment into the TV series, making "Flowers" amazing in this regard.
Judging from the current plot, in addition to Wong Kar-wai's usual style, "Flowers" also unexpectedly presented three surprises, the first of which is that the story is no longer obscure and closer to the audience, which adds a lot to the overall plot.
Before the launch of "Flowers", people were most worried that the story might adopt a stream-of-consciousness approach, after all, most of Director Wang's past works seemed obscure and difficult to understand.
However, as soon as it was broadcast, the audience was pleasantly surprised to find that the plot of "Flowers" did not adopt the form of stream of consciousness. The story is set at the beginning of the Chinese New Year's Eve in 1992, and the male protagonist walks out of the hotel with a box of 300,000 banknotes, ready to drive away. Suddenly, a taxi crashes into it, and Po collapses in a pool of blood. Subsequently, Po was rushed to the hospital for rescue, and a police interrogation triggered a variety of characters, including Lingzi, Miss Wang, Granduncle, Tao Tao and Commander Cai.
In just a few sentences of dialogue, the profession and personality of each character are clear at a glance, and the relationship with Mr. Bao is also clear and clear. At the same time, the plot cleverly buries some suspense, making people guess who is the one who hit the treasure, and will the treasure always survive?
Subsequently, the plot turned to the memories of his uncle, played by You Benchang, bringing out Bao's family history. And with the mystery of the car accident revealed, the story officially entered the first round of business war.
In the business war, on the one hand, through the setting of "Li Li meddling in Mr. Fan's business", Li Li's ambition was shown, and she was not an ordinary woman who wanted to open a restaurant. On the other hand, through the plot of "Mr. Fan and Mr. Wei have a fiery showdown, but Mr. Bao calmly copes", some suspense has been created, which has triggered speculation about how Mr. Bao will respond.
On the battlefield of Shanghai, everyone was scheming, and the competition between Mr. Bao, Mr. Wei, Mr. Fan, and Li Li of Zhizhenyuan was extremely fierce. At the same time, the intricate entanglement of a love scene shopping mall is about to break out, and the show is officially staged.
It can be seen that the story of "Flowers" is not only not obscure and incomprehensible, but very fascinating. In particular, the business war part from the third episode onwards was particularly exciting, which made the audience full of praise.
Wong Kar-wai is good at telling stories, there's no doubt about that.
Secondly, the actors shine with a unique brilliance under his direction.
The audience unanimously agreed that after the broadcast of "Flowers", Wong Kar-wai showed the best side of the actors.
It is worth mentioning that Wong Kar-wai is really ingenious in guiding actors and tapping the potential of acting skills. Many of the actors have been given a new lease of life under his lens.
Take the male protagonist Hu Ge as an example, in "Flowers", he showed an all-round charm under the direction of Wong Kar-wai. The combination of the black coat makes his every look and every movement full of mature charm.
Moreover, Hu Ge himself is a Shanghainese, and once he speaks Shanghainese, Mr. Bao's image is even more vivid. From Bao's honesty and simplicity at the beginning to Mr. Bao's deep thoughts at the end, Hu Ge successfully showed the multifaceted nature of the character.
As the three golden flowers in Shanghai, Lingzi, Miss Wang and Li Li, the actresses also showed their unique charm. Reiko, played by Ma Yili, is shrewd and capable, and shows an extraordinary temperament in the plot of Bao Zong's partnership to run a small restaurant. The image of her return with short hair is even more prominent against the backdrop of the Shanghai dialect, vividly presenting a delicate and shrewd Shanghai proprietress with a slight sense of sanctity.
Li Li, the owner of Zhizhenyuan, is played by Xin Zhilei and is a character full of mysterious charm. Under the direction of Wong Kar-wai, Xin Zhilei is particularly beautiful and can be called glamorous. Her aura and momentum are heartwarming, as netizens said, Xin Zhilei is expected to leave her most beautiful moments on the screen.
Miss Wang, played by Tang Yan, works in a foreign trade company on the Bund and is responsible for assisting Mr. Bao in handling various tasks.
She is not only beautiful in appearance but also capable in her work, and her hair shows fashionable big waves, becoming the representative of the "Pearl of Puxi". Under Tang Yan's interpretation, her image is bright and smart, full of youthful vitality.
There are also uncles played by You Benchang in the film, Mr. Fan played by Dong Yong, and Mr. Wei played by Zheng Kai, Wong Kar-wai successfully gave each character a unique charm.
The third surprising point is the use of Shanghainese. In Flowers, the use of dialects becomes a highlight. During the shooting, Wong Kar-wai made it clear that he would retain the language style of Shanghainese. He emphasized that if Mandarin is changed to Mandarin, it will be like Jingbai in "Teahouse" becomes Mandarin and loses its unique taste.
Most of the actors were chosen based on the fact that they could speak Shanghainese, which proved to be true in practice. This not only injects Shanghai's unique regional atmosphere into the play, but also makes the characters more real and sensible.
In particular, the proprietress of Tokyo played by Ma Yili is full of Shanghainese accent. As soon as she opened her mouth, her role immediately became vivid, and the unique energy of Shanghai women was not unfamiliar with her, it was really "Ling, Ling".
Tang Yan once said that the performance is not like acting, but more like showing the real state of life. Therefore, although "Flowers" has launched two versions, the Mandarin version and the Shanghainese version, I strongly recommend the audience to choose the Shanghainese version, because it is the real flavorful version.
Finally, although "Flowers" has achieved high ratings, it also faces three major problems, as the first TV series directed by Wong Kar-wai, all of which are both highlights and full of controversy.
Some people even said that Wong Kar-wai was going to be finished. Bluestone summed it up, and there are three main points.
First of all, the plot is simply obscure. After watching the first two episodes, many viewers feel that the plot of "Flowers" is a bit elusive, which is true. The beginning of the story is a mess, with a mix of narratives, flashbacks, and interludes, and if you are not careful, you can't keep up with what happened before and after. The first episode is all about Po's success story, but the content is too simple, and although there are many pictures, it lacks storytelling, which makes it impossible for people to integrate into it. And a lot of the plot is completely driven by dialogue, and the audience who is impatient with the dialogue will feel confused. However, this problem is mainly highlighted in the first two episodes, and once the third episode is entered, the story rhythm and narrative are much better, and the number of cases of incomprehension is significantly reduced.
Secondly, the background does not correspond to the characteristics of the times. The story of "Flowers" takes place in Shanghai in 1992, but whether it is the noisy Yellow River Road or the fashionable costumes of the characters, it is too gorgeous. This makes many people question, this is not like Shanghai after the reform and opening up, but like the night Shanghai in the ** period. In particular, the plot inserted into the real record is even more disjointed. However, ** and documentaries show that Shanghai in the early 90s was this illusory prosperous scene. And in order to truly restore that era, the play set up a 1:1 real scene, and also widely collected old objects in Shanghai. Therefore, although the Yellow River Road in the play is luxurious, it also has the simple style of Shanghai well. Maybe there is something wrong with the shooting style, but the background is definitely not one of them.
The third point is that the original book has been adapted and given a new look.
As soon as "Flowers" was broadcast, it caused heated discussions, and the most controversial thing was the adaptation of the story. Many people say without reservation:
The story has almost nothing to do with the original book, except that the names and identities of the characters have not changed.
Judging from the current ** plot, "Flowers" obviously deviates from the original work. The end credits show that part of the content of the play is based on "Shanghai Fu", "Savage Growth", "Red Men and Green Women", and "Joys and Sorrows" and has been authorized by the author or publisher.
It can be seen that the plot should be an integrated rewrite of several texts.
However, the earlier plot introduction has already hinted that there are certain discrepancies between the series and the original book. Jin Woo-cheng, the author of the original work, said that once the original book is in the hands of the director, the series becomes a new life, and it is impossible to simply copy the original work.
In addition, in the story adaptation stage, Wong Kar-wai once mentioned that the original book "Flowers" has 31 chapters, and the story is incoherent, and the adaptation is almost impossible to start. So, he chose Bao, the most up-and-down and representative character in **, as the main line of the series.
What made Bao become Mr. Bao and become a trendsetter of the times overnight?This experience was not detailed in the original book, so Wong Kar-wai perfected it in his own way.
As he said, we may not be able to restore the complete "Flowers", but we can present Shanghai Po that is not seen in the original book.
Therefore, it can be seen that the drama "Flowers" is not the original "Flowers", but a unique presentation of Wong Kar-wai's version. This is not only Po's personal story, but also dedicated to this vibrant city of dreams.
Dedicated to those who tirelessly chase their dreams, to that ineffable era of rapids. This "Flowers" presents a unique charm, and Wong Kar-wai's performance is even more eye-catching. Take your time to admire it, and you'll find that it's really worth a look.