When I watched "Mr. Red Carpet," I was reminded of two American films from the late 1990s.
One is "Truman's World" starring comedian Jim Carrey, and the other is "Eyes Wide Opening" by film master Stanley Kubrick.
At the core of the former's dystopia, it is a story of a number of people living in lies for decades; The moral of the latter is indescribable because of the mystery that runs throughout, in the shell of **, suspense, and thriller, the creator outlines the upper limit of the middle-class elite to break the wall, if a person insists on watching what he shouldn't see, and lingers on it, thinking about it, it is difficult to keep everything original.
Ning Hao's "Mr. Red Carpet" is also doing a similar title, in a word, it tells the various discomforts encountered by a big star after stepping out of his comfort zone.
But all the viewers who go to see Ning Hao with the expectation of the "crazy" series are destined to reap the same disappointment as "Crazy Alien": it is not a typical comedy, but a slightly absurd drama, it comes with looming comedy elements, but its essence is a serious movie.
We can say that in terms of choosing what form to present the theme, Ning Hao at this moment has already accumulated enough capricious capital.
On the other hand, Ning Hao, who is "looking for a suitable audience to communicate", also knows that in any schedule, including the Spring Festival, "Mr. Red Carpet" is unlikely to sell well in the sinking market, and the box office trend of the film basically reflects this.
Of course, if our patience can be sufficient to ignore the form of amusement or not, the theme of "Mr. Red Carpet" is not only not difficult and obscure, on the contrary, what Ning Hao is trying to show coincides with a long-term hot spot in society, that is, "the world is a huge grass stage team".
Regarding this point of view, Luo Xiang has previously elaborated as follows:
Most people are ridiculously wet, so you really don't have to worry about not being able to do a lot of work. No matter how powerful a person is, he often learns by doing, and no matter how glamorous the industry is, there are often loopholes behind it. Everyone is bluffing, but they are just very tacitly not exposing each other. ”And the extension of "Mr. Red Carpet" lies in the fact that although the world can't be grassy anymore, you still have to be in awe of this grass stage team.
Because everything has its own operating rules, during which the logic is not broken, as long as you are in it, you have to be constrained by it all the time; If you want to advance and retreat, you must follow its instructions; You try to take risks alone, and disaster will follow.
And in terms of the character of the protagonist Liu Weichi (played by Andy Lau) in the film, the superstar himself is very capable, and the leap of the stratosphere is based on real strength. It is precisely because he is a quality, principled, and pursuing professional, rather than a straw bag that makes him stupid, that the embarrassment he encounters and the contrast in interpersonal relationships are particularly ironic.
Liu Weichi, who is usually embraced by the brokerage team and fans, is a strong man, but in the process of jumping out of his comfort zone, he involuntarily becomes a weaker - this is also the protagonist's posture to implement the whole film.
Every character Liu Weichi encounters, from an investor in new energy vehicles, a butcher who runs a pig farm, a first-class expert of Generation Z to a truck owner who has never known his life, can create obstacles to his life.
For example, the investor, his logic is: Your film industry is not good, and you shoot themes that no one watches, so you lack the money of Lao Tzu, I take this weakness to death, I dare to say in front of you, you are all sick in the brain, and you can't recognize the situation clearly.
For example, the butcher, his logic is: big stars come to experience life, I borrow a dozen pigs for the crew as props every minute, but I found that you threw away the gift for you, since you look down on me so much, I will make a big fuss about the scene and pull back a dozen pigs.
For example, the **up master, her logic is: You think that I and you** are not out of like, but for blackmail, because you fundamentally feel that I am not worthy of your class, then please put away your self-righteousness, don't think that you can continue to be arrogant.
For example, the owner of the small truck, his logic is: your good car scratches my broken car, I will leave your car, you pry my car open and stuff the money, I will break your window and return the money to you, I don't want you to lose money, I want you to apologize.
In the end, Liu Weichi found that the points that these people cared about were not consistent with what they thought they thought, some people were completely shameless, and some people didn't want money at all.
The reality is that it is one thing to accumulate material wealth and what kind of social prestige to achieve, but it is another thing to look at wealth and prestige and the process by which they are acquired. It is difficult for people on high to realize that all living beings have always been equal at the level of the three views, some people strive for fame and fortune and envy the powerful, and some people "a thousand poems are light on ten thousand households".
It's like Liu Weichi thought that the up master who was despised by him would help him send an apology**, but he didn't expect people to ignore him completely. His former star halo was also thrown away by the other party because of his lack of responsibility under the avoidance of communication, even from a secular perspective, the two are still very different in terms of identity.
In fact, since the beginning of the "Crazy" series, Ning Hao has already moved the logic of this set of "stick tiger chicken" to the big screen, and excavated the absurd colors in it according to local conditions.
In "Crazy Stone", it is the "moving trio" who accidentally drags down the Hong Kong thief; In "Crazy Racing", it was the Muay Thai drug dealer who was frozen into a refrigerated truck by the "graduate school entrance examination duo"; In "No Man's Land", it was the gun-wielding bandit who was knocked on the back of the head by a fool; In "Crazy Aliens", it was the international friends who came to fill the glass and tasted a bite of "Yoneda Ko".
Crazy Stone movie stills.
In Ning Hao's new film, not only is the protagonist arranged to run into walls everywhere and find teeth all over the ground, but also has a meaningful plot: the red carpet and posters that were carefully arranged at the original awards ceremony were gathered together in a disorderly manner afterwards, and the star signatures on the poster wall were also trampled by the aftermath staff.
It's as if it's reshaping our understanding of strength and weakness – the turtle wears a hard shell because it's actually a mollusk.
Although the movie title of "Mr. Red Carpet" is very good, according to the translation of popular Hong Kong and Taiwan movies in the past, "Strong Dragon Doesn't Suppress the Snake", "Xiucai Meets the Soldier", and "Mollusc" If used as the movie title, it may be more attractive while fitting the theme.
Of course, between success and elegance, Ning Hao chose the latter.
In this era of short ** and live broadcast, film creators have to think about the problem of survival and development, which is not only the problem of Liu Weichi in the play, but also the problem of Ning Hao outside the play - who should learn whom, who is more qualified to look at whom, who can't kill anyone no matter what, the transformation of this relationship is a earth-shaking thing for a mature industry.
Perhaps it is with such an observation of the times that Ning Hao made such a movie of "hard-headed communication", although the protagonist of the story avoids it most of the time.
We can conservatively say that it is difficult to fully understand between people; It can also be said more pessimistically that there is no real understanding between people; But "Mr. Red Carpet" is at least a reminder that people should understand each other.
Because whether you want to understand it or not, the facts are there, and it does not change with your pride, nor with your stubbornness.
On the contrary, it is only by understanding why a product form that you don't like attracts so much attention that you can possibly find a basis for coexistence. But this process of finding the foundation is never smooth sailing, it requires you to give up your professionalism at the beginning, then you need to give up your principles and bottom line, and finally you need to give up your dignity as a human being.
In the film, Liu Weichi and Summer went to shoot a short **, and he always emphasized to the latter, is it a bit foolish for you to do this, but the other party can reply to him seriously, you look at our layout, we are very serious. In fact, no one is lying to anyone, it's just that the upper limit of the short** seriousness can't reach the lower limit of the movie's actors' seriousness.
So in the depths of Liu Weichi's heart, the summer in front of him was not the **up master who led him to the road at all, but the vase representative of the grass platform team.
But since you want to get a piece of the grass platform team's world, the standard for lowering your posture is determined by the shortest slice of the bucket. In other words, it is impossible for a straw bale to become an elite in a short period of time, but an elite can be dressed as a straw bale in an instant.
Of course, the process of backward compatibility is inevitably mental, and thinking about it and doing it are two different things after all.
Like the director Lin Hao played by Ning Hao in the film, he finally couldn't tolerate the arrogance of investors and laymen interfering with insiders, and instructed martial arts to fake the scene on the set, and beat up the investors and his business school buddies. The price of beating investors is that they have to face a series of practical problems, including capital withdrawal, negative **, etc.
But if Lin Hao gave up coexisting with investors at the beginning, his rural themes could only exist in the form of PPT for a long time, regardless of whether the script was mature or not. Liu Weichi is the same, why did he step out of his comfort zone, because the big brother Jackie Chan in the play won the Academy Award by playing a farmer, and he can only be a green leaf to accompany him.
In reality, such examples abound. For example, Xiao Lizi won the Oscar for the first time after the "self-destruction" of "The Revenant"; For example, Jet Li was always a layman at the Academy Awards before the "literary drama" of "Casting a Name".
This goes back to the proposition that the grass platform team has its own laws.
Although literary films are not necessarily good, commercial films are not necessarily bad, but if you act in a niche movie that loses money, you are closer to winning an award, and if you act in a commercial film, you may not have a good reputation at the box office.
Although the rural theme is the stereotype of Chinese films for Western judges, if you make a comedy with an urban love theme, it is difficult to send it to other people's film festivals.
Although only one logo is created to build a car, but to tell a good story to the capital market can bring financing, the track is right, the pig is higher than the bird.
Although the PR strategy is to deal with misunderstandings, even if the parties are really not wronged, the PR will tell you that it doesn't matter - because the public doesn't care about the truth, the heat will soon pass, and the new melon will replace the old one.
But if you, like Liu Weichi in the film, insist on clarifying your wrongs and show the truth to others, you will add fuel to the fire.
The reason is that although the public does not care about the truth, it does not mean that the public does not care about everything, everything here can actually be reduced to an attitude, that is, "this thing must end in an acceptable way as I expected".
When Liu Weichi rebelled against the public's satisfaction with emotional anxiety, all that awaited him was a wave of unsettled waves. As a result, he is still misunderstood, and the public is still angry.
The movie has an open-ended ending, with Lau standing on a balance bike, trying to recover from a sense of loss of control.
In fact, in the process of advancing and retreating, the protagonist does not find nothing: in the butcher, he finds the simplicity and roughness of the peasant, and then immediately copies this temperament and the lines that conform to this temperament into the works he participated in.
But outside of the performance, the protagonist seems to have more to lose. Although he was wary of the outside world, his vigilance was still superficial. What he can worry about and watch out for is only the tangible camera, and the invisible hidden arrow is what really makes him unguardable. For example, the differences in thinking habits, norms, logic, and values make it impossible for him to be comfortable in the ever-changing conflicts.
In this sense, life itself is more complicated than acting.
Ang Lee once said: "In fact, real life is cheating." The way you see us behave is actually fake. In order for a group to survive, it must be organized and civilized. There will be repression in it, and there will be people who tell lies ......Only when acting, in fact, is there a virtual reality. Reality is actually virtual, and what is virtual is our most ontological thing. I think the people who act are very brave people, they are always touching the truth. ”
In "Mr. Red Carpet", Lau Weichi is a first-class good actor, he is used to revealing himself on stage, but when he is in close contact with the broader life experience, you will find that his original activity area is like a greenhouse.
In fact, not only actors, but professionals in any field can hardly expect to survive in real life with professionalism and professional independence. Especially in that kind of society where "if you are serious you will lose", the more professional you are, the more you will be slapped in the face by the absurdity of reality.
Interestingly, people who do things unprofessionally often act very professionally. You can understand this as a difference in the center of gravity, some people are good at being distracted, and some people prefer to be exquisite.
To understand the end of the film, it is necessary to link with the aforementioned plot slightly - the unidentified lady in black next to the agent Lin Weiguo can easily control the balance bike that the protagonist cannot control immediately. There are a few close-ups of the lady on the balance bike given in the movie.
This is a very interesting moral point:In the eyes of ordinary people, it may be like walking on the ground for a red carpet gentleman who has gone deep into the masses.