On the third day of the Spring Festival, the top three patterns were almost decided, and sir wrote them one by one.
The rest of the movies that didn't squeeze in, do you have any unease?
sir has one.
Originally, this is the most anticipated movie by fans during this Spring Festival, it talks about the film industry, filming in the play, and satirizes everyone after satirizing themselves, it can be said that this is a movie with the strongest movie elements in this Spring Festival file.
However, after 3 days of release, the box office was 60 million, and the Douban score was 70, turned into an obscure little transparent.
Did you shoot badly? Not necessarily.
Sir thinks that this is the most underrated movie in this Spring Festival file-
Mr. Red Carpet
Director Ning Hao, who has been sharpening his sword for five years, also brought his "benefactor" Andy Lau this time, and the "stakes" are very big.
But many viewers feel that this is just a comedy that satirizes the entertainment industry.
There are even people who wonder: Why is there such a movie that is not "family-friendly" during the Spring Festival?
If it were another director, after reading this plot synopsis, Sir might also suspect that it was a problem with the director's ability, or that he had made a mistake in the schedule, but this is Ning Hao, who can obviously kill all sides through basic experiences such as reversal and stool dropping, but is still unwilling to give up "movie expression" in order to cater to the trend.
So much so that after watching the movie, Sir kept thinking about it.
Is it possible that now this evaluation and popularity have formed a perfect closed loop with the film?
Let's start with Ning Hao.
In our impression, he can almost be regarded as the most successful comedy director in China since the new century.
In 2006, Ning Hao filmed "Crazy Stone" with a budget of 3 million, which not only had a big reputation, but also received a box office of 25.3 million, which became an instant hit.
The movie has a strong ability to create memes.
Golden sentences such as "don't ** (BMW)", "Nike camera", "Baleno, brand" and so on are endless, so that when people see Ning Hao's name, they associate it with "hilarious".
And after that. He "intensified", and even completed his box office breakthrough step by step with works such as "Crazy Racing", "* The Big Robbery", "Heart Flower Road", "Crazy Alien" and other works.
At present, the cumulative box office of individual directors is 9.8 billion.
But. Is Ning Hao really just a comedian who makes the audience happy?
Looking back at those hilarious works, we find that it seems that defining him in this way is too narrow.
Because for him.
"Making people laugh" won't be the first purpose of the movie.
For example: There are two impressive jokes in Ning Hao's early "Crazy Series", one is the end of "Crazy Stone", where Black Skin steals bread and runs wildly on the elevated shelf, and the other is in "Crazy Racing", where the gangster engages in drug trading and buys ashes.
You will find that the laughter in Ning Hao's movies is not a sensory stimulation that breaks expectations and then tickles.
Instead, it focuses on the helpless madness of ordinary people who are bullied by the absurd and coincidental reality and tossed so that they have no temper.
can only face the miserable laughter of life and sigh.
Therefore, when he filmed "No Man's Land", "Heart Flower Road" and "Crazy Alien", it was an extension of this theme, and the kind of difficulty of the character could not be hidden.
And what about "Mr. Red Carpet"?
That's right. It also has some ironic passages that we would think are "laughs" at first glance.
For example, actor candidate Liu Weichi looked at the roll-up banner behind him in a daze in the preparation room.
And then quietly.
Do-it-yourself, put your own ** in the C position.
or complained that Chen Long won the actor with the role of a farmer: "A Hong Kong person plays a farmer, which is unreliable."
As a result, the hind foot took on the role of a farmer at the speed of light.
There is even a scene in the film where he stays in a three-star hotel in order to experience the life of a farmer.
The front foot staff checks the room for eavesdropping equipment.
He stayed in the hotel on the back foot, but he had a huge curiosity about the creaking spring mount and spring bed.
However, when you think that this is in line with the trend of the times, when you are satirizing 2.08 million, you will find that the more you look at it, the more wrong it is, why is it satirized by everyone from investors to directors to actors to ** and netizens?
Even more outrageous.
When you think this is a "satirical comedy", but you vaguely feel, how can it reveal sympathy and sadness?
Many people have "different frequencies" because of this.
If it doesn't match your expectations, you will inevitably give a "mediocre" evaluation.
But. Is there a possibility that our expectation that it is a "satirical comedy" is just wishful thinking like our expectation of Ning Hao's "hilarious master"?
Mr. Red Carpet", maybe not to make you laugh.
If you understand "Mr. Red Carpet" from another angle, maybe you will suddenly be enlightened.
One word: communication.
That's right, this Spring Festival comedy actually hides a very serious core.
At the beginning of the movie, Ning Hao revealed a clear signal to us.
First scene:
A vertical line is measuring the size of the red carpet, and then the festive red carpet slowly opens in a marching posture, conveying a sense of sacredness, the highest award for the art of cinema in a certain territory, and everyone is looking forward to the results of the year.
Meantime. A car passed by, scraped off a red carpet, and had no communication with the staff who laid out the red carpet.
Second Scenario:
Liu Weichi and his wife divorced after a hidden marriage, and his ex-wife accused him of various problems.
And what about him. When encountering an argument, he never faces it, but squats down and avoids the problem at hand by packing up his things.
Communication is ineffective.
These two scenes have actually clearly told us that if you expect this to be a movie that exposes the privacy of gossip in the entertainment industry, you may be disappointed, and its original intention is not to satisfy the audience's voyeuristic desires, but to present the state to provoke broader thinking.
It is a high-density work that treats the audience as a good opponent and a good bosom friend in a game of chess, and it is a high-density work that invites the audience to enter the game and immerse itself with the considerable intellectual accumulation of life so far.
Let's talk about the details that Sir thinks has a key guiding effect for understanding the whole film.
Without a doubt, the most important thing to talk about is a pig.
After Liu Weichi entered the crew, he couldn't find a feeling, and he acted in the scene of being bullied, and was pointed out by the director that real farmers are very "rough", ** will be bullied so well, and they will not resist at all?
The implication is that the actor is not grounded and has no taste, and to put it more profoundly, it is anti-human. From Liu's point of sight, all the "lower-level" people should be as submissive as his agent and assistant, and dare not say anything.
The actor also has professional self-esteem, so he asked the team to arrange to go to the countryside to experience life.
Avoiding the routine, the local cadres entertained, and he broke into the pig farmer's pig shed.
Excited, if he got a treasure, he took a mobile phone to shoot all kinds of pigs, and felt that this was the texture of life.
Brotherly brother to pig farmer, and received a pig-killing knife.
As a result, not long after the car drove out of the village, the roundworm-like agent in his stomach threw the knife and stuck it straight into the roof of the vegetable shed, which in itself was a metaphor for the naked arrogance of the class.
And the pig he brought was praised by the director, which was real and natural. As a result, a pig ** became a "pet" that a five-star hotel was forced to accept helplessly.
In the words of Internet blackmail, the pig was empowered by the aura and status of the actor, and everything made great strides towards the absurd road.
But the director cleverly came back in the end:
The pig is still the pig, and it will not become a beloved pet because of "empowerment".
But in the end, this pig will "frighten" everyone in and out of the play, it is crazy, it is very appropriate to describe it as "wolf rushing", and its ending is like a pig-killing knife that falls down and goes straight to the roof of the shed.
Why crazy? From the pig's point of view, it is elevated, bears pressure, and becomes a "tool pig";
But on the other hand, it is partly a projection of Liu Weichi's anxiety and panic, and he has nowhere to say aggrieved and uncomfortable.
This is a pig. The second very important "role" is:Horses
In order to win the favor of the curatorial chairman of the international film festival, Lau Weichi took Leonardo's "Survival in the Wilderness" as an example and carefully planned a "highlight scene" that the judges could see and touch, that is, there was no need for a stand-in, and the horse riding really fell.
He passed it on to the chairman and uploaded it to the Internet to attract praise. As a result, living in a glass house, he underestimated the treacherous mood of the crowd.
He became the "bad guy" who abused horses, the film was boycotted, and he was also disqualified from being shortlisted.
He was wronged, obviously he was hard working and serious, how could he become an immoral and bad star.
Do you want to apologize? Solve it by public relations thinking or by conscience instinct, or go to the cinema to see it.
To reveal, the fallen horse finally appeared in the yard of Stephen Lau's Hong Kong mansion, pacing on the ground where the tree was cut down.
It seems to imply that in the era of entertainment to death, the other side of "social death" on the Internet, in the unknown gaps, the truth hides in it to breathe.
The third is"Tree".
At the beginning of the movie, a tree is cut down.
That's the emotional projection of the actor and his ex-wife when they argue.
He lives so a** and anxious.
From marriage to divorce, it is a ** state, so the ability to love in intimate relationships has long been lost, and even the child's birthday can be forgotten. Even if they meet in Pingshui, they are eager to get a little short-term warmth, but they are nervous, and they can use the sweeping robot in the girl's room as a ** camera.
The tree was cut down, and the "everyday" and "normal" also cut down a lot from the actor.
At the end, he sees several wagons pulling the felled trees in the tunnel.
This picture also shows that the red carpet is everywhere, and the actor is everywhere.
As long as the cart is turned upside down and chasing a false sense of identity, the inevitability of being pruned by the rules of the game is chosen.
It's like after watching the movie, Sir's mind keeps spinning "Bolero", the composer Ravel once introduced himself:
Its melody, harmony and rhythm are consistent, and the rhythm of the snare drum is continuously emphasized, and the variation of one factor contributes to the orchestral crescendo.
The same goes for films.
Combined with the protagonist and theme of the film, it is not difficult to feel that this song is actually suggesting an ambiguous state between "change and change", "absurd and real", just like the Internet world that is difficult to define and the consensus is absent.
So you see, is "Mr. Red Carpet" easy to understand?
It's also easy. As long as you grasp the theme of "communication", you can understand that this is a movie about the "ineffectiveness of communication", which is of great significance to the present reality.
But at the same time, it is not so easy to "understand".
Because it's really not like our common Spring Festival movies, which will bring the meal to your mouth and feed you, it is just like the big and small good movies in this world, only showing the state, without judgment, so that any audience who goes to the movie with a position and prejudice will not get the satisfaction of "cool film".
But sir thinks.
Compared with commercial blockbusters that are large and small, they strive to be simple and understandable.
Movies like "Mr. Red Carpet" seem to be even more commendable.
So back to the question at the beginning, in this year's Spring Festival file, sir has seen similar comments more than once:
Why do you want to watch such a "not family-friendly" work during the Spring Festival?
On the surface. This is Ning Hao's "willfulness".
For example: We all know that in today's movies, in order to attract the audience's more and more easily distracted attention, the number of shots is increasing, as far as the general commercial film is concerned, it is basically 2000 shots to start, and action movies are far more than that.
The length of a single shot is getting shorter and shorter.
And what about "Mr. Red Carpet"? Ning Hao admitted frankly that the number of shots in the whole film is less than 400.
Not only is it far less than the 2,000 shots of "Crazy Racing", but it is not even "Crazy Stone" 1 4.
Maybe. This is Ning Hao's serious competition about comedy and the tradition of family carnival during the Spring Festival.
But. When I think about it, I don't think it's necessarily capricious.
For Sir, such a movie released during the Spring Festival is an attempt to connect with each other from the screen to reality, its box office, its reputation, people's understanding of it at different latitudes and directions, and at the same time constitutes a perfect closed loop.
How to say? Let's take an example.
Not long after the opening of the film, Liu Weichi received a notice from station D to make a short ** for him, and under the camera, he reproduced the classic actions in "Five Tigers Will Break Up" (1991) in the short **, parroting "Everyone, Lao Tie", and accidentally said "666" as "liao liao liao".
As a result, the choreographer praised him for being good:
666 is very earthy, liao liao liao liao is great.
What do you think this paragraph is about?
A tribute? As we all know, in 2006, it was Andy Lau's help that gave Ning Hao the opportunity to shoot "Crazy Stone", so this time Ning Hao tailor-made a movie for him.
Reasonable. A complaint?
666" and "old iron" are not dirty? Of course, it's dirty, but why did the choreographer ask him to do such a dirty thing? And, when Liu Weichi just wants to act seriously, but because of the wrong pronunciation, he wants to correct it but can't correct it, is this the sadness of being an actor or the sadness of the audience.
It makes sense to think that way.
But if you look back and think about it, this is not about the current environment that we all know:
Movies are no longer movies, and stories are no longer important.
When the creator is calculating the audience's G-spot in seconds, he forgets that a good movie itself can become particularly "heavy" because of multiple interpretations.
Yes. Rather than saying that "Mr. Red Carpet" is a "feast" of non-routine comedy, it is better to say that this is Ning Hao's thinking about the present, which raises questions and presents contradictions, but is not in a hurry to give the audience answers, but leaves the final interpretation in the hands of the audience.
You can have a variety of answers.
There is no right answer.
And this is Ning Hao's real intention, even if you criticize, even if you don't feel it, but as long as you participate in this thinking, this discussion is enough.
Because——It's not important to force people to take a stand and take sides, it's important to be seen and stimulate the process of communication.
It's a pity. Both in the film itself and outside the film.
Communication is becoming inappropriate, unbalanced, and ineffective.
Just like the voiceover of "international conflict" that often appears in the film, or the constant saying of "the story of the movie is nothing to me", from the big countries to the film industry, and even the pig that rushed out and fell to his death at the end of the film, all tell us that communication is powerless.
Everyone is on the same page.
Everyone is irritable and prone to give their so-called compassion at the same time.
But they never think about it, even if it's really a communication.
And so the film ends.
Liu Weichi stepped on the balance bike, he opened his arms, walked on thin ice, and tried to maintain his balance, in fact, he has already told us the director's choice:
Accept. Even if no one applauds, you have to adapt and accept it silently.
It's just that in Sir's view, in the fiercely competitive and lively Spring Festival stalls in 2024, live broadcast marketing is strongly inserted, how much of its expression can be accurately delivered to the audience, and it can be picked up by people with intentions like a drifting bottle thrown in the ocean, and it will be loved and recognized.
became the final suspense of the movie.
Cinema is the art of communication.
Sir doesn't want to see the irony of communication on the screen.
got off the screen, and was constantly verified and slapped in the face.
Therefore, if "Mr. Red Carpet" is drowned in the choice of inertia, initiating communication in exchange for silence.
That's indeed - it is the biggest difficulty for sir in this year's Spring Festival.