Although "Life Events" has an important scene of reshaping the appearance of the deceased, it is actually inappropriate to compare it with the Japanese film "The Embalmer" that was previously introduced to China.

Text/Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Li Li

Identification object: " Life's Events "

Release time: June 24, 2022

Although "Life's Events" has a scene It is an important scene of reshaping the appearance of the deceased, but it is actually inappropriate to compare it with the Japanese movie "The Mortician " that was previously introduced to China. Peeling away the story of "Life Events", the so-called understanding of life and death brought by the funeral profession is just a packaging, far from the source of the growth of the protagonist Mo Sanmei.

This is a story about how a loser turns defeat into victory in life. But Mo Sanmei's failure did not lie in the fact that he had been imprisoned for fighting, nor in the fact that his girlfriend of many years cheated on him, nor in the fact that his father only remembered the goodness of his other dead son but never praised him stingily. Mo Sanmei's failure is that he can't find the meaning of life, so he can't find the motivation to live well. His ex-girlfriend looked down on him, his father looked down on him, and behind all of this, he always looked down on himself. He had no direction and just muddle along, which was the cause of all his failures.

Correspondingly, Mo Sanmei's final success was naturally not to make the ancestral funeral parlor flourish and become a good son in the eyes of his father. In the film, Mo Sanmei's father later commented on his son: "He finally started to care about things." This sentence accurately reflects Mo Sanmei's biggest change. In other words, Mo Sanmei finally found the purpose of life. Momentum and direction.

The source of this change is Wu Xiaowen, a little girl with Nezha hair, holding a red tassel gun , and falling from the sky with anger. Her appearance stems from a child's incomprehension about death: I saw you took my grandma away, then I will chase you and ask you to return my grandma to me. Mo Sanmei didn't understand Wu Xiaowen's persistence, but it was this persistence that cured his indifference. He also became persistent. In order to restore the WeChat voice message left by his grandmother in Wu Xiaowen's broken electronic watch, he ran all over the city and contacted everyone he could. This persistence lies in the fact that he finally understood Wu Xiaowen's cherishment and care.

There must be one or two "careful" things in one's life so that a person can live a meaningful life. This is what "Life Events" wants to tell the audience. This is also the basis for the film to resonate with many adults - today, as technology becomes more and more advanced and desires are easier to satisfy, modern people are always prone to being "empty" and difficult to be "engaged". In this story, what finally attracted Mo Sanmei was the emotional connection with Wu Xiaowen and the sense of meaning found in the trivial funeral work. Therefore, without the packaging of the funeral industry, similar stories can happen to anyone at any time and at any place, because human beings always need to find the value of their own existence in order to live with peace of mind, and this value usually comes from our connection with others - love and being loved, needing and being needed, achieving and being achieved.

But as a creator, it is natural to choose a field that you are familiar with. Director and screenwriter Liu Jiangjiang has relatives in the funeral industry, so he understands the subtle emotions in traditional wedding ceremonies: grand and complicated rituals are usually to soothe the pain of the living and make up for the regrets of the living. Therefore, he naturally found an entry point of "how to face death" when talking about the proposition of "how to live well". Life and death are the best care.

but the shortcomings still exist. The biggest problem is that if the creator can be confident in the charm of the story itself and the emotions between the characters that can move the audience even without the dramatic promotion of too many external plots, the story may be made purer. Speaking of this, although "Life Events" does not need to be made into a Chinese version of "The Embalmer", it can indeed learn from the latter's strengths in simplifying complexity. The relationship between the characters in "The Embalmer" is simple and the emotions are not dense, but the audience feels like hearing thunder in a silent place. In comparison, the various gag supporting characters and audience-pleasing episodes in "Life Events" seem a bit superfluous, and even weaken the thickness of the main plot.

In the final analysis, Liu Jiangjiang only scratched the surface from "hollow" to "high-minded" this time, and there is still some distance from truly reaching people's hearts.

Finally, let’s talk about acting. Zhu Yilong is really not bad this time. The many crying scenes are layered and show his skill. Judging from the box office, the film is quite popular with the audience. I hope this will also give Liu Jiangjiang, who is making a film for the first time, more confidence in his future film expressions. Next time, maybe the actor can move the audience without taking the lead in crying. (For more news and information, please follow Yangcheng Pai pai.ycwb.com)

source | Yangcheng Evening News·Yangcheng Pai

pictures | stills

editor | Shao Ziheng