It seems that some animals will have a certain premonition of death at a certain moment, such as the cattle before slaughter and the image after aging. At this time, they will always present unprecedented poetic and divine nature, but that still only comes from instinct. Instinct

people are the only species in the world who knows they will die.

It seems that some animals will have a certain premonition of death at a certain moment, such as the cattle before slaughter and the image after aging. At this time, they always present unprecedented poetic and divine nature, but that still only comes from instinct. Instinct and awareness, it is never the same thing. Poetics and divine nature are just from human empowerment and projection.

Therefore, people have become the only creature in the world who will spend a lot of time and effort to solve the problem of death.

This effort has a scientific name that is gradually becoming a mess, called " Ultimate Care ".

Taoist tells you to practice alchemy, become sanctified in the body, and live forever. Confucian tells you to quickly establish virtue and make merits and words, so that everyone can remember forever. Christianity and Islam tells you to be born to mean atonement and suffering, death is happiness, death means returning to God or Allah, returning to the Garden of Eden or the promised land of milk and honey. Buddhism tells you that death is just a concept invented by others, it is just a discriminating mind. In fact, there is no death at all - even life is an illusion of void, let alone death.

In a nutshell: Taoist promises not to die, Confucianism promises to die is equivalent to not die, Christianity and Islam promises to die happily and peacefully, Buddhism promises to deny life first and then deny death then deny .

Anthropologist Malinowski said: Among all the resources generated by religions, the ultimate crisis of life—death—is the most important.

But literature and religion are different.

Although literature and art can certainly focus on the high self-sublimation of religion, the foundation of literature and art can only be stories and emotions.

Then everyone knows that the stories about death are always miserable, and the emotions about death are always very chaotic.

Anyway, the theme of death is always the most difficult to shoot.

If you are not careful, you may be photographed in horror, or you may be photographed in vain, or you may be photographed in vulgarity.

Horror, nothingness, vulgarity, and it is just the coupling between our society and the three most common distortions of looking at death.

They are respectively manifested as the vicious curse of "Die for me", the self-deprecation of "I'll die sooner or later", and the rumor pleasure of "Who's dead is dead".

lays the foundation for these things, but just want to express the cultural pioneering significance of " Life Events ": the icebreaking of the funeral theme in mainland China.

looked at the information. In the venture capital of the 2019 Pingyao Film Festival, the director's self-written and directed project - "Going to Heaven" with the story background of North China funeral culture was shortlisted. He has been accumulating and deeply cultivating this field.

Note that "funeral theme" is not "death theme".

The latter is too broad and vague: Which war movie will not be everywhere? How many romance movies will cause car accidents to be cured? Even the traditional main theme propaganda and education are inevitable that heroes and models will vomit blood and fall on the disaster relief site or on the blackboard podium.

In other words, in most movies where death plots occur, death is only a joint consequence and essential element of the type narrative, and it is just a destination and explanation of the character's fate.

But funerals are different. Funerals are first and foremost a profession. Since it is a profession, there is professional logic and professional ethics - the logic and ethics that completely revolve around the handling of death, and will deeply intervene and reshape the life of practitioners - the life with the logical closed-loop of death's acceptance and completion.

It is even different from medical topics. Its value is not to fight against death, but to accept death.

knows that its original schedule was Qingming, and everyone knows that it has been postponed to the present for many reasons. Suddenly, it feels that it is also very good to postpone it. It removes the blessing of this special day of Qingming, but it matches the internal setting of "death is the norm and daily life" and the essence of the professional drama "living with death day and night".

Sorry, actually I know that most of the time, it doesn't look like a professional drama at all.

When it comes to the peak of the funeral profession, many people will think of the 81st Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film - Japan's " Devourer ".

But no one will compare "The Great Events in Life" with "The Devourer". The difference between these two is greater than that of living people and dead people.

has to find sample parameters, but it is easier to remind me of Zhang Yimou's ", 100 Mile Walking Single Riding " and the global classic animation " Despicable Dad ", although they seem irrelevant (of course, there are some side associations, such as the costume funeral for living people, jumping to Feng Xiaogang's "Big Name" in minutes).

The former is related to the opposition and reconciliation between father and son, and how to let go of the knot between the two generations. It also has a background of "intangible cultural heritage inheritance and continuation" - using this phrase to put it in the funeral industry is a bit awkward and even funny, but you see, this is a collection of all kinds of folk beliefs, habits and taboos. For example, the sedimentary rock layer in folklore, there are Chinese characteristics that breaks through the screen everywhere. Because of this Chinese characteristics, you cannot expect the aesthetic atmosphere of "The Great Events of Life" to "enter the aesthetic atmosphere of "Entering the Great Events of Life" "The Wagliver and the Supreme Going of the Condor He is destined to be the sum of the city, lively, trivial, nagging, aunts and aunts, kinship, red tape, and old customs (even the name "Mo Sanmei" represents an unreasonable custom), and is destined to be neighbors with contempt, dislike, and inauspiciousness for life. Moreover, even as a "funeral worker", others are quite unprofessional. He doesn't even have the public identity of a state-owned funeral home staff. However, the self-employed who runs on the streets and docks start to "light cigarettes with paper money, clean the towel first, and then cover the body when it gets hot."

The latter is a bachelor who lives a mess, inexplicably letting a troubled naughty child fall into his life, so he is confused, at a loss, frustrated, but he becomes concerned and shackle without realizing it. In the end, he re-understood what a sense of responsibility is" but the classic template that is infinitely useful and pleasing.

is fine. At this point, it has been sorted out. The superposition of the theme of "Unworthy descendants inherit their father's business" + a "ghost elves save the life of a salted fish" is the foundation of this film.

Every "funeral-related peripheral" of it serves the "father line" and the "child line". It makes the father-son conflict more intense, make the naughty children more annoying, or makes the father-son conflict softer, make the naughty children less annoying.

said so, is it a very biased?

As expected, I have said that all domestic professional dramas are emotional dramas in their hearts.

seems to be, not all.

If you turn your attention to funeral and death again, fathers and naughty children are actually responsible for providing two dimensions of meaning.

The father provided it is historical ethics : it is the Taoist tradition, the rules of "set by the ancestors" and "do our work", the root and origin, why do you also need to write notes to summarize this kind of work, and why you must also respect yourself after doing this kind of work.

provided by Naughty Children is based on emotions : the more you lack love, the more you need to understand love, the more you live, the more you learn not to give up, the more you need to treat the dead, the more you should treat the living, the more you need to understand death, the more you should understand life, the old saint teachings - how can you know death?

This is why the movies should fill these two lines at the cost of deviating from professional dramas and mixing them off topic.

This is like since ancient times, the more you have been listed as a "lower karma", encountered many unfair and frequently discriminated against, the more you will try your best to move yourself toward some more moral places, such as ethics, emotions, taking over history, and raising children.

, the process of "geting closer to some more moral places" and from "family members scolding you in the hospital corridor" to "family members bowing to you at the door of the morgue, and banners are hung in the store", from "neighbor wedding store owners do not allow you to park at the door and not let their son play with you" to "neighbor wedding store owners and couples hold weddings for you personally", from "kindergarten teachers hinting that you should not let your career affect your children" to "you can participate in kindergarten parent-child days with confidence and even proudness", if they are in line with the rules, they follow them step by step.

You said I was cheating people for money, I said I was collecting and retaining memories (repairing watches and leaving grandma’s voice behind is particularly like a concrete metaphorical entity).

You say I am a feudal superstitious person. I let you see that my father, who attaches great importance to rituals, finally dissolved the ritual with his own hands, using such a magical, carnival -style, and Zen-style performance art .

You said that I would be unlucky to do this, so my family either divorced or died of misfortune. I explained that my second brother used his life to exchange for a young life.

You said I was a funeral, and I named myself "the person who planted stars" and asked the angel who was willing to call my father to crown this title with his own mouth and handwriting.

All of these are the beauty filter frames added to the entire industry when the death is not auspicious enough and the funeral is not high-end enough.

just happened to be the moment it came, the whole world was sunk in the rich feeling of trauma and loss.

It is precisely because this layer of filter needs to mobilize too many resources and scenes that this film is described as "condensing dozens of episodes and eight o'clock TV series into one episode": the second half is not good enough to be completed, and the entire rhythm is compressed, as if you are busy putting all the space on PPT, each of which lacks polishing and laying the groundwork, all relying on the turning point that falls from the sky, "the biological mother suddenly comes". I remember that TVB's series loves to do this at the end, but what is needed here is the texture of the movie.

In fact, there are many things and scenes worthy of heavy ink and finely engraved:

is like the restoration of the body of father and son, in the ancient formula, the real occurrence of evolution - think about how the son and father delivered a letter together in "That Mountain, That Man, That Dog".

is like that decision to make rational decisions for the rivals of love. This is a direct confrontation between professional ethical needs and emotional catharsis needs - I often say in class that the best conflict in professional dramas is "I am a lawyer, and my professional ethics requires me to escape from the defense object, but now my defense object happens to be the person I hate most emotionally."

is like the death of an elderly person, the death of a child, the death of a living person, the death of an enemy, and the death of a relative. The five funerals that appear in sequence in the movie actually constitute a very subtle sense of progression. If this sense of progression can be done more carefully, it will be quite outstanding.

Finally, the girl's acting skills are superb, and although Zhu Yilong is not amazing (the director gave too many close-ups, which is too high), it can be seen that she is very attentive.