Author: Wang Yichuan
The film " Life Events " tells the story of a male funeralist Mo Sanmei meeting the granddaughter of the deceased at work, and unexpectedly changing her career and attitude towards life. The film focuses on the change process between them from sharp opposition to mutual support, and the transformation process of Mo Sanmei from a gangster in the city to an upright, friendly and responsible citizen.
movie "Big Events in Life" poster. Photo provided by the producer
video carefully portrays the vertical evolution of Mo Sanmei's personality and attitude towards life. The first stage is a sharp opposition between him and Xiaowen, who is paranoid about finding his deceased grandmother, showing the incompatible confrontation between this down-and-out funeralist and the innocent orphan. Xiaowen has repeatedly disturbed Mo Sanmei's funeral affairs, making Mo Sanmei's father Lao Mo even more disgusted with him. The second stage is the stage of his easing relationship with Xiaowen and mutual help, which shows that he has a new experience of many events in his life. Xiaowen realized that she had caused trouble and took the initiative to make up for it and asked her grandmother's dance partner and Lao Mo to help Mo Sanmei. The father and son changed from opposition to reconciliation. The third stage is the stage when Mo Sanmei and Xiaowen have a father-daughter relationship. Xiaowen lives happily at Mo Sanmei's funeral company. The story of the deceased second brother gave Mo Sanmei a new experience of giving birth to others. When his father passed away, Mo Sanmei went from being a bystander to a family member. The brilliant fireworks treatment of his father's ashes symbolized that he had a new understanding of life and death. Xiaowen was taken away by her biological mother Haifei, but she escaped and identified Mo Sanmei as her "dad", which made him rethink his family and family affection, and took the initiative to invite Haifei to stay, allowing the audience to have new imaginations about the future of "this family". Such three stages of progressive progress make Mo Sanmei's transformation process convincing. What
intertwined in the above vertical narrative is the horizontal entanglement of multiple life values and concepts. First of all, the concept of life and death. The whole film puts death on the top priority of life, such as the death of grandmother to Xiaowen, the death of father to Mo Sanmei, and the death of Mo Sanmei’s ex-girlfriend Xixi’s husband and sixth to Xixi, all of which have a huge impact. In fact, the understanding of death is always inseparable from the understanding of birth and survival. For example, after the tragic death of Lao Liu, Xixi begged Mo Sanmei to help restore the body of her deceased husband, and Mo Sanmei agreed with pain out of awe and sympathy for her new life. Mo Sanmei rethinks a series of value concepts such as love and hate, good and evil, responsibility and escaping responsibility. The care and resentment of his father and his dead second brother, the care and resentment of Xixi and his husband, as well as good and evil thoughts of surrounding neighbors (such as wedding shop couples) and society (such as kindergarten), responsibility and escaping responsibility for the family and career, and the concept of multiple life values and concepts are intertwined, which jointly contributed to the sudden change of Mo Sanmei.
is located on the background board of characters and events, and is a series of rich and complex symbols. There are funeral symbols here, such as shrines, coffins, urns, yellow paper, brazier, paper people, etc.; there are wedding symbols near the wedding shop, such as gold jewelry, wedding dresses, twig characters, auspicious dried fruits, dresses, lanterns, fireworks, etc.; there are symbols of the daily life of the people, such as mahjong, marriage certificate , real estate certificate, children's watch phone with grandma recorded, etc.; finally, there are geopolitical symbols, such as the extensive use of Wuhan dialect , Sichuan dialect, etc. The high-density superposition of many symbolic systems sets up a rational situation for Mo Sanmei's character development and its aggravation.
The whole film shows a trajectory of a style that starts with a comedy style and gradually turns to a serious drama. Xiaowen, who was uneasy due to the sudden loss of his grandmother, disrupted many funeral affairs, and the funeral shop and wedding shop were arranged close to each other, which brought a sense of comedy. Especially when Mo Sanmei took her real estate certificate to propose to Xixi and later wanted to confess to her female partner Yin Baixue to adopt Xiaowen, she met Lao Liu and another partner Wang Jianren, respectively, and they all announced to Mo Sanmei that they were "together". These comedy scenes add frustration to Mo Sanmei's life, but it is these strong stimulation that makes Mo Sanmei have the desire and actions to think about life seriously and fight for it, which promotes the growth of qualities such as love, justice, and sympathy in him, showing the film's serious style.
This film reflects the attitude of life towards goodness and goodness of contemporary ordinary citizens and the intention of striving forward in life.As Lao Mo said: Life is a book, and it always turns to the last page, sometimes it ends, sometimes it is ellipsis . No one can always be with you, but there will always be someone with you. The key is to have the same serious and kind attitude as a saint. An ordinary citizen may not be able to become a saint, but as long as he has a correct attitude towards life, he can make correct decisions and take action in the face of life and death, love and hate, good and evil, responsibility and escaping responsibility, and finally taste the wonderful taste of life. This is exactly the inspiration this video brings to the audience.
(The author is a professor at the Literature and Art Research Center of Beijing Normal University and vice chairman of the China Art Critics Association)
Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-