"Single Man" tells the story of an old single man, Lao Yang, in a village called Gujiagou in Wanquan County, Zhangjiakou. The whole story revolves around Lao Yang's sexual repression. The story is based on the local customs of the northern rural areas of Zhangjiakou, with sexual impulses as clues to connect the characters, interspersed with the plots of infidelity, promiscuity, homosexuality, prostitution and infidelity in Gujiagou, trying to fully show the original sin of modern rural areas in China.
In the first few scenes of the story, the love affair of four old bachelors, Lao Yang, Liang Datou, Gu Lin and Liu Ruan, basking in the sun at the entrance to the village was briefly described.
When Lao Yang was young, as a poor shepherd, he had an affair with the second girl in the same village and got her pregnant. Liang Datou lost a hand when he hooked up with a female member in the 1960s. When Gu Lin was young, she wanted to be a frivolous sister-in-law in front of her wife. She found out and ran away with her sister. Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, Liu Ruan had the painful experience of marrying a wife at the age of twelve.
After introducing the love affair of Lao Yang and others when they were young, the film did not drag on, and went directly to Lao Yang's young lover. Now he is cheating on two girls whose wives and sons are adults. The following story takes sex as the center and Gujiagou as the radius, and depicts people's looks and customs in Zhangbei area from a unique perspective.
I call Single Man White Deer Plain Version 2.0. I'm not saying that the film "Single Man" has epoch-making significance compared with "White Deer Plain", such as upgrading from industrial 1.0 machinery manufacturing to industrial 2.0 electrification and automation. The reason why "Single Man" is called "White Deer Plain" version 2.0 is only a comparison of the broadcast time of the film.
The late broadcast is called version 2.0. This embarrassing situation is not only because the film is an independent film (Oscar winners are mostly independent films) and the director is a young post-80 s, nor because the actors in the film are unprofessional actors (Blind Well, which won the Silver Bear Award at Berlin Film Festival, is also mostly unprofessional actors).
The status quo of version 2.0 illustrates two problems.
1, single men are not as significant and far-reaching as the original novel White Deer Plain in terms of artistic level, story telling, theme expression and cast.
2. "Single Man" has surpassed the film "White Deer Plain" in topic selection and expression of social significance.
Next, I won't say how bad the movie "White Deer Plain" is, but what's good and what's bad.
Highlights of the story:
1, the highlight of the story is that as an independent film, the tonality of single men should be different from the values of commercial films. In Single Man, however, the thinking about the real society is biased towards the direction of commercial films.
Lao Yang is a melon farmer whose main livelihood is to grow melons, and the ordinary audience will feel sympathy for the melon farmers at the bottom of society. Lao Yang went to the county to sell melons, but he met a rogue. The watermelons he planted hard are sold at low prices. Lao Yang tried to resist, but was more strongly suppressed by hooligans, and he was beaten black and blue. In the eyes of the audience, such a plot treats Lao Yang as a poor man.
However, poor Lao Yang is not worthy of sympathy: when the melon vendor came to Gujiagou village to buy watermelons, farmers headed by Lao Yang forced the vendor to buy rotten melons and cracked melons at normal prices for the benefit. The vendors refused, and Lao Yang led the villagers to fight violence with violence.
In the story, in order to hook up with the second girl for a long time and solve her own physiological needs, Lao Yang honeyed the second girl, pretending to be pitiful, and asked for help according to different situations at different stages. "Although I gave you 100 yuan for living expenses, that 100 yuan is my whole life." For Er Girl, Lao Yan is a qualified sentient man.
It seems that Lao Yang, who gave all her material things to the second girl, generously took out 6000 pieces of bride price money when dating her sister in Sichuan. So big that even the second girl couldn't believe that Lao Yang was so rich.
Of course, Lao Yang's Chicken Thief also shows the sadness of Lao Yang's character. His only parallel head is the second girl, and Lao Yang is just one of the parallel heads of the second girl.
2. Humanity is worth pondering. We often say that China people have turned every festival in the West into a shopping festival. In Gujiagou, every time the outside world influences Gujiagou, the villagers in Gujiagou will change it with their own way of life. This is also one of the highlights of the film: Gu Jiagou won the war of external change, but lost the self-redemption that he should have done.
Gujiagou can obviously keep the melon vendors with sincere nostalgia, but they choose violence.
When Qiao Sanyi's family could clearly collect the travel expenses and let Sichuan sister who followed Qiao Sanyi wholeheartedly go back to her hometown to attend the funeral, she chose to ignore it.
3. Dialect: White Deer Plain is about the yellow land in the northwest, while Single Man is also a story in the north of China, and its lines are mainly based on the local dialect. Dialect has been shining brilliantly in China's films since the film Looking for a Gun. The use of dialects in Single Man has brought unique charm to the film, especially the use of simple, rhyming and thought-provoking dialects in the film, which really made the audience laugh and meditate for a long time. Interested babies can refer to the last line of Single Man, which is too yellow and violent, so I won't write it directly. ...
4. Tone:
The overall tone of the film is unpretentious and light and natural. Based on the principle of realistic creation, the director restores his true colors with real life, profoundly expresses the sadness and helplessness of small characters in reality, and carefully handles the tone and keynote in some special scenes and plots.
For example, in the scene of Lao Yang raping Sister Chuan, the color of the film is lewd red, which is unique to informal massage shops and red light districts on the street. The director tried to express his views on the so-called "marriage" between Lao Yang and Sister Chuan in lewd red. Phenomenon and essence are the same, both are business. Sister Chuan wants to settle down and obey orders, while Lao Yang wants to solve physical problems and exchange interests and rules of the game between adults.
This tone processing makes the film add a lot of changes on the basis of keeping the tone stable, and the changing image style while maintaining stability is the creative feature and charm of many independent filmmakers.
Single Man uses a lot of long shots when the story conflicts. This application not only represents the director's attitude towards the story characters in the film, but also expresses the position of the film, which easily makes the audience feel irrelevant, but also has to be immersed in thinking by such a long shot, effectively mobilizing the audience's emotions.
Story failure:
As an independent film, I'm really embarrassed to say where its failure lies, because I don't understand the expression of various ideas and arts in independent films and the enthusiasm of young people who will die without literature and art in Douban film reviews. After watching the literary film Sex, Lies and Videos, the protracted plot and various unknown so, I almost collapsed.
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Of course, don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you. Existence is meaningful. Don't blindly deny other people's works based on your own preferences and aesthetic level.
I just agree with a slogan that Xiaogang Feng said when advertising a brand at present: movies are good only if the audience likes them. Chairman Mao said that art should serve the people. I have been deeply influenced by this concept, and now I think this concept is correct.
Therefore, as for the failure of the film, it is purely personal preference. If you don't like it, you can skip it, but you are also welcome to spit in the comments. In order to increase the activity and recommendation of the article, I will reply to you.
Failure is from the perspective of how to serve people's viewing experience and thinking;
1 at the beginning of the story, I still tell the romantic experiences of several old bachelors when they were young. Although the opening topic and plot pave the way for the following story, there seems to be no problem in developing such a character plot. Think about it. Apart from spreading Lao Yang's personal experience at the beginning of the story, the purpose of spreading other stories of the old bachelor is to serve the later stories. If we go further, Liang Datou, Gu Lin and Liu Ruan should all have complete character lines. Although there are conscious arrangements behind the story to tell the story completely, some of them mean to complete it for the sake of completion, so the degree of film completion is somewhat far-fetched.
2. The two girls were framed, and they became the important characters in the story, threading the needle for the whole story. However, such people are established, but what I see is in the clouds and fog. The film confessed that ErShantou almost slept with the men in the village in order to earn tuition for her son.
The second girl has a purpose, but the story is not clear about the purpose and motivation. You know, married women's infidelity is a thing that is not recognized by morality at all times and in all countries. Erwench did such a big thing just to pay his son's tuition, which is not enough. Even if you show that Owen Qi's family is poor, there is nothing wrong with it, but Owen Qi is the daughter-in-law of the village chief. Well ... Erwench's motives lack a solid story.
On the whole, single men are still a film of acceptable quality. The film tries to express its thinking on social reality with sex as a link, which is both a bright spot and a failure. The highlight is that the story is fresh and not kitsch, and it doesn't play pornographic edge balls. The failure lies in the social reflection under the condition of writing about sex without profound expression. The author's intentions and values are not very clear, or even scattered.
The title says that the truth of Degang Guo's mentoring conflict is truly explained in The Single Man: interest.
There is no right or wrong in the adult world, only pros and cons, which is also manifested in single men. But movies are movies, reality is reality, trees move to the dead, and people move to the life.
In Single Man, the villagers in Gujiagou did not redeem themselves because of the author's character setting, but what about people? Forgive others, and "wisdom" can be divided into "wisdom" and "wisdom". It is easy to win with wisdom, but it is difficult to settle down with "wisdom", but "wisdom" is the easiest to find and change yourself: be kind to others.