When I was in college, I once went to the hospital for a check-up. When I came out of the consultation room, I saw a woman in her thirties squatting on the ground, clutching her stomach and crying. "What should I do! Where can I get so much money!" The cry was as sharp as a knife, as if it was about to tear his body apart. The man who looked like her husband clung to the diagnosis and wiped away tears while rubbing the woman's back, unable to say a word of comfort.
I staggered out of the hospital, my legs were as soft as cotton, and emotions such as fear, sympathy, and anger collided in my heart. Since then, I have realized up close that there are really a group of people in the world who are waiting to die, watching their lives deplete because of poverty.
"I'm Not the God of Medicine" reintroduced my emotions at that time. Zhang Changlin, a counterfeit drug dealer played by Wang Yanhui, said: "There is only one disease in this world, the disease of poverty." In the era of extremely abundant material, poverty can limit imagination, and poverty can stifle many choices. "Poverty" is no longer an adjective. Instead, it becomes a noun and a label. Poverty is the original sin.
The plot is not complicated. Cheng Yong, played by Xu Zheng, was originally a complete loser. His ex-wife divorced because of unbearable domestic violence. His only son will follow his mother to live abroad. problem. By chance, he met Lu Benyi, a chronic myeloid leukemia patient played by Wang Chuanjun, so he started a business of smuggling generic drugs from India. The original intention is of course to make money, but because the price of generic drugs is far lower than that of domestic genuine drugs, many lives have been saved by inadvertently inserting willows.
The road to smuggling is certainly not smooth. The police started looking for him, counterfeit drug dealers targeted him, and the directors of genuine drug companies hated him. In order to protect himself, Cheng Yong gave up his agency rights, opened a company with the first pot of gold saved by selling generic drugs, and became a small boss. Later, Lu Yiyi's death made him realize that he returned to his old business, not to make money, but to save people from sin and become the true savior of the world.
Every turn of the film is expected, and the narrative is a little old-fashioned. But after thinking about it carefully, I realized that this is the reality, so cruel that there is almost no possibility of developing other forks.
Except for Zhang Changlin, the actions of every character in the film are from a legitimate and just standpoint. It is the duty of the police to crack down on illegal drugs; it is reasonable for genuine drug companies to sue generic drugs; it is justifiable for the poor to buy smuggled drugs from India if they want to survive. But it's not hard to see that the film's stance completely falls to the poor patients.
Is there something to hate about poor people? maybe. But this sentence can never be a gold medal for the wicked to do evil and those in high positions to do nothing. "Between the egg and the high wall, I will always stand on the side of the egg." This is a famous saying of Haruki Murakami that has been abused, and it is also a simple truth that many creators believe in when they create.
After watching some interviews, director Wen Muye has always been humble and low-key, but when referring to the actors, he said that all the actors in this film have contributed to their peak acting skills. This is not an overstatement. From the acting roles of Xu Zheng and Zhou Yiwei, to the rising star Wang Chuanjun, to the stunning Gong Beibi, everyone's performances are remarkable and well-defined. It should be known that the film tells the story of the little people, and the little people are the most test of performance.
Xu Zheng's rivalry with each supporting role is full of tension. Cheng Yong and his wife were waiting in the corridor when Lu Yiyi was doing debridement. Heart-piercing howls came from the ward. Xu Zheng played the role of an "outsider" who felt ashamed. Hearing this howling, he was restless, his eyes were dodging, and his body unconsciously turned to the other side. The wife sat motionless, her eyes unfocused, showing that she had become numb during the long-term suffering. When Cheng Yong went to the airport to take his son abroad, he almost cried. The policeman Cao Bin, played by Zhou Yiwei, said that he wanted to invite him to drink. Cheng Yong turned his head and said another day. On the one hand, it was because his son was in a bad mood when he left, and on the other hand, he was not used to Cao Bin's sudden gesture of goodwill. Of course, there was also a sense of guilt in the face of the police. A scene, less than two minutes, only has a few lines, but it fully shows the complicated hearts of two men who are not good at words.
Liu Sihui, played by Tan Zhuo, is a woman who makes any bloody man willing to charge for her. She is tough and tranquil, sexy and charming when she has heavy makeup, and a distressed haggard beauty when she is not. After Cheng Yong made a lot of money, he took a few partners to the bar where Sihui worked for a "team building", and used stacks of banknotes to force the bar manager to strip instead of Sihui. The manager swallowed hard for Qian and twisted his waist on the stage, while Sihui clapped and applauded desperately under the stage, with light, fire, and tears in his eyes. The humiliation she has experienced, her gratitude to Cheng Yong, and her unwillingness to fate are all written in this look. There is a popular question on Zhihu, "What are the examples of whether an actor can act in a single shot." Tan Zhuo's eyes are perfect.
Lu Yiyi, played by Wang Chuanjun, is really surprising. He has been sick for a long time, and is as thin as a bamboo pole, but he always has a silly smile on his face. When he saw Cheng Yong for the first time, he handed over an orange cover, and this orange appeared at several important turning points in the film. When he was so ill that he could not recover from expensive medicines, he endured the pain and said to Xu Zheng, who came to visit, "eat an orange." After his death, Huang Mao hid in a place where no one was around, stuffing oranges into his mouth while crying. Oranges have become a metaphor for Lu's life. They are bright and full, sour and sweet, but if you accidentally splash the juice into your eyes when peeling, it will make people cry.
Lu Yiyi's character reminds me of the wailing woman I ran into at the hospital many years ago. I don't know how she is doing now. If I had seen the movie at the time, maybe I would have stuck an orange in her hand and said, "Come on, have an orange."
Most of the characters in "I'm Not the God of Medicine" are faced with the dilemma of obeying the law or saving lives, which is the main contradiction that drives the development of the story. Behind this, the screenwriter and director are caught in the dilemma of whether to fully dig the depth of the story or try to pass the trial as much as possible. Under my country's film and television work review system, it is not allowed to glorify criminals and criminal behavior, and the character Cheng Yong just stepped on this red line. As a result, the plot in the second half inevitably fell into the rut of excessive sensationalism, and finally relied on "the state included Glenin in medical insurance" as the ending of the whole film, resolving all conflicts in one go.
To confront and change the world with movies, Korean commercial films in recent years can be regarded as one of the best. However, because of China's special national conditions, most of the film and television works still stay at the entertainment level. It is precisely because of this that "I am not the God of Medicine" is so valuable, and it is even more difficult to pass the trial. In the mixed film industry, its dark humor wrapped in heavy realism is a magnificent flower.
Pastor Liu, played by Yang Xinming, always talks about "May the Lord bless you". In the context of the film, this sentence has a strong sense of irony: the lives that the Lord cannot save are saved by smugglers. But at the end of the film, the irony fades and miracles begin to unfold. On Cheng Yong's way to the prison, countless patients came to see them off, and took off their masks one after another, and Lu Yiyi and Huang Mao, who had died, even appeared in the crowd.
This scene is very dramatic, replacing realism with symbols, which is not so much a tribute to Cheng Yong, but a tribute to life. The patients' desire for life transcends the limitations of law and emotion, time and space, like a seed breaking through the coating, like a chick pecking through an eggshell.
May the Lord bless all who fight against fate, Amen.
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