(Spoiler) Tian Wang Liming said: " To win people, you must first win yourself ", but Yan Shitang said, "To win people, you must first lose yourself." The "Hidden Plan" tells us that the ultimate victory for this legendary cyclist is not actually doping, but the highest level of deception: "To deceive others, you must deceive yourself first."
Lie is rebellion, and director Stephen Frears portrays an athlete's process of attaining detachment as a process of depravity. Yan Shitang has changed from a cyclist to a master of doping; in front of the camera is an anti-cancer warrior philanthropist, but inside is a manipulator who coerces his teammates to participate in his doping "course", and even promotes doping culture in the entire circle. Individual lies spread into structured collective bullying.
The director's critical attitude is very clear, but it is not so simple for Ben Foster, who plays the protagonist. The challenge is that he once said that he wanted to show Yan Shitang's complex human nature, but the latter is a typical "big talker", and only his deception is complicated. To interpret Yan Shitang's mentality at the moment of lying, it is not easy to grasp: Yan Shitang faced the doubts about doping from various parties, "speaking big without blinking", the audience may think that he is "very fake", but they already know the truth , the preconceived perception is different from the people who did not know it at that time.
Some body language experts will use the case of Yan Shitang to illustrate the clues revealed by liars, while Foster has fully mastered the body language of a person who is extremely confident and habitually lying, but he cannot express the so-called complex humanity; however, if he acts sincerely , Even the audience was deceived for a while, and they were afraid that they would not be expressive enough, not like Yanshi Tang. Yan Shitang's self-deception is not because he believes his own lies, but because he is greedy for winning and does not know how to lose, thinking that he can continue to deceive until the bubble bursts. I hope that after watching this drama and watching TV news, Hong Kong people will be more likely to recognize who is lying - if they ever care.
(Originally published in am730 "730 Perspective" on May 17, 2016)
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