Great works often present themselves and don't need a review to follow up, but I'm still willing to spare no effort to praise this American drama, and I'm not afraid that excessive praise will be overstated because it's just a TV series, or that it will So revealing your shallowness, no, I'm totally sure, there will soon be a flood of comments about it, and a longer period of time with more diverse reviews, analyses, citations, and all sorts of compliments (including because of the standard Criticism that arises from the rise) will breed and multiply around it. Great works are like this, just like the fertile soil must be covered with vegetation, and I believe it will be mentioned repeatedly like "Forrest Gump", "The Shawshank Redemption", "The Godfather" and other works. Among the lesser but more profound works like "Manchester by the Sea" and "Olive Kitteridge", if luck is good enough (everything needs luck), it may It will transcend the image itself and record the silhouette of the next era. Yes, you can also say that I am deliberately inflating it, but don't we always do this, always in a deliberately inflated way to hedge against possible undervaluation.
Every story needs to start from the origin, such as a knot or desire, an unresolved contradiction, an encounter a few hours ago, a feud decades ago, like the singularity of the Big Bang, everything must start from here, Settle down here. The origin of "Nightmare in Dongcheng" is the nightmare of female police detective Mel in Dongcheng - her son hanged himself as a shadow she could not get rid of. Every turning point in the whole story is related to it, and the two cases in the small town, the disappearance of a girl, the murder of a girl, like the horizontal and vertical coordinates, divide the people in the community into four different Quadrant, police, workers, teachers, students, restaurant owners, waiters, cashiers, housewives, retirees, clergy, these ordinary people form a typical small-town American ecology, and the story is here unfold in the ecology.
For Mel, the pain of bereavement has a deeper meaning, which is guilt. She blames herself for her son's suicide, and the latter is more than the former. In order to escape this double pain, Mel cannot Not devoting herself to work, this is not the general sense of "full heart", it has nothing to do with professional ethics, professionalism, and professional interests, but she has to do so, has to escape into her only refuge, bring With a seemingly calm, in fact, almost morbid obsession, full of irresponsible, moth-to-fire sacrificial meaning. As a result, the origin on the ecological coordinates of the town has become the driving force behind the development of the story, like a vortex, driving the people and families who are still in each quadrant, so that they start to revolve around it, just like the stars revolving around the sun Same.
As a result, the complex and multiple relationships between people are naturally presented, interspersed with changing narratives, metaphors that echo before and after, and the rhythm of the plot is like a rushing river, which becomes logical, almost a scene is missing The story cannot continue, and the entire American drama also shows a quality that is rare even in classic literature. It combines the advantages of long and short stories, with complexity and depth, as well as tension and rhythm. The whole story also seems to be Wonderful, as if it was not created, but emerged naturally. The eternal motifs of human nature, destiny, and self-salvation it showed were not portrayed and dealt with, but were discovered by the screenwriter and director like an existing mine, as if There really is such a small town called Dongcheng, and there really are such a group of people living there.
The entire American drama is concise, straightforward, without lyricism, whether it is sad or gloomy. Ordinary people in a small town, doing ordinary jobs and living a peaceful life, almost vulgar and boring, but two cases (a problem girl disappeared, an underage mother was killed), but two cases separated by a year (a problem girl disappeared, an underage mother was killed), Opened us another image of America - in the first few episodes, I thought it was an American drama that revealed the problems of American teens, drug abuse, teenage prostitution, school bullying, gun murders, underage mothers, everything The desolate scene of the American community; half of it, it seems to be talking about the mid-life crisis, the loss of a child, a wife, divorce, cheating, incest, every scene is an unbearable detail within the family; however, at the end, I realized It's actually talking about the bleak and sad life itself, the life that everyone suffers, the cheating husband, the divorced family, the drug-addicted brother, the fallen daughter, the suicidal son, all like heavy chains, firmly trapped The people in the play are actually equally disturbing to those of us who watch.
That's right, life, everyday life, is both monotonous and unpredictable, just like the two cases of young girls, it was not known whether it was the same murderer at the beginning, because no one knew where the end of life would be. One of the cases ended in the fifth episode. Detective Colin, who could be regarded as the male lead, died at the same time. HBO had to subtitle after the film and said that there were two more episodes. I was afraid that people would not understand. This is life, and there are always bad things in life. But good things often come to an abrupt end. Black Orpheus eventually overdose and died at home. His sister, facing the corpse, put her head on Mel's shoulder. This is also life, not all sorrow, but also relief that finally comes. The widowed old man Carlo asked Mel how to survive the death of a loved one, and Mel replied that although it was unacceptable, you still have to put food in the refrigerator, pay utility bills, and do laundry. In life, you have to move on with unacceptable events.
So, this American drama began to sublimate from here, from the sad life of a down-and-out female police detective to a story of how a person redeems himself in misfortune. It has a deep sadness, but it gives a warm ending. Loli finally Embracing and crying with Mel, who finally faces the loss of a child, the reconciliation comes, perhaps because it reveals a deeper reality in the final episode - the tragedy of Erin's death There isn't a real bad guy. A thirteen-year-old child defends the integrity of his parents' family without reproach, a seventeen-year-old single-parent girl seeks security from her elders, and can be forgiven, although John has a disability, it is not a capital crime, Irene is not a young girl, and you Nor can every middle-aged man stop beating the heart of a sweet dad. Everything is an accidental mistake. There is no real bad guy in this murder case. Irene's bad luck is not caused by some bad person, and the murder is not a specially customized blueprint. A lot of bad luck is the random product of the collision of all things, and it is incomplete. Souls collided and rubbed each other, became attached or grieved with each other, and finally reached the point of no return, but no one was really responsible for it, so Mel's staggering mother finally said a serious word to her daughter, "You It's not your responsibility for your son's suicide."
That tainted priest, on the eve of the end of the show, under the pressure of the eyes of the crowd, preached on the stage, which seemed meaningful, as if it was an annotation of the whole drama. Before the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God, every human soul was crippled, every life was broken, and even the priest who led the people in prayer—the one closest to God—was not spared. The only way for people to be redeemed is to reconcile with themselves and life, accept their broken soul, and accept their imperfect life. This is not surrender, it is not resignation or lying flat, it is a kind of firm courage, the so-called courage to recognize the truth of the world and still be willing to dance with it. The entire American drama ends with Mel opening the stairs and climbing the attic where his son committed suicide. The piano flows like spring water. At this moment, Dongcheng has finally changed from an unbearable but unbearable place to a promised land, from a place that seems to be cursed. The bad land has become a cherished land, and the people of Dongcheng, whether it is the bereaved child, the deceased wife, the divorce, or the Lori who finally separated from the husband, have all learned to live with the broken life. As a result, people woke up from the nightmare of Dongcheng, and the haze turned into bright sunshine.
And that ethereal and weird writer witnessed this change. In one year, he passed through Dongcheng like a shooting star. Many people could not understand the meaning of his existence. In fact, he was the "other" of Dongcheng. He won the National Book Award after only writing one book. A person who has never written again for more than ten years, a person who has completely reconciled with life and himself, a writer who cannot exist in the world, but an extreme reflection of Dongcheng's nightmare. He is like a bird flying across the sky, helping us Understand those Dongcheng people who lie on the ground, and ourselves.
Plus:
If it wasn't for the respectable Brother Guangming who told me that he was reluctant to watch after three episodes, I would not have specifically found out about this American drama - especially the starring Winterless. I actually don't want her middle-aged image to impact my memory of Rose. Ever since I saw that Nick in "Big Little Lies" can't withstand the ravages of time, I'm not very willing to go to those female stars who are getting older. But this time, I really want to thank Winterless, a great actor, who has surpassed Francis McDormand, even she is not an actress, but an actor, a good actor who can keep pace with Hopkins, May Mel's pain of bereavement is never exposed, Mel's performance is not lyrical, Mel is all verbs, she is not performing, there is no such thing as "acting Mel's alive", because when she appears, she It's Mel.
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