Can you imagine Zhang Yimou's "Alive" being told with clown-like black humor?
There are many tragedies that make us want to laugh, even if it is really sad. This inexplicable confusion stems from the sense of absurdity. Tragedy will make people feel that life is meaningless, meaningless is absurd, and absurdity will make people laugh.
Although the film is labelled as a comedy, the director obviously wants to express something deeper, such as compassion.
The director teased our protagonist like a god, gave them all kinds of tragic encounters, and then let the protagonist struggle and funny in it like a clown, just like we tease the crickets in the cage.
There is no way out of their tragedy. Ray and Crowder were wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment and were trapped within the gun line for their entire lives. The only way to get out is to die, go out of the gun line to be killed, or die from old illness and then be carried from the morgue to the cemetery on the hillside.
Just like life, being trapped alive cannot escape, the only way out is death.
The director can't get our protagonist out of trouble, and maybe God can't either. The more tortured, the more compassion. Because no one can escape, whether it is poor Ray and Crowder, the director, or us watching the movie.
So in the absurd comedy of Ray and Clay, the director will occasionally stop at one place and use the upgrade lens, accompanied by the affectionate singing of the female voice, which makes us feel sad and throbbing.
Just like Zhou Xingchi's movie, you are suddenly serious in laughter, serious in nonsensical, and cast a deep gaze at you in wanton laughter. Only a moment is enough to penetrate your heart and make you shake for a long time without being calm.
This is compassion. Human beings have mercy on themselves.
Although tragedy is doomed, as Lei said, there are many unhappy things in life, but more happy things. Even though they are trapped in prison, Ray and Crowder are still happy, or they are always optimistic and do not give up hope.
(When Ray and Crowder first entered the prison, they found out that the inmates were all kinds of perverted murderers in reality, the kind that would make you nauseous in reality. However, they have become sincere here. People close to you. What’s wrong? I think it’s the elimination of the bottom line, allowing the sinner to lay down the psychological burden and regenerate into the collective life. Sometimes the moral limit is too high and it will cause more crimes, because it will cause more crimes. People are more stressed.
So we will want to dispel morals, such as Wupin jokes and the group of people on foreign 4chan forums.)
What impressed me the most was the scene where Lei and a group of inmates fantasized about meeting in Lei’s bouncing bar. They are in the dirtiest cell, but they can imagine drinking in the most magnificent hall, so-called sludge looking up at the stars. Freedom can be deprived, but ideals cannot, not even fantasies. It's impossible for Ray to open the bouncing bar he loves, but you can't stop him from imagining with tears in tears. It is impossible for prisoners to enter that kind of hall for a lifetime, but it does not hinder the imagination, just like a little girl lighting a match and seeing her family gather for Christmas. It's like a movie.
A happy ending is better than anything.. No matter what, live, and don't give up hope and fantasy, what about being imprisoned in life, we will finally be free and usher in a happy ending.
I mean, being alive is happy ending, but it's not God's self-deception trick in heaven.
Another: In terms of the drama structure, two people with very different personalities (set as fools in comedy) are combined for some reason, and there is a certain contradiction between them. Then they encountered a common predicament, the two worked together to get out of the predicament (to resolve the contradiction), and the conflict between the two was resolved and the character transformation was completed.
The design of the laughter is mainly about language and sudden face-slapped funny. One of them is to allow the audience to join the group of prisoners, and when they laugh you will also laugh with you, as if you are in it. If you look at it from an outsider's eyes, it is actually not funny. When this is done, it becomes easy to be funny, no need to make dramatic transitions, no need to save jokes. Just like in "The God of Cookery", when Stephen Chow and a group of punks laugh at the screen together, the audience will also laugh. There is no reason, but the appeal of laughter.
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