If "Youth of You" is only the second film directed by Zeng Zhiwei's son Zeng Guoxiang, it would be really amazing. He redefines the youth film.
First of all, this is a movie with extremely rich genre elements, because the heroine played by Zhou Dongyu is a high school student who is about to take the college entrance examination, and the hero played by Yi Yang Qianxi has just come of age. From this dimension, it is a youth film; but at the same time, there are elements of murder. The process of investigating the case with the police is not an exaggeration to say that it is a crime film; at the same time, while watching the film, I thought of "New Bridge Lovers" countless times, the story of two desperate and lonely people who finally depend on each other under the siege of the world. , you can also say this is a romance.
Secondly, although the theme of the film is "school violence" or "school bullying", it is clear that director Zeng Guoxiang's ambition is not limited to telling a thin story like "school bullying". As the life experience and heart of the book are slowly unfolding, we can see many sub-topics closely related to the current society: left-behind children, social networks, the college entrance examination system, the gap between the rich and the poor, juvenile delinquency, teacher responsibility, etc.
And the director controls the proportion of scenes in each sub-topic very well, so that people will not feel overwhelmed and won't grab the theme of "school bullying".
Take social networks, for example.
At the beginning of the film, Chen Nian (Zhou Dongyu)'s classmate committed suicide by jumping off the building because she could not bear the bullying of several female classmates. After the suicide, all the students in the school came out to watch. At this time, the director only used a few flashing shots to show the ugliness of the social network era: in the face of the death of their classmates, they chose to watch and take pictures, swipe the screen on social networks, and chat in WeChat groups. When eating melon masses. Only Chen Nian stepped forward bravely and covered the dead man with his clothes.
After that, the plot continued to develop, but the clue did not stop there until Zhou Dongyu's mother was posted a missing person notice because of her debts, and some classmates posted it in the class group. Booing, Zhou Dongyu became the target of collective humiliation, and tears of humiliation welled up in his eyes.
On the surface, Wei Lai and the others were bullying Chen Nian physically and verbally. However, the classmates had no sympathy for their classmates' family and life experiences. The cause, even the accomplices and facilitators.
The director used a simple close-up shot of the group chat interface that flashed for a few seconds, sketching out the appearance of all beings in an era of social networking. It also makes the whole story and character encounters more reasonable, why would a girl at the top end up choosing to let a fighting punk to protect herself? Because her mother was working outside, the teacher found out that the bullying incident was just a hassle. All the students chose to eat melons and coax her, and she was pushed to the edge of the cliff by everyone.
It's not so much that Wei Lai and the three of them are bullying Chen Nian, but that all the classmates are bullying her together. That's why Chen Nian asks the police more than once: Is it useful for me to call the police? And because no one testified and lacked direct evidence, the police could not even file a case, causing Chen Nian, who called the police, to be further retaliated by the bully.
Here "Youth of You" discusses a very important issue: that is, whether it is the responsibility of the teacher, the dedication of the school, the cooperation of the police and the school, the best way to suppress bullying in the school is still the attitude of each classmate, whether to choose to eat melon or choose Come forward.
It can be seen that the main creator of the film is not only trying to tell a good story, but also trying to think and discuss with the audience why such a story happens and how to prevent it from happening.
It is this kind of realistic attention that makes "Youth of You" break away from the "childish love style" of ordinary youth films, or the simple "youth cruel story", and become more real, plump and three-dimensional, reflecting a kind of "complexity". beauty of".
Youth is inherently complicated, society is also complicated, and human nature is even more complicated. Bullying incidents are far from being as simple as children fighting. Only by facing, acknowledging, and accepting the complexities of everything can we truly understand youth and stay away from bullying.
It is precisely in order to reflect this "complex beauty" that we can see many perspectives of storytelling in "Youth as a Teenager". From the beginning and the end, it seems to be Chen Nian's perspective, she is recalling the past; but in the story. In the process, we can also see a hidden perspective, that is, the perspective of police officer Zheng Yi. The setting of this character is particularly good.
At first he sympathized with Chen Nian, the victim of school bullying. While he was a policeman, he also became Chen Nian's friend. He has been trying to protect her, but found that his role as a policeman is sometimes very powerless, so he told Chen Nian. Said my favorite quote from the entire movie:
Growing up is like diving, there will be rocks and mussels in the river that can hurt you, but you still have to jump down.
He even had an affair for a time, which affected the direction of the case, but until the end, after experiencing difficult struggles, he still managed to overcome his emotions.
Police officer Zheng Yi is like a bystander in the whole process. He sympathizes with the bullied person, wants to protect her, once shielded her, and even understands the bullied person's psychology of trying to get revenge. These are normal people's states, but he didn't take it seriously. The melon masses finally overcame their psychological impulse to watch "dog blood revenge" and stood on the side of reason, law and justice. He is the opposite of the melon-eating classmates in the group, and it is also the meaning of the whole movie.
So in the end, the old policeman played by Huang Jue patted Zheng Yi on the shoulder and said:
You have finally grown up.
At this point, we will find that the director is actually trying to tell us what growth is through Zheng Yi's perspective. It is not a blind dive, but gradually understands how to choose.
If Zheng Yi's perspective is a calm bystander of a school bullying case, then the old policeman played by Huang Jue is watching Zheng Yi coldly. The perspective structure wrapped in such layers is the film's attempt to view campus bullying from an adult's perspective, that is, sympathy, but it also adheres to the principle. There is no end to revenge, and the law is the only criterion.
The existence and gradual development of these two police perspectives also continue the "complex beauty" in terms of perspective and film structure.
Once again, the details of the script of "Youth of You" were carefully polished. For almost every named child character that appears in the film, the director uses minimalist words and lenses to show his or her life experience (or vague life experience), such as the three girls who bullied Chen Nian, all of them have Family problems are either violent education by parents, or excessive maintenance and connivance by parents, but on the other hand, Xiaobei (Yi Yangqianxi), a gangster with the same miserable background, has a heart to protect others.
The director seems to be using these details hidden between the camera and the dialogue to quietly hint us that every child with problems must come from a family with problems, but not every family with problems will definitely produce a problematic child.
There are some memorable scenes in the film, you can see the talent of the director. For example, the police car carrying Chen Nian and Xiaobei drove to the fork in the overpass, which means their life crossroads; North did not pass, which means there is always a difference between them.
Friendly reminder: This film is particularly tear-jerking. The female audience on the left and the male audience on the right are wiping tears during the whole process. Please bring a tissue.
Tucao after the film: How did Huang Jue go through so many vicissitudes.
PS: Yi Yang Qianxi's performance is amazing, because this movie uses a lot of facial close-up shots, which is actually quite challenging for the actor's expression control.
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