How popular HBO's "Our Distance from Evil" was in the first half of the year, and how much Netflix's "Sin Dreamer" was expected in the second half of the year.
Two years behind HBO, Netflix finally launched its first homemade Chinese drama in Taiwan, telling the story of a "modern gangster in the East".
Comparable to the film's scene production standards; Jia Jingwen, Zhang Xiaoquan, Fan Xiaoxuan, Wang Baijie, etc. starred, with a luxurious lineup.
Before the first self-made Korean drama "Lee Corpse North Korea", and then there was the topical Japanese drama "Naked Supervision", Netflix's voice in the Asian market is getting higher and higher.
The first Chinese self-made drama "Sin Dreamer" was naturally given high hopes by everyone. It seems to be a work that "cannot fail".
This time, however, Netflix lost.
The "Sin Dreamer" Douban score says it all.
Netizen @ Ming complained that for the first time on Netflix, "listening to Chinese lines, watching Chinese subtitles, I actually couldn't understand it."
In fact, the audience on the other side is also confused.
The culprit of "can't understand" lies in the editing, frequent flashbacks, dream jumps and interpolations, resulting in most viewers watching in the clouds and not knowing what to do.
Chen Yingrong, who takes over the three positions of director, screenwriter and editor, has naturally become a scapegoat for the audience.
Director of "Sin Dreamer", Chen Yingrong
In fact, before the launch of "Sin Dreamer", Chen Yingrong and Netflix played a game on editing for a long time. At one point, I wrote a "breakup letter" and prepared to disperse unhappily. But in the end, Netflix compromised.
As a result, a series with a very experimental image style and the least Netflix was born, whether it was good or not, it became an "outlier" in the history of Chinese dramas that was difficult to copy.
In fact, as long as you survive the first two episodes, sort out the plot of the virtual reality, starting from the third episode, the narrative is basically smooth.
The third episode "Ten Years" and the fourth episode "The Old Man" staged the "Prison Break", and the fifth episode "Little Floating Life" began a new kidnapping story after the prison escape.
"The Dreamer" ostensibly tells the story of the gang's four brothers ,"Ah Quan" Ding Changquan (Played by Zhang Xiaoquan), "Dashing" Xiao Shu (Played by Wang Baijie), "A Ghost" Cui Chenggui (Played by Zhang Liheng) and "Lucky Star" Cui Wanfu (Played by Zhou Huanfu), from being framed and imprisoned, and then escaping from prison to complete self-redemption.
Gangster four brothers
Although it involves plots such as collusion between politicians and gangsters, homosexuality, etc., in fact, the director blurs the boundary between virtual and real by constantly interspersing dreams with reality, reduces the impact of real events, and highlights the concept of "sin dreamer".
Chen Yingrong said that everyone dreams and everyone is guilty. And the "dreamers" are each and every one of us.
The key to understanding "Sin Dreamers" is to capture the weird dreams of each episode.
<h1>Crime and Dream</h1>
<h1>Sin and dreams</h1>
The chapter title of the first episode, "Killing", as the name suggests, tells the beginning and end of Ah Quan's murder.
But at the beginning, the director presents the first dream with the controversial "chaotic editing".
The prison cellmate "Tang Sanbai" Xia Shiying (Lu Yilong), who is in love with "Ah Quan" Ding Chang, tells Ah Quan that he is leaving in the middle of the night.
Not long after Ah Quan woke up in reality, Tang Sanbai died of a heart attack. The dream was given a prophetic spiritual meaning, and every dream of Ah Quan thereafter seemed to be a foreshadowing of reality.
Tang Sanbai said in his dream, "After a lifetime of study, I don't guess people's hearts and don't gamble on Providence, but in the end, it turns out to be the same thing, the human heart, Providence."
The phrase "human heart, providence" lays out the worldview of the whole play.
In the fourth episode, Ah Quan responds to the statement of "the human heart, providence", arguing that the successful escape from prison is the work of both the human heart and providence. The kidnapping of his son Tensuke is the driving force of the human heart, and the fire in the prison is the help of Providence.
"The human heart and providence" seem to be a series of actions that guide Ah Quan in the dark, and they are doomed to escape "sin".
He should have left everything he had planted for him, but because Fuxing said "Brother, I'm sorry", he couldn't bear it, and returned to the kidnapped father and son; and because of a series of "yin and yang mistakes", Ah Quan vented his anger on his kidnapped father Wang Qingnian, and the "sin" was caused.
Director Chen Yingrong once explained the relationship between "sin" and "dream" in an interview, she believes that a person's "sin" is caused by thousands of things, and there must be many decisions in front of it, which lead people to that step.
"Dreaming" is like a desire for Ah Quan to make up for sin, to do what is truly right.
The second episode chapter title, "Tianyu", in the name of Ah Quan's son, strings together the past and the present, predicting the future cycle of cause and effect.
The director also used "chaotic editing" to make Tang Sanbai and Wang Qingnian alternately appear in Ah Quan's dream.
Wang Qingnian predicted that Ah Quanhui would have the same ending as his son Tianyou because of him. Then, Tang Sanbai asked Ah Quan to "wait for me to leave, do me a little favor and clear the cabinet", which laid a foreshadowing for the final "surreal" ending, Ah Quan went to Tang Sanbai's house to discover the secret of his life.
The sin committed by Ah Quan became an old dream that had been entangled for ten years, and his son Tianyou was kidnapped in the cycle of cause and effect, and he had to face the "sin" of that year.
"Sin" and "dream" constitute the existence of the characters in the film, and the English name of "Dreamer" is "Nowhere Man", which literally translates as a wandering person, a person who has nowhere to find.
In religion, the meaning is "bardo body" and "middle body", which refers to the chaotic and ambiguous state of existence in the middle when life is born after death, before it is reincarnated into the next life.
This explains why Ah Quan has been in a half-dreamed and half-awake state, and before he enters the next reincarnation, it is like his soul has been floating in the yang, trying to fulfill one wish before dying.
Looking back, the MV-style mixed cut to present the state of "Nowhere Man" Ah Quan is so suitable for the situation, very poetic, like a dream.
<h1>MTV Narrativity</h1>
<h1>MV narrative</h1>
Chen Yingrong, born in 1980, often uses DJ as the registration ID of BBS, and over time, DJ has become not only her English name, but also her status symbol.
In the world of film scores, she lives like a tireless DJ.
At the age of 23, his feature film debut "Seventeen-year-old Sky" won the box office of Taiwan's Chinese film that year;
Seventeen-year-old sky (2004)
In 2006, the second comedy film "Guoshi Peerless" received double box office success.
But what really made her let herself go was the movie "RiotEr", which worked directly with the retro-rock Band Soler on an entire album's soundtrack.
It was also after this movie that Chen Yingrong bid farewell to the film world and plunged into the music world of the MV.
Eight years later, returning to the film and television circle, the creative aesthetic of the MV seems to have deeply affected her video narrative style.
Guo Caijie's music film "Love to Build Flying Chickens" directed by Chen Yingrong
"The Dreamer" is destined not to go back to the commercial narrative of "everyone is happy", on the contrary, the fragmented narrative style hinders most viewers from understanding the plot.
But if you accept the DJ's singing taste, you will change her "MV narrative".
The first episode begins with the Snow White Ballroom, which explains the heavy scenes of the characters and gang relationships in the play.
The DJ is accompanied by an old Hokkien song "Night Rain in Hong Kong" from the 1950s, when Yang Sanlang, who was the conductor of the US military band stationed in Taiwan, suddenly inspired in the rainy Keelung, played a poignant song with a small trumpet, expressing a kind of wandering feeling.
In "The Dreamer", Ah Quan, Dashing, and Ah Ghost appear in such a melody, opening the prelude to the underworld life, combined with their future encounters, and then listening to this song back and forth, it seems to hint at the tragic tone of the characters from the beginning.
Then accompanied by the two pairs of lovers Ah Quan and Jing Fang (Jia Jingwen), Xiao Xiao and Bai Lan (Fan Xiaoxuan), the music that often appears is "Indebted", from Ade's new album last year, "Wen A Pot of Youth Wine".
Ade's unique bite and rhyme, after the rock arrangement, is especially like a drunken whisper.
I have a debt in my heart for you, and I hope you will forgive me for my arrogance... How I wish everything had been as broken as before, and all the heartbreaking sadness of the crater turned out to be just a bad dream in the middle of the night
Combined with the fate of the two couples in the play, the lyrics unexpectedly fit, singing the lovers' indebtedness to each other, as well as the regret that the relationship did not end up.
Especially in the fifth episode, titled "Little Floating Life", the two lovers reunite after a long absence and steal a day of idleness.
The feeling of regret in "Indebtedness" is rendered and moved.
Another of Ard's songs, "Memo to The Fifty-Year-Old Self", appears in the scene of the prison, especially in the chorus before the escape, led by Fu Xing, a group of death row inmates with no tomorrow collectively chorusing:
Yesterday was a photo hanging on the wall Today is a receding view outside the car window Tomorrow is the bedside alarm clock the day after tomorrow is the faded name on the tombstone
This scene is quite ironic.
In addition to these plot-appropriate soundtracks, there are some weird collocations in "Sin Dreamer" that refresh the impression of classic songs.
In the sixth episode, in the largest large-scale fight scene in the whole film, Ah Quan singles out the people of Wanyouqing like a death, all the way from downstairs to upstairs, and the film's action director is Kensuke Enmura, the Japanese master in Wu Yusen's "Pursuit".
The whole fight scene was originally particularly japanese gangster style, but the background music was accompanied by the old Shanghai ballroom song "Haunting Old Dream" in the 30s of the last century, and the intense action picture was processed in slow motion, which suddenly turned it into a poetic cruel picture, instantly rendering the tragic sense of the character of Ah Quan.
What makes people shoot is the combination of classical music "Peace Piece".
The name of pianist Bill Evans is both a clue to Wang Qingnian's schizophrenic wife and her "bed relationship" with chairman Lin Guanzhong, and the piano song played by Lin Jizi (Xu Guanghan) during his confession in the last episode.
While playing this soothing piano piece, Lin Jizi told a sensational story to the world.
The eerie feeling of this collocation is similar to the cruel and bloody pictures used by Tetsuya Nakajima and Wen Ziwen, accompanied by the classic piano song "Piano Concerto No. 5".
In addition, Xu Guanghan, who was almost nominated for the Golden Horse Award for male support this year for "Sunshine", this performance gave people an unexpected surprise, performing a feeling that was both creepy and pitiful, so that this confessional play reached the climax of the whole play.
Zhang Xiaoquan said, "In the dust of the world, I would rather love and hate" represents the core of "Sin Dreamer".
Literally translated, "The world is a micro-life, what else do I talk about love and hate?"
Buddhism believes that the whole world is in the dust, and man is just dust.
Ah Quan was originally a taciturn, repressed man, who resented the world and longed for perfection in his dreams.
Until the last moment, he finally let go of all the obsessions of love and hatred, and the soul of "Nowhere Man" finally fulfilled his wish before the next reincarnation.
Lin Jizi was also at the end, because FuXing said, "Brother don't be afraid, we were all afraid that night", and was relieved.
The core issue falls on the Buddhist concept of dust, "The Dreamer", which is destined to be an alternative in this era.
Author ✎ Stacy
This article was first published in the Adventure Movie: Cinematik
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