Among the recently aired works, "Heart Residence" is a rather special one. It appears in the name of urban emotional drama, but you can taste different flavors by tasting samadhi. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Lu Xun Literature Prize winner Teng Xiaolan, this drama uses "house" as the starting point to depict a layered picture of a shanghai family living a life. The original novel has a good reputation, "lively opening, a little bit of popularity" comments, saying that the "Heart Residence" of the Haipai fireworks. Whether it is 2009's "Snail Residence" or 2022's "Heart Residence", these two works are directed by Teng Huatao and starring Haiqing, more than ten years have passed, and the audience's mentality has also changed. Both "Snail Dwelling" and "Heart Residence" are spectacle and full of conflict, but "Heart Residence" can no longer reproduce the glory of that year. In a way, this change stems from the growth of the audience.
The city in the play is an emotional expression of "wandering"
Haiqing, known as the "national daughter-in-law", returned with "Heart Residence", which should be the fourth time haiqing cooperated with director Teng Huatao after "Double Sided Tape", "Wang Gui and Anna" and "Snail Residence". Coming to "Snail Residence" Haiqing has become a pseudo-strong woman, and the cause of all tragedies began when she wanted to buy a house and change her class, and now 13 years later, she is still struggling to buy a house in "Heart Residence". And this time it's different.
From the "face" of the house, "Heart Residence" explores the "Lizi" of Shanghai citizens' lives, and really shoots a mirror image of family life. The Gu family, young and old, who are in the same house for four generations, value weekend family gatherings. The recent situation of each family's life and the release of various types of news, the discussion and resolution of major and minor matters in the big family, the characters who appear have their own "careful thinking", but the "home" still has tolerance and centripetal force, revealing the bittersweet taste of living at home. Screenwriter Teng Xiaolan said that "Heart Residence" takes the house as the starting point and writes all kinds of characters, reflecting the current living conditions of ordinary people from all walks of life in Shanghai, as well as the changes in values reflected behind it. "Ju" is the face, and "heart" is the inside. The "heart" is placed before the "dwelling", which is more about the dwelling place of people's minds, not just the placement of the body.
Haiqing said of the understanding of "Heart Residence", "This 'residence' is not necessarily a house, but a place that makes us feel more at ease, this place can be work, it can be a house, or it can be a family. Tong Yao, who plays Gu Qingyu, said, "'Heart Residence' is actually about where the heart is located is very important, and Gu Qingyu wants to find someone who can live in this house with her." Director Teng Huatao said, "The biggest core of this drama is to focus on the warm and well-intentioned side of life and human nature, and promote positive values." There are pains in the story, but not indulging in pain; there is the pressure of urban society, but the focus is more on the efforts and self-improvement of the characters in the face of pressure. ”
"Heart Residence" is adapted from the novel of the same name by Lu Xun Literature Award winner Teng Xiaolan, and the new era family emotional drama directed by Teng Huatao, from home to city to era, has become the epitome of the life of many ordinary Chinese families. Teng Xiaolan is both the original author of the novel "Heart Residence" and the screenwriter of the TV series of the same name. Teng Xiaolan said that the novel can be told and more willful, while the script should grab the audience in a short period of time and think more. The script creation process of "Heart Residence" is generally smooth. The entire creative team of directors, producers and planners is very professional.
In the creation of "Heart Residence", Teng Xiaolan will draw inspiration from the lives of the people around him. Teng Xiaolan said that he would be particularly sad when he wrote about Shi Yuan (played by Feng Shaofeng). The script tells that he studied hard and hoped to return to Shanghai, but in the end, because of his mother's unintentional mistake, he could not return to Shanghai. Writing this, Teng Xiaolan felt the same way, also as a child of Zhiqing, she understood the feeling that the people who left Shanghai in her father's generation were eager to return to their roots, "If there is a personal feeling (reflection) about myself in this work, it is the part of Shi Yuan's character. ”
In the view of director Teng Huatao, the characteristics of Shanghai are very strong in integration, there are tall and petty bourgeois places, there are also very localized and grounded places, and all kinds of atmospheres are mixed together, "We emphasize this feature of Shanghai more." Teng Huatao led the team to collect wind many times. Teng Huatao said that he has been filming in Shanghai for a long time and knows more about various places in Shanghai, but some industries involved in this drama, such as the professional background of senior white-collar workers in finance made by Gu Qingyu, are far from Teng Huatao's own life, because Gu Qingyu's family and professional background will affect her personality, so he has interviewed some women who are engaged in finance and investment banking in Shanghai to better understand the characters.
In Teng Huatao's view, "Heart Residence" is slightly different from his previous works, this time focusing on depicting different circles of contemporary cities, with Shanghai as the representative of Chinese cities, in which each typical character is displayed in a panoramic manner. The most prominent in the play is the urban white-collar Kochi class women represented by Gu Qingyu and the ordinary families of the middle class represented by Feng Xiaoqin, "I myself feel that unlike the TV series such as "Wang Gui and Anna" and "The Naked Marriage Era" more than ten years ago, the clarity of the circle of "Heart Residence" is more clear. ”
Yan Bin, deputy director of the Department of Radio and Television Editing and Directing of Tianjin Normal University, said that in recent years, the regionality of works has become a deliberate expression of many film and television drama works, and the use of geography by films will be more clear, but the regional expression in TV dramas is not yet mature. For example, in the TV series "Beijing Love Story", "Beijing Youth", "Beijing Women's Picture Book", "Shanghai Women's Picture Book" and other urban theme TV series, Shanghai and Beijing are actually not the real Beijing and Shanghai, but an "imagined" Shanghai and Beijing, which is a kind of dramatized heterogeneous expression and an emotional expression with "drifting" as the background. He said that Shanghai in "Heart Residence" is the epitome of a large city, and as a city with high housing prices and a predominantly foreign population, it is more typical. He said: "The Shanghai in "Heart Residence" has different meanings for Feng Xiaoqin and Gu Qingyu, one is hometown, the other is a hometown, and it is a set of contrasting relationships. In the TV series, the region is more like the background of the character's life, which is actually used to strengthen the character's pyrotechnics and sense of reality, and the regional expression is internalized into an emotional thinking. ”
There is a need for a better transition between conflict and compromise
In the city of Shanghai, two modern women with very different personalities and destinies are juxtaposed in the same family through the "sister-in-law relationship". Netizens described the original work like this, "even ordinary life can blow up a tsunami, and even ordinary people have countless truths in the ups and downs of the world", high topicality is the prominent feature of "Heart Residence", around the "war" between two women, buying a house, workplace, marriage, older singles, pension and other social topics are intertwined.
The story of "Heart House" begins with the most daily life state of the two women. On the one hand, Feng Xiaoqin, as a stay-at-home mother, went to the vegetable market to buy vegetables before the whole family got up, bargained with the stall owner, and took the dishes with her. When she hurried home, her feet had not yet entered the door, and the sound of shouting for her husband and children to get up quickly became lively first; on the one hand, Gu Qingyu, as an elite in the workplace, was doing yoga briskly in front of the floor-to-ceiling window where the sun shone in. Immediately the camera turned, sitting in front of the dresser, she put on makeup and picked up her clothes, and her movements were not hurried.
The heroine Feng Xiaoqin carried a vegetable basket and confessed: "Only by owning a house can we have a sense of security in the city's life and the feeling of being a master." "Living with the elders and carrying the identity of a foreign daughter-in-law, Feng Xiaoqin wants to own a house of her own and become a real Shanghainese." Feng Xiaoqin was full of fireworks, but with the calculation of a small citizen, Gu Qingyu was intelligent and knowledgeable, but full of pride and prejudice. In this family, the confrontation between the two is continuous, whether it is the back and forth of borrowing money to buy a house, or the outbreak after the silence after Gu Lei's death, which makes many viewers feel empathy.
There are almost no perfect characters in "Heart Residence", and each character has a point that people love and hate. Gu Qingyu represents the urban white-collar workers, Kochi women, and Feng Xiaoqin represents the backbone of society, ordinary housewives; including Shi Yuan, who represents the generation of people who left Shanghai, desperately want ye to return to their roots... Teng Xiaolan hopes that all the characters in "Heart Residence" are not conflicting for the sake of conflict, "Everyone is constantly working hard for their own ideals, and they will not want to touch others and infringe on the interests of others." But in this process, it is inevitable to intersect with others, and there is conflict in the intersection. All the characters in "Heart House" are like this, and none of them are bad people in the traditional sense. ”
These are two women full of vitality. Although their identities and circumstances are very different, they are all clear-thinking and full of action. Teng Xiaolan said that they are by no means the "sister-in-law war" in the general sense, and their contradictions are not only due to the prejudice of the geographical portal, but also the difference in values and concerns between the two. "The series of things they each go through afterwards is a process that people must go through in self-knowledge and growth. In the end, the sister-in-law reached a 'reconciliation', in fact, it was also understanding, 'I can't fully forgive you, but I slowly understand you.' To reconcile with the other person is also to reconcile with oneself. This is also a code that people in the city can eventually achieve harmony with each other: maintain a friendly distance and 'compare hearts to hearts'. ”
Yan Bin believes that the settings of Feng Xiaoqin and Gu Qingyu in the play are very different, and the growth experiences of the two people with different identities and different backgrounds are equivalent to the two sides of the human body, on the one hand, the security of survival that can be experienced on the ground, and the other is the spiritual security that Tengyun can feel, which is different but itself compatible. Yan Bin said: "From conflict to understanding, the two people are actually a process of 'limited compromise', and once the relationship between these two senses of security is found, they can understand each other." But this excessive conflict of setting and expression is tough, and it is inevitable that there is less of a chaotic reality. As a female-themed TV series, she did not place women in a simple family space and emotional space, and this drama used 'buying a house' as an incision, but placed it at a more macroscopic level - the value discussion in the sociological sense, which is undoubtedly the biggest highlight of this drama. ”
Overly intensified contradictions and explicit conflicts are "double-edged swords"
Whether it is 2009's "Snail Residence" or 2022's "Heart Residence", these two works are directed by Teng Huatao and Haiqing as the main actor, more than ten years have passed, and the audience's mentality has quietly changed. Yan Bin said that both "Snail Residence" and "Heart Residence" are spectacles and full of conflicts, but "Heart Residence" can no longer reproduce the glory of that year. In a way, this change stems from the growth of the audience. "Audiences are no longer so obsessed with spectacle, dramatic conflicts, but are beginning to accept more real, purer dilemmas of life," he said. "Thirty Only" also has heterogeneous plots such as derailment, but it does not thicken this plot, on the contrary, the audience loves to watch it more. The plot can only lead to conflict, and the small fragments of life can show emotions. Audiences no longer accept the ubiquity of conflict, preferring to believe in the same emotions as them. ”
Unlike the traditional family drama heroines, the two heroines of "Heart Residence" did not get the ending of "love reunion". Teng Xiaolan confessed that she did not deliberately not let them be together, "Feng Xiaoqin has gained her own value in other places, and this part of love is natural." For the two heroines, it is like this, finding their own life, listening to the inner arrangement, and finding the abode of the heart. ”
The TV series "Heart Residence" ushered in the grand finale, and the Douban rating of this drama was 5.8, which also attracted controversy along with the hit. Yan Bin analyzed that compared with the traditional urban women's theme, the advantage of "Heart Residence" is that it does not place all the focus on the house, the house is more like the background and motivation of the story, and what really shows the dilemma of life in urban life. Relatively speaking, the values to be expressed are more diverse, and there are a large number of spectacle expressions such as "fake marriage" and "phoenix man" in the work, but this is just where this work has been criticized, and the overly intense contradiction and over-explicit expression is a "double-edged sword", which is the magic weapon for urban dramas to create topics, but it is also a weapon to reduce the credibility and authenticity of the work, which is also the regret of this work.
It is worth mentioning that whether it is the previously popular "Human World" or "Heart Residence", they all belong to serious literary adaptations. In addition to "The World of Man" and "Heart Residence", a large number of TV series adapted from serious literature have entered the creative period. For example, adaptations of Lu Yao's novel "Life" and Shuang Xuetao's novel "Moses on the Plain" appeared in iQiyi's series list; Yu Hua's new work "Wencheng" and Jin Yucheng's "Blossoms" appeared in Tencent's 2022 film list. In addition, Wang Meng's "This Side of the Landscape", Jia Pingwa's "Qin Cavity", Su Tong's "Yellow Bird", Xu Zechen's "North" and so on have also announced that they will be filmed and televisionized. Among them, "Qin Cavity" is the winning work of the 7th Mao Dun Literature Award, "Blossoms", "This Side of the Landscape" and "Yellow Sparrow" are the works of the 9th Mao Award, and "Going North" and "The World" are the works of the 10th Mao Award.
Speaking of this, Yan Bin said, "Serious and serious literary works with a certain degree of market recognition, not only have the expectations of readers, but also have a more serious, meticulous and rigorous story structure and humanistic thinking, which naturally become an important choice for film and television project adaptation." The advantage of adapting a TV series from a literary work lies in the early recognition of the audience, which is equivalent to a kind of prejudgment, which solves the problem of early promotion of the work. The difficulty lies in the fact that the process of film and television has actually become a cross-media narrative, and how to ensure the film and television of the original novel under the premise of ensuring the 'spirit of the story' is the most difficult. Specifically at the implementation level, we can consider enhancing the emotional power of the original novel and using emotions to achieve the docking of film and television works and the audience. "It is not difficult to find that serious literary adaptations of film and television dramas will become a new trend, and more serious literary adaptations will appear in front of the audience."
Yan Bin believes that most urban emotional dramas take the path of topic dramas, through the expression of urban life, strengthen the emotional docking with ordinary audiences, and this kind of realistic writing based on emotional narrative has strong sociological significance and is worthy of recognition. "The current society is micro-grained, and each audience has its own subdivided worldview and outlook on life, so the resonant emotional value has become the core path for TV dramas to attract a wide audience, while urban emotional dramas can provide more abundant emotional value, which is the reason why such works are recognized by the audience."
Yan Bin also said that the repeated expression of many plots and topics, the lack of broadening of the theme, content, and expression is the dilemma we are facing now, "The future of realistic theme emotional works we can expect, such as can move the field of vision down, to pay attention to more, more grass-roots second- and third-tier cities of ordinary people's lives, will also surge the reality of life of most people." ”
The imagination and construction of love relationships, marriage relations and family relationships in excellent urban emotional dramas support the spiritual world of people in the changing era, play the role of "guiding light", encourage more tolerance, understanding and cooperation, and let the audience not only enter an urban space, but also enter an immersive and lingering art world. I believe that in the future, there will be more works that focus on the lives of urban civilians, the still water is deep, warm and mellow, there are observations, perceptions and reflections on life, and the value guidance it passes to the audience is "to discern what has been forgotten".
Author: Zhang Jie
Source: Tianjin Daily