Poster for the movie Labyrinth of Hearts
When I first started watching "Labyrinth of Hearts", I thought the film was very unmodified:
Ordinary actors, not to mention big names, not even a small wrist, a bunch of rustic people are blindly mixed. The shots are particularly ordinary, lacking exquisite composition; the colors are even more bland, vulgar to the point of slag, and there is no sense of high quality in the film.
How does such an actor's appearance look?
Group photo of the creators of the movie "Labyrinth of Hearts"
If it weren't for the movie, I'd probably think of it as a country documentary made by my cousin in the countryside on my phone.
However, if you think so as much as I do, we're likely to miss a great suspense film.
The film scored as high as 8.7 points on Douban.
Douban score of the movie "Labyrinth of Hearts"
The investment of the film is only 1.7 million, but the performances of all the ordinary people have won several film awards, including the "Best Screenplay Award" of the Beijing Youth Film Festival, the "Golden Horse Award" of Taiwan Film, the "Best Screenplay Award", the "Warsaw Award" of the Warsaw International Film Festival, etc.
And its director Xin Yukun has also won countless praises.
The director speaks at the Youth Film Festival
On the Douban, some people commented on "amazing", and some people even compared the standard of such a niche film with the works of the British director Nolan and the famous American film director Cohen brothers, which shows its charm.
I found out two times and three brushes that this movie reveals exquisite conception and rigorous logic everywhere, and the ordinary people who were previously scorned by me seem to be extremely grounded, their mental outlook with a rough animality, and the characters in the play are very close, and such faces are exactly the real people.
The most unexpected thing is that the film exposes the naked absurdity and selfishness of human nature through the ingenious narrative technique, full of irony and black humor.
<h1>1</h1>
<h1>About this film</h1>
"A beautifully told story is like a symphony, with structure, context, characters, genres and ideas merging into a seamless unity." —Robert McKee, "The Story"
At the beginning of the film, several scenes cause suspense:
The woman wearing filial piety after the incense, the man who may be framed when sleeping in the car, the sneaky shot holding up a stone intended to commit murder...
Stills from the movie Labyrinth of Hearts
Then, go to the first story:
Zong Yao went home to visit his parents, and at the memorial service of the grandfather of the Sun family, he knew that in recent years, people in the village often smoked and fell asleep in the grass stacks, and then burned themselves to death.
At the same time, some of the key characters in the play appear one by one:
He and Zong Yao secretly fall in love with Huang Huan, have a conflict with Huang Huan, and threaten to let her die, Baoshan's derailment object Liqin, and Dazhuang, who loves Liqin.
The movie "Labyrinth of Hearts" Baoshan and Liqin flirted
One night, Zong Yao and Huang Huan went on a date in the grove, only to be caught by the leper White Tiger, who wanted to seal the fee and argue with Zong Yao, and the White Tiger was pushed to the ground by Zong Yao and died.
Seeing this, Zong Yao and Huang Huan fled to the city overnight, thinking about it and giving up the elopement, decided to return to the village and resign themselves to fate. Zong Yao came across the funeral procession for the White Tiger on the way back to the village, and Zong Yao was very weak-hearted, but the person who sent the funeral said that the White Tiger smoked on the grass stack and burned himself to death.
Zong Yao fell into doubt: This is how I killed the White Tiger?
Immediately after, the film begins to move on to the next story:
Baoshan and Liqin steal joy, Liqin can't stand the domestic violence of her husband Chen Zili, and the two discuss how to get rid of Liqin's husband.
The next morning, news came from the village that a corpse (in fact, it was a white tiger) had been found, suspected to be the missing Huang Huan, because Baoshan had previously threatened to let Huang Huan die in front of everyone, so he was naturally regarded as a suspect.
Baoshan is interrogated, and Liqin comes to testify
Li Qin was asked to testify and spend the night with Baoshan to clear Baoshan's guilt. However, she was afraid that the scandal of her affair with Baoshan would be known, so she denied it, returned home with a nervous mood, and was suddenly informed that the corpse was not Huang Huan, but her husband Chen Zili.
Liqin, who lost her husband, was busy doing funerals, and at this time, the big man who had long been infatuated with Liqin volunteered to drive to the city to buy funeral supplies for Liqin, and as a result, he met Chen Zili on the way back.
Unexpectedly, Da Zhuang wanted to kill Chen on the road, but he couldn't get his hands on it, and as a result, Chen Zili fell off a cliff when he was going to the toilet on the mountain, and this time he really died.
The village chief felt helpless
Later, in the process of retracing the plot one after another, we gradually discovered that the person who covered up the truth of the white tiger's death was Zong Yao's father, the village chief who seemed to be just and selfless.
At the end of the film, the village chief and Zong Yao's father and son stand in front of the coffin and look at each other with a lot of emotions.
The film tells the same story from the different perspectives of several people through flashbacks and interludes, and on this basis, it cleverly outlines the whole picture of the event and makes the whole story seamless.
<h1>2 </h1>
<h1>About human nature</h1>
"Don't test humanity, don't — it's not vulnerable at all." --Li Bihua
Undoubtedly, this is a film that explores human nature.
Behind a corpse, it reveals a lot of human sorrow and tells us a lot of social truths.
Everyone in the movie has a hidden agenda.
Huang Huan, who wants to marry Zong Yao, lied that she was pregnant in order to achieve her goal. Zong Yao, who had accidentally killed the White Tiger, looked at the funeral procession but did not dare to admit that he was the murderer.
In order to be with Liqin, Da Zhuang had killed her husband. Baoshan and Liqin secretly enduring their respective other half, saying the oath of shan menghai at night, but during the day Liqin selfishly hides the truth.
Even the crippled Chen Zili raised Xiao San outside and violently abused his wife. On the surface, the village chief was righteous and righteous, and his justice was awe-inspiring, but behind his back he concealed the guilt of his son's manslaughter.
In short, the whole film is full of the evil side of people's hearts: deception, concealment, stealing, violence, hypocrisy...
Liqin's husband Chen Zili was out eating with Xiao San
And these immoral performances, paired with the actor's "original" general performance, seem to be a restoration of the sad side of human nature in townships and rural areas, and can also be said to be a restoration of most people in China.
This reminds me of the coppersmith in the movie "Donkey Got Water", a man who was once simple and honest, because of hatred and deception, finally became arrogant and rampant.
The image of the coppersmith in the movie Donkey Got Water
It also reminds me of "The Drifting of the Young Pi", the protagonist "Pie", in order to survive, made the act of eating the same kind.
Movie "The Fantasy Drift of The Young Pi"
They, either for selfish desires or for a living, under the appearance of being born as human beings, throw all the good behind and return to the state of struggle for survival and survival at the animal level.
<h1>3 </h1>
<h1>About the truth</h1>
"If the truth is a kind of harm, choose to lie. If a lie is a kind of harm, choose silence. If silence is a harm, choose to leave. —— Murong Xi
Regrettably, the fact that everyone is desperately trying to hide is actually doomed from the beginning.
For example, the body of the white tiger was mistaken for Huang Huan for a while, and chen zili for the next, and the younger brother of the white tiger, in order to cope with the debt collectors, asked the village chief to borrow this corpse to impersonate his brother, but he did not know that it was his brother himself.
People seem to be digging for the truth, but in fact they are far away from the truth, but the truth eventually returns to itself.
The truth does not fulfill people's wishes, and the truth has its own destiny.
In fact, in the film, the villagers have many opportunities to discover the truth, but none of them are trapped in a "labyrinth" like illusion.
The village chief knew without saying a word, Zong Yao's silence was Jin, Li Qin's plan was calculated, and the other villagers were led by the nose, none of them turned to the authoritative public security police, and all relied on the imagination and inference of the villagers to find the identity of the body.
Here, the film portrays us as if it were an isolated world, where everyone lives in their own speculations. It's not so much speculation as they want to use "false truth" to cover up their inner purpose.
Therefore, the truth at this time is only a manifestation of pandering to personal interests, and everyone is complacent, thinking that what they see is the essence of the matter, but they do not think that they are all parts of the whole scam ring.
<h1>4 About accidents</h1>
"All accidents on earth are deliberate arrangements of Heaven. --Hawthorne
The whole film is like a story that is accidentally strung together, missing any link, missing a millimeter, and falling for thousands of miles.
If Huang Huan hadn't asked Zong Yao to meet at night on a whim, they wouldn't have met the White Tiger, if the village chief hadn't come to the woods for convenience, they wouldn't have bumped into Zong Yao, who had killed someone by mistake; if Chen Zili hadn't gone to the side of the road, or if he hadn't met DaZhuang on the road, his fate would have been rewritten.
Each step is like a "butterfly effect", which moves the whole body.
The last scene of the film is meaningful:
Huang Huan's girlfriend talked to her on the phone outside the temple, and then passed by the white tiger. This girlfriend may never have thought that the lying methods she and Huang Huan talked about on the phone by chance actually affected the fate of many people behind them.
At this time, the white tiger, from a gambling addict to life, became a devout worshipper, perhaps he was praying for peace, or perhaps hoping that he would have a good hand at gambling money, or he might pray for the happiness of his family.
When the incense was served, he had words in his mouth, and when he got up, he slowly disappeared into the screen, leaving only a long empty shot.
Seeing this, I realized that all people, whether good or evil, have another side of him.
The film sets this scene at the end, but this is actually the beginning of the story.
So here, the director cleverly completed a closed loop that sets the starting point at the end, like a stroke of god, combined with the previous plot, all the clues are strung together, suddenly open.
<h1>5 </h1>
<h1>epilogue</h1>
In the film, a sentence by Baoshan's mother-in-law who educates her daughter is very impressive: "If there is any, you have to ask it?" Ask it, and the stone will be pressed on your heart. ”
Yes, sometimes, the truth is far more cruel than we know, and people would rather believe in deception than the truth.
And this is not only the truth of life, but also the inspiration brought to us by the film.