Film Name: 热搜 / Trending Topic
I had high expectations for Steinbach’s new film ‘Trending Topic’ because his previous two films ‘The Coffin in the Mountain’ and ‘Villain’ are both close to my heart.
However, after seeing some of the advance reviews, I adjusted my mindset in time …… so yesterday’s screening was quite in line with my expectations, although the film is very un-‘Steinbachian’, but it is still a commercial film above the standard line.
Honestly, if you go into Trending Topic looking for Steinbach’s unique style of crime thriller, you’re probably going to be disappointed, as it’s almost devoid of his trademark gloom, contemplation, and musings, and instead is more in keeping with the subject matter and the time period of the film, which is all about the ‘short and sweet’, the battle of good versus evil, and the triumph of weakness over strength.
It’s certainly watchable, and it’s sure to be the director’s best film at the box office, but it’s also a lot less valuable to analyse.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below].
Chen Miao, the editor-in-chief of the self-media magazine ‘Wonderful World’, has continuously created a number of popular articles, indirectly prompting the girl in question, Zhang Xiaohui, to commit suicide by jumping off a building, and then Chen Miao discovered that there was another sexual assault case behind the scenes that was being covered up, and that the real culprit was directly referring to her own big gold master, the Hengshi Group…. …
The first impression of Trending Topic is that it is ‘professional’ – not in the sense of academic professionalism based on the media perspective, but in the sense of directional blasting that understands the psychology of netizens in the era of online media, which, in the film’s terminology, means that In the film’s terminology, ‘this hotspot has rubbed it the wrong way’.
It can be seen that the creators in the development and status of the new media has done a lot of homework, the choice of the topic of breaking news, play on the topic, hotspot hype, multi-level reversal, data flow, public opinion manipulation, just after the opening of the report on Zhang Xiaohui after a few scenes, we usually eat melon common common summary of all the vocabulary, so that I have a kind of mute illusion: should be said to let you say it.
As for the PK of Chen Miao and Hengshi Group, it also involves a lot of tricks such as faking, diverting attention, changing strengths and weaknesses, switching concepts, rumour mongering and so on, so I won’t rehash them. In short, this two-hour film allows the audience to see all the types of hotspots that they have seen for many years, and to eat melons at one time.
Trending Topic adopts a straightforward narrative, with short, fast-paced shots, not much suspense or twists and turns, and the ending’s reversal isn’t too explosive (with a little bit of girls helping girls thrown in), which has the advantage of being more approachable, and the disadvantage of losing all sense of cinema that is worth exploring. The downside is that the sense of a film worth exploring has been lost as well.
Let’s just say one thing: the characters and environments in the film are too clean.
I only realised this when I looked back at the stills afterwards. Compared to the rural Henan province in The Coffin in the Mountain and the Inner Mongolian steppe mining area in Villain, Hai Zhou City in Trending Topic is just a little too glamorous, with its high-rise buildings, nice cars and houses, and well-dressed people, and only the schools, hospitals, and the night market that are relevant to the Only the occasions related to the victims, such as schools, hospitals and night markets, reveal a little bit of shabbiness beyond the glamour.
By all rights, this should be a brilliant piece of writing, but in fact, its sense of contrast and irony is not very strong (it is more like conveying the pursuit of glamour), in other words, there is a flavour of putting the cart before the horse.
I didn’t see Xin Yukun’s name in the Trending Topic screenwriter’s column, and I feel that he really didn’t participate much in the story this time, but that doesn’t stop him from being the film’s biggest signature, which I’m still a little sorry for: the film is certainly watchable, but with less of the director’s signature style, I always feel that it doesn’t satisfy me, and it doesn’t have enough flavour, and it’s only in the slow motion of a few shots that I can vaguely see Xin Yukun’s shadow! ……
Let’s move on to something else.
Trending Topic seems to be about the black box and obscurity of online opinion in the new media era, but its focus is still on the double-edged sword attributes of the media: they can do harm and act as an accomplice, or they can save people and bring justice.
Personally, I don’t like the design of the villains in the film. Wang Shimin of Hengshi Group and Yuan Hong’s villains are too faceted and too typical to appear fake …… Fortunately, this doesn’t affect the way they show how the capitalist predator bullies the weak and weak and overturns the clouds, especially the alienation of their subordinates and the victims.
This is probably the most emotional part of the film: Amy, who was once a victim, turns into Wang Shimin’s sex slave and an accomplice in the murder of other girls; Principal Yan, who appears to be concerned about the students, is like a pimp; Zhang Xiaohui’s mother, Lai Meiyu, accepts a bribe to settle the matter in order to live a better life in the future; and Zhen Xi, who wanted to be brave enough to come forward to report the incident, backs out and regrets under the bad guy’s coercion and lure.
This reveals a bloody reality in the war of public opinion on the network – no party can stay out of it, the rich and powerful people will always be more than ordinary people can afford to spend, the victims and the people concerned, often because ‘look ahead’, ‘can’t fight’ or to avoid the second time. Victims and people involved will often choose to reconcile or swallow their anger, or even turn their guns and kill others because of reasons such as ‘looking ahead’, ‘not being able to fight’, or avoiding secondary injuries.
In the film, some of the media, water army, skilled deletion of the plot, but also made me think of a few years ago, a few domestic head of the Internet company appeared in a major public opinion after the situation is very different, the hands of the media resources, the difference is really not small it ……
In addition, there’s another unstated aspect of Trending Topic that caught my attention, the absence of traditional media – which, I think, should be the most absurd, daring and toxic aspect of the film.
Chen Miao, the protagonist, used to work for a newspaper, but later resigned to start a business and set up a self-media company with his elder brother He Yan. This is a microcosm of the experience of many media people in the last decade or so (and I have a partly similar past myself), and the subtext is that traditional media such as newspapers, radio and TV are declining, and new media on the Internet have a bigger user base and sound volume.
But at the same time, the self-media practitioners and no editorial qualifications, they are more often in a grey area that we all know (He Yan is worried about Chen Miao fake reporter will be in trouble plot, shows that the creators also understand this point), so I often find it laughable to watch the film, the self-media in this kind of public opinion in the event, more is to play a stirring, rubbing the flow of the role of the wind and waves, which is so high energy and status, really to their own face! It’s a shame that it’s not a big deal.
Unfortunately, the reality of these years, along with the reduction of resources, brain drain, environmental tightening and many other factors, the traditional media should bear the main responsibility of public opinion monitoring is really more and more unable to fight, the number of investigative journalists continue to decline, influential social reports are more and more difficult to see, on the contrary, some meat and vegetables, lack of constraints on the self-media, the whole will be a bit of a bright spot in the eye of the big job.
Public power is serious and evidence-based, which means that its intervention often lags behind, and until then, only the media can bite the dust, and for ordinary people, the media is one of the few means to get help.
Nowadays, every Internet user with a mobile phone and an Internet connection is theoretically a ‘self-published media’, and Trending Topic is trying to say that all of us can be a manipulated mob, but we can also be a righteous person who can fight for justice at the touch of a finger.
I won’t comment on that conclusion, but it’s not a bad thing to put it out there.
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