Film Name: 奇迹·笨小孩 / Nice View
The movie I’m most looking forward to in this year’s Spring Festival lineup is Nice View.
Directed by Wen Makino, the director of Dying to Survive, the movie tells the story of the workers in Shenzhen and focuses the camera on the real underclass in our society …… This sells, and it’s just too appealing to me.
It’s safe to say that Nice View lives up to its expectations. Despite its formulaic content and the added filter of reality-washing embellishment, the filming techniques, pacing, group scenes, and other aspects of the film’s excellence exude the magic of turning the corrupted into the miraculous, and make the film funny, cry-inducing, good-looking, and heartfelt.
Most importantly, Nice View captures the bitterness of the “bitter sweet”.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below].
First of all, I would like to commend the team of Nice View for their “professionalism”, the movie is very “good-looking” in terms of graphics, and the audio-visual language is precisely the weak point of most domestic movies that need to be improved.
Nice View’s camera is meticulous and precise, whether it’s the use of dynamic shots and editing, or static close-ups, precision and attention to detail, all bright, I heard that Wen Makino is often a stopwatch “an action shot 64 times to ensure that a strip” to hard to just, it’s not difficult to understand.
For example, Jing Hao dismantle the phone, change the motherboard, do dismantling tutorial scene, put into our lives may be a mediocre scene, but in the film under the operation of the mirror, between the movement of the pleasing switch and focus, the character action more sharp fine, the phone parts are also more clear and three-dimensional, so Jing Hao has a three-dimensional martial arts masters taste – in recent years, I have only seen a similar beautiful shot in Project Gutenberg. In Chinese-language films, I’ve only seen similarly beautiful shots in Project Gutenberg.
Similar operations are not limited to the protagonist, there are also a lot of inconspicuous places (including actions such as moving boxes), there is this kind of recognition of the image performance …… to serve the audience’s eyes comfortable, “Nice View” has won half of the battle.
At the same time, the film also likes to take the city of Shenzhen as a serious role to shoot, it has a variety of different looks: both the steel jungle in the skyscrapers, but also low gray shantytowns, office buildings inside and outside the bright and shiny, neon flashes, but also the streets of the factory area of the human world, dust everywhere.
The city is a character, but also a mirror, a beast that accommodates the flow of millions of people’s existence without sadness or joy, coupled with the film’s several appearances of perseverance, constantly climbing ants, the film’s tone and texture pulled up at once.
With the professional execution of the professional team to lay the foundation as a guarantee, the narrative and characterization of “Nice View” will be twice as effective.
The protagonist Jing Hao’s persona has the natural attribute of gaining sympathy and closeness to the audience: a 20-year-old working man in Shenzhen, an orphan dependent on his sister, playing the role of a brother and a father, and trying to find ways to make money (without committing serious crimes).
But the movie never focused on selling misery, but focused on creating a positive atmosphere of bitterness and joy, and the positive atmosphere of things that happen – take the scene where Jing Hao is chasing Zhao Zhenchang, in order to grab the life-saving straws in front of him, Jing Hao relies on a battery car and flesh and blood to catch up with the limousine and high-speed railroad that Zhao’s boss is sitting in, Jing Hao is miserable and in pain, but what we remember more is that he tried his best to win ten minutes for himself, and that’s what he did. What we remember is that he tried his best to win ten minutes for himself.
What I like most about Nice View is its diverse portrayal of the underprivileged and the disadvantaged in society, which is not condescending or imaginative, but rather as realistic as possible.
In addition to the hero Jing Hao, his “miracle team” members are all “skilled”: Liang uncle as a caregiver at the same time, but also a know-how of the people; Zhang Longhao is a powerful boxer; Liu Hengzhi and Zhang Chao are Internet cafe God, and set a record of consecutive nights; Zhong Lao is a retired wounded soldier and a former watchmaker ……
But if you think about it carefully, you will find that Nice View downplays or even hides the really bitter or unpleasant side of these people: nursing home care workers work dirty, low-paying, hard work, and often people who can’t find other jobs to do it; people who have been injured and imprisoned, and have a criminal record are having a hard time doing anything; and the “three and the gods” are dirty, messy and stinky, and their rotten mud is even pinched off the wall. The “Sanwa gods” are dirty, smelly and rotten, and their appearance is even pinched off seven or eight; even the old people who are willing to help for free have a disrespectful side for the old people. ……
The good thing about the movie is that it doesn’t simply glorify or fictionalize these “less than 1,000 dollars a month” people, but gives enough respect when it captures a few characteristics to build up the characters.
Take Wang Chunmei, the most representative female worker in the “Miracle Squad”, for example, in her early years, due to the lack of noise reduction and protection measures in the factory floor, she was left with the occupational disease of being partially deaf, and not only was she unable to find a job, but her quality of life seriously declined, and she also faced all kinds of difficulties and threats from time to time because of her insistence on filing lawsuits.
To put it bluntly, wage earners like Wang Chunmei, in the past few decades, have been the equivalent of “expendable and replaceable” human parts, the backdrop for the interpretation of the “demographic dividend,” and the price of long-term absence from the mainstream narrative! –If this brutal reality is made clear, the movie can easily become resentful, full of criticism and accusations, but Nice View is able to point out this fact while maintaining a positive rhythm of uncompromising and self-improvement, which is really admirable.
In the end, with the support of this grassroots fringe, Jing Hao was able to avoid the fate of the “half-ninety who walks a hundred miles” and made it to the finish line.
It’s easy to see that there are no real villains or villains in Nice View: the gangsters who threaten Wang Chunmei count as half of the gang, but they’re actually hardworking wage earners who are quickly branded “weak”; the alchemy gang that steals a cell phone counts as half of the gang, but they’re quickly caught; Wang Chuanjun’s snobbish manager, Li Ping, and unpaid gambler Tao Zhiyong don’t even count as half of the gang, but at best they’re just an objective bump in the road. Wang Chuanjun’s snobbish manager Li Ping, and the gambling addict Tao Zhiyong, who owes money and won’t pay back, don’t even count as half of the gang; at best, they’re just a bump in the road.
And Jing Hao and others on the “gray” attributes, but also in this context is infinitely diluted – do not forget, Jing Hao just began to use a number of wrong way to do the refurbishment of defective products to make huge profits, only by the impact of the policy, was forced to turn to do the dismantled parts of the business! — It’s hard to get viewers to empathize with and like an average person who gambles so heavily on making money in a grey industry, but because he’s tasked with earning money to save lives, many of his words and actions are rationalized.
The reality captured in Nice View, with a thick layer of beauty filters, is more like a teenage fairy tale that remembers the bitter taste of sweetness, which will eventually turn into sweetness even if there is bitterness in the mouth.
Personally, I feel that the end of “Nice View” can be concluded after Jing Hao’s product passes the audit and is recognized by Mr. Zhao, and the better life of the “Miracle Team” after six years belongs to the snake’s footsteps, and the sugar content is too much, which is really a bit snoozy… …
It wasn’t until I saw the background of the movie that I realized that Nice View is one of the key film projects of the State Film Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department for the year 2021, and that it’s a tribute film that couldn’t be more authentic.
In other words, the film is actually a “semi-propositional essay” that has its own specifications, so my evaluation of the film went straight to the top because it not only greatly enriched and revolutionized the shooting ideas and genre choices of melodramatic films, but also truly captured the human suffering and tenacious optimism.
Finally, I’d like to recognize the star and director of Nice View.
YiYeChianXi is talented and willing to work hard, and whether he admits it or not, he is currently the most supportive young actor in the post-00s generation……. Of course, the “original sin of traffic” on the four-letter brother may not be washed away for the rest of his life, but as long as he continues to come up with good works, any negative rumors will eventually become insignificant. The actual fact is, if you’ve got a great deal more than just a couple of years of experience, you’ll be able to get a great deal more than just a couple of years of experience in the field.
Wen Muye can be described as a veteran and skillful, once or twice successful if can be explained as “accidental”, then this time the quality of the film is enough to show that he was born to eat this bowl of rice, Ning Hao’s “Bad Monkey” really dug into the treasure.
Here’s a word of advice: keep up the good work, the future is bright.
Please specify：Yescase Store » Nice View 2022 Film Review: bitterness finishes when sweetness begins, but it’s still bitter (idiom); sufferings end in sorrow