The day before yesterday, I watched a late show of ‘The Movie Emperor’, after watching it out of the theatre is already 12 midnight, not that I want to stay up late, but because if I don’t hurry to watch it, I’m afraid I won’t be able to find a film in the queue.
A total of four people in the audience, for the Chinese New Year film really seems to be cold, there are two buddies also left the scene in the middle of the end of the film, leaving me alone to read the subtitles, the two cleaning aunts about to get off work in the front row sat down and chatted softly……. All of this, and the theme of the film and the temperament of the perfect match.
In fact, ‘The Movie Emperor’ this spicy, satirical, love to understand the tone, put any schedule will be the same result, it would be better to collect some of the bottom of the box office in the most lively time of the year, and then use the overall cold reception to achieve the logic of the drama inside the drama outside the closed loop.
The film is about ‘people can’t communicate with each other’, you have your reasoning, I have my ideas, he has his words, who seems to be right, but just can’t pee in the same pot……. If you really want to get a (short-lived) consensus, I’m afraid that you can only go on a few more pigs jumping off the building. The pig is a pig that jumped off a building.
Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below
The Movie Emperor is undoubtedly a far more authorial than commercial film, which has little to do with whether or not it’s based on The Square, as the film is jam-packed with home-grown material and laughs, and is about universal truths.
Hong Kong superstar Lau Wai-chi decides to follow the example of his counterpart Chan Lung and shoot a rural film in the Mainland in order to get the film award he’s been longing for. From this moment on, the curtain rises on a drama that is constantly being deconstructed and exorcised, with everyone in the film dragged to the ground in a succession of absurd farces that are the object of ridicule and irony.
The nature of The Movie Emperor’s love of playing to the gallery was revealed when he collaborated with Summer, an UP user on Station D (a combination of Shake and B), to shoot a promotional video for the film.
Summer, a typical Generation Z youngster, was overjoyed by Liu Weichie’s miscommunication of ‘liao liao liao’, which was much funnier than the original design of ‘666’, but Liu Weichie was intent on acting out the words in the short video. However, Liu Weiqi was so focused on acting in the short video that he made a mistake, how could he not correct himself?
When the two of them are in the same room together, it is even more highlighting the difference brought about by the generation gap. I believe Summer should just want to ‘taste’ the king of the sky for a one-night stand, while Liu Weichi, who has been in the industry for 40 years and has been secretly married for a long time to maintain his single persona, is looking forward to the fear of being filmed and the other party wanting to take advantage of the opportunity to get to the top, and performs a series of awkwardly stingy ‘good show’. ‘Good Show.’
A more straightforward conflict in ‘The Movie Emperor’ would have to be the bull’s-eye between the film’s financier, director, and star.
The funding agency just wants to turn the film into an advertisement, ‘the story is NOTHING’; director Lin Hao wants to make a serious theme about communication and enter foreign film festivals by using the big cotton jacket; Liu Weiqi always wants to play a grounded father’s love like a mountain, so as to make an impact on the film director.
If the above confrontations are still relatively common, mild and restrained, then the film picks up the story and starts to enter the deep waters of absurdity and irony.
‘Don’t make it sound like I’m a big star who can’t suffer.’ Liu Weiqi in order to play a good farmer, determined to go down to the people to experience life, live alone in the county’s three-star hotel (still Ning Hao can not put the ‘Paris by Night’), to avoid the local cadres to arrange a good elaborate hospitality, sneak into the pig farmer’s pig barn: this is the bloody, living, dirty real peasant life ah, hurry to shoot more! A few photos, back to feel good feelings.
After being discovered by the pig farmers, Liu Weiqi was hospitably ‘landlord’ all the way to drink and play, brotherhood, and when he left, he also got a pig farmer’s gift of a pig knife.
To the pig farmer, Liu Weichi and his own drink, accept the gift is a brother, send a few pigs in no time, but Liu Weichi took this experience as a matter of course to laugh about, he knew his assistant Lin Weiguo casually throw the knife, which is also for the pig farmer later to make a scene on the set of the buried hidden trouble.
In the hotel car park, Liu Weiqi and never met the owner of the broken car interaction is also very interesting, he thought he could rely on the money to calm the other side of the dissatisfaction, but the other side thinks it is in the money to insult their own, smashed his car glass and demanded an apology, scared Liu Weiqi drove back in the night to escape.
Liu Weiqi’s so-called ‘private visit’ to experience life looks like a pro-people, but in fact he has never let go of the superiority of the superior, and the result is that this arrogance in the front of the real ‘countryside’ is unbearable.
The Movie Emperor’ is one of the funniest climaxes of the film, when the group fight on the set: the funding side stuffed a bunch of relatives of the business school of soil bosses and rich second generation to come in as a group of actors, threatened to “for the art of dedication”, Liu Weichi hard and mud, Lin Hao, director of the head of the hot and smooth order, the group of really put! The director, Lin Hao, in his heat of the moment, ordered the group to be beaten up.
The beauty of this scene is that it removes the reins that have been on the edge of an out-of-control conflict, allowing the tit-for-tat between people to completely explode and flow with the waves, and the actors, the management, the director, and the other messy people, all of them, under the incomprehensible woefulness of the ugliness, letting everything return to the essence of chaos.
After that, the other part of the film directly refers to the core spirit of the film, is Liu Weichie caught in the public opinion storm – Liu Weichie insisted on not using stunt doubles, personally on the horse shooting, think he is so dedicated to acting, will be like Little Li Zi get to get awards, and the result of the netizens saw that he said he was abusing the animals.
This set of logic of the opposite direction throughout the whole film, who think they are right, but just can not communicate, so only into endless fights.
The bit where the PR team comes up with an idea for Liu Weichie is the most telling. The person in charge hopes that Liu Weichi public apology to soften, and then wait for the new melon out of the lower heat, Liu Weichi but yelled to adhere to the principle and the truth, turn his hand to persuade him to calm down Lin Weiguo hit, this time we exploded, on the spot, there are antipathy to the girls beat the case to go away, the back of the other cat-loving boys also follow the drama, Lin Weiguo and a fist to knock him down ……
The whole world is like that chaotic hotel conference room, where a dozen mouths can pop up with more than twenty ideas, and in the end, the only one who can briefly unite everyone’s attention and words and actions is the pig who jumps off the building after making a big fuss.
Conflicts and prejudices can never be eliminated, and often only intensify.
In today’s world, even if a public figure who has made a mistake apologises, the voices of criticism and unforgiveness will still be in the mainstream. Similarly, even if a public figure is tough-minded and doesn’t apologise, there will still be people who will support them. …… If you want to achieve a consensus, you can only have a few more pigs jumping off the building! ..
Outside of the main story of The Movie Emperor, there are two scenes, one before and one after, that hint at this ineffectiveness of communication between people.
One is when the film just opened, the film festival staff had just laid the red carpet tightly with their bare hands, when a forklift drove by behind them and scraped the whole red carpet away; the other is before the end of the film, when a few tourists wanted to go out of the near-by entrance of the exhibition hall, and the security guards refused to let them, saying that they had to go around the top, which was a rule.
As in the past, Ning Hao’s ‘The Movie Emperor’ still reveals his despair for human nature and the world. People of any class or status have their own arrogance and inferiority, and broad understanding and consensus may just be an unattainable luxury.
At the end of the film, Lau Wai-chi, who has always been an evader when it comes to disputes, finally starts to apologise sincerely and tries to use a balance bike, but who knows if he will fall off the bike outside the camera?
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