On the first day of resumption of work, thank you for the invitation. I am at my workstation and my heart is still on vacation.
I watched a few movies in a hurry a few days ago, but ended up not having the motivation to write anything at all.
Lao Mouzi's "The Silence of the Insect" is the most luxurious movie in this year's Spring Festival lineup, but the look and feel is the same as all Lao Mouzi's films in recent years. It has the taste of a pre-made dish where you can guess the ending just by looking at the beginning.
The fun that the whole movie brings to this Shenzhen native is mainly focused on identifying where in Shenzhen each scene was shot.
The "Shenzhen Eye" at Gangxia North Metro Station in Shenzhen has a strong presence!
Almost all the famous fighting stars in the Chinese-speaking world are gathered in "The Daredevil" directed by Yuan Heping. The fight scenes with hard bridges and hard horses are indeed exciting, but other than that, I can only remember the super handsome Chen Lijun. Compared with the movie, it seems more like a "Martial Arts Spring Festival Gala".
As for the biggest winner of this Spring Festival, "Flying Life 3", even if the controversy of the all-male cast is put aside, the plot is still the same old "middle-aged man pursuing his dream with passion". However, it can be seen that Han Han really loves racing, and the big rally scenes are still very beautiful.
Are these considered bad movies?
It's definitely not something, but it's not even close to being something that can really impress me.
Among the entire Spring Festival movies, the one that really entertained me was the most belated one——
"The Night King" starring Huang Zihua + Sammi Cheng was only released in Guangdong and Guangxi areas on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year. The whole country can watch it yesterday.
What's going on?
In such a "politically incorrect" nightclub world as this movie, besides the drunkenness of alcohol and hormones, is there also a sense of energy that everyone needs most at the moment?
The night of "The Night King" is the night of the nightclub.
Where are the best nightclubs in Hong Kong? In East Tsim Sha Tsui.
As long as you open the door of the nightclub, you can enter a world of endless feasting and feasting. Charming dancing girls wearing shiny skirts and sexy girls stand in a row and welcome you with a smile…
Here, as long as you have money, you can buy happiness and respect, and everything is too beautiful to be true.
Brother Huan, played by Huang Zihua, is the CEO of Dongri Nightclub and the talkative person in the entire place.
Ah, I made a mistake, this is Brother Huan.
If in the heyday of the nightclub, the dancers in the nightclub could drive a sports car to work, and the mamasangs could win or lose millions at the card table in one night, Brother Huan would probably be a ruthless character who could control the situation.
But the story of "The Night King" is set in 2012.
At that time, more intimate private clubs were on the rise, and the gorgeous and lively nightclubs seemed a bit outdated. The financial crisis also completely changed the way many things operate. Several of the largest nightclubs in East Tsim Sha Tsui closed down one by one.
Brother Huan’s Dong Ri is the last struggling nightclub in East Tsim Sha Tsui.
Of course, it’s not for nothing that my brother has been working in nightclubs for more than 20 years.
He was able to appease everyone when Mama Sang was poached and it was difficult to get customers to show up. He was also able to personally participate in the training of the dancing girls and guide the employees through words and deeds on how to deal with customers in a charming way.
Brother Huan, who has such a nimble figure, only gets scared when he meets one person – his ex-wife Sister V.
They worked together from the bottom of the nightclub to become managers. They were once a gold medal partner in the East Tsim Sha Tsui nightclub. After they parted ways, although they were still in the nightclub, they believed in completely different management methods.
Brother Huan believes in friendship and friendship, and favors are greater than KPIs. What he emphasizes is "treat them as human beings, and they will naturally fight with you."
Sister V advocates a more modern business management model, where performance is the core of everything. There is a beauty contest, and whoever has performance can stay.
Something unexpected happened. The big boss of Dongri passed away, and the nightclub was about to be acquired by a consortium. The consortium designated the CEO to be airborne, and it was Sister V.
I particularly like the key twist in this story –
Sister V was entrusted by the consortium to acquire Dongri, but the prince of the consortium made a plan. She must either invest 80 million on her own to take over Dongri, or she could only admit defeat and pay liquidated damages.
This deal seems really cruel to me.
During the years when Sister V brought business management to the nightclub, she worked hard for the consortium and seemed to have boarded a newer and more stable era.
But to the consortium, Sister V, who worked hard from the bottom, is still essentially a pawn that can be given up at any time in the face of greater interests.
After all, she still belongs to the old era of friendship and friendship, the old era where individual efforts can change one's destiny.
The truly touching core of this story was finally revealed after the people were in a state of dissipation. The tide of the times is rolling in, and there are always people who are caught up in the tide.
How do we get through the moment when the road we came from has been flooded and we don’t know where the road ahead is?
Director Wu Weilun said when talking about why he wanted to shoot the nightclub in 2012:
“In 2012, some big nightclubs such as Big Money in East Tsim Sha Tsui closed their doors. When practitioners look back at the past, they will find that there was a glorious period, but they don’t know how to go forward.
This mentality is very similar to people today. In the past few years, everyone has been worried about their jobs. Some industries may have been eliminated. They know that they can't turn back, but they don't know where the future is and how to change careers. "
This sentence reminds me that in the past two years, everyone has always missed the "economic upswing period."
Why?
I think the key point is that when we look forward in a direction that we cannot discern, we can only look back.
On the one hand, I miss that hot era, and on the other hand, I want to draw some residual warmth from those memories to survive the long winter.
In "The Night King", the answer Sister V and Brother Huan gave to all this was——
Not accepting fate.
Sister V sold her house and car to collect the down payment to take over Dongri, and Brother Huan also mortgaged the house. The two became comrades in arms again, and together they fought against the prince's plan.
And Dongri's Mamasang and Miss Wu also stayed because of their kindness and loyalty. Everyone is using their own methods to support Dongri's old ship through the storms of the new era.
And Brother Huan has a line that particularly touched me:
"Times have changed.
But for some people and some things, if you have seen them at their best, you cannot let them go easily. "
It seems to be true. People who have experienced "good times" always seem to have a fire in their hearts that is unwilling to be completely extinguished, and it is always difficult to give up completely.
Aren’t many of us like this now?
While saying "Today is different from the past", I still want to struggle from time to time.
If you really look at it in terms of right and wrong, winning or losing, being loyal and struggling may not be the most "smart" choices.
But this kind of Don Quixote-like solitary courage is sometimes all we ordinary people can rely on.
The more I look back, the more I feel that the film "The Night King" is very much like the tap on your shoulder by an old friend. It is not a specific solution, but at that moment, you know that you are seen and respected.
It does not shy away from the cruel and heavy things in the tide of the times, but it tells the whole story in a light and humorous way. At least during the more than two hours of watching this movie in the cinema, you can laugh from the bottom of your heart and believe that things will always turn out well and that fate will reward those who are kind and righteous.
I think "the friendship between people" sounds like a false thing. As long as it can be filmed well, it will be something that can easily impress the audience in the past few years.
In the face of the great insecurities of our times, we need to hold each other’s hands tighter than ever.
The road ahead is confusing, and all we can do is walk together.
