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Author: Wei Chunliang

First release: New

I watched Xu Zheng’s new film "Reverse Life" and I really liked it.

This movie about a delivery man was badly criticized before it was released:

The traffic password is used to trick the lower-level people!

We pay to watch rich people play us????

The people who are smiling in the poster are actors, and the people who are not smiling in the back are the real deliverymen. The poor people spend money to go to the cinema to watch how the rich people play themselves? You are acting, but I am real.

Before watching the movie, I also thought it was such a movie, but after watching it, I don’t think it’s that bad.

In fact, the problem is not that the poor pay money to watch rich people play poor people, but that the rich play "rich people playing poor people" and then say that it is better to be poor because poverty can train people and educate people.

At first, I was also afraid that "Reverse Life" would go down this road of no return. Just imagine, if you shoot a story about a middle-level manager of a large Internet company who was fired and switched to work as a food deliveryman, you could easily end up making fun of the lower-class people. There is often only one step between depicting suffering and consuming suffering, and it is difficult to strike the right balance.

In this regard, "Reverse Life" is pretty good. At least it is more conscientious than the news that a delivery guy earned 1.02 million in three years, and more realistic than Han Xue's short play about a delivery guy who lives in a bright and spacious open-plan room, reads books, plays with cats and guitar, and delivers 30 orders a day.

The deliverymen presented in "Reverse Life" are trapped in a system that is constantly urging them. They live in dilapidated and small urban villages. They deliver food with their children, run red lights, do live broadcasts, worry about renting electric bikes and changing batteries, and also have to learn how to take shortcuts to get there quickly.

You can clearly feel that the film's segment about the delivery man was taken from a short video platform, but it was processed more concentratedly and artistically. Therefore, you can also feel that its presentation of the delivery man's life and inner thoughts is not deep enough, but it ensures the authenticity and does not make people feel out of the play. There is neither condescending ridicule nor superficial praise. The attitude is level, sincere, and respectful.

With such a background, the basic quality of the film is guaranteed, so after watching it for more than half an hour, I dispelled my doubts about this movie.

But as Xu Zheng gradually increased the number of orders, I began to worry about how the film would end. If it depicted Xu Zheng making 1 million in three years as a food delivery man and then being content to be a high-paid food delivery man, then the film would be over.

Fortunately, the movie ended with Xu Zheng selling his house with a monthly mortgage of 15,000 yuan and buying a smaller one, thus letting himself off the hook; and in the process of delivering food, he developed a small program that the deliverymen needed; the small program was valued by the food delivery platform, but it did not make him completely leave the delivery industry.

Such a plot not only affirms the efforts of the deliveryman, but also acknowledges the power of knowledge. It avoids the cruelty of crossing the river and the embarrassment of mindless praise, which is commendable.

However, this is actually a very cunning approach. Developing a small program for food deliverymen is not replicable. If another programmer or other so-called middle-class people comes to deliver food, how will the story continue?

Fortunately, this problem belongs to reality, not movies. Programmer Xu Zheng developed a small program, which is at least valid in the play.

Yes, although the movie shows a lot of blood and tears, it still leaves many bright little tails: Lao Kou's head was only a few centimeters away from the big wheel, his daughter with leukemia got a match, the hard-working Xu Zheng won the single king, and the father with cerebral hemorrhage was finally able to stand up with the help of tools.

Our reality is much more cruel than this, and it is not difficult to understand this as long as you often watch social news. Therefore, although Xu Zheng can handle realistic themes well, it is also limited and incomplete, just like in "Dying to Survive", the film ends at the pharmaceutical company.

You know, this is the only way. Many problems can only be hidden in the plot. When they are almost there, they must be stopped in time. You can't ask for more, otherwise you won't even have this.

Someone asked on Douban, if a person becomes a delivery man in middle age it is his problem, but if a group of people in middle age become delivery men, whose problem is it? Does the director dare to say it?

But when I saw the dull expressions on the faces of those college students who wanted to be deliverymen at the delivery station, I almost asked, what happened to us over the years?

I think the movie didn't give an answer, but it did describe it. Throughout the movie, everyone is in a hurry, everyone is panicking, the delivery riders are in a hurry, the employees of the big factory are in a hurry, everyone is in a hurry, but it seems that no one is happy. The middle-level managers of the big factory will be laid off, and the takeaway order king is so tired that he cries.

"You're going to time out," "You're about to time out," "It's over," the sounds of the machines kept ringing like death warrants, and it seemed that it was not just the system that was urging the delivery man, but the times that were urging each and every one of us.

Perhaps, it’s not just the delivery riders who are trapped in the system.

At the end of the movie, the real images of the lower class people on the short video platform were released, "Dedicated to everyone who works hard to live." But seeing those real scenes, I can't help but ask, they work so hard, why are they still living such a hard life? Who is living those good days for us?

This may have gone beyond the expression of the movie, but I believe it does not contradict what the movie wants to express.

—The End—