"Hugh Sugar": Showmanship? Tribute? The director's motives are more mysterious than the detective's
2024-08-14
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
Since the great success of the first season of the American TV series "True Detective" in 2014, the traditional barrier between the big screen and the small screen in Hollywood (also known as the contempt chain) has become increasingly blurred. It seems to be a trend for famous film directors to "go into the sea" to produce TV series, and "Sugar" is another TV series that follows this trend.
Although the main poster of the series features the uncle Colin Farrell who has become more and more popular in recent years, this is not what attracted me to the series. After all, when it comes to cross-border work, Farrell is ahead of many Hollywood movie faces. We have already admired his acting skills in the second season of "True Detective".
Poster of "Hugh"
The real attraction of "Huggies" that makes people feel "have to watch" comes from its director Fernando Meirelles. This Brazilian's name may be a little difficult to remember, but as long as you mention "City of God", "The Constant Gardener", and "The Two Popes" which dominated the 2019 award season, everyone has to admit that Fernando's directorial resume is indeed strong. Therefore, as Fernando's first attempt at a TV series, "Huggies" must also be paid attention to.
At first glance at the title, you can definitely guess that this is a suspenseful detective drama. If you are willing to think about it a little more, you might think that the word "mystery detective" means that the protagonist of the drama, Detective Hugh, also has a mystery, or that his detective method is unusual. These are two very reasonable guesses, and to a certain extent they are in line with the plot, but I think most viewers did not expect that this slow-paced, often inner monologue, and even somewhat literary suspense drama would turn into a science fiction drama as they watched!
Stills from "Hugh"
To be honest, it was not until Hugh’s true identity was confirmed that I belatedly recalled the many foreshadowings in the first half of the series. You can’t really blame me for being slow, mainly because the atmosphere of “Hugh’s Detective” has the tone of Hollywood’s golden age gangster movies, which is gloomy and often triggers dark emotions that have nothing to do with solving cases. Coupled with the director’s arrangement of a large number of flashbacks of classic black-and-white movie clips to match the protagonist Hugh’s inner activities, and Hugh’s heart disease mentioned at the beginning - the disappearance of his sister, this looks like a detective story template for facing mental trauma through solving cases, and is far from a sci-fi cyber that can be related to alien planets.
Constrained by this "reasonable" imagination created by the first part of the series, I even repeatedly ignored Hugh's emphasis on his own abilities - including his bloody fighting ability, superb language skills, and the strange parties he would attend. Halfway through the show, I guessed that Hugh was a retired spy. After all, the identity of a spy could explain his extraordinary abilities and the gatherings of his small group. But when the sci-fi trend suddenly hit, I was shocked and suddenly slapped my thigh and shouted: "Yes, how could a spy use the kind of rhetoric and enthusiasm that Hugh used to describe the intersection of Shinjuku, Tokyo?"
Director Fei's arrangement really broke through the routine right under people's noses.
Stills from "Hugh"
I was indeed pleasantly surprised, but at the same time, it was difficult for me to determine whether "Hugh" was a good crime drama. Apart from the slow pace and gloomy style, Fernando used a wide variety of photography methods in this short drama with only eight episodes - close-ups, surveillance angles, looking up, handheld photography, etc. Even an ordinary audience who usually only pays attention to the development of the plot can hardly fail to notice the frequent changes in the camera language in this drama. Not to mention, when Hugh is trapped in his personal spiritual world, the screen suddenly cuts into the black-and-white old movie scenes. These practices are definitely not as good on the small screen as on the big screen, especially in a drama that focuses on suspense and detective work - because the two almost deliberately interrupt the audience's rhythm of following Hugh's investigation.
If the series ended before Huger's ultimate identity was revealed, I would say that as a famous director who became famous on the big screen and won many professional awards, Fernando was suspected of showing off his skills in "Huger's Detective", making the style of the series more important than the plot. But when the aliens suddenly surfaced, I was no longer so sure. The story of the last two episodes has completely deviated from the suspenseful proposition of "looking for the missing girl", and the judgment of mankind and human nature rooted in most of Fernando's films is about to emerge with Huger's identity.
When I saw the ending, the old movie scenes that were cut in, the emotional tremors and reflections that Hugh had about human behavior, the conversations he had with his peers about human society, and the camera language switching that was done every time to express different POV perspectives, all of a sudden they all ran through and had a common reason. Fernando was undoubtedly not making a science fiction film, but in the story of "Hugh", he needed to use an outsider from an alien planet who was responsible for observing humans to complete his statement and judgment of human nature.
Hugh and every person involved in the case do not share the same value system, but through investigating the case, he delved into the darkness and secrets buried deep in every human being. He observed all humans, whether murderers, victims, accomplices, instigators, those who intended to bury the truth, relatives, lovers, or friends, with the same caution and calmness. Therefore, what he examined was not any specific human being, but their common characteristics as human beings.
But is this all Fernando wants to say? I don’t know.
Stills from "Hugh"
The instigator behind the murderer left more motives unsaid. The chaos, confusion, anger and darkness of human nature attracted the murderer to no longer be satisfied with being just an observer, and also made Hugh finally decide to abandon his home and step into the unknown entanglement with humans. The human nature in Fernando's heart may be this abyss, which dragged the two alien visitors who once had the most in common to the two ends of good and evil. When they stared at each other through human nature, they could not see through the distance between this shore and the other shore, but only saw themselves in each other.
I always feel that this is the biggest "mystery" of "Hugh Jackman".
The best Guo in the world
(This article is from The Paper. For more original information, please download the "The Paper" APP)
