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The release of the film "A Dream of Red Mansions Part Two: Golden Marriage" caused a lot of controversy. Although some experts and scholars praised it as a successful adaptation at the premiere, the audience did not buy it and criticisms continued (this of course included the opinions of some experts and scholars). Even though Douban's score was only 4.0, some people thought that even this score was too high.

What is the reason? Some people think that the director did not choose the right actors, especially the one who played Lin Daiyu, whose temperament and appearance were far from the image in everyone's mind, and the candidates for Wang Xifeng and Jia Baoyu also need to be considered; others think that the plot design is not faithful to the original work, and deliberately highlights the story of "conspiracy and love", which subverts people's perception that "Dream of Red Mansions" is precisely about the tragedy that occurs in daily life without conspiracy. The conclusions drawn from these explorations all make sense. But I think this is not the key, especially requiring the adaptation to be faithful to the original work, which is more likely to be a wishful illusion. This issue is quite complicated and will not be discussed for the time being. Here, the author would like to do a further case study on the problem that the adaptation has not achieved logical consistency.

Lin Daiyu in the movie Dream of Red Mansions

The Dream of Red Mansions has a scale of 900,000 words. The new version of the movie compresses it into 2 hours, so there must be drastic changes. What to delete and what to keep, especially how to build an organic whole with the retained content, is very particular. We can see that in the new version of the movie, many plot sections that were originally considered important have been deleted (such as Baoyu being beaten), while some unimportant sections (such as Zhou Ruijia sending palace flowers) have been given more time to show. On the surface, such treatment shows the innovative consciousness of the adaptation and is impeccable. But if you go deep into the film and analyze the retained sections in detail, the problem will be exposed immediately. The following mainly dissects the "Sending Palace Flowers" segment in detail.

The plot of sending palace flowers appears in the seventh chapter of the novel, which is developed from the plot of the sixth chapter. It tells the story of Mrs. Wang's companion Zhou Ruijia bringing Granny Liu to Rongguo Mansion to beg for money. After receiving 20 taels of silver from Wang Xifeng, Zhou Ruijia went to Mrs. Wang to report the result. But Mrs. Wang happened to go to Aunt Xue to chat, so Zhou Ruijia followed her all the way. After reporting, she was about to leave when Aunt Xue temporarily caught her and sent her to deliver palace flowers to the girls in the Jia Mansion. The novel describes Zhou Ruijia's delivery all the way, like a thread of beads, and mentions the three young ladies who received the palace flowers, as well as Jia Lian, Wang Xifeng and her husband, Daiyu, Baoyu and others one by one, either directly or indirectly, showing the personality characteristics of different characters.

The new version of the movie only gives a few shots of the middle part involving Yingchun, Tanchun, and Xichun, but explains in detail the beginning of Zhou Ruijia's flower delivery and the last stop at Lin Daiyu's place. The layers are quite rich and the story takes up nearly three minutes. The movie has different choices based on the main and secondary characters. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this design, but there are problems with the words and deeds of the three main characters, Xue Baochai, Lin Daiyu, and Jia Baoyu. For the convenience of discussion, let's first extract the beginning and end of this plot in the original book. At the beginning, Aunt Xue explained to Zhou Ruijia who was about to leave:

Aunt Xue suddenly smiled again and said, "Wait a minute. I have something for you to take." Then she called Xiangling. There was a sound of curtains, and the little maid who had just played with Jin Chuan'er came in and asked, "What does grandma want me to do?" Aunt Xue said, "Bring the flowers in the box." Xiangling agreed and went over to hold a small brocade box. Aunt Xue said, "This is a new style in the palace, twelve flowers made of gauze. Yesterday I remembered that it would be a pity to leave them alone, so why not give them to the sisters to wear. I wanted to give them yesterday, but forgot. You came today at the right time, so take them. Each of the three girls in your family will have a pair; for the remaining six, give two to Miss Lin, and the other four to Brother Feng." Mrs. Wang said, "Keep them for Bao-ya to wear, why are you thinking about them?" Aunt Xue said, "Auntie, you don't know, Bao-ya is very strange, she never likes these flowers."

The final description of Lin Daiyu is:

Zhou Ruijia came in and said with a smile: "Miss Lin, the aunt asked me to bring flowers for you to wear." Baoyu heard this and asked first: "What flowers? Give them to me." At the same time, he stretched out his hand to take them. When he opened the box, he found that there were two newly made artificial flowers made of piled gauze. Daiyu looked at the flowers in Baoyu's hand and asked: "Is it just for me? Or do other girls have them too?" Zhou Ruijia said: "Everyone has them. These two are for you." Daiyu sneered: "I knew that others would not give me the leftovers if they didn't pick them out." Zhou Ruijia said nothing after hearing this. Baoyu then asked, "Sister Zhou, why did you go over there?" Zhou Rui's wife answered, "The madam is there. I went there to answer a message, and my aunt asked me to bring her here." Baoyu said, "What is Baojie doing at home? Why haven't you come here these few days?" Zhou Rui's wife said, "I don't feel well." After hearing this, Baoyu said to the maid, "Someone should go and see her. Tell her that Miss Lin and I have come to ask my aunt how she is. Ask her what's wrong and what medicine she is taking. Logically, I should come in person. Say that I just came from school and caught a cold. I'll come in person another day." After saying this, Xixue agreed to go.

Let’s look at the beginning of the new version of the movie about sending flowers to the palace.

The director changed Aunt Xue's proposal to send palace flowers to Xue Baochai's proposal, probably to focus on the main characters of the movie. The handling itself was acceptable, but when Aunt Xue's words were also moved to Xue Baochai's mouth accordingly, they were not logically straightened out, resulting in all kinds of confusion.

The first sentence Baochai said was not in the original novel but added. She said to Mrs. Wang: "I heard that there are many sisters in the courtyard, so I prepared some small gifts for them. Please help me divide them among them." This seems to be correct, but the next sentence was cut and pasted from Aunt Xue's mouth in the original novel, which makes people stunned. It is: "This is a new style in the palace. I thought of it yesterday. It would be a pity to leave it alone. Why not give it to the sisters to wear."

Since she first explained that the flowers were a gift she prepared for her sisters, implying that she was a thoughtful person, it was consistent with the consistent characterization of Xue Baochai in the novel, but why did she immediately say that she suddenly remembered it "yesterday"? And why did she say "it's a pity to leave it for nothing"? Didn't she say that this was a gift she prepared specially? If it was really "left for nothing", it means that someone came to help deal with things that she didn't need, so how could it be called a "prepared gift"?

In fact, judging from the original work, the words that Aunt Xue said to Zhou Rui's wife were clear in thought, understandable in meaning, and expressed quite appropriately.

First, "I remembered it yesterday", which means that she wanted to send the flowers. But she forgot it soon and didn't send it. Today, she happened to see Zhou Rui's wife coming, so she remembered it again, so she had to go there instead of waiting for a servant from the Jia family to be assigned. After all, Zhou Rui's wife was Mrs. Wang's companion and not a servant of the Xue family. It seemed that she should wait for the Xue family to assign work at any time.

Second, the palace flower is a new style and is very rare, but because Baochai never likes to wear such ornaments, it has become a useless thing "left there in vain". If you give it to someone like this, it will be presentable and the recipient will not feel embarrassed about taking away someone else's beloved thing.

Third, it is precisely because of the sentence "It's a pity to leave it there" that paved the way for Mrs. Wang's politeness in the following text. Mrs. Wang asked Xue Baochai to leave the palace flowers to wear by herself, which led to Aunt Xue's explanation. This double writing cleverly explained Xue Baochai's style of not liking to dress up.

The film adaptation did not take into account the context of the dialogue when adding new lines and misappropriating lines from the original work. As a result, it not only caused a contradiction between "prepared gifts" and "left for nothing", but also confused the audience as to why Baochai left the palace flowers "left for nothing". What is even more strange is that Baochai clearly asked Mrs. Wang to distribute the twelve palace flowers on her behalf, but when Zhou Ruijia interjected with an exclamation of "these flowers are so beautiful", Baochai actually forgot what she had just said, left Mrs. Wang aside, and directly distributed the palace flowers to Zhou Ruijia. In this regard, the author really wants to know what kind of mentality Mrs. Wang should have at this time, and how she should look at Baochai. However, the director himself may have forgotten the inconsistency of Baochai's words, so he did not let the audience see how Mrs. Wang looked at Baochai's style of speech, which was like stepping on a watermelon peel, and she said whatever she wanted to say - of course, this style of speech is only seen in movies.

Xue Baochai in the movie Dream of Red Mansions

Just like when Baochai sent Zhou Rui's wife to deliver the palace flowers, she spoke incoherently. When the palace flowers were delivered to Daiyu as their last stop, the performance of Daiyu and Baoyu was also incredible.

At the beginning, the movie is the same as the novel, Baoyu eagerly took the palace flowers to appreciate them (by the way, it is wrong to let Zhou Ruijia directly use the original words in the novel to say that the concubine asked her to send flowers, because the movie has changed it to Baochai asking her to send flowers). But then, Daiyu is not as written in the novel. She just took a look at the flowers in Baoyu's hand, and then asked coldly, is it for me alone, or are there other girls? No. In the movie, Daiyu actually asked with a tone of praise: Where did such beautiful flowers come from? Not only did she ask this, she also put the flower on her head and asked Baoyu if it looked good? Then she put another flower on her head to see the effect. Then she remembered to ask whether it was sent to her alone. When Zhou Ruijia replied that other girls had it, she suddenly threw the palace flowers on the ground and said, "I don't want it." Sometimes she put it on the ground to appreciate it, and sometimes she threw it on the ground to despise it. This attitude changed 180 degrees, making the kind of aloofness shown in the novel become moody and eccentric. Moreover, it is inappropriate to replace the sentence "I know that others will not give me the leftovers if they don't choose them" in the original book with "I don't want them". Because the rarity of things corresponds to the uniqueness of people, so Daiyu's words seem to imply that she can only accept gifts given to her alone, and other girls should not have them. Such a request is too much. In the original book, Lin Daiyu only cares about who gets it first and who gets it later when everyone has it, because the one who gets it first can choose, but it is definitely not that others are not allowed to have it. This is more in line with the character of a sensitive and vulnerable little girl. If she is allowed to have it alone, it would be too overbearing.

Perhaps the director will argue that the focus on who came first and who came later was not really eliminated in the movie, but was just changed to Baoyu's tone. Unlike the original novel, the movie inserted a dialogue that was not in the original novel, in which Baoyu first blamed Zhou Ruijia for not giving the palace flowers to Daiyu first, and then warned her that what was given to Daiyu in the future should be considered as what was given to Baoyu, and must be given to Daiyu first. This kind of dialogue treatment shows that Baoyu understood the meaning of Daiyu's words in the original novel, which was that she wanted to come first, and also shows how much Baoyu doted on Daiyu. Yes, it seems so on the surface, but in fact, such a change has greatly misunderstood and shallowed the creation of Jia Baoyu's image.

In fact, as a romantic, Baoyu, while doting on Daiyu, also casts his eyes nervously around, paying attention to the dynamic relationship between the people around him. This kind of attention may have the kind of inconsistency that Daiyu accused, that is, forgetting the younger sister when seeing the elder sister, but more importantly, this kind of attention is actually to prevent the surrounding people from accidentally hurting Daiyu, just like the later novels wrote that he winked at Shi Xiangyun to stop Xiangyun from comparing Daiyu with the actor Lingguan; on the other hand, he tried to minimize the offense caused by Daiyu's temper to the surrounding people, because this offense may eventually rebound on Daiyu herself. In this way, in the original work, when Daiyu complained to Zhou Ruijia inexplicably about the palace flowers, which made Zhou Ruijia so embarrassed that she was speechless, he immediately went to chat with Zhou Ruijia, and asked about Baochai with concern, and specially sent a maid to ask about her condition, which to a large extent alleviated the harm to Zhou Ruijia and perhaps Baochai indirectly. Instead of just catering to Daiyu's moodiness and trying to please her (especially when Daiyu might not really be that angry at the time) like in the movie, it was Baoyu, who had high emotional intelligence, who tried to maintain harmony between Daiyu and the surrounding world, instead of isolating her from the surrounding world with a solidified world of two people, that made their spiritual world become broader and broader as their feelings deepened. Although the reality of their lives became more and more severe and eventually turned into a tragedy, at least they made each other and the readers deeply feel that the love they paid for this was deep and broad, beautiful and worthwhile. Instead of making Baochai's thinking confused, Daiyu moody, and Baoyu's narrow-mindedness of trying to please others, as in the movie "Sending Palace Flowers", to present the so-called beauty of love.

Stills from the movie Dream of Red Mansions

At this point, readers may ask: Since the author believes that logical consistency is the key to adaptation, why should we use the original work as a comparison, and use the excellence of the original work to compare with the incomprehensible film adaptation? What does this mean? To be honest, the author uses the original work as a comparison, which really does not mean that the only principle that should be followed in adaptation is to copy the plot and character image of the original work step by step. Of course not. The author quoted the original passage of "Song Gonghua" for comparison, just to illustrate that when the original work already has such a profound and rigorous textual expression, hoping to adapt it and innovate it actually puts forward a very high requirement for oneself. If you do not fully understand the spirit and textual connotation of the original work, and equate adaptation with simple cutting and pasting of the original work and adding a few witty sentences, you can only put yourself in a ridiculous situation.