suspense dramas are becoming more and more popular, so how good is this dark horse?
2024-08-29
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■our reporter wang yan
as the summer vacation draws to a close, the suspense drama "the past by the water" has begun to go viral. the drama was first aired on youku on august 16, and its online reputation has steadily improved. before the finale, it had risen to 8.2 points, leading the 2024 summer series.
suspense dramas are common, and movie-quality camera scheduling and shooting techniques have gradually become standard for suspense dramas. how can this dark horse still overcome the aesthetic fatigue of the genre?
a web blogger wrote at the beginning of his drama recommendation tweet: "good news: shen xing, who traveled thousands of miles to find his uncle, finally met his uncle. bad news: the lucky tapir who was exchanged for his uncle has passed away, and shen xing failed to save him and became a prisoner of the rebels. when it comes to how miserable the contemporary 'cows and horses' are, shen xing, a rookie worker in "border water past", is a model. he originally went abroad to make a living and earn some extra money, but it turned out to be a survival journey in the dangerous sanbianpo..." - the words seem far and near, "half a foot off the ground" but there is no lack of sense of substitution, which is exactly the feeling of the drama.
looking back on the creation, the director and co-writer suan said that in 2019, when he and producer cao baoping first met, they mentioned the concept of "realism + fiction". how to tell a realistic story in an imaginary worldview is the core issue throughout. now it seems that as the audience travels to that bizarre world and connects with the worker shen xing through "bluetooth", the creator has found the right path.
taking root in an exotic country
sanbianpo, a tropical borderland with mixed crowds, a mottled place of prosperity and decline, is also the main story of "border water past" takes place. it is rough and fierce, full of dangers. shen xing, who accidentally drifted there, met uncle cai who wandered among various forces, and staged a small-time adventure story of staying and escaping.
although it is completely fictional, the audience will consciously call on their real social life experience to feel the strange people, events and wonders of sanbianpo. it can quickly lead people into a new and exotic space. netizens who are "addicted" to the drama have summarized it as follows: it depends on details, characters and structure.
details construct the world, including but not limited to the description of geography, language, laws, currency, ecology, and social relations of characters. for example, language is a new language systematically created by the creators during the more than two years of polishing the script - bomo language. suan said: "but bomo language is not made up, but based on linguistic principles, it has 17 initials, 7 finals, and 4 tones designed. it took more than 100 days for yan wenkan, who is engaged in cultural research, to create it." for example, the design of the geographical environment is like a real land in parallel time and space, and the huge map scroll gradually unfolds: the south is close to water, mosquitoes breed; the north is far from the ocean and close to land, and there are mines and forests hidden in the cliffs. just like the big bang and the reorganization of the era, with the influence of the environment and climate, new organisms will grow, and there will be the foundation for the growth of the population and the shaping of lifestyles.
interestingly, in order to analyze this new world, "the past of the edge water" abandoned the old template of using narration and animation to explain the worldview at the beginning of the whole play, but instead used a chapter-by-chapter structure to narrate the story like passing a level in a game. each episode has a chapter, a new task in each chapter, and a new copy is opened. the audience took the protagonist shen xing's pickup truck and followed his footsteps of "doing tasks", starting from the xiaomo nong checkpoint and jiandong construction site, breaking into daban, haishan mine, ma niu town, sangkang village, zhoubin logging site... in the adventure of the characters, they completed the jigsaw puzzle of the heterogeneous world by themselves, and got to know the "people outside people" and the intricate sanbianpo interest system. a foreign country with all the internal organs landed in the play, and all kinds of people who make a living took root here, and interests and emotions were intertwined.
a resonance of values in a human testing ground
if we judge it by the standards of a suspense crime drama, the story of sanbianpo is "cruel" enough: there are little-known black and white businesses, people with their own agendas, and barbaric laws beyond imagination. however, the drama of the various heroes fighting for supremacy has a bit of legendary texture, and the smoke of war and blood are far from daily life.
in the first half of the story, some viewers thought that the cleverness of "bianshui past" was to use the actors' relaxed and daily neighborhood feeling to establish a buffer zone from far to near, from fake to real, from horror to resonance. the world of sanbianpo is a mixture of black and white. uncle cai is a diverse and complex character. he has a few words and a successful reversal of the scheme. he has a deepness that makes people unpredictable about the true and false feelings and uses affection to control subordinates. he also has a soft moment, which is both true and false, and both good and evil. there is also dantuo who regards shen xing as his younger brother, wu haishan, the ruthless and flattering mine owner, and wang anquan who talks a lot... everyone has a story, and together they outline a kaleidoscope of human nature in a poor mountain and bad water. when shen xing, a spirited young man with no great wisdom but little cleverness, enters the game with the setting of a beginner's job, how he "survives" episode after episode in the appalling black industry adventure and the bloody human relationships will touch the hearts of the audience.
as the plot progresses, the true brilliance of the play "bianshui past" emerges. after constructing the complexity of the three slopes and the fierce impact of human nature, the creators turn to dismantling this world. suan said: "first gradually understand and go deep into a world, then ask questions and reflect on why it is so chaotic and whether it can be changed? this deeply reflects our understanding of reality and human nature."
for example, in the scene of "true and false monks", shen xing was forced to transport rubies alone, and on the way he found that he could disguise himself as a monk. he fled in fear all the way, but even though he could not save himself, he still used the identity of a disguised monk to get a box lunch and gave it to an orphan child he met on the road. later, when shen xing was about to fall into the hands of the evil, it was two kind monks who saved his life at the critical moment. after escaping from the dead, shen xing was stunned when he touched the gem hidden under the rice in the bowl. this shock was the relief of surviving the disaster and the gratitude for the kindness of others. in the play, shen xing passed through the checkpoints of different armed forces and faced the danger of being chased, intercepted, and pointed at by guns, but in every choice about fate, he walked on the side of goodness.
it was precisely in the moments of displacement and uncertainty that shen xing still chose a little warmth. his passion for making money but not being too greedy, his timid appearance but brave inside, ferried the distant spectacle of the plot and the nearness of human nature, the intense emotions and the truth of human heart, making the audience willing to believe in this little man and to identify with his values - even if the world in front of him is desolate, he can still follow his heart and stick to his bottom line.
lv fan, director of the audio and video office of the media integration center of peking university, commented: "behind the fiction and construction, the past by the waterside is concerned with how small people can stick to kindness and keep their original intentions in a treacherous environment. this 'unchanging' human nature is highlighted in the 'great changes' of the plot."
(source: wenhui daily)
