If you only watch the movie itself, Tangshan Earthquake can be regarded as a masterpiece. The huge production cost ensures the shooting quality of the film. It is also wise for Xiaogang Feng to learn family ethics stories from disasters. There are also many highlights in the handling of the plot. The tearful details and the solid acting skills of a group of old actors are enough to cover up the flaws in the script. However, in today's complicated domestic film production environment, we should not simply look at the text for most films. For example, the great Tangshan earthquake, the intertextuality between the related topics or phenomena caused by its birth and the film itself, is the most interesting.

At first, Xiaogang Feng accepted the task of showing how Tangshan people actively faced the earthquake and highlighted human nature in the disaster. However, in the process of artistic transformation, Xiaogang Feng, who has always appeared as the spokesman of the people, made a clever "avoidance" this time, shifting the focus of the story from the disaster itself to the fate of everyone in a family in the 32 years after the earthquake, and turning it into a family ethics drama. Looking back at the history of China's film and television, from the early movie "Orphan Saving the Ancestor" to "A River Flowing East" in the1940s, and now to the TV screen, it shows that family ethics drama is the most important and widely accepted genre among China audiences. In addition, in order to avoid all kinds of censorship barriers, the film removed more elements describing the darkness of human nature in the process of adaptation from the original novel Tangshan Earthquake. For example, the adoptive father played by Chen has changed from an image of drooling over his adopted daughter to a selfless and tolerant fatherly image. Although these practices weaken the profundity of the work itself, in the current creative environment, they are in line with the handling of this theme and can best cater to the wider audience psychology.

Therefore, under this premise, the details of family scenes handled by Xiaogang Feng are full and infectious. Especially in showing the emotional estrangement and communication between the older generation and the younger generation, with the help of Xu Fan, Chen and Chen, these scenes made people burst into tears. Generally speaking, the opening paragraph of the film is very cinematic, and the tension of the disaster and the living conditions of Fang's family are well interpreted. Unfortunately, since the earthquake, the flavor of TV plays has become more and more intense. Two-thirds later, I can feel that the work is eager to show the "progress" of society in the past 30 years, and it is also a manifestation of propaganda.

Let's go back to the original point where everything has not yet begun. The origin of the production of "Tangshan Earthquake" is that the Tangshan municipal government hopes to find a heavyweight director to make a film to promote the city, and at the same time allocate the production and publicity expenses from the municipal financial revenue. Therefore, from this initial starting point, the "Tangshan Earthquake" is first and foremost a "city business card". Later, at the beginning of the film, Xiaogang Feng shouted the slogan of "500 million", which made this thing that should serve the people with people's money look impure. And this kind of motivation is doomed to fall into the root of the film text. The most obvious ones are many hilarious product placement advertisements, close-ups of ICBC bankbooks, Jian Nanchun, which ordinary people can't drink at any time, and the advertising vocabulary of "Use China Life Insurance, be practical", which will inevitably make people get away from the serious theme. What is even more shameful is that Xiaogang Feng's remarks have become a kind of "moral blackmail" in propaganda. For example, those who are not moved to tears are compared to those who cut children in kindergartens, suggesting that those who don't look at them may become animals. Therefore, people with conscience should or must participate in this tearing ceremony made by many parties.

Throughout the film history, there are many excellent works that touch the disasters of human history, such as alain resnais's documentary film Night and Fog, Spielberg's Schindler's List, Polanski's The Pianist and so on. Insist on being cautious and serious, no matter how you use it, it is both sincerity and basic respect for human nature. As for the movie "Tangshan Earthquake" which was born in a special mode, the box office may really exceed 500 million, but just like China's GDP, what can be said except figures?

Published in Yangcheng Evening News

There are abridgements in the newspaper.