The Across the Furious Sea of Cao Baoping’s trilogy "Burning Heart" was finally released. I watched the premiere in advance, and I was really impressed by the director’s ability to "destroy" the original text. I have read the novel, and the text is actually a relatively traditional story of "revenge by blood relatives". The biggest drama conflict is concentrated between ordinary people and dignitaries. With the director’s position, the directors of Bo Huang, Zhou Xun, Zu Feng, NI YAN, etc. are gathered and filmed along the story line of "Little Hare for the Daughter", which is also a good-looking commercial genre film with high probability. However, I didn’t expect the director to sacrifice the grass snake gray line Dafa. The real core of the story is a scalpel with cold light to stab the "stubborn disease" of parent-child relationship in East Asia, and completed the comprehensive upgrade of the masterpiece Dog Thirteen in 2013: crazier and more extreme. Bo Huang, an actor, summed up his role succinctly: He just loves being a father. After all, the core of "Angry Sea" story is an author’s film that reflects on "dad standard".
In Dog Thirteen, the "dog" is a metaphor for a girl and her father is an "old dog". The dog-like adult world has to export the truth in the name of love: Dad hit you because he loves you. A few years later, in the "angry sea", there was actually an animal running through it, and from the first scene, it was not only itself, but also rich and strong author’s thinking and social metaphor. It was "fish". Lao Jin, played by Bo Huang, is the captain of a fishing boat. He ventures into the high seas to fish all day long, with the purpose of studying in Japan for his divorced daughter Nana. Fish, money, is the "best" love he can give, just like fresh and plump fish. There is a scene in the film in which Nana listens to a guide telling about local customs during the Boys’ Day on May 5th. There is a detail hidden in a very deep place, and it was only after I watched the movie that I checked the information that I suddenly realized. The carp flag is a hollow carp made of cloth or silk, which is generally divided into three colors: red, black and cyan, in which black represents father.
Before the tragedy began, there was such a close-up: a black carp flag fell into the water, soaked and sank. The direction is very clear. It is precisely the father "Laojin" who has been rudely disciplined, restrained and neglected for a long time that really leads Nana to give up her life. The film constantly uses the flashback of Nana’s diary to break the main line of Laojin’s revenge. On the surface, it is to cooperate with the audience to increase the mood, feel the misfortune of the fancy girl and be angry with the bad boy’s anti-social personality. However, if we start with the end, we will find that many lines and details refer to "being a father", and before the answer is revealed, the audience may think that Laojin is a "good father" who bears the burden of humiliation. The most enjoyable scene about "dad power" in the movie is related to "fish". The suspect "bad boy" plans to "escape" to Germany at the airport with the help of his mother. The police are chasing him, and Lao Jin is certainly chasing him. At this time, the coastal city was hit by a storm, and the fish in the sea were swept into the sky by a tornado. The fish fell with the heavy rain, hitting the highway, smashing the car glass and hitting people’s faces. All the characters were crazy. This fish that splashed the sky was the spread and suppression of dad’s power.
It can be said that Cao Baoping has completely constructed the most complicated "deep water area" of commercial genre films: how to show and reflect on patriarchy.
He doesn’t need chicken soup at all, and he doesn’t even need to set some conflicting lines like Dog Thirteen. This time, he almost completed it by plot reversal and character movements. A vengeful father is a black hole of love, staring at a distant child, shuddering at the thought, but it has a real foundation. It is more or less a gray track for East Asian adults to heal their childhood all their lives. The director actually has a way to film these unspeakable cultural and spiritual relationships, and the actors can actually perform, of course, taking risks and being bold. Across the Furious Sea can be released, and the Chinese film in 2023 will have the dignity and dignity of ending this year.
