《In the Octagonal Cage》: The myth of counterattack is false, but the background of anger is true

Recently, there is a film - In the Octagonal Cage - that has attracted everyone's attention and attracted a lot of attention after it was broadcast.I believe you will often see news and plot analysis about it on social media.Especially one of them - In the Octagonal Cage -: The counterattack myth is fake, but the anger background is real, which aroused everyone's strong interest and curiosity.Therefore, today the editor has compiled the following content for you, hoping to provide it to you in more detail and richness.

“cage” images and quasi-images (doors, fences, hospital beds, prisons, lunatic asylums, Sister Ailing’s golden locks, Brother Xun’s iron house) are widely used in film and television literary works.Explicit, metaphorical, tangible, intangible.In short, people will always be shrouded in something ghostly in this life.

There is a cage in the films - She Vanished - and - In the Octagon - both of which are currently being shown.The former hung a large iron cage in the deep sea to trap and kill his beloved wife, while the latter placed an octagonal cage in the ring and let two children fight each other to stimulate the spectators.

But these two closely related films (the two brothers Chen Sicheng and Wang Baoqiang are well known.Chen Yezhen invested money in the octagonal cage) but his ambitions are very different:

《The Disappearing She》is still taking the traditional meaning of being imprisoned by “cage” to be broken, and《in the octagonal cage》uncharacteristically, what it wants to say is that the society is dangerous and people are deceitful, and it is better to stay in the cage.Safe, although this is not the most ideal answer.I will elaborate on this meaning later.

Over the years, Wang Baoqiang has been particularly loved by the audience for his honest and honest image that is harmless to humans and animals, and his down-to-earth character who is not stained by the entertainment industry.He is playing a Chinese version of Forrest Gump that has not yet been completed, using characters that are stupid, crazy and crazy.In a sense, Wang Baoqiang's personal growth is an important part of the Chinese Dream.

We all know what he's been through over the years.Needless to say, the painful grassroots dormant period between Shaolin Xueyi and Beidiao Dream Chasing is not something that ordinary people can bear.

He survived it all, and continued to display his talent for action comedy with a large dose of greasy, noisy ADHD in the "Tang Detective" series, exceeding every requirement for the role of Tang Ren. His highly saturated performance seemed to say: is it enough??It's not enough for me.

Or on social platforms and various events, he never misses every opportunity to express his gratitude to his brothers, sisters, directors and seniors in the entertainment industry who have been kind to him. Looking back, he sounds like a newcomer who has just debuted.

Withdrawing from the public eye, he frowned, as if he had pulled up a curtain to block out the light. Like those stylized comedians we are familiar with, he treated life after the curtain with an overly serious and prudent attitude.We can see this attitude in the octagonal cage - the fighting coach Xiang Tenghui (played by Wang Baoqiang) who always stands in the shadows under the ring.

From what he could see, the fierce fighting in the ring with splatters of blood and sweat, and the cruel rules of the game where one was either completely knocked down or got up and continued to fight, were some kind of real life.

He also lived a life of mystery mania and high-spiritedness.But I acted too many exaggerated comedies like "Tai囧" and "Tang Detective", and followed the trend and made a few nonsense "Havoc in Tianzhu". My life suffered a dramatic blow, and I passed the age of 40.Wang Baoqiang entered a long period of reflection.After learning from the painful experience, he wanted to express this sober and heavy inner landscape sincerely through a movie.

This realistic-themed film took six years of Wang Baoqiang's time and is a staged summary of his twenty-year film career.It can also be said to be a product of anxiety in a literal sense.

They are - Blind Well - (2003), - A World Without Thieves - (2004), - Hello!Mr. Tree《(2011) and》Destined《(2013), this is the background color source of》In the Octagonal Cage《.

These four films starring him, full of realistic concerns, rewrite his underlying story while redrawing his spiritual portrait; while tearing apart his moral order, while maintaining his salvation complex; while violently destroying, while pitying others;It's anger, and on the other side it's love.From this - in an octagonal cage -.

01Kids King

Facts have shown that the opening plot of "Destiny" had a profound impact on Wang Baoqiang:

At the end of the new year, the cold-blooded killer San'er (played by Wang Baoqiang) was riding a motorcycle back to his hometown in Chongqing. On the winding mountain road, he encountered three or five bad boys who blocked the road and robbed them. Without saying anything, he took out his pistol from his arms, shot them one by one, and then walked away.

This kind of involuntary violence made Wang Baoqiang feel uneasy.Ten years later, he would use this opening design 》 inside the Octagon -- but with a twist:

On this day, Xiang Tenghui, who runs a declining sand and gravel factory, was driving a sand truck. He also encountered a group of bad boys who set up roadblocks and robbed passing cars. This time, he dragged them to the sand and gravel factory and fed the hungry gang.The wolf-like child has a full meal.

That night they had the most peaceful sleep ever on the simple bed board.Although Xiang Tenghui's purpose is to use them to fill the group of students for the upcoming fighting club (essentially to attract sponsorship).Later, when the fake show came true, it was another matter.

Wang Baoqiang wanted to illustrate a simple truth through this rewriting: How bad can a child who can eat well and sleep well be?Why would you want to be a bad person?

The subsequent plot further goes on to say that if they still have a father who can take care of them and take some responsibility for them, maybe they can still strive to make progress and become useful people.Among this group of wild children, Su Mu (played by Shi Pengyuan) and Ma Hu (played by Chen Yongsheng) once grew into promising fighters.

In real life (in interviews and self-reports, he has repeatedly talked about his father's frequent beatings and scoldings against him when he was a child) and filming experiences, Wang Baoqiang has repeatedly experienced the helplessness of being abandoned by his father and the anger towards his father's unreasonable violence.

Going back to 20 years ago, that was Wang Baoqiang’s starting point as an actor.In "The Blind Well", he played Yuan Fengming, a 16-year-old boy who went out to work because he could not afford the tuition.

Among the dense crowd of gray people looking for a way to survive in the labor center, Yuan Fengming, wearing a blue and white school uniform, reminds people of the little girl in red in the black and white shot of Schindler's List.

Just like the fate of this little girl, a premeditated massacre is coming——

He was targeted by two criminals who specialized in finding "ideas" (slang for migrant workers who were deceived) to work in coal mines and artificially cause mining accidents (and then pretended to be the families of the dead workers to ask for compensation).

This time when he went out to work, Yuan Fengming had another purpose: to find his father who had lost news while working outside.The video has an intriguing design:

It turns out that “PiDian”, who initially demonstrated the modus operandi of these two criminals, also had the surname Yuan, both from Henan.In this way, the confusing relationship between Yuan Fengming and the man named Yuan opened an emotional gap caused by his father's absence. It aroused the compassion of Song Jinming (played by Li Yixiang, one of the criminals) who often misses his children in his hometown.As a result, the pretended uncle-nephew relationship (in order to deceive the owner of the coal mine) gradually began to have a natural flow of father-son love.

When he realized that this was a scam at the last moment of escaping from the tiger's mouth, Yuan Fengming's shocked expression was like a sudden mine collapse.

This thrilling scene is destined to be unforgettable.After many years, Wang Baoqiang still did not easily take off Yuan Fengming's school uniform.《In the octagonal cage》There was a flashback where he asked Xiang Tenghui, who was still a top student in the sports school at that time and had just won the provincial sports meeting fighting championship, to stand in the principal's office wearing a school uniform——

His urine test before and after the competition was positive and he was suspected of taking banned drugs. His competition results were canceled and his medals were returned.The school imposed a penalty of expulsion.It was clear that he was the victim of a shady game, the work of a stern coach he once considered a father figure.

Although the father or the role of father is not present, such as--Hello!Like the haunting father in Mr. Shu who accidentally killed his son (Mr. Shu’s brother), he brought a painful mental entanglement to the child that he could never get rid of.

As a result, some of them lived as the crazy Mr. Tree (played by Wang Baoqiang), and some of them lived as hopeless bad boys in an octagonal cage. Under an unsheltered sky, they were hated by people, hated by dogs, and blown by wind and rain.Fighting, hungry, taking risks out of desperation.

The tragedy and cruelty of the incomplete father-son relationship is that whether the father is present or absent, his influence on the child is deep-rooted.

Wang Baoqiang grew up in such a harsh environment.Fortunately, the story "A World Without Thieves" that followed the blind shaft told him that there are adults in this world who use children as ideas to seek wealth and death, and there are also adults who are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect a child's dream.From this, he knows what children need most and what kind of adult they should be.

He wants to make amends for these real or imaginary regrets.In the octagonal cage, he feels sorry for them. He wants to be the father (the superficial relationship is the relationship between coach and student) and let all the children who are not wanted or cared about be real children for a time.

However, problems also arise.

02True and False

Although Xiang Tenghui wanted to be a good father, he was not ready.The sand and gravel factory was not managed well, and there were more than a dozen mouths to eat, which eventually led him to the path of survival by training these children to perform commercial fighting performances.

The so-called commercial fighting performances are fake punches.But since no flaws should be exposed and the customer wants to be impressed, the fake punch must be realistic enough.At the beginning, the children were inexperienced and could not grasp the balance between true and false. They did not know the severity of the fight. After the performance, all of them were bruised and swollen.However, they soaked their feet and ate delicious food, and finally they were able to support themselves.

This scene of fake punches and real moves has a bitter comedy effect, and there is a reflection on the truth and falsehood. At the same time, it is also a powerful mockery of adult society:

As long as you tell them that this is a performance, even if the eyes of the children in the iron cage are visibly red and swollen, and the corners of the mouth are bleeding, they will not be moved, and they will be contented to be adrenaline-filled spectators and shout that the fight is fair.Not ruthless enough.

This stroke echoes the second half of the film:

Many years later, Xiang Tenghui established a fighting club with formal qualifications and became a local celebrity.In fact, his fighting club is almost a charity shelter - children from poor families like the first batch of people he recruited are pouring in, and there are new ones every day.Xiang Tenghui's wind is light and the clouds are calm. He has collected everything he should have, and even the girl wants it.

Just when everything was looking up, a video of a commercial fighting performance in his early years was widely circulated on the Internet. He was described by the media as a black-hearted liar who used minors to perform black boxing performances for profit.Public opinion became murderous, the club was shut down for rectification, Su Mu was disqualified from the competition, and his and his children's fate took a turn for the worse.

What is true?What is fake?No one cares.But the accusation made by this series of plots is unmistakable: the audience who cheered and cheered when they saw children fighting each other and the audience who now speak righteously and call out injustice on the Internet are essentially the same kind of people.

Obviously, a society composed of this group of viewers who are obsessed with the surface of life and events is dangerous and cannot be trusted.It has good intentions, but it also has the cruelty to abuse good intentions.It has justice, but also violence inflicted in the name of justice.

There is no doubt that the treatment of the issue of cyber violence in the octagonal cage makes the film a bit overloaded with information and the main line is bloated, but it is the most outstanding among similar themes in recent years.It doesn't offer a new angle on the theme, but it has a deeper intensity in its presentation.

This is a performance in which Xiang Tenghui personally enters the octagonal cage:

He agreed to participate in the recording of a TV show and respond to public opinions, but at the scene he directly confronted the audience in an uncooperative and angry manner, saying "Who do you think you are, I just lied to them?" They were brought out by me.Yes, no one cared whether he was alive or dead before, but now you can’t care either. % keeps clamoring and irritating the audience.He was like a Spanish bullfighting animal ready to attack at any moment, breathing heavily, kicking and beating, and disdainful of the audience in the audience.

In such a comparison, 《Keep you safe》it seems routine to perform Dapeng's personal vaudeville show on the pretext of tracking down the rumor mongers, and in the end let the rumor mongers run away like a rat and be brought to justice.There are too many little things and fancy things to do, it’s not painful or itchy.

Wang Baoqiang used the upright spirit of a martial artist to reveal his secrets, let alone explanations and sensational words. He locked himself and the other party in an octagonal cage, fighting hand-to-hand with one against many, forcing hypocrisy and insidiousness into a corner and suppressing them.Fight until you surrender, fight until you admit defeat, fight until you understand who you are.

That's right, Wang Baoqiang, who has always been intolerant, refused to give in on this point: Some people only know that others will feel pain only when they are hurt.

However, after all the fighting, and after stepping out of the octagonal cage, an urgent practical question lies before us: What to do with the children?Where is their way out?

At this point, this story seems to be about a fighting boy who breaks out of the iron cage and fights back with passion. While pointing out a politically correct way out, it also questions the feasibility of this way out: Can it work?Can it go far?

In other words, is it possible not to pay tolls?

03 Utopia

The film gives a straightforward answer through the encounters of Su Mu and Ma Hu, the two most promising rising stars in fighting: no.

After Xiang Tenghui's fighting club was shut down, the children were taken away by their families in tears and returned to their homes with the attention and care of caring people in society.

In order to keep Sumu Pohu's qualifications, he forcibly transferred them to another club with better software and hardware and more qualifications.After the arrangements were made, we had a break-up meal, quit the fighting arena, and stopped interfering.

Xiang Tenghui meets the two brothers again, which is a replay of the opening scene of the film: Careless sets up a roadblock to stop the robbery, and once again stops Xiang Tenghui.

The whole story is that after they transferred to the luxury fighting club, they were not regarded as one of their own and were suppressed and forced to perform fake punches. During the resistance, Su Mu had one of his legs broken.The two brothers abandoned and ran away. In order to cure Sumu's leg disease, they returned to their old business.

This plot design is usually considered to be too abrupt and blunt, and is a failure - these two people have won many good rankings in competitions. With weeds growing like this, there should be many choices and ways out. How could they fall into the trap again?

What I want to say about this failure is this: the sloppy behavior of the new fighting star Su Mu is no different from that of Xiang Tenghui, the provincial sports meeting fighting champion many years ago.In other words, the rules of the game in this society have never changed - those who can win the game may not necessarily be the champion, but those who cannot adapt to the rules of the game are losers.

The two brothers are stuck (their contract is still in the hands of a luxury club). They can't fight and are just ordinary people with no education. No one wants to work and they have no capital to start a business.There is such a big gap in Sumu's treatment, so it is inevitable that the young and energetic Sohu has reached this point.

On the other hand, this plot also seems to highlight Xiang Tenghui's central position: You see, without this father and mentor, these children have lost their direction in life and the possibility of success.

This level of reference must exist, but the point is not to amplify the presence of Wang Baoqiang's protagonist (there is a saying, there are indeed too many close-ups, and several side characters are not fully taken care of), what it wants to express is still the rightThe distrust and angrily accusations of this society——

In a fair and just society, it is abnormal for one person to play a decisive role in the fate of another person.Whether it's a good effect or a bad effect.

Some people may think that Wang Baoqiang’s own counterattack story is a counterexample:

Feng Xiaogang asked him to play the silly character in "A World Without Thieves", and asked a bunch of big stars to act as foils for him. Isn't it a fateful moment?(Although Wang Baoqiang's acting debut was "The Blind Shaft", it has not been known to ordinary audiences for a long time because it is an underground film).This kind of interpretation perspective cannot withstand scrutiny. There are a lot of newcomers and child stars who have better opportunities than him. This cannot explain why he can become the Wang Baoqiang he is today.

If we sort out the overall development of Wang Baoqiang to this day, it should be said that he is the best interpreter of the old saying that “ is destined by nature and 70” by hard work.In other words, we have always talked about the legendary narrative of "noble people help" and "foolish people are lucky". We often overlook Wang Baoqiang's ambition and will to become a great actor hidden under his silly smile.

《Blind Well》《A World Without Thieves》's close-to-nature performance is just a warm-up to make opponents and the audience relax their vigilance; 《The Conspiracy》the blind man A Bing is starting to impress people; when it comes to《Soldier Assault》"Xu Sanduo", screenwriter Lan Xiaolong said, "I am very angry, I can't figure out whether he is Xu Sanduo or Wang Baoqiang."And--hello!The superb performance in "Mr. Tree" made the audience both amazed and in awe: this is the art of performance.

Seeing the latest one - in the octagonal cage - Wang Baoqiang has a flat head, black eyebrows and a deep face. Some experienced viewers have already decided that he is the best choice to play Lu Xun.

Talented actors are always surprising.Recognizing this, we can say that Wang Baoqiang is unrepeatable, just like talented actors are always rare.What's even more special is that Wang Baoqiang himself knows this.There are no martial arts secrets for his thrilling pass——

He understands human feelings, but is not sophisticated. He still behaves in the same way as Shaolin Temple students: be a “Benren” and work hard.

In a recent road show promotion, Wang Baoqiang, who always expresses gratitude but never expresses gratitude, rarely told a story about being stabbed in the back:

During the investment search stage, he met an investor. After chatting with him, he found that the investor was not optimistic and did not invest.Not only did he not vote, he went around trying to persuade others not to vote.As expected, these words had quite an effect, forcing Wang Baoqiang to become a producer himself. Not only was it not enough to empty his own pockets, but he also borrowed money from friends in the industry to hold on until the end.

Even if there is no conflict of interest, people will still be killed.This is an inconspicuous corner of the vanity fair exposed by Wang Baoqiang.Even so, he did not move closer to his partners Xu Zheng and Chen Sicheng, who are smart gamers or even game rule makers who are all-round and winner-takes-all.

Playing dirty tricks to force evil was not his choice after he was deceived and suffered losses.The creed he practices must not be easily understood and recognized by others: in this dangerous world, kindness is the greatest weakness and an invincible weapon.You still have to be a kind person.

This is destined to be a road less traveled and difficult to walk.Wang Baoqiang does not overemphasize personal struggle because of his own success. He holds a simple concept: for an upright and capable person to achieve universal worldly success, it should not be so rough and difficult.

He turned to society and questioned it, but he also realized pessimistically that he would not get any answers.

As the plot develops towards the end, we only need to look back at the entire film to find that this distrust and pessimism is so complete, because children live in such a tragic world where families, schools and society are all disordered:

Broken families drive them away or leave them alone; urban schools also turn them away with disguised high borrowing fees (the borrowing fees are nominally exempted, but they need to donate 2 million to Tenghui to renovate the school playground);Subsequently, an extremely kitsch storm of online public opinion drove these children who had just come out of the wilderness and were still gasping for breath back with a stick, and sent them to the hopeless Hope Elementary School, extinguishing any trace of their hope of making a comeback from the bottom.possibility.

Therefore, the last scene of the film is a complete tribute to the Raging Bull. The camera arrangement and picture texture of the ring fight scene have an intense and absurd meaning:

Su Mu, whose body looks almost devoid of muscle and always looks like he is about to break down and cry at any moment, appears on stage (Shi Pengyuan's performance is too weak.If it was not intentional, this role should have been played by sloppy actor Chen Yongsheng), it has lost its persuasiveness.

Next, the Fist of Fury ending in which Su Mu miraculously defeated the tough foreign players with a soft body can only be understood as an international joke.

No matter how bloody the fighting scenes were, how tears filled the eyes of Sister Su Mu in the audience, or how tragic and heroic Xiang Tenghui was far away from the crowd, they could not dilute or eliminate the irony in this joke.

But whether we were deeply moved or saw the heavy background, with the lessons of the previous plot, we no longer dare to easily establish a natural causal connection between an exciting victory in a game and a bright way out.

We know that this high-profile way out is too fragile.

At this point, if we let these children live in the small utopia supported by Xiang Tenghui, get into the octagonal cage, and stay inside without coming out, it may not be too difficult to accept, but it may be the best they can get.arrange--

No one thought that the outside world today was a more dangerous octagonal cage with no escape.

(Wang Xiaowo/Tenth Screening Room)

The above articles are compiled and collected by the editor personally about - In the Octagonal Cage -: The myth of counterattack is fake, and the background of anger is real. I hope you all like it, and here I highly recommend that you pay attention to our website.We will continue to release the latest information, including plot analysis and discussion of more films. Those who like to watch dramas must not miss it.