After four years of delays, 11 minutes of cuts, and a poor reputation with a score of 5.8, the return of "Flames on the Plains" seems to have failed to live up to expectations.
The original work of the movie, "Moses on the Plain", is a very popular and textured representative work of the writer Shuang Xuetao. In the novel, the belated flame in the harsh winter on the Northeast Plain is a carnival in the face of destruction and a glimmer of salvation in the darkness. However, on the big screen of the movie, it burned into a "dud".
"Flames on the Plains" poster
The biggest adaptation of the film is the shift from the perspective of the seven people in the original novel to focus on the love-hate entanglement of the younger generation. Li Fei (played by Zhou Dongyu), who is eager to escape from the cage, and Zhuang Shu (played by Liu Haoran), who is on the edge of crime, conspire to "do something big" - to set a fire in the cornfield. By mistake, Li Fei and her father got on a taxi disguised as a policeman. An accident and the plan collapsed... Eight years later, Li Fei is overwhelmed by the secrets she carries, and she reunites with Zhuang Shu, who has become a policeman, and the tragedies of fate are staged one after another.
Zhou Dongyu as Li Fei
Liu Haoran as Zhuang Shu
If literature requires readers to "read" the author's deep meaning from between the lines, movies need to provide a more intuitive "watching" scene. Therefore, it can be seen that the creators made a lot of more "direct" treatments of information and character relationships in the adaptation. For example, the fragmented narrative of the original work, through the monologues of different characters to piece together the truth and show the group portrait of the times, is a huge challenge for the film adaptation. Changing the perspective and focusing on the narrative can obviously bring the audience into a clearer story line.
The main plot of the film focuses on the entanglement between Li Fei and Zhuang Shu. From the throbbing and mutual testing in their youth to the pulling and fettering in adulthood, the ups and downs of the times provide a stage for the youthful sadomasochism of the protagonists of the "grudge couple". The historical grievances between Fu Dongxin (played by Mei Ting) and Zhuang Dezeng (played by Chen Minghao) of the previous generation were unfortunately deleted, resulting in a break in the intergenerational narrative, which not only weakened the heaviness of the entire work, but also hindered the audience's understanding of the two protagonists, making the characters seem suspended. So much so that the core event of the film - "setting a fire", which is regarded as a symbolic appeal to resist mediocre life in literary narratives, really seems extremely abrupt when it is so specifically proposed in the film.
Mei Ting as Fu Dongxin
Chen Minghao as Zhuang Dezeng
Other scenes that make the originally vague love between the hero and heroine concrete include the sudden kiss in the snow, the car race between the amputee girl and the policeman, and the final scene where they are wearing the same pair of shackles and relying on each other waiting for death to come. The director uses a large number of close-up shots to exaggerate the "sense of fate", which is a design full of dramatic tension, but also makes the story somewhat distorted.
The novel spans 30 years of history, and the fate of the characters is linked through events such as the Cultural Revolution, layoffs, and crackdowns; the movie condenses time into a dual narrative of the 1995 case and the 2007 investigation, deleting the direct impact of the times on the fathers and weakening the sense of historical depth. The mirror-like fate comparison between Fu Dongxin and Li Fei is simplified to a few scattered painting shots; the violence closely related to Li Shoulian's survival dilemma and the father's eagerness to protect his daughter has also become a stress response. As the background of the whole story, the "Taxi Murder Case" occupies a stronger physical space compared to the overall narrative of the times.
Tang Zeng as Li Shoulian
Both are good at describing crimes and deeply exploring the existence of characters through crimes. As the producer, Diao Yinan has a very suitable fit with Shuang Xuetao's Northeastern narrative. The cold temperament of the movie, the sharp and cruel crime, there is no drag, the police track down the taxi murder, the cruel means of committing the crime are not magnified by curiosity, just like the daily cursory viewing, those charred bodies that do not need to be emphasized by close-ups and character reaction shots, but instead exude a certain indifference, diffused on the environment and the land.
The film's "coldness" of the general environment is out of focus, but the individual pain of the younger generation is concentrated on Li Fei. A good student who wanted to escape since childhood was locked in place by fate and even became a "prisoner" of the clinic doctor. The film also tried its best to exaggerate a certain sense of pain in the visual language. The camera constantly gave close-ups of the stumps. This pain is so concrete, but it cannot reflect the trauma buried in the times and the dignity that collapsed silently.
The film is currently facing multiple controversies, including the dissatisfaction of the original readers with the adaptation downgrade, and the discomfort of ordinary audiences with the slow pace of the narrative. The sense of fragmentation of the film is also reflected in the fact that the first half tries to maintain the gaze on the historical scars, and the second half takes a sharp turn for the cheap drama routine. In recent years, the "scars of the Northeast" have been shown in many aspects in film and television works. In the four years since the release of this film was delayed, the symbols of the times that have been written over and over again have caused the audience to have aesthetic fatigue.
Unfortunately, there is no "Moses" on this plain in the movie. After reuniting after a long separation, Li Fei is always struggling to ask Zhuang Shu, "Did you come to the appointment that day?" Childhood sweethearts' unrequited love is a standard feature of youth pain literature, and those unfinished, restrained, and blank parts are the real sparks that can illuminate history. But the movie failed to ignite it.
