"Picture of Hunting Crime": "Portrait" brings surprise to suspense detective drama
Recently, the suspenseful and detective-themed online drama "Guild of Crime" has been on the air, and its popularity on the broadcast platform once exceeded 8,500.
The reason why this drama has attracted attention is that for the first time, it has created a nearly all-around perfect "portrait artist" image, using a brush to remove the unbelievable case doubts again and again, the calm and scalpel-like brushstrokes sometimes travel in art history. The Forest of Classics sometimes accurately outlines the portraits of criminals, and sometimes reproduces the complex inner turmoil of human beings like an impressionist painter, painting "seeing" people's hearts and making them thrilling.
The funniest thing about this show is the new subject matter.
It is the first time that the portrait artist is the protagonist. Compared with the previous protagonists such as criminal police, prosecutors, and forensic doctors, the portrait artist is too low-key and mysterious. It has appeared in foreign film and television themes, and it is very rare in China.
The most important reason is that portrait artists are too scarce.
According to statistics, among the more than 2 million public security police in my country, each province (city, district) has only one analog portrait artist as standard.
This drama makes full use of this sense of mystery, and almost fills the various skills of the portrait artist. For example, at the beginning, the protagonist Shen Yi is introduced as an art genius, who can draw a person's 30-year-old appearance based on a photo of a three-year-old. And that real texture far exceeds the stereotyped aging special effects on short videos today.
He can also draw clear portraits based on blurry video surveillance screenshots, even if the person is still wearing a mask; he can also accurately restore the victim's face statue based on a skull, and can infer from the light contrast in the video whether the face is a human face Artificial intelligence synthesis... All kinds of spectacle expressions are amazing.
It is the greatest value of this drama to actively explore this scarce but quite difficult subject matter.
On the surface, it unveils the mystery of the portrait artist to the audience, and solves the case through the kind of real brush and ink lines. In fact, in the current highly information-based and data-based society, everyone is a "digital slave". The era of modern art has more prominent human subjectivity, less fancy visual effects, more traditional and classical.
Another feature of this drama is the cross-border fusion-the fusion of the case-based reasoning and solving type drama and the art major.
From Jacques-Louis David, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Gentileschi to Munch, the iconic artists in the history of Western painting are introduced one by one through Shen Yi. Amazing flow, even perfectly integrated into the plot.
The work combines the professional knowledge of art with investigation, such as determining the time difference through the color change in the sketch; inferring whether the weather was rainy or sunny through the texture effect of the art paper; through the messy grass in children's paintings, The low tree judges the character's inner anxiety, and infers that his parents have a bad relationship; especially through Gentileschi's famous paintings, it is inferred that two victims of domestic violence jointly murdered, which is quite ingenious... It is popular. With the knowledge of art history, it is very beautiful when it is presented in the picture.
This drama also continues a major creative trend of current suspense dramas, which is to convey a value through cases.
That is to say, the work not only expresses the confusing and bloody violence in solving the case, but also combines the case with some hot social issues and connects with the public's emotions, which has a certain realistic texture.
For example, in the case of the murder of Ren Xiaoxuan, a high school girl, the corpse skull was found in the playground, which is easily reminiscent of the sensational "burial on campus" case. Chu Yingzi, a female prisoner who was willing to confess to her criminal accomplice, used lip blood instead of lipstick, reminiscent of Lao Rongzhi, the "femme beauty".
In addition, the play also uses the murder of a female architect to reflect the discrimination against women in the workplace, as well as domestic violence, sexual assault and other criminal issues...Through one distressing case, it reflects the current women's survival plight.
This drama once again proves that a good detective drama must convey a value.
In this play, there are not only the images of female victims who are discriminated against and insulted, but also the images of female heroes who dare to resist patriarchy and give emotional support to their peers, although this heroism has the tragic color of burning jade.
For example, Lin Min has been silently guarding Ren Xiaoxuan who was bullied, and Zhou Yunyi took all the charges to protect the pregnant Lu Ting.
On the one hand, this narrative strategy can take care of male audiences, the mainstream audience of detective dramas, and to some extent reflects a feminist quality.
Humanistic care for the disadvantaged groups of women has become the core part of the depth and power of this drama.
In general, "The Guide to Crime Hunting" is a genre drama with a very good degree of completion. Its drama structure is strictly genre creation, and the characters have very clear goals: Shen Yi wants to find the mysterious woman who once looked for his portrait. , but couldn't draw it because of amnesia.
This contradiction has been running through the whole play, full of inner dramatic dynamic.
The rhythm of this drama is also very fast, almost two episodes are a story, the emotional scenes of men and women are removed, and it is very straightforward.
However, there are also obvious problems in "Sin Hunting Guide", which is mainly reflected in the over-exaggeration of the protagonist Shen Yi's ability.
Many times, he did what a criminal policeman should have done for his partner Du Cheng. This excessive deification is somewhat distorted.
More importantly, the paintings that Shen Yi draws from are all Western oil paintings, and the shooting techniques are also mostly imitated by European and American detective dramas. If some traditional Chinese portrait painting techniques or related works can be added, more Chinese charm may be more attractive to the audience. resonance.
But in any case, the innovative courage of this show is worth encouraging.
Hu Xiang