Author: Li Xiazhi
The web drama “Moses on the Plain”, adapted from Shuang Xuetao’s novel of the same name, has come to an end on iQiyi. It is only 6 episodes long, and each episode is more than one hour. This time, the Misty Theater conducted a mini-series experiment.
Starring Dong Zijian and Hai Qing, the play tells the story of the policeman Zhuang Shu (played by Dong Zijian) investigating the truth of an old case seven years ago, and gradually discovering that the father and daughter of the Li family who had ties with him in his youth have become suspects, and the clues that continue to appear make the case clear Start to see the sun behind the clouds. The original work itself has attracted much attention because of its film adaptation, but this time it was adapted into a drama version, iQiyi did not continue the regular length of 12 episodes of the Misty Theater, but changed it to a 6-episode mini-series, and used the film Filmed by director Zhang Dalei of “August”.
Such project establishment methods almost all point to the possibility of an experiment, and after the premiere of the series, it also presents a completely different appearance of suspenseful web dramas. Taking the first episode as an example, there is no obvious narrative conflict in the whole play, a lot of long shots are used, the rhythm is slow and lines are hardly used. Because the play belongs to the Misty Theater of iQiyi’s suspenseful online drama, many viewers who have not read the original work have various guesses at the beginning: whether there will be accidents with the characters, and which character is the murderer. But this kind of conventional drama viewing experience is completely ineffective in this online drama. The plot of the first few episodes is just to explain the growth environment of Zhuang Shu as a child. Although it is also related to the subsequent murder case, it is not too much. .
The slow narrative rhythm continues until the end of the play. Even though the plot itself is narrated by a murder case, the play does not use the standard suspense drama expression to promote the plot. It uses more images to shape the atmosphere and weakens the plot promotion at the level of solving the case. , pays more attention to the interaction between people and the times, and is more like a memoir of youth full of age. This image style can indeed be traced back to director Zhang Dalei’s “August”. Zhang Dalei, who is well-known to the audience for his debut work, has a similarly calm and restrained style of work, with nostalgia and retro. He once said in an interview that he loves Taiwan’s New Wave movies very much, and he likes a more life-like performance style, and he prefers the image style without showing any traces. This filming style also continued in “Moses on the Plain”, reminiscing about the past years, childhood and youth through the growth of Zhuang Shu.
However, the relatively slow pace of watching dramas, without a particularly multi-plot narrative promotion, does challenge the audience’s viewing habits. For impatient audiences, not being suspenseful enough may become the biggest “original sin” of the show. Many audiences can’t wait for the plot with sufficient concentration, so they bluntly say “I’m tired of watching”.
The final score of the drama on Douban was 7.7, and more than 40% of the audience gave it a four-star rating. Compared with most domestic dramas in the past two years, the performance is still excellent. If you put aside the suspenseful nature of the series and look at this new drama from the perspective of literary and artistic movies, you may be able to see the transformation of domestic online dramas expressed in movies. From this perspective, “Moses on the Plain” has made a bold attempt, providing new possibilities in image expression and presentation. (Li Xiazhi)
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责编：崔益明 ]