Stills from the TV series "Born by Life"

  With the conclusion of the TV series "Born by Life", a mystery that spans 20 years has finally come true, and the trump card of the fate of the people in the play has been exposed to the audience.

  "Born by Life" is adapted from the novel of the same name by writer Shi Yifeng. Its literary nature provides the drama with ups and downs and profound connotations. In the process of film and television transformation, the adaptation techniques and creative style of the main creators reflect a relatively distinct tendency. The fuse in the novel is a misunderstood burglary case. The drama version upgrades it to a more dramatic and controversial murder case, but does not launch a cruel and sensational narrative scene. Instead, it downplays some of the sharper and twisted parts of the novel. Through the design of characters, plots, and picture shots, it highlights the warmth of human nature when ordinary people are flirted with fate. This perception and display of specific people is like the glory that breaks through the fog, illuminating good and evil.

  The multifaceted nature of human beings is as unpredictable as fate

  As a suspense drama, "Born by Life" shows the complexity of human nature. In the slower narrative rhythm as a whole, the characters form the main suspense throughout the series. The multifaceted nature of people is as unpredictable as fate, and the good and bad are indistinguishable.

  Du Xiangdong, the soul character and detention center discipline, is played by Qin Hao. Qin Hao uses plain, restrained and accurate performance to create an image of a former police academy elite who is just and kind, but never fulfilled by fate. Du Xiangdong's initial appearance was a "difficult" situation of being unsuccessful but defending the bottom line. The arrival of the brothers Xu Wenguo and Yao Binbin completely rewritten Du Xiangdong's fate. His intuition made him sympathize and appreciate the two suspects, and his professionalism also kept him suspicious and alert at all times.

  Qin Hao showed his lifelike words and demeanor, but through the portrayal of his eyes, he created Du Xiangdong's emotional ups and downs and complex mentality. For example, when he first heard the murder case of Xu Wenguo and Yao Binbin from the escorted criminal police, he revealed the inner changes of the characters through his "micro-image" performance of his eyes: from being surprised and shocked to digesting information, to responding to colleagues absent-mindedly, to exploring the Xu Wenguo brothers, looking at them alertly, his eyes gradually became sharp, but his facial expressions did not change. Qin Hao accurately shows the rich and active inner world under the still external movements, and conforms to the thickness and depth that the characters should have. Du Xiangdong's care for Xu Wenguo's brothers and his persistence in chasing and correcting mistakes came from his inner belief in justice, which allowed him to abandon his gains and losses for 20 years and make a desperate bet on a judgment that he did not know when it would come. This character vividly illustrates the deep connotation of "Born by Life", as stated at the end of the story, "What we have fought for will suddenly shine inadvertently in a corner of the River of Time."

  Xu Wenguo, played by Han Geng and Yao Binbin, played by Shi Pengyuan, showed both good and evil qualities in the early stages of the series. Xu Wenguo was dull and restrained, but his occasional ruthlessness made him seem to be enduring. Yao Binbin showed panic in the gloom, and in his eye contact with Xu Wenguo, it seemed like he was relying on or conspiring. As the plot unfolds, the life experiences and experiences of the two brothers gradually become clearer, and the process of being framed becomes clearer, which wins more and more sympathy from the audience. Xu Wenguo has high quality, values ​​friendship, and has methods. Although he was forced to be involved in an unfortunate fate, he has been persevering and finally achieved a "counterattack" from a fugitive to an entrepreneur. Yao Binbin is a young man who devotes himself to studying technology. His background is kind and filial, but his impulsive and thoughtful personality weakness made him manipulated and provoked by evil people. In the end, he chose to sacrifice himself in order to gain time for Xu Wenguo to escape, which added a lot of heroic and tragic color to this already wronged image.

  The dynamic relationships of Du Xiangdong, Xu Wenguo and Yao Binbin are full of changes, mixed with the entanglements of human nature and morality, emotions and legal principles, forming the most memorable part of the play.

  Telling the tragedy of fate through plot adaptation

  "Born by Life" takes suspense criminal investigation as its shell, but the core is not limited to the desperate battle between good and evil, but tries to slowly bring the audience into the situation where the characters are in through delicate descriptions.

  In the original novel, "catching fugitives" became an obsession that trapped Du Xiangdong for half his life. Even in the end, the suspect that year was already innocent on the legal level, and Du Xiangdong still kept a close eye on it. The reason why Du Xiangdong is so paranoid is that he has failed to observe for a while and has become a part of the escape from prison for two fugitives. From then on, he has been stained, lost his ideal job opportunity, and has never received talent for life. With his own expectations of becoming a criminal policeman and his frustration after wasting half of his life, Du Xiangdong used his life as a bet to track down the fugitives.

  The TV series weakens the components of character tragedy and tragedy of the times in the novel, and tells the whole story as a tragedy of fate. The planned escape from prison was adapted into a prison escape caused by a car accident. The Xu Wenguo brothers decided to take the gun and run away after a moment of accidental incidents. This adaptation process uses situational choice to replace the bottom line of the law, adjusts the subjective intention of the criminal behavior, and the characterization of the characters directly affects the audience's sense of identity with them. In addition, after Yao Binbin's case was overturned, Du Xiangdong was recognized and compensated for his performance in this case. He got the opportunity to join the criminal police team that he had always dreamed of, but Du Xiangdong refused and continued to stay in the detention center in the deep mountains to serve as his original position. Therefore, Du Xiangdong's motivation in the entire series was not to avenge the "revenge of a single arrow" of that year, nor to "get a stubborn person" in personality, but to become a non-utilitarian value orientation and life choice. The sharp relationships of characters in the novel are transformed into persistence in truth and fairness, highlighting an idealistic noble spirit.

  In addition, Du Xiangdong's compassion for the Xu Wenguo brothers in the novel is magnified in the TV series and always runs through. Du Xiangdong brought them a meal and helped Yao Binbin tie up anti-fouling ropes before the execution. He took care of Yao Binbin's widowed mother for many years. This not only portrayed Du Xiangdong's affection and righteousness, but also laid the groundwork for him to finally take huge risks to expose the truth.

  Love scenes occupy a certain amount of space in the TV series. Du Xiangdong and his wife Liu Fenfang's mutual support, and Xu Wenguo and Sun Yonghong's tragedy were all deliberately strengthened, adding a bit of romantic color to the cold narrative of the suspense drama and also condensed into beautiful symbols of the characters' miserable destiny.

  Compared to Liu Fenfang, who never understood Du Xiangdong in the novel, hoped that he would be transferred back to the city to work, and had encouraged him to resign and "go to business" and Liu Fenfang, the role played by Zhong Chuxi in the play is closer to the image of an ideal partner in the mind of men: beautiful, cool, tenacious, wholehearted to her husband, silently supposes the family, and bears all the pressure. Liu Fenfang died of heavy bleeding during pregnancy, which deepened the regret that "the good things in the world are not strong". The emotional bond between Xu Wenguo and Sun Yonghong not only caresses and commemorates the innocent era by the characters, but also forms the inner force that promotes the plot. In the early stage, Tang Yaoxin framed the Xu Wenguo brothers in order to seize Sun Yonghong. Later, Sun Yonghong killed Tang Yaoxin's evidence of his crime for justice, forming a fateful narrative closed loop.

  Of course, for many suspense drama audiences, the love scenes do not meet their expectations for the entire drama, and it does lead to the rhythm of detection and decryption becoming slow, and even suspected of "injecting water" the plot. It can be felt that the creator hopes to give the characters some beautiful bright colors through the overall darker story direction through rendering the love scene. However, the artistic effects such as emotional cultivation or atmosphere creation brought by these paragraphs cannot make up for the play's shortcomings in suspense narrative, and then directly "redeem" to the audience's satisfaction. What's more, the personality and complexity that Liu Fenfang and Sun Yonghong should have were not fully portrayed in the play, and the characters were not subjective enough, so they were positioned as the "pendants" or "trophies" of male characters.

  Should you choose to tell a gripping suspense story, or to choose to depict a thick and plump scroll of fate? The main creators of "Born by Life" may prefer the latter. However, how to balance genre innovation with audience taste, how to grasp the core creative part of suspense dramas more essentially, and how to adapt to and lead the current development status of the TV drama market has never been a simple question for every drama creator.

  Compassionate and restrained artistic expression

  The sound and picture texture of "Born by Life" is quite stylish and meaningful, and director Lu Chuan strives to have a sense of quality in audio-visual art. The meticulous time and space environment, restrained performance tone, concise geometric composition, accurate mirror scheduling, agile detailed imagery, and lyrical music selection, form a stylized but true expression system. This system, combined with the narrative perspective and order, produces a compassionate and restrained "God's perspective" as a whole, which not only immerse the audience in a period of fate in a period of history, but also withdraws and jumps out from time to time to avoid excessive sensationalism.

  The mountain scenery of the "Banan Region" (actually filmed in Muchuan County, Leshan City) appears many times in the play. The steep mountains, dense forests, reservoirs, and factory areas in the aerial shots set off the characters more and more insignificantly, creating a majestic and ruthless visual image. The relationship between space and people can be associated with analogy to the relationship between fate and people.

  The actor's performance treatment also points to the same artistic effect. The highlights of several emotional expressions in the play are presented in a relatively restrained manner. For example, the scene of Yao Binbin saying goodbye to his mother on the eve of the shooting, the main performance is that Cui Lizhen, played by Alia, passed through the iron gates sadly and anxiously, and Yao Binbin responded with tears. Then Cui Lizhen called out "son" briefly, and Yao Binbin knelt down in a collapse. The actor's emotional performances form a concise and powerful expression effect in a limited space. There is also a performance passage that was extremely sad and angry after Du Xiangdong learned the truth about Yao Binbin's wronged years later. Starting from the outburst of the character's emotions and lifting the table, the previous mid-scene shooting switched to panoramic shooting. Qin Hao's roar, face covering, and thrashing venting actions such as Qin Hao's roar, face covering, and thrashing were included in the overall picture of the street scene because of the distance from the shooting viewpoint, which seemed futile and even a bit absurd. These treatments show the work's pursuit and attempts for complexity, forming the unique artistic style of "Born by Life".

  (The author is a PhD in Drama and Film and Television, and is a lecturer at the Film Academy of Shanghai Theatre Academy)

[Editor in charge: Susan]