Mysterious and lost

(Text / Yang Shiyang)

If you want to select the most personal drama in terms of atmosphere creation this year, perhaps this "Third Day" can compete with "Ratchett". "Ratchett" uses the most upright and rigorous retro style, scarlet and strong The contrast of green color blocks shows and shapes the hearts of the most distorted and perverted mental patients, while "The Third Day" uses evil music and desert island scenery to create a standard cult trend. Jude Law walked out of the Vatican in "The New Pope" and came to the deserted island of "The Third Day". He was no longer the Pope who was expected to wake up and comfort people's hearts, but changed. Became a vulnerable father captured by the loss of his son.

"The Third Day" is a typical "Island Story", everything starts with an emotionally extreme mourning, Jude Law's hero Sam weeps and puts a toddler's clothes on a deserted stream. In the water, let it float away, he is making a final, psychological goodbye to his dead son. At this moment, this grieving man accidentally encountered a strange and terrifying scene, a boy assisting a girl to commit suicide in the forest. He rescued the girl and sent her home. As a result, he set foot on the island and crashed into a different world where reality and reality coexist.

Every few years, a similar work will appear, or, in other words, this type of play of "The Third Day" is a model-like existence in Western film and television dramas, like a surging undercurrent, It never stops. It involves religion, subconsciousness, psychological healing, conspiracy theories, ancient legends, urban rumors, etc., and a series of cultural prototypes. It is finally transformed into a series of suspenseful stories with similar roots and different appearances. Therefore, from "The Third Day", you can find the perversion and madness in "Lyme Town", you can think of the sacrifice rituals and the swirling stream of consciousness in the brain in "Pagan", which can reflect the The incredible suicides in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" can make one wonder if the man in the story is undergoing a kind of secret psychotherapy or mind control similar to "Homecoming", and even "Lost" can be thought of The mysterious island that can never really leave... The most fascinating part of this kind of story is not the answer, but the mystery. Those countless forks are full of charm. Its greatest charm lies in the fact that the viewer is as lost as the protagonist and is seduced The voice is entangled, infested by ubiquitous hallucinations, jumping in and out between reality and reality. To a certain extent, "The Third Day" and a series of homogenized stories behind it are suspense within suspense, but also It is one of the most anti-suspenseful types, because in most popular suspense stories, the purpose of all suspense and puzzle setting is to reveal the answer, and the direction of this kind of story is through a series of uncertain roads and dissonant notes. After that, it finally reached a definite and stable end, and everything fell into the category that reason can explain, but a story like "The Third Day", although dressed in the guise of a suspenseful story, has the shell of a horror story, but it The purpose of the game is not to solve the puzzle, but to give the impression that the puzzle will go on forever. The mystery itself is the destination. So, it's typed, but it's antityped. Sometimes it's frustrating when this kind of story finally reveals the result, because when great doubts must fall into a cause and effect, all processes seem to weigh heavily, and "The Third Day" tries to find a way to A method that does not provide an answer. Of course, this kind of operation will make the audience's perception different. People who like it will think it has a long aftertaste, and people who hate it will think it is a mystery. But looking back, isn't every kind of fiction a myth?

The Ou Xi Island that Sam went to is connected to the mainland by a narrow passage. Between the ebb and flow of tides, the sea water will cover or reveal the only road. This setting makes the island a kind of breathing. It is sometimes isolated and closed, sometimes connected and connected. If you have enough patience to read the whole story, you will find that this breathing design is quite meaningful, it represents the hero Sa A kind of ups and downs of Mu's mental and spiritual state, sometimes, he requires himself to return to a given life of reason, and sometimes, he subconsciously hopes that he will stay forever in this unknown place that allows him to exist alone. on the island. It was a place of escape and a place of comfort, so that he could escape the endless grief of losing his son.

Since Sam accidentally broke into this island, he has been facing many mysteries. A female anthropologist who seems to have entered accidentally like him, a group of aboriginal people with slack eyes and fierce faces, a pair of seemingly friendly but seemingly unpredictable residents. The bar owner couple, not to mention the sneaky behavior of some people who always seem to be full of conspiracy, the story takes a twist in the middle, Sam's wife because of a mysterious email, with two The daughter also came to the island, and their unexpected reunion, conversation and struggle to leave became a space with multiple interpretations. Taking the wife and daughter as the broken line, and comparing the relationship and stories of Sam and the family, you will find another layer of possibilities for the mysterious stories on this small island. In a conventional sense, "The Third Day" can be interpreted as everything told in the surface story, an island that maintains mysterious ancient customs, leading Sam to come here in a seemingly casual way, His lineage and his origins will make him the leader here, but as the story progresses, as his wife and daughter are involved, everything under the water begins to emerge. Perhaps, that island is a kind of The appearance of the psychotherapy ritual, it is like VR, like immersion, where Sam finds his "son" again, the accident caused by his indulging in extramarital affairs, is given the possibility of making up again here, and His never-completed farewell to his wife and daughter, he also made a complete farewell here. All the blood, weirdness and injuries experienced on the island are the inescapable ravines and tears in all the processes he has experienced in the real world. , except that those were replaced by the fantastical with the plot of the island. So, looking at it from this angle, you can interpret the story of the island as something that actually happened, and you can comprehend everything as a performance in the brain, a dream, a hypnosis, a weird but effective grief therapy.

According to the original plan, in addition to the stories that can be seen so far, "The Third Day" actually has a more interesting offline plan. The creative team originally planned to carry out a large-scale immersive live event and use it as a part of the overall story. part. That is indeed an interesting idea. Just like the story that guides outsiders into a situation, the offline immersive drama will also be an experiment on the same topic, and it will once again complete a cross between reality and reality with the content on TV. Interaction, but unfortunately, due to the epidemic, this plan was disrupted. Perhaps, this accident is also intertextual with the story. Like everything in "The Third Day", accidents can happen at any time, and people don't know where they are being led.

(This article was first published in Beijing Youth Daily)