Live Like You [Entertainment]

It was once rumored on the Internet that "The Pencil Box" is a work adapted from a true story, but no one has been able to confirm its authenticity so far.Probably because when this work first came out, it didn't cause much waves in the country, but when people started to see this work to flaunt it, all the main creators of "Pencil Box" have disappeared. in people's sight.In some bizarre rumors, the director of the play, Hu Ya, was even said to have a pseudonym and a false identity.

People are talking about "Pencil Box" and its director, Hu Ya. Some say that Hu Ya is the prototype of Fan Chun, one of the protagonists in the play. Some say that this work was made by a well-known director wearing a vest. Ya was persecuted to death because of this work.Perhaps it is because of the darkness and mystery of the work itself, the longer the time passes, the more the existence of "Pencil Box" becomes a phenomenon that cannot be ignored in the domestic film industry.People discuss it a lot, but not many people have actually seen this work, and even fewer people can understand its meaning.

Zhou Wenjin had seen this work, when he was still in high school.

Looking back now it's almost unbelievable.A film with a sensitive subject that had never been released in China was able to find a source on a high school campus in the 90s when the Internet was not well developed.At that time, Zhou Wenjin was a member of the school's film club. Their interest club brought together a group of students who love movies and a group of students who are too lazy to participate in too troublesome club activities. The activity they often engage in is to use the school's audio-visual room to organize a movie-watching event every week.I don't know who provided the film source at that time, Zhou Wenjin came into contact with the film "Pencil Box" for the first time.

If you want to talk about your first impression of "Pencil Box", Zhou Wenjin's answer may be different from that of many people.Netizens' perceptions of this film were quite polarized, so that many years later, they formed a very classic and iconic evaluation, that is, ""Pencil Box" is straightforward and obscure, compact and casual, and there is a simple and withdrawn feeling hidden in the profound." There is positivity in it.”But Zhou Wenjin has only one feeling from the beginning to the end, "Pencil Box" is a warm story.

There are two protagonists in this movie, the first male protagonist is Fan Chun, but the perspective of the film is completely presented by the second male protagonist Lu Xiaoge.The story is about a conscientious little policeman, Lv Xiaoge, who received an unfamiliar letter from the city one day. After opening it, he discovered that it was an invitation letter for a memorial service, inviting him to attend the memorial service of a young man named Fan Chun. Yes, but Lu Xiaoge couldn't remember that he knew such a person at all.Confused, Lu Xiaoge mentioned this to his high school friends the next day, but was told that Fan Chun had been his high school classmate.

A friend said: "That's a weird guy. In the past, everyone walked around him in school. It's normal if you can't remember. It's been so many years, and a memorial service invitation letter came suddenly. I'm afraid it's not asking for a funeral?"

Although Lu Xiaoge also found it strange, he still decided to go because he thought he was with his classmates.

This is the first part of the film, and it is from this opening that many film critics praised Hu Ya.Whether it's the suspenseful way of solving the problem or the bold use of color, it makes people feel deeply about the ambition of the whole film.Then, the camera turned and came to the memorial service.Vibrant bright colors filled this scene, Lv Xiaoge stood in Fan Chun's mourning hall, looking at the man in the photo, he couldn't help but mutter in his heart.They obviously invited even high school classmates who didn’t remember him, but in fact, there were only four people who came to Fan Chun’s memorial service, including a beautiful and suspected widow, an old woman who frequently wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, and a A middle-aged man with a greasy hair and a powdered face, and an old gentleman with white hair and a righteous face.

Lu Xiaoge didn't know these four people, but for some reason, these people all showed strange expressions when they saw him, and some even looked a little panicked.Lu Xiaoge saw Fan Chun's body in a complete daze.Fan Chunsheng, who was lying in the coffin waiting to be cremated, had a delicate but indescribably glamorous face. It was hard to imagine that a man could grow up like this. Legend has it that he died of a sudden myocardial infarction, but Lu Xiaoge had no intention of dying. It was found that there were deep cuts on Fan Chun's wrist.After the memorial service, the suspected widow stopped Lu Xiaoge, gave him a key, and told him that Fan Chun had left him a relic.

"What relic?"

"Who knows?" replied the young widow. "It's yours. Take it as soon as possible."

Lu Xiaoge accepted the key inexplicably, but Fan Chun's widow did not tell him where the key was locked.Lu Xiaoge just returned home with this key that he didn't know where it came from.At night, Lu Xiaoge was puzzled and had a nightmare.

This paragraph is very chaotic, Lu Xiaoge's dream is mixed with a lot of flashing images, and the overall lighting is extremely weak, almost only occasionally flashing a few seconds in the darkness that can barely be seen clearly.The content of the picture includes classrooms, blackboards, basketball courts, and finally a white-walled wooden house on an empty wasteland.

This is also a place that many lead fans talk about, thinking that although Hu Ya is not a professional, he used his innate intuition to create a completely real and blurred dream in this paragraph, "without logic and smooth and natural", and finally Lu Xiaoge Waking up with a flash of light in the eyes.It wasn't until Lu Xiaoge opened his eyes that everyone realized that the film had switched to the third segment.

The third segment: the psychiatrist's clinic.

In this clip, the audience realizes that Lu Xiaoge, who seems to be very normal, actually suffers from mental illness.It seems that because of a case a few years ago, Lu Xiaoge suffered psychological trauma, which caused a piece of his memory to be missing, and the missing piece of memory seems to be in the era when he was studying in high school.Because of this problem, Lu Xiaoge has been seeing a doctor with the psychologist Mao Lang for nearly two years. Mao Lang has used advanced light stimulation hypnotherapy on him, but his disease is always good and bad. When he is good, he can remember some high school When the scene is bad, I completely forget that part.

"Actually, it's not a big deal if you don't remember your high school life." Lu Xiaoge's friend said, but Lu Xiaoge himself didn't know why, but he was very persistent in wanting to get that memory back.

Afterwards, Lu Xiaoge's ordinary life followed the rules.Lu Xiaoge has a girlfriend, but the two of them rarely meet each other. When they meet, they have sex, but their sex always seems mechanical and pale.Hu Ya's handling of this section is completely indifferent. It is obvious that the scale of the shooting is so large that it is almost erotic, but the audience does not feel excited at all when they see it.Especially every time they have sex, they are at Lu Xiaoge's house, and the layout of Lu Xiaoge's house is particularly "desolate".A bed parked in the middle of an empty room, the cold iron head and foot of the bed that resembles a hospital bed, and the creaking sound every time you make love can only make people think of morbidity rather than romance.Lu Xiaoge and his girlfriend are in the same posture every time. After the end, they lie on the same side and look at the ceiling. Then the girlfriend gets up, and there is the sound of washing in the bathroom, and the sound of the alarm clock ticking and echoing from the bedside , then the sound of water leaking from the sewer, the sound of a woman getting dressed, and finally the sound of the door closing.

This part almost drove away most of the people who hated this film, but it made people who liked this film rewatch it again and again. Many fans said that "every time you watch it, you will have new discoveries."Although the time indicated by the alarm clock is roughly the same when I go to bed several times, the meanings of the different indications of the seconds, the reflection of the iron railing at the head of the bed, the meaning of the roar of the sewer, etc. After doing various analysis, it is generally believed that this is Hu Ya's genius.In short, after this long period of time passed, when Lu Xiaoge saw another corpse at the police station, the one who died this time turned out to be the old woman who had appeared at Fan Chun's memorial service and frequently wiped her eyes. She was killed by someone, and the murderer cruelly gouged out her eyes and cut off her ears.

That night, Lu Xiaoge dreamed a relatively clear scene for the first time.In this scene, he's back on the high school campus.The empty school shone with the unique yellow light of the setting sun. He climbed the stairs and found the classroom he used to sit in, and he also found the desk he used to sit in, which was in the penultimate row.Then, as if by magic, the camera shows a brightly colored pencil case suddenly appearing on an empty table.It was a pencil case with extra fancy patterns printed on it. Lu Xiaoge didn't know why, but when he saw this pencil case, he felt panicked.A bell rang and he woke up in fright.

Then came the treatment. For the first time, Lu Xiaoge recalled a case that traumatized him a few years ago. In that case, a little girl chose to die because of being bullied on campus.It is obviously a heart-wrenching segment, but Hu Ya used a very romantic technique. He boldly used stop-motion animation and used porcelain as a medium to compare the little girl to a flower that is different from other plants. In the end, she was severely beaten. broke.

When Lu Xiaoge was receiving psychotherapy, he found himself in the high school campus again, and walked to that desk.He saw the pencil case again, and this time he put it on the pencil case with trembling hands. When he looked up, he suddenly saw several photos pasted on the blackboard in front of him, each of which was a portrait.

Lu Xiaoge was awakened by the light again, and he told Mao Lang what he saw. Mao Lang was also very surprised and asked him to try to draw pictures of those people based on his memories.Lu Xiaoge tried his best to recall, and drew pictures of several people one by one, and Mao Lang quickly retrieved the results for him: "These people have all been killed."

In almost five years, these five people died one by one in different places, some were in traffic accidents, some committed suicide, and some were killed by robbers, but the strange thing is that all the bodies have the same phenomenon, that Even if the eyes are gouged out or destroyed, so are the ears.It might just be a coincidence when they are not connected together, but when they are connected together, you will find that all of these are unusual.What is even more surprising is that these people are all from the same high school that Lu Xiaoge attended, including the old lady who used to be the administrator of the school's sports warehouse.

Lu Xiaoge keenly discovered the secret hidden in it, and Fan Chun may also be one of the murdered.He began to go back to his high school to investigate, where he met the gray-haired old man he had met at the memorial service, only to find out that this person had been his class teacher in high school.The homeroom teacher reacted strangely to Lu Xiaoge's appearance. In the evening, the homeroom teacher asked Lu Xiaoge to have dinner and talked about something endlessly. Lu Xiaoge was drunk, and when he woke up, the homeroom teacher was also dead.The ears were also cut off, the eyes were smashed, and this time even the tongue was cut off.

Lu Xiaoge was taken into the police station as a suspect. Fortunately, the police did not find his motive and weapon for the murder, so they released him.Lu Xiaoge walked down the street in a daze, and decided to go back to high school at night, but there he ran into the greasy-haired and powder-faced middle-aged man at the memorial service. The middle-aged man was so frightened when he saw Lu Xiaoge, he turned around and ran away desperately.Lu Xiaoge thought he might know something and chased after him, but the middle-aged man lost his mind under the fright and fell from a height to his death. Before he died, he shouted: "Don't come here, murderer!"

Lu Xiaoge lost consciousness again because of being overly frightened.This time, he returned to the high school classroom again. He sat on his chair, covered in cold sweat, with a pencil case in front of him and a key in his hand.This time, Lu Xiaoge finally saw clearly that the pencil case was locked. Trembling, he inserted the key into the lock hole, and with a "click", he opened the pencil case.Lu Xiaoge opened the pencil case, and a pair of beautiful eyes were reflected on the bright iron lid, passionate and melancholy...

This is the end of the feature film of the story, followed by a long post-credits scene. Next to the name of the production team, there are scenes of fragmented scenes, old sports equipment warehouses, cruel laughter of teenagers, overturned vaulting horses, panting like beasts, The moment of murder, the sound of sudden braking, the bright headlights, the sound of blood flowing... When everything was still, an empty room appeared in the gray-blue screen, with a bed in the middle of the room. Lu Xiaoge was wearing a patient's clothes. Sitting on the edge of the bed, with a straight back, holding a closed pencil case in his hand, looking over and over again.Mao Lang came in, said a few words to him, lifted his eyelids and shined light on him, but Lu Xiaoge didn't respond at all. Finally, Mao Lang shook his head and left.

The door closed with a click, leaving Lu Xiaoge alone.

The light dimmed with a "click", and then the sun's rays moved over, and Lu Xiaoge appeared in the wilderness. He was sitting in front of a desk, and there was a small room in the distance. He stuck out the key hidden under his tongue, Opening the pencil case in front of him, a pair of passionate and melancholy eyes were reflected in the box. Fan Chun bent down and said something in Lu Xiaoge's ear, and then, Lu Xiaoge smiled...

The whole film is over.

Regarding what this film is about, people later formed a mainstream consensus, that is, Fan Chun, as a homosexual, loves Lu Xiaoge deeply, but he dare not express it. This emotional and shy boy only dares to sit The back row is secretly watching the boy he likes, but Lu Xiaoge is not unaware of it. Whenever he opens the pencil case, he can see the passionate and melancholy eyes behind him in the mirror.But at that time, homosexuality was still very strict. Fan Chun’s sexuality was discovered somehow. A group of boys took him to the sports warehouse and bullied him. The head teacher was afraid that his teaching career would be affected, and he colluded with the female logistics in charge of the warehouse to hide the truth. After this incident, he may have fabricated something (that's why his tongue was cut off), which caused Fan Chun to become insane, go crazy, and finally committed suicide.

Out of guilt, Lu Xiaoge began to take advantage of his position to take revenge on those who killed Fan Chun. In the process, he gradually lost his mind until he became a mentally ill patient, living in his own world.He thought he was still a policeman, and that Mao Lang was his psychiatrist, but he didn't know that he had already been admitted to a mental hospital because of murder charges. However, the police never found the exact number of people he killed and where their remains were. Until he saw those portraits in his mental hallucinations, but so what?After all, he is "together" with Fan Chun.

Of course, in addition to the mainstream consensus, there are also some minority opinions. Some people think that Fan Chun does not exist. Lu Xiaoge is Fan Chun himself. He split into a second personality after being bullied, and the pencil case can't be seen The figure in the back row, he always saw himself.The real murderer is Fan Chun, the second personality, and Lu Xiaoge's burial of Fan Chun represents his transformation from not accepting his second personality to accepting it, merging his personalities, and then killing.But this conclusion cannot explain the scene where Lu Xiaoge later lived in a mental hospital and the last two people appeared at the same time.

"How about it?"

"Huh?" Zhou Wenjin came back to his senses.

He Xizhang sat on the opposite chair and looked at him calmly: "Then Fan Chun or Lu Xiaoge, which one do you want to choose?"

However, Zhou Wenjin looked at He Xizhang's eyes absently. For some reason, he realized for the first time that they were really a pair of affectionate and beautiful eyes.