Chapter 244
The second half of the long review of "Yaotai Lu"
When this clip became a hot topic and was widely circulated on short video platforms, many people said that Ling Suisui was "the god of snow atmosphere". There were already a dozen people around me who used her stills as their avatars and mobile phone wallpapers.
Many netizens who have not watched the drama said that she is the embodiment of the goddess. Although this is a far cry from the protagonist's role, I can understand it. After all, "goddess" here is an adjective.
It does not represent a specific character, but a temperament that transcends the mundane world. She stood in the snow, her eyes seemed ruthless, yet affectionate.
She gazes at the earth and witnesses the passing of the four seasons. She represents the constant laws of nature and her gaze will not stop for anyone. But when her eyes sweep over you, even for just a brief moment, this gentle, tolerant, condescending but not arrogant love can dispel the darkness and give people infinite courage.
This is probably the audience’s beautiful imagination of the “goddess” and also the underlying logic of the so-called atmosphere. If you want to replicate TV shows and movies in the future, in addition to learning how the director uses the camera, don’t forget the key role played by the actors.
Speaking of this, the effect presented by Ling Suisui has already become a benchmark for acting in domestic fantasy dramas, but this is only the external performance that can be seen from the clips. Regardless of whether other actors can catch up, this is probably the level she reached a few years ago.
If you want to discuss it in more depth, you have to watch the previous plot together.
Here is a brief background. When Jiayue was wearing Feiguang's vest and talking with her senior sister under the moonlight, it should have been the lowest point in her life as a demon.
She is a warrior, but what she longs for most is peace. Her previous idea was to use force to gain the opportunity to sit down and talk, but she found out that there was no such thing as the difference between immortals and demons, and good and evil. Bloodshed and sacrifice were just ways for those in power to balance the weights in their hands. Her ideal became a complete joke.
Senior Sister’s bad mood was obvious to her, but Jiayue had to maintain a shaky appearance. Wearing the same costume, Jiayue in Picture 1 has just joined the sect, her eyes are full of fighting spirit, while in Picture 2 she only has a faint sense of death, as if she has no interest in anything.
Even if it is a still, you should be able to feel the obvious difference when you swipe left and right. Whether in terms of lighting effects or character expressions, Picture 1 is very sunny and positive, while Picture 2 is overall colder, and you will feel a little uncomfortable after watching it.
Of course, the degree of discomfort would be very mild, because Jiayue, who led the troops in battle, was accustomed to hiding his emotions in his heart and not letting his condition affect his own morale.
But it still exists - you suspect it is a thorn in your heart, but the physiological reaction cannot be called pain. It is more like a light strand of hair. You can't tell where it is and can't find its location, but if you don't take it off your body, it will be like a mouthful of air that is hard to swallow, stuck in your throat.
Jiayue talked to her senior sister with such a mood, and also wanted to hear from her how miserable the world was - in Jiayue's cognition, the soldiers who were forced to go to the battlefield were already pitiful, but in the context of war, there were also common people who were unarmed and had a uncertain fate.
It’s already so hard, yet women and children are still singled out as the bottom of the pile to be bullied. Moreover, there are no elderly people among the common people.
Oh my God, this was a huge blow to Jiayue's spirit, forcing her to face up to her own insignificance and incompetence. Ling Suisui's way of dealing with it was to sway his body slightly and flicker his eyes a few times.
Her back was still straight, her neck remained elegant, but her furrowed brows sent out a dangerous signal. There is no inner os here, and there is no explanation for this part in the subsequent plot, so let me boldly speculate on Jiayue's thoughts:
What a terrible world! I really want to kill everyone.
As a famous hell joke goes, if all humans died, world peace would be achieved.
Who says idealists never take extreme steps? Human nature, or demonic nature, always changes with the environment. If the conversation ended here, it might be the last straw that breaks the camel's back, leading Jiayue's fate in a completely different direction.
Fortunately, Senior Sister still had something to say.
The senior sister expressed her longing for the heaven and imagined her life after attaining enlightenment and ascending to heaven, including what contribution she would make to practitioners on earth in the future, how to repel the enemy in the battle between immortals and demons and achieve peace as soon as possible.
From Jiayue's perspective, knowing how many bad things Tianjun had done, the beautiful fantasy that her senior sister had about the Ninth Heaven was simply impossible to achieve.
Jiayue hesitated several times to speak, and many viewers could see her hesitation. She didn't know whether she should say it or not. Her senior sister had suffered enough in the first half of her life. What would it matter if she exposed the truth? It only added to her pain.
At the beginning, Ling Suisui expressed the same emotion. However, as the senior sister spoke more and more, her eyes gradually lost their pity and sympathy, and turned into contemplation and reminiscence.
This was an important turning point in Jiayue's change of mentality, or in other words, in getting back on track. When I watched this drama for the first time, I kept thinking, what on earth was Jiayue thinking?
My friend and I had a disagreement on this point. My friends think that Jiayue thought of her past self, so she regained her original intention and continued to move forward. But I don’t think so, because there was not much nostalgia in Jiayue’s eyes.
In order to find the answer, I read this passage over and over again. When I read it for the fifth time, a sentence suddenly came to my mind - "This fish cares."
There is no need to elaborate on the classic story related to this sentence. At that moment, I repeated this sentence in my mind for a long time, and suddenly my nose felt sore.
The name "Jiayue" implies beautiful days, but she has been living in a trap of being deceived and exploited. What she wanted was peace, but objectively speaking she became an accomplice of both the immortals and the demons.
Even so, even if she was utterly disappointed with the Three Realms, all she needed was an anchor point to pull her back from darkness to light.
So, when we get back to the snowy mood picture, the look in her eyes takes on a whole new meaning.
She is not a "goddess" blessed by heaven, nor is her birth noble. Her nine fox tails were not innate, but acquired through training. She knew that every step she would take in the future would be a struggle against "heaven".
But she will never back down, because even in the rotten Three Realms, there are many, many people represented by her senior sister who still care. It was worth the effort, and she could be sure that she was not alone.
Although the industry considers Yao Tai Lu to be a fairy tale drama, I previously labeled it as fantasy. This is clearly a power struggle in the world of high magic. It was not until this moment that I suddenly realized that this was indeed a fairy tale, and Jiayue, played by Ling Suisui, deserved the title of "hero".
Of course, even after I said so much, I still failed to convince my friend. She still insisted on her view of "regaining the original intention" and said that I had re-processed Jiayue's image in my mind. I admit this.
Even though we disagreed, I didn't intend to force her to do anything, nor did I need to find a way to find Ling Suisui herself to ask for clarification.
——This is the charm of literary and artistic works. There is no standard answer. This also indirectly proves that Ling Suisui's level of interpretation of the role has evolved into a multifaceted one, which is not only flesh and blood, but also always fresh.
Maybe when I rewatch Yaotailu next time, I will have new ideas. I am very much looking forward to it. It feels like I am treasure hunting at a treasure spot that will refresh. It is hard to predict what I will dig up next time.
If the audience is relatively insensitive, it would be difficult to appreciate the above content; the more careful, sensitive and empathetic people are, the deeper their feelings will be about Ling Sui's performance.
This does not mean to deny the former. After all, the drama promotion of Yumi Video is to go for the exciting drama route. I just want to praise Yaotailu for achieving a perfect balance between the sinking market representing commercial value and the professional field pursuing artistic value, so that every audience can see what they want. And the fulcrum of balance is Ling Suisui.
This is really amazing. Although she has not yet become a veteran artist, in my heart, she is already an actor at the top of the domestic entertainment pyramid. Creators all know how difficult it is to be both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. Once she has crossed this threshold, what else can stop her?
By the way, when I learned that Ling Suisui had a lot of say in the crew and had proposed major script revisions several times, I couldn't help but admire her.
——Although I know that when this matter first became a hot topic, many marketing accounts’ copywriting was directed at criticizing her, as if it was an unforgivable thing for an actor to change the script, I really don’t understand this.
If Yaotailu becomes worse and worse due to Ling Sui's repeated changes, this is indeed her black spot, but such matters require specific analysis.
In order to prove that she had indeed changed the script, some "insiders" even released the first version of the script. I was very interested in this, and went out of my way to take a few glances. The more I looked, the more I wanted to frown. The more I looked, the more I couldn't understand. Was this really Ling Sui's dark trending search?
Or is it that the platform’s intention in promoting this is to show how capable Ling Sui is and how he can accurately identify garbage in the script? Why don't you take a look for yourself and see how good the parts she changed are?
I don't know if this script is the real first version, but this kind of 1 woman n men Shura field plot is really bad, and it fits the Xianxia stereotype I mentioned before.
Fortunately, the audience has eyes. From now on, anyone who says that Ling Sui’s hit works are all due to the team, and attempts to deprive her of her own credit, can simply compare the two versions of the script recorded by Yaotai and throw it in their faces.
If I were to give Yao Tai Lu a score out of 10, I would still leave one point for room for improvement. Although Ling Sui's performance is impeccable, the worldview construction of the entire drama still has some flaws. The monster clan and the demon clan are still unclear, which makes the plot logic not very rigorous and there are still inconsistent gaps.
Of course, this is based on my usual strict requirements for film and television works. I did not give them a break or give them extra leniency, or even lose the desire to comment simply because of the "Xianxia" theme.
As I said at the beginning, the role of Yaotailu should be a moat for good dramas. I hope that the works after it will be closer to it and strive to surpass it. She would probably feel bored if Ling Suisui was always the only one standing out in every track.
So far, her TV series inventory has been completely aired, and only movies are left. In fact, I don’t want her to leave the field of TV dramas so soon, because in the four years that she has been winning the championship - including "Yao Tai Lu", it should be the fifth year - the frequency of high-quality dramas appearing on various platforms has increased significantly.
So, big devil, don't go too far. The domestic entertainment TV drama circle still needs you to come back often for some stimulation. 】
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