"Jinxiao Building": high concept, down-to-earth

Text/Tianjiaji

TVB's "Golden Night Mansion" has received a rating of 8.5 points on Douban, surpassing "White Strongman" in the first half of the year. This show is very interesting and very entertaining in terms of its setting.

Li Shihua and Chen Shancong respectively played the past lives of two characters - dancer Coco and policeman Liu Xuhui in 1969, and this life - flight attendant Alex and security guard Xiao Weiming in 2019. In the previous life, Coco always dreamed of the future, and in this life, Xiao Weiming always dreamed of the past, so the plot alternated between 1969 and 2019.

Another setting is that "Jinxiao Building" is a place full of supernatural legends. Not only Coco and Liu Xuhui, Alex and Xiao Weiming have lived in this building in their past and present lives, but everyone in this building has lived in this building. Unexplainable things will happen to people in this world. Because the legend is so exciting and unique, a company has even produced a game called "Fantasy Mansion" based on it. The beginning and subsequent plot of the show will also be based on this game, and the game's clearance method and plot It has also become a supplement to the previous episodes of this TV series.

At the same time, the same person and the same cat live in the Jinxiao Building whether in 1969 or 2019: Lin Gezai (played by Zhang Yanbo) who was in his early twenties and now an elderly teacher Lin (played by Liu Jiang), and the long-lived black cat "Liangbao".

The entanglement between the male and female protagonists is the main plot of this drama. On this basis, this drama also tells the stories of other residents in a group of buildings in the form of a unit drama every two episodes. For example, episodes 7 and 8 are called "Crow" and tell the story of a family of three; episodes 15 and 16 are called "Beautiful Witch" and tell the story of Sister Yuki, played by Kang Hua, who loves beauty and is greedy for beauty.

These unit stories focus on current issues in life and show the lives of ordinary people in Hong Kong. Most of the fashion dramas produced by TVB show the rich or middle class in Hong Kong. It is rare to find a drama that focuses on the lives of ordinary citizens in the middle and lower classes. This is why "Golden Night Building" is so popular.

For example, in "The Crow", a family of three lives in a small house of about ten square meters. Xiao Hui, played by Gao Haining, wholeheartedly hopes that her son Dongdong (played by Zheng Yaoxuan) can go to a prestigious school. She not only anesthetizes herself to engage in pyramid schemes, It also put a lot of pressure on husband A Guang (played by Chen Jiahui) and Dongdong, until Dongdong was captured by the crow spirit. This story is filled with a very negative temperament - no matter how hard they try, those who lose at the starting line will not have a chance to come forward. (Xiao Weiming also complained about the social reality that even after graduating from college, life is very difficult.)

The story of "Baby" also uses Wen Qing, played by Deng Peiyi, to exchange souls with the sex doll Mary, telling the story of parents and adulthood. The estrangement between children and the loneliness of parents.

There are also Internet celebrities who wear A-grade clothes but pretend to be socialites, office workers who are constantly looking for excitement in one-night stands, etc. These stories exposed the life and mental outlook of many Hong Kong people in a TV series ( In fact, it is similar to our lives), which makes people full of excitement. But the interesting thing about Hong Kong people is that even if the themes are heavy, the temperament and interpretation of the TV series are very optimistic and relaxed. They will not indulge in gloomy negativity, but look for new opportunities in desperate situations. This may be the reason why Hong Kong, as an immigrant city full of people who have left their hometowns, is full of vitality.

This drama not only has an interesting setting, but also puts forward philosophical concepts. It's still the story of "Crow". After Dongdong was taken away by the crow spirit, no one in the building remembered that Dongdong had ever existed. Everyone's memory became that Xiaohui and Guang had no children, even though many people were very familiar with Dongdong before. This plot was used to propose the concept of "Mandela Effect".

"Golden Night Mansion" also plays a little trick on the scene when it comes to this concept. For example, the poster on the wall in the first shot was "Los Angelas". When everyone no longer remembered Dongdong, the words on the poster changed to "Los Angeles". This comes from a real anecdote. The earliest American city of Los Angeles was written as "Los Angelas", which comes from Latin and means "angels". Later, people changed the word into "Los Angeles" as they wrote. It is also a typical case of the "Mandela Effect".

The application of concepts such as fables, Mandela Effect, Butterfly Effect, and parallel time and space also makes this show seem to have some depth.

As mentioned earlier, this drama is in the form of a unit drama. Every two episodes focus on a group of characters living in Tonight Building. However, it is also because of this format that the drama has a strong sense of fragmentation. Criminal investigation dramas and medical dramas are the most typical unit dramas. They change a group of people and a story every few episodes, such as TVB's "Criminal Investigation Files" and "Wonderful Hands". The participation of the protagonists in these dramas is very high. Very strong, whether it is the police who solve the case or the doctor who treats the disease, they are the ones who lead the development of the story. In "Golden Night Mansion", the protagonist's participation is very weak in each unit. Alex and Xiao Weiming are like bystanders or passers-by in each story, rather than participating in it. Their own story lines and these unit stories It's also parallel, the only implication is that these people all live in this building.

If the audience’s expectation is to follow the two male and female protagonists to explore the origin, entanglement, and development of their stories, then in addition to "Strange Dreams" in episodes 9 and 10 and "Sleepwalking" in episodes 19 and 20 "These two units, you don't need to look at the others.

I personally watched it one episode at a time because I wanted to see how the creator would bring it together. However, after watching it, I felt that the sense of fragmentation was too strong, and there was no sense of enjoyment in one go. So I was somewhat disappointed. But if you watch it with the mentality of watching "urban legends" and "life", this drama is still quite interesting.

End.