2
1
Enchanting and mentally stimulating artwork, great in every aspect
The first drama I've watched (and rewatched) from the first to the last second, intro and outro included. Excellent direction, pacing and balance between suspence and distension, care for details, lights, settings, camera frames...
The plot is apparently simple: after discovering his ex is missing, an underdog (blogger with passion for investigations nicknamed Da Hui Hui) starts to suspect she was killed by a renowned ceramic artist and a rising young prof (Zeng Jie) with "tending to perfection" as his Leitmotiv. DHH befriends a policeman (Li De) who believes "only in evidence" and initially doubts his "logic behind truth" (which is also the name of DHH's blog-channel) but is intrigued by his sense for details and deduction methods based on clues, assumptions, leads and circumstantial reasoning. Their explicative dialogues are intermittently inserted in action scenes regarding mainly the life and the personality of the artist DHH intends to "debunk" and DHH's flashbacks regarding his ex. Gradually, DHH discovers that behind the well-cured image of a sophisticated artist "tending to perfection", self-confident and socially respectable person, ZJ is an insecure person, womanizer, social climber and money-grabber in an unhappy marriage with a rich woman who helps him to maintain the respectable image in public, but belittles him in private, triggering his terror of poverty and aggressivity. The life of this couple (and in particular the life of ZJ) is meticulously scrutinized and displayed through numerous flashbacks, containing incredible findings, twists and clues, steadily complicating the story, like drops of rain gradually enlarging the crater and flowing further on.
Fluid elements are omnipresent and aesthetically excellently employed: the rain scenes, the ocean light effects in DHH living room/studio, close shots of intoxicating liquids being poured in glasses... conveying the sense of slippery, of danger, of a vague dream and making us doubt of what we see. To pay his tuition, ZJ painted countless copies of Monet's "Sunrise, impression" - ofc. the choice of this painting wasn't casual: its unique haziness inhences the sensation that the reality we see is just a blury vision of what impressed us the most.
All scenes are perfectly lighted and staged, cured in details, often set as theatrical stages with all actors performing great. But there's ONE...
UNFORGETTABLE scene: ZJ's monologue, brilliantly delivered by Wang Duo, in the shed where he painted Monet's reproductions. Young and poor ZJ gets drunk for the first time. He has just won his first important award and heard that his hard-working father was celebrating it with his colleagues in a distant place where he worked. He buys a bottle of cheapest booze, returns to the shed, gets stoned seeing the sea from the painting pouring down and talking to himself, disjointly commenting who knows what (the painting, his poverty, his parents' unreasonable ambition?), creating the following couplets: "Harmony blending light with dust/ Dust blinding my vision /Vision blurred by arrogance". That's the moment in which we realize ZJ is a true artist, he is not just posing as one. Vulnerable, desperate and drunkly aware that recognition seeking will be his curse. A rare moment in which he is truly himself, not pretending. Smth truly memorable, a must watch scene.
The choice of music is not extensive but is good, in particular the melanchonic song in English.
Ofc., there were certain "blemish flaws" even in such a "tending to perfection" drama. The story covered a good part of ZJ's life but left certain "tiny holes" (why his parents were so ambitious, expecting from him to sacrifice everything and everybody, even them, for success? his inspirations and creativity remained blurred, as well as his relation with the older rich lady in a moment of his crucial characterial transformation...). The ending report of trial verdicts was totally unnecessary. Besides, one in particular, containing a HUGE legal error, got on my nerves. Hand-made reproductions of famous paintings ARE NOT ILLEGAL as long as the original work is in the public domain (and all Impressionists' works are sufficiently old to be in public domain), and can be legally copied, even for sale (ofc. as copies not as originals, selling them as originals would be a fraud). So, the sentence inflicted to the painting village was not only unnecessary but silly, laughable! Whoever added those sentences misinforming about the legality of this line of work should be fired if not sent to serve exactly the same punishment.
The plot is apparently simple: after discovering his ex is missing, an underdog (blogger with passion for investigations nicknamed Da Hui Hui) starts to suspect she was killed by a renowned ceramic artist and a rising young prof (Zeng Jie) with "tending to perfection" as his Leitmotiv. DHH befriends a policeman (Li De) who believes "only in evidence" and initially doubts his "logic behind truth" (which is also the name of DHH's blog-channel) but is intrigued by his sense for details and deduction methods based on clues, assumptions, leads and circumstantial reasoning. Their explicative dialogues are intermittently inserted in action scenes regarding mainly the life and the personality of the artist DHH intends to "debunk" and DHH's flashbacks regarding his ex. Gradually, DHH discovers that behind the well-cured image of a sophisticated artist "tending to perfection", self-confident and socially respectable person, ZJ is an insecure person, womanizer, social climber and money-grabber in an unhappy marriage with a rich woman who helps him to maintain the respectable image in public, but belittles him in private, triggering his terror of poverty and aggressivity. The life of this couple (and in particular the life of ZJ) is meticulously scrutinized and displayed through numerous flashbacks, containing incredible findings, twists and clues, steadily complicating the story, like drops of rain gradually enlarging the crater and flowing further on.
Fluid elements are omnipresent and aesthetically excellently employed: the rain scenes, the ocean light effects in DHH living room/studio, close shots of intoxicating liquids being poured in glasses... conveying the sense of slippery, of danger, of a vague dream and making us doubt of what we see. To pay his tuition, ZJ painted countless copies of Monet's "Sunrise, impression" - ofc. the choice of this painting wasn't casual: its unique haziness inhences the sensation that the reality we see is just a blury vision of what impressed us the most.
All scenes are perfectly lighted and staged, cured in details, often set as theatrical stages with all actors performing great. But there's ONE...
UNFORGETTABLE scene: ZJ's monologue, brilliantly delivered by Wang Duo, in the shed where he painted Monet's reproductions. Young and poor ZJ gets drunk for the first time. He has just won his first important award and heard that his hard-working father was celebrating it with his colleagues in a distant place where he worked. He buys a bottle of cheapest booze, returns to the shed, gets stoned seeing the sea from the painting pouring down and talking to himself, disjointly commenting who knows what (the painting, his poverty, his parents' unreasonable ambition?), creating the following couplets: "Harmony blending light with dust/ Dust blinding my vision /Vision blurred by arrogance". That's the moment in which we realize ZJ is a true artist, he is not just posing as one. Vulnerable, desperate and drunkly aware that recognition seeking will be his curse. A rare moment in which he is truly himself, not pretending. Smth truly memorable, a must watch scene.
The choice of music is not extensive but is good, in particular the melanchonic song in English.
Ofc., there were certain "blemish flaws" even in such a "tending to perfection" drama. The story covered a good part of ZJ's life but left certain "tiny holes" (why his parents were so ambitious, expecting from him to sacrifice everything and everybody, even them, for success? his inspirations and creativity remained blurred, as well as his relation with the older rich lady in a moment of his crucial characterial transformation...). The ending report of trial verdicts was totally unnecessary. Besides, one in particular, containing a HUGE legal error, got on my nerves. Hand-made reproductions of famous paintings ARE NOT ILLEGAL as long as the original work is in the public domain (and all Impressionists' works are sufficiently old to be in public domain), and can be legally copied, even for sale (ofc. as copies not as originals, selling them as originals would be a fraud). So, the sentence inflicted to the painting village was not only unnecessary but silly, laughable! Whoever added those sentences misinforming about the legality of this line of work should be fired if not sent to serve exactly the same punishment.
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