The popular costume drama "Menghualu" has been well received, and netizens have not hesitated to give high scores. On Douban, "Menghualu" once reached 8.8 points, becoming the highest-scoring domestic costume drama so far this year. . This is related to the fact that the show is solid and can withstand scrutiny in terms of content structure and character presentation. The popularity of "Meng Hualu" also provides lessons for the development of domestic costume dramas in the future.

"Menghualu" stills

"Menghualu" is adapted from Guan Hanqing's Yuan drama "Zhao Paner Fengyue Saves Fengchen". Guan Hanqing ranks first among the "Four Masters of Yuanqu", and "Save the Wind and Dust" is one of his representative works. "Menghualu" retains the plot of resisting oppression in "Save the Wind and Dust", and adds a large number of characters and plots on this basis. With the Northern Song Dynasty as the background of the era, it covers the growth of women, love between men and women, and secret wars of power and so on. The theme tells the story of three women who went through various difficulties, joined hands in Bianjing, and finally turned Yongan Tower into the largest restaurant in Bianjing.
As a big country that produces ancient costume dramas, China produces excellent ancient themed film and television dramas every year. Even so, "Meng Hualu" still has a certain enlightening significance - based on the classic Yuan Zaju as the adaptation prototype, the creator explores traditional drama resources and implants a contemporary core for ancient historical stories. Today, people are accustomed to the adaptations of classic novels such as Journey to the West and A Dream of Red Mansions, and are also familiar with contemporary creations based on historical stories passed down by word of mouth. a feeling of. In 2010, the film "The Orphan of Zhao" directed by Chen Kaige attracted people's attention, but in general, not much attention has been paid to the film and television perspective of traditional Yuan Zaju. The success of "Menghualu" has revealed to us that there are still many stories in ancient times that can be recreated in modern times waiting for us to discover.
It is conceivable that the creation of film and television dramas based on ancient literary and artistic works itself has an additional layer of guarantee of presentation quality - the detailed presentation of the background of the times and the rich theme writing in the original works can provide a "bright spot" for the current adaptation. ". However, it should be noted that when making contemporary adaptations of traditional works, attention should also be paid to the embodiment of cultural thickness and aesthetic details.

"Dream Records"

Taking "Menghualu" as an example, in the presentation of the story with the Northern Song Dynasty as the background, the play has meticulously crafted in terms of clothing and scene arrangement, so that the design of "fuhuadao" is as close to the character itself as possible. The refined presentation of tea culture in the play is worthy of praise. The Song Dynasty abandoned the decocting method of placing the powdered tea in a tea kettle filled with water in the Tang Dynasty, and switched to the method of ordering tea. The so-called tea ordering method is to put the tea powder in a tea bowl, pour a small amount of boiling water to make a paste, and then pour the boiling water, or directly pour boiling water into the tea bowl, and stir it with a teapot at the same time, and the tea powder floats to form porridge noodles. In "Menghualu", Zhao Paner has repeatedly demonstrated the tea-making skills and tea-ordering skills. It is reported that in order to show the audience more refined tea culture skills, the main creators specially invited the representative inheritors of non-heritage tea hundred operas as guides . In addition, "Menghualu" also pays special attention to creating a traditional aesthetic mood, making full use of scene composition, color change and "blank" to show the aesthetic mood. The meticulous setting of "Fuhua Dao" and the presentation of traditional aesthetic conception make "Meng Hualu" fit the increasingly popular "classical beauty" aesthetic characteristics of costume dramas. No wonder netizens commented that "every frame can be taken as a wallpaper".
With the development of society, the audience's aesthetic needs are constantly improving, their eyes are becoming more and more "critical", and the challenges faced by film and television drama creation are also increasing. This requires practitioners to expand their horizons on the basis of insisting on creating "conscience dramas", draw nutrients from traditional cultural resources, and dig deep into ancient literary works, folk stories, historical legends, etc. The story is adapted and created to inject new power into the development of my country's film and television dramas.
(This article was originally published in the second edition of China Art News on June 13, 2022)