Note: This article contains spoilers

Before the official release, the audience's expectations for "Space Exploration Editorial Department" were very high. As early as the Pingyao Film Festival in 2021, it became a blockbuster and won blockbuster awards one after another. Although Kong Dashan is a new director, his short film "The Future of the Legal System" became popular on the Internet many years ago, and his deconstructive and funny style is impressive. And as his first feature film, he was able to get the full support of Guo Fan and others, and won the investment of many leading production companies in the industry (although the film is a small cost and low investment), which also shows that the film is not simple.

"Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department" poster

After actually seeing the true face of the movie, there will not be a gap of "the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment", but it is indeed somewhat different from the expectation. Therefore, it is necessary to give the audience a friendly reminder: In a sense, the style of "Universe Exploration Editorial Department" is the same as Kong Dashan's self-ridiculous "literary and artistic films are boring" and "addicted to self-expression" in his previous "Legal Future Times". Maybe some announcements will make the audience think that this is a commercial soft sci-fi movie, but in fact it has a lot of literary and artistic expression, and the director is full of personal style. Especially the pseudo-documentary shaky hand-held photography and intensive jump-cut editing throughout the movie will inevitably make some viewers feel "dizzy", so no matter the size of the theater, seats can be selected as far back as possible.

The protagonist of the film is Tang Zhijun (played by Yang Haoyu), the editor-in-chief of a science fiction magazine called "Cosmic Exploration" that was on the verge of bankruptcy and later closed down. He has been obsessed with extraterrestrial civilizations for decades and believes that there are aliens. The existence of the belief that humans can receive messages from unknown civilizations.

Today's Tang Zhijun looks dejected and downcast. He still lives in a decaying residential building, his wife and daughter have left him long ago, his daughter died of depression, and it is difficult for him to maintain the daily expenses of the magazine due to his cash-strapped condition... In the eyes of everyone , he may be a "loser" with little authority and not much respect.

Tang Zhijun (played by Yang Haoyu)

But Tang Zhijun's obsession with extraterrestrial civilizations is consistent, and even more obsessed. Others just misunderstood him as "Min Ke" and did not ridicule him. Yang Haoyu's performance in the film is very outstanding. The Tang Zhijun he plays has a firm belief in extraterrestrial civilizations, which allows him to talk about some "nonsense" theories in the eyes of outsiders in a serious and poetic way. The snowflake point is the afterglow of the birth of the universe. The TV is broken because the information of the external civilization is overloaded. It is not the TV that has a problem, but the universe has a problem, and so on.

serious as if it were real

Tang Zhijun's eyes are so firm, his voice is sincere and calm, and every time he encounters the eldest sister of the editorial department of the magazine, the sober realist Qin Cairong (played by Ai Liya), he is always gentlemanly and silent...In short, he seems to be It's pedantic and ridiculous but has a clear and pure sincerity and belief. Crazy words are a bit romantic. This made the audience lose the moral advantage of mocking him, and they couldn't bear to be too harsh on him.

Sister Qin "the truth"

Tang Zhijun accidentally discovered a certain "secret" leaked by the universe, so he, Qin Cairong, the eldest sister of the editorial department, and Na Risu (played by Jiang Qiming), an alien research enthusiast, went all the way to the southwest, and gathered netizens who were also lovers of alien civilization. Xiaoxiao (played by Sheng Chenchen) also accidentally met the mysterious boy Sun Yitong (played by Wang Yitong) in the southwest. Just like the English name of the movie "Journey to the West", they are like the master-student combination in "Journey to the West", embarking on an unknown journey to find aliens, and it is uncertain what kind of hardships they will encounter.

This journey is in the form of a road movie, and it is connected with all kinds of weird and funny experiences that seem to be extremely absurd but also have a bit of metaphysics. This constitutes the main source of laughter in this movie. "What kind of cosmic joke" is appropriate to describe this journey.

a bunch of weird people

However, unlike the formulaic and mature jokes of genre films, the jokes of "Universe Exploration Editorial Department" are very picky. It has a little "neurotic" (not a derogatory term) atmosphere, non-linear, weird, unimaginable, Playing cards not according to routine, cold humor... If you are an audience with the same frequency as the movie, you will fall in love with this strangeness, otherwise you may find it inexplicable.

Layers upon layers of nonsense are piled up, and the serious emotional core of the movie is only revealed in the last section. The reason why Tang Zhijun is so obsessed with the mysteries of the universe is not only his decades-long interest, but also because the last text message sent to him by his daughter before committing suicide trapped him—"The meaning of our human existence in the universe what exactly is it". Tang Zhijun wanted to find an alien to ask his daughter why.

In other words, Tang Zhijun was oppressed by the deep pain of losing his daughter. He couldn't get rid of it. He could only verbally pretend to say "I don't understand and don't forgive", but he moved to the search for alien civilizations through actions. His daughter's questions have always held him back. , which is his fundamental motivation for solving. Behind his paranoia, madness, and unreasonableness hides a trembling, soft, fragile, and vast and affectionate heart.

And what is the meaning of human beings living in the universe? Although it is as distant and ethereal, as obscure and ambiguous as poetry, it is not without ultimate direction, that is, "we love each other and multiply, this is the meaning of existence, we are the puzzle itself and the answer". In other words, while we are chasing the distant place, the people around us are also our distant place, and also the "universe" that we are worth exploring and caring for.

When watching "Universe Exploration Editorial Department", many viewers thought of the famous line in the movie "Big Buddha Plus", "People can take a spaceship to the moon, but they will never be able to explore the inner universe." However, rather than saying that the inner universe is unexplorable, the "Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department" emphasizes that the inner universe is as important as the distant outer space universe, and their exploration is as important.

Perhaps there are too many people who bend down to pick up sixpence in real life. In many cases, people are willing to give extremely high praise to those who wholeheartedly pursue the moon and abandon reality. It’s just that people often overlook that behind Strickland’s unrestrained freedom in The Moon and Sixpence, there are people who are silently bearing the price, just like Tang Zhijun’s persistent exploration of the distant universe, but he also lost his family and lost his life. daughter.

Tang Zhijun finally returned to the crowd with a complete understanding, and the unreadable poem he wrote to his daughter could not express how much love and regret he had. At this time, I think of Lermontov's "Sail", "What does it look for, in a distant foreign land? What does it leave behind, in its own hometown?"

Go explore the distant unknown universe, if there is peace in the storm; but please remember to cherish the "universe" around you, their weight and significance are no lighter than the entire universe.