Starring in "Buried Alive" is not an easy task, and starring in "Gravity", the difficulty will be even more difficult.

Alfonso Cuarón's script executes a minimalist strategy throughout, cutting down almost all the branches of the actors, leaving only the key information, and then leaving all the gaps to the actors to fill in slowly.

In contrast, although "buried alive" is trapped in a small wooden box, in fact, there are many support points for performance, and the emotional explosiveness and emotional turning points are clear at a glance;

What does this mean?

This means that the actor must first do his homework in advance, and use methodological acting skills to truly construct the mental journey of the entire character, not only lying in the coffin and feeling the pain of confinement as he did at the beginning, but also conceiving the background, history and story of the character, which is almost equivalent to writing a biography.

Then, when you put into the performance, you must follow the director's conception and framework, guide with expressive acting skills, and dedicate a more accurate, more delicate, and more profound performance, which complements the storyline and theme core, and then fully integrates the characters into the story, telling the entire universe, the whole nature, and the whole life with a one-man show, so that the audience can forget the characters themselves.

To really play a role, but you need to make the character disappear. Such contradictory statements are the best interpretation of "gravity".

First the method acting, then the expressive acting, and finally the return to the method acting, which can be seen as the theoretical sequence in the "gravity" performance process. Of course, in the actual performance process, it is naturally impossible to distinguish in such detail, but it is a seamless one, but before entering the performance, it is a crucial preparation stage.

For Lan Li, this is not only a rigorous challenge, but also an excellent opportunity to polish his acting skills again. Especially after just experiencing the stage performance of "Les Miserables", it is definitely better to put in the performance of such a character now.

Otherwise, Lan Li would not have taken a week's break after the stage performance, and then came to the UK non-stop, ready to meet the challenge.

In the previous life, Sandra Bullock gave the best performance of her career, even surpassing her post-title "Weakness", which truly impressed, but in this life, Lan Li had to find a different way to interpret a different role from a male perspective.

In the male version of Ryan Stone's character, it is certain that after the space disaster, the first and third phases are the same as the female version. The first stage is the survival instinct and dying struggle, and the third stage is to wake up and regain strength.

The real difference should come in the second stage, freeing from the shackles of gender labels and further broadening the theme of the whole film.

Lan Li once thought about it, borrowing from the story setting of Sandra in the previous life, to set up a family for Ryan, such as a divorced wife, a seriously ill daughter, and even a daughter who died in an accident, and even an elderly parent, and so on, their estrangement and departure gradually cut off all the bonds of Ryan, and in despair, Ryan began to give up trying to survive.

But after thinking about it repeatedly, Lan Li vetoed such a plan.

Not because of the borrowing of other people's settings, but because of the special, simple and crude copying and pasting of the work "Gravity" does not work. The female perspective that applies to Sandra's version, put it on top of the male perspective, and the whole theme suddenly begins to fall back.

If according to Lan Li's original conception, then what reawakens Ryan's vitality is responsibility and fetters, from his wife, from his parents, and from his children. This is possible, but philosophically speaking, it does not reach the height of life and the universe, but falls behind.

The reason why Sandra's version of Ryan was able to sublimate the theme is that it uses the maternal characteristics of women, establishes the foundation of the bond between mother and daughter, and after the moment of life and death, gives up the obsession of bonding, no longer immersed in the sadness and numbness caused by the death of her daughter, returns to the original meaning of life, rejuvenates herself, and accepts the call from gravity.

So, cheer up and open up a path back.

However, the version of Lan Li copied and pasted, but it turned responsibility into obsession in the opposite direction, using family and family as concern and motivation to awaken the hope of survival, which is instead inferior and simple and rude.

Furthermore, simply applying Sandra's version of the story to Lan Li, but after the characteristics of women who conceive life are missing in men, it magnifies the difference in life experience caused by "gender differences", and the mystery of interpretation becomes thin and superficial.

Previously, when Lan Li and Alfonso were discussing the character conception of the entire film project, they mentioned the work "Tree of Life", and conceived the transformation of the male version of Ryan Stone, after missing the female qualities, and then deeply abandoning the male qualities, blurring the mystery of gender differences, and purely returning to the origin of life-

The Big Bang moment.

In the midst of the chaos, an explosion occurred, a massive slash broke new ground, and signs of life were born.

In other words, the male version of Ryan should symbolize the source of life, pure and primitive survival power. So, Lan Li re-conceived and conceived a more pure power:

Originating from the family, it endows a person with social attributes, becomes the support and motivation of this person, encourages the person to begin to pursue himself, and then further develops into the dream process of pursuing the self and the self, and in the process of chasing, gradually begins to cut off social ties, becomes a pure life body, and gives up all social attributes.

But at the moment of life and death, it returned to the process of reshaping the entire life and promoting the advanced life form.

As a child, Ryan Stone was a genius and a role model, he was good at everything from studying to sports, from politeness to socializing, and even managing his own life. With a happy and warm family, the love and support of his parents, and the adoration and admiration of his younger brother, they have always been Ryan's biggest supporters, and they have supported Ryan to bravely pursue his dreams.

For Ryan, he yearns for the space universe and the mystery of the unknown, so he hopes to become a scientific researcher, leave the earth, study the entire huge galaxy in the universe, and chase the origin of mankind. With the support of his family, he began to selflessly rush towards his goal and achieve his dream.

Ryan became an astronaut.

However, as he continued to run, Ryan gradually became estranged from his family.

On the one hand, because flying into the universe is not an easy task, and even if he tries his best, it may not be possible, he is completely immersed in his dreams, and he forgets that he even forgets his own existence, and even ignores everyone else.

On the other hand, because he's a genius, he sees the world in a very different way, like the otaku freaks in The Big Bang Theory. The family simply couldn't keep up with him, they didn't understand his world, and he didn't understand theirs.

And just like that, they drifted away. Those expectations and care slowly became pressure, and fell heavily on Ryan's shoulders, so he began to learn to be independent and strong.

For ordinary men, society does not allow them to be fragile and sad, and needs them to be strong and carry all the weight, but for Ryan, it is different, the attributes of gender are ranked second, and it is more from the difference in thinking between geniuses and ordinary people, after stripping off gender, everything is arranged and combined in a numerical, logical, and regular way.

In the eyes of Sheldon Cooper in "The Big Bang Theory", gender is a social attribute, a social attribute that he does not have.

As a result, Ryan became more and more apathetic, and his connection with his family became weaker and weaker. At the time of the space accident, he had not been in contact with his family for many years, and he was alone, and his social attributes gradually disappeared from him.

After the explosion, after the first stage of survival, the fear of death and loneliness in the limit of life ruthlessly crushed all armor and defenses, which made Ryan re-examine his self and self, and accumulated more than twenty or even thirty years - the specific age setting needs to be further discussed with Alfonso - social attributes reappeared, and negative emotions such as fear, worry, and despair began to erupt, so Ryan decided to give up.

Placed in the environment of the space universe, like a child/palace, and like a mess of chaos at the beginning of the universe, Ryan returned to the most primitive state, the state at the beginning of the birth of life.

Then, the whole long life is experienced again, like being reborn, but more like the process of the Big Bang.

In Lan Li's conception, the whole process of returning to himself and self awakened the memories of his family, and even more awakened the dreams and motivation of his family's support, which gave Ryan the opportunity to re-examine himself:

His dream is not to become an astronaut, but to study the universe, to study life, to study the unknown after becoming an astronaut. But now, I have finally become an astronaut, but I have lost the excitement of the beginning, and at the same time, I have lost the joy after success, and it seems that everything is taken for granted.

Such an unchanging layer of days, after becoming regular, becomes numb. Habits are so terrible.

Now, after an accident broke the inertia, I retraced my life and found my purpose again.

However, the problem is that "looking back on life", which cannot be done in the movie, because the time and length of the film are limited, and all the above thinking content will not appear in the movie, or even cannot appear, but only Lan Li's self-conception. So, what entry point should he choose to bring such a huge and magnificent idea into the movie?