Zhumen's wine and meat stink, and there are frozen bones on the road.

This used to be the miserable situation of the people during the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, and in contemporary society, people can hardly see such a tragic situation. Lan Li is not an innocent and ignorant rich boy, he knows that there are still countless people in Africa who are facing the dilemma of hunger and cold, in the Middle East there are still countless people struggling to survive under the flames of war, even the United States has a strong gap between the rich and the poor, and the scene in the slums is a mess.

However, Lan Li never believed that he would see the pictures in Du Fu's poems with his own eyes.

Two days before the official start of filming for "Detachment", Lan Li saw the / prostitute / woman again, she was dead. Dead at the mouth of a dark alley, two steps away from the garbage can, flies and stray dogs roaming next to the corpses, and wet rats can even be seen scurrying around. However, no one cared.

Lan Li dialed "911" and notified the police to deal with it, and this human tragedy came to an end. What's even more chilling is that this is not an isolated case, even in the bustling city of New York, where this is still happening every day.

In a trance, Lan Li seemed to see the nurse, the nurse who was broken up and too busy to take care of himself, the nurse who was dazed and fragile and had tears in his eyes, the nurse who was exhausted and tortured, and the nurse who was trembling under Henry's severe reprimand. In her, he saw Henry, the deep despair and stiff numbness so familiar.

Henry is weak, and so is the nurse, but the two weaklings are still hurting each other: she ignores her grandfather's request and allows the sick to continue to sink, and he ignores her exhaustion and heaviness, and unleashes all his anger on her. The two weak men poked one wound after another on each other's scarred bodies.

In the body of the nurse, Henry saw not only himself, but also the group of students in the school, Meredith, Sarah, and the students who stubbornly rebelled against life but ended up with bruises.

They are all weaklings of life, or rather, they are all outcasts of God.

In this terrible society, there is no hope, not even the slightest, the cruel reality eats away at their vitality and soul little by little, some people try to resist, some people try to escape, some people try to struggle, some people try to vent, some people try to accept ......

But in the end, everything doesn't matter, because they can't see the exit, even if they accept it with their heads down, but their mouths full of bitterness, stomach pain, and heart sorrow are still tormenting them fiercely, and life will not become easier. No one knows where the end is, and no one knows if they will be able to make it to the end, they can only live like the walking dead, just alive.

Even Henry himself. He was deceiving himself, giving the children a glimmer of hope that they would make it to the finish line, but unwilling to take responsibility, and when the relationship was a little closer, he ran away in embarrassment. Just in such a despicable and shameful way, reminding himself that he is still alive, not a walking dead, at least still alive with a purpose.

But tonight, all the masks were torn apart. He saw his grandfather's weakness, he saw the nurse's pushing, he saw the darkness of society, and the endless night could never go out. The displacement and isolation of his heart dragged his ankles into the abyss little by little, and his emotions collapsed like this, completely and completely.

He hated himself, he hated life, he hated society...... I hate being alive even more. Life is really too long, lacking the courage to die, and lacking the motivation to live, every day of life is like suffering. So is the identity of the teacher, this layer of disguise, still meaningful?

Lan Li's footsteps stopped, he understood, he finally understood.

Despair. This is the core of this play, not sadness, not pain, but despair, despair of grandfather, despair of society, despair of education, despair of oneself. That despair erupted from the inside out, releasing the pain that had been suppressed in the depths of his heart for a long time, and the collapse cry was not only because of sadness, but because even the last trace of illusion that maintained the illusion of normalcy in life was shattered, and the cruel reality invaded, and the overwhelming despair completely disintegrated his emotions.

Because of my grandfather, because of my nurse, because of my students, because of myself, because of my mother, because of society, because of life.

It was at this moment of desperation that Henry saw the scene on the bus: a young prostitute was serving a drunken drunkard, without any cover, and it was presented to him like an Italian comedy of absurdity, cruel and ironic, cold and playful, showing the ruin and darkness of society in front of Henry.

The darkness of despair struck Henry's soul quickly, fiercely, accurately, and violently, and all sorrow ceased abruptly, all tears abruptly stopped, and the broken soul became dying, barely breathing. Then he regained his composure, numb, stiff, and unfocused, and quietly stared at what was before him. Deadly despair, even the pain has begun to fail.

Throughout the context of the play, Henry has maintained a relatively positive attitude until this night, once again devoting himself to the teaching work of the new school, meeting Sarah and Meredith, and he once again tries to guide the students in dire straits with education within the scope of his ability.

But this time the despair was like a heavy fist, waking him up in one fell swoop. This made him begin to re-examine his own uselessness, and he realized that he was already broken, and even he could not redeem himself, so how could he redeem others?

In the scenes after that, it can be seen that Henry has always maintained a distance from Meredith, and even in the face of Meredith's desperate cry for help, he is also curled up in his shell like a turtle; The government's rescue agency picked up Erica.

It was a turning point, but not because Henry met Erica. It's because Henry really tastes despair, despair that is all lost. The kind of despair that sees no possibility in the whole dark society.

From a purely performance point of view, there will be no world of difference in the effect of presentation, because the context of the performance is still the same, but from the origin of the performance, it is very different.

Lan Li's performance just now was based on the outburst of emotion, from the weakness and embarrassment of his grandfather, from the guilt and sadness after scolding the nurse, and from the darkness and coldness of his mother in his memory, the loneliness and loneliness of homelessness led to a collapse cry. This is similar to the performance of Adrien Brody in the previous life, but it is also the performance that Lan Li is trying to change.

The right performance should be based on the torture of despair.

He realized his self-deception, about his grandfather, about his mother, about the caregivers, about the school, and about society. That despair was like a heavy fist, smashing all the masks and protections fiercely, revealing the most vulnerable and true side of himself, and the emotions were too repressed and fierce to be able to help himself.

All emotions come from despair, the embarrassment and suffocation trapped in social reality, the helplessness and heaviness that are pressed in the reality of life, which detonates all emotions.

At the end of despair, he saw Erica. The self that used to be, the self who was tortured by society, the self who walked alone in the dark life, the self who lost confidence in life because of despair...... This is not only to maintain the emotional connection between Erica and Henry, but also to connect the timing of Erica's appearance with the overall core of the script, reflecting the dilemma of education and the disaster of society.

In other words, this scene is a scene that makes the emotional transfer and sublimation of ideas coherent throughout the script, including after this, Henry's indifference and rejection of Erica, even cruelty, can be found clues, making the core of the story complete and deep.

From the professional standpoint of the academic school, the context of performance is different.

Prior to this, Lan Li's performance was "sadness - more sadness - despair - numbness", such a performance has enough layers, the emotions are clear and in place, but it lacks a clear main line, and it is impossible to further deepen the theme.

After sorting out his thoughts, Lan Li's performance should be "despair and self-blame - pain and sobriety - numbness and torment", and after following this main line, it can be further developed into "self-protective alienation and indifference, sadness or irrepressibly begin to slowly leak", to put it simply, on the bus, emotions have undergone earth-shaking changes, and leaving the bus, the temperament and state of the whole person have also changed.

The main line of the whole performance complements the script, and conforms to the director's ideas, further excavates the depth of the core of the theme, and truly makes the film complete, which is what Lan Li has been striving for, different from the previous Adrian's version, interpreting Tony's intentions, and interpreting the story with characters according to Lan Li's own ideas.

This is the last piece of the puzzle!