Original title: Opening up a new aesthetic realm of criminal investigation drama with hard-core documentary
The TV series "I am Interpol" ended in the audience’s expectation and reluctance to chase the drama. "The golden shield is made of blood", and the passionate old songs have been around for a long time. This hardcore criminal investigation drama reminds people of Plainclothes Policeman, Six Groups of Serious Crimes, Captain Interpol and Action to Break the Ice. While paying tribute to these works, the drama constructs the aesthetic pursuit of criminal investigation TV series with a distinct sense of the times, shock and artistic breakthrough.
The frontal attack is the primary feature of the play. "I am Interpol" begins with the murder of the deputy director of Gaojian, Dashanzi Police Station, Hechang City Public Security Bureau, and the 1.28 mega-murder and robbery in Xishan Mine. The urgent rhythm, uneasy background music and dim composition all make the major and important cases in the play more dangerous and difficult to detect. These cases extremely threaten the lives and property of the state, the collective and the people. The works have a clear idea, which positively highlights the criminal police’s search for the truth, their protection of justice, their responsibility, tenacity, wisdom and their accompanying hardships and even sacrifices when solving cases.
The characters in the play don’t pretend to be profound, don’t mystify, and don’t deliberately exaggerate. Starring Yu Hewei, Fu Dalong, Ding Yongdai and others brought the audience closer with their unpretentious costumes and natural and true performances. A series of characters such as Qin Chuan, Wu Yingde, Cao Zhongshu and Tao Weizhi are vivid and unique. The opponents of Qin Chuan and Hu Bing, Qin Chuan and Wu Yingde, Qin Chuan and Ye Haiping are good-looking and chewy, which is also an important factor for the audience to enter the show and empathize.
In the progress of the plot, the play truly presents the efforts, grievances and sacrifices of the criminal police in the process of investigating and handling cases. The eyes of the grassroots police who are sleepless and monitoring frame by frame suddenly become blind; Hu Bing, an old colleague, was obsessed with "I am a criminal policeman" in his hospital bed because he tracked the driver’s accident. Tao Weizhi, who is extremely persistent and almost obsessed, investigates cases in an almost archaeological way; Fan Shouliang, who failed to solve the case and retired, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease; Qin Chuan, who has not fully recovered after the operation, still can’t let go of the case being detected … … It is this true and strong sense of documentary that makes the mission and dedication of criminal police more grounded, and also allows the audience to immerse themselves in it and inadvertently feel the baptism of the lofty aesthetics of realism.
The creation of industry drama has deepened the presentation of industry and workplace, and this drama is another major feature of writing history for the progress of criminal investigation technology. In "I am Interpol", the story spans a large area and time, including Hechang, Xucheng, Xicheng, Yuncheng, Qingjiang and Donglin … … Qin Chuan and his comrades-in-arms measured the land of the motherland with their footsteps, pursued suspects day and night, and defended justice and the peace of people’s lives. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist Qin Chuan is about 30 years old. At the end, his son Qin Hai Zheng and his daughter who sacrificed their comrades-in-arms have become a new generation of people’s policemen, which describes the growth of a generation of policemen and the inheritance of their parents’ spirit from another angle.
The drama naturally incorporates the development of criminal investigation techniques such as psychological testing, DNA-assisted case detection, and big data locking criminal suspects, which shows the creator’s ambition to write history for the progress of criminal investigation techniques. This is also a strong proof that the creative team of the play has succeeded in deeply exploring the theme field. According to reports, in order to create this drama, the main creative team interviewed nearly 200 criminal investigation experts at all levels and front-line criminal police, with a journey of 20,000 miles, and arranged various interviews for 2 million words. On the basis of "foot strength and eyesight", it was finally transformed into "brain strength and pen strength", and the spiritual implication and aesthetic value of the works were greatly surpassed.
These creative experiences of "I am a criminal policeman" may not seem unusual, but they have reached a new creative height and aesthetic realm by putting them in place, discovering new ideas and trying to push them to the extreme. (Author: Dai Qing, a professor at the School of Drama and Film, Communication University of China)
People’s Daily (20th edition, December 19th, 2024)