＂Night meets life＂： How can humans who walk away from the sun save themselves？
The sunshine of all things on the earth has suddenly become the source of destruction. How can human beings save themselves?
Netflix’s latest Belgian sci-fi drama "Into The Night" tells the audience a different answer from that of The Wandering Earth.
The creation of "The Night of Life" was inspired by the electronic novel "The Old Axolotl" launched by Polish writer Jacek Dukaj)2015 (temporarily translated as "the old salamander"), and Duka also personally participated in the script adaptation of TV series.
The first page of the electronic novel "The Old Axolotl", readers can choose Polish and English versions to read, and Duka, the author of the novel, also participated in the illustration design.
As a famous contemporary science fiction writer in Europe, Duca has been insisting that his works will not be published in paper for years, and The Old Axolotl is no exception. In the novel, the sun bursts with amazing gamma rays, and only a few earthlings have time to upload their brain waves to a video game server called "InSoul3". From this, the novel quickly entered a post-apocalyptic era of Cyberpunk’s narration, AI (artificial intelligence) and human ontological consciousness, plus all robots.
Different from the original work, The Night of Life can be regarded as a prequel to The Old Axolotl, that is, the story of those survivors before uploading their consciousness to the "InSoul3" server-a plane originally flying from Brussels to Moscow in the middle of the night was suddenly hijacked and flew all the way west to avoid the rising of the sun and find a way to survive.
Poster of "Night at Night"
Such a plot inevitably reminds people of the American drama Lost more than ten years ago, but the flight changed from an air crash to an escape from natural disasters. Every passenger on the plane has an unknown story. Except for the first episode, the beginning of each episode constantly introduces a passenger’s past life experience through flashbacks.
A total of 6 episodes, each of which lasts about 40 minutes, can be regarded as a science fiction movie with a duration of about three hours. Although there are many loopholes and design flaws in this drama, the advantage is that the plot rhythm is bright, and it is easy for viewers to spend half a day "brushing" this short drama.
Science fiction works need a tacit understanding between the creator and the audience, that is, the creator constructs a set of world views that can be justified, and the audience must truly believe in the plot setting at the moment they enter the story. For example: people can’t make a sound, otherwise they will be attacked by alien creatures; People can’t send signals to outer space, or they will attract aliens. The setting of "Night at a Time" is that people can only live in the eternal night, otherwise they will be killed by the sun.
Stills of "Night at Night"
For the audience in China, "A Night in Life" is just a combination of two films-The Wandering Earth+The Island.
In The Wandering Earth, scientists found that the sun is rapidly aging and expanding, and the whole solar system, including the earth, will be swallowed up by the sun in a short time. In order to save themselves, human beings put forward a bold plan called "Wandering the Earth". In "The Night Meets Life", the time window given by the creator to human beings to survive is even shorter, and the sun has already started a gamma-ray burst.
The so-called gamma-ray burst, the most violent explosion in the universe, is theoretically caused by the collapse and explosion of a huge star when the fuel runs out or the merger of two adjacent dense stars (black holes or neutron stars). Gamma ray bursts as short as one thousandth of a second and as long as several hours will release huge energy in a short time. If compared with the sun, the energy it releases in a few minutes is equivalent to the sum of trillions of years of sunlight, and the energy of a single photon it emits is usually hundreds of thousands of times that of typical sunlight. Physicists have found through calculation that powerful gamma-ray bursts can kill a certain range of cosmic life.
But just like the rapid aging of the sun in The Wandering Earth, gamma-ray bursts only occur in the last years of a star. In other words, it will take at least four or five billion years for the settings in the above-mentioned film and television dramas to happen.
But as a viewer, you must accept this assumption, otherwise, if you don’t believe in this setting at all, why waste your hours? "Night at a time" is a layer upon layer overweight in the setting of human survival limit, constantly telling the audience the cruel "status quo" through characters’ lines-people under the bunker have also been killed, scientists who speculate that the sun has changed have also died, gamma rays have spoiled all foods, and gamma rays have changed the structure of carbon atoms in aviation fuel …
Stills of "Night at Night"
Of course, since it is "every life", it will always give people a little hope of life. The characters in the play soon discovered the escape plan in NATO headquarters-a base under the dam of Bulgaria reservoir, which became the hope of human survivors. Here, the audience needs to ignore the fact that gamma ray bursts will make the ocean boil in less than 2 seconds; In 10 seconds, the ocean will completely evaporate; In 1 minute and 10 seconds, the earth’s surface will be in a state of melting.
For various understandable reasons, the human nature of The Island, a film directed by Bo Huang, is still holy. However, although the role of "Virgin Mary" also exists in "Night in Life", its background color is even darker. Naturally, the darkness of human nature in the play still does not exceed the works such as Future Water World and Crazy Max 4, but it also conveys the deep distrust of the creators for human beings in the eschatological environment.
Stills of "Night at Night"
The setting of the flight from Brussels in "Night in Life" is of unique symbolic significance, because Brussels, the capital of Belgium, can now be called "the capital of Europe". It is the headquarters of the European Union and NATO, with not only people from all over Europe, but also immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. Therefore, this Belgian drama series is full of "regional jokes", such as mocking Poland’s performance in the two world wars, questioning Turkey’s European attributes, and mistrust between "old Europe" and "new Europe".
In the author’s opinion, the satire on the rules of procedure of the European Union in The Night is the most pungent part of the play. The open, transparent and common decision-making mechanism of the European Union has been advocated by the characters in the play. However, every time they flaunt the banner of democracy, they all expose their own human defects. The more you show an open and inclusive attitude, the more you expose your own narrowness and prejudice.
Stills of "Night at Night"
Perhaps due to the limitation of space, each of the characters in "The Night Happens" is like a "tool man". Their roles are like NPC (non-player role) in video games, and their role is only to promote the development of the plot. Some viewers may pity the "whistleblower" Italian officer. Assuming that he didn’t hijack the plane at first, the passengers on this plane would have died long ago, but his function lies in. The Arab smuggler, the Russian grandfather and the three British soldiers who joined later just created some conflict points for the plot. However, some characters will still leave a deep impression on the audience. For example, the Russian mother named Zara sold a kidney for 15,000 euros to treat her child, and the Turkish businessman named Ayaz can handle black and white, much like the role played by Tong-Seok Ma in A Trip to Busan. As for Jakub, the polish mechanic who brushes the sense of existence hard, as long as he knows that the original author is Polish, his blunt sense of existence can be understood.
As the author said earlier, one of the advantages of "A Night in Life" lies in its fast pace, never dragging its feet in narration, and its ability to constantly set suspense in a limited time. Basically, in the past few decades, all kinds of air crashes in film and television dramas have been shown in this drama, such as hijacking, mixing with "illegal immigrants", flight instrument failure, communication equipment failure, broken window glass and so on. Netflix has not yet announced whether the show will have a second season. But judging from the end of episode 6 of the first season, the master has undoubtedly dug a "big pit". At present, it is impossible to judge whether the play will follow the plot in the novel or become a completely different story. But please also ask the audience who haven’t read the novel to "grasp the handrail", because maybe the screenwriter will start a roller coaster with a brain hole.
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