Man chang de ji jie

An extraordinary production.

If it was a mainstream British series, this would win a shedful of BAFTAs.

If American, it would be up for Emmy's galore.

If Scandanavian, well, it would win pretty much everything they award in Scandanavian if they have awards.

The Oscars obviously are for movies and this is tv series but if they awarded Oscars for tv then best actor co-winners go to the pair that played Mr. Wang and Captain Ma and that's guaranteed. The actor playing Ma's performance in the last 30 minutes or so in the final episode worthy of an award just for that aspect (not saying anything more on that as it would spoil the reveal).

I don't know if they do awards in China but I expect it swept the awards there if there are any.

There's no doubt it can be confusing at times. There are three time lines to follow. The last one is 2016 when three of the major characters from the earlier times are still involved and following up something that happened in 1998 and how it relates to an incident unfolding in 2016. The first time line is 1997 in which we see the lead up to the critical events of 1998 and characters are introduced before their lives fall apart. Then we have 1998 when the key events happen. Jumping back and forth between 1997 and 1998 can be especially confusing as obviously the characters look the same; by 2016, they have aged so you know when you are seeing the modern timeline.

Towards the end of the series, time line 1997 has progressed in leaps and bounds over the many weeks and months and eventually catches up to 1998 when everything comes together and you discover what it was all about as you watched 1998 unfold in the earlier episodes. It all starts to become clear as you put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Finally in the later episodes, what is going on in 2016 also starts to make sense as our trio of older men discover more about the earlier events and more is revealed.

Again, it all eventually starts to tie together.

There is much jumping back and forth between the time lines from episode to episode so that keeps the brain active trying to keep up and remember what happened the last time you saw what was going on in that year. That can be an issue. There are even episodes when a timeline is not shown at all and only picked up in the following episode so you immediately are trying to remember what happened last time you were there in the story.

This is not a series where you can watch one episode and then set it aside and pick it up a week later. You really need to concentrate and remember episode to episode what is going on. I'd suggest 12 consecutive evenings of viewing while setting the rest of your regular programming aside for the duration. Even better, two episodes in one evening as some of the episodes are well under an hour.

One negative was that in the version we watched the English subtitles sometimes didn't stay on the screen long enough. You could get 3/4 of the way through what was on screen and then they moved on to the next sentence so you miss potentially important words. Not always, but annoying when it happened. This was especially true in the first episode (or two) but seemed to improve as the series went on. Didn't help that the Chinese speakers were rapid fire when emotions ran high so the subtitles probably were struggling to keep up. Not the fault of the series ; no doubt it would have been better to speak Chinese to follow everything properly.

There are numerous loose plot threads everywhere as you watch the series (and that's the point) and you do wonder how it all will be tied back up by the end but, amazingly, after finishing it last night and thinking about it this morning, I can honestly say it all warpped up perfectly as far as we could tell. There weren't any of those , "hang on! What about ... That doesn't make sense" moments that are so common these days in so many series.

Would a Western remake of this series work? I wonder. Much of this is about China and the China of the 1990s when the economy was undergoing such rapid change. The coal mines of the UK as they shut down might be one setting if a British remake. The closure of steel mills in the USA possibly? Just throwing out ideas.

Anyway, watch this series.

Magnificent.

This TV show triggered self-compassion for my own midlife crisis.

Yes, you may not encounter the sad life in this series, but you will definitely get older. Even the most powerful people will get old, and when that time comes, how to live decently?

It does suck to have your wife and children die abnormally and your best friend die in a car accident like Wang Xiang in this title, but it's even worse to face your own old age. The good thing is that the screenwriter gives a more positive and optimistic attitude, which seems to encourage us viewers not to be afraid of getting old. But specifically for each individual, it may not always be that easy.

Frankly, I've started to have to face some of the signs of aging, my mind gets older sometimes, and trying to act young seems to make me cringe because appearances can't hide it.

Let's hope I get the same optimistic ending, like the ending line: look forward, don't look back!

Snapping my fingers once in a while, shattering the distance between the distant past and reality.

Finally a Chinese drama that is not being overated by its patriotism or some celebrity huge fan base .Scene will beautiful shot and change to bring u into it. Plot was twist naturally according to character personality and environment. Bgm was well select to bring yr emotion in for every Scene.

Every cast performance was suberb, most of the lines u can feel is not from script. The lines are grounded and natural excute by actor life experience. Nice story telling that give u the unexpected turn that shock u. Many golden moment that stuck in your mind even u finished watching it. Kudos to the makeup artist natural separate 20years difference to the same actor. Director sincerely want to bring the audience to his world and didn't play by market needs,Thanks to everyone and director seriously contribute their 101% in this show.

... about ordinary lives of ordinary people, which, due to its amazing details and filmography explains a lot, not only about China, but about the ex-USSR and the Eastern Europe.

This is the first humane look, without the hand-wringing so common among the Eastern European "independent" film-makers, at what and how the transformation of the 90ies really happened and what it meant (not much, either good or bad) for the ordinary people.

Overall, this is an excellent multi-decade multi-character character study, which, I am sure will be included in movie schools and anthropology curriculas for decades to come.

10/10.

It is not only the suspense story itself, but also the beautiful work that presents the truth of life with a mixture of joy and sorrow through the description of life and people. The suspense is part of the story, and the core is life and destiny.

At the first few episodes, it starts out a bit slow. I also confuse by the different time narratives. When it comes to build up more characters likes Wang Yang, Shen Mo and brother, as compared to the suspenseful dismemberment case, it is more attractive about the fate of these people. The more I feel empathy for the murder, the more I sense about impermanence of life.

The success of the TV drama is not only reflected in the restoration of the sense of time in the props and scenery, but also the character creation and the actors' subtle performance. Though I'm not a native Putonghua speaker, I can still understand their effort in picking up a perfect Northeastern Chinese accents. Wang Xiang and Gong Biao in the play, regardless of their accents or demeanor, are exactly like our uncles and fathers in real life! Plus, the lighting and music are exceptional good.