A tale of controlled manipulation.
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The film is co-directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo (Hello, Mr Billionaire, Goodbye, Mr Loser) and stars Shen Teng, Ma Li, Shi Pengyuan, Sa Rina and Xiao Bochen.
Successor tells the story of a high-powered wealthy couple who goes through a meticulous and elaborate plan to stage a challenging environment for their son to cultivate his personal growth (which is essentially a Chinese retelling on the 1988 American psychological comedy drama The Truman Show) in order to groom him to take over the family business. Worried that he will turn into a useless rich kid, they decide to raise him near to poverty-like circumstances.
The film opens with a young boy, Ma Jiye (Xiao) rushing about to complete his daily house chores, including diligently preparing medicine for his ailing grandmother, before rushing off to attend school. His dilapidated courtyard home in a simple rural district is devoid of the trappings of modern day luxury and convenience. Little does he know, his parents are in the background located in a hidden underground control room secretly monitoring and engineering every aspect of his childhood by through a complex network of CCTV and human “spies” in disguise as fellow villagers.
Unbeknownst to Jiye, the community of neighbours living and working in the vicinity are employees and staff of his extremely wealthy parents, Ma Chenggang (Shen Teng) and Ma Chunlan (Ma Li). The ailing paraplegic grandmother is actually a renowned head teacher Liin disguise whose task is to teach and inculcate Jiye with the quality of filial piety. Friendly neighbours are really physics and Chinese teachers and the owners of a nearby wet market are his maths teachers.
In this controlled environment, Jiye is bombarded with and tested daily on desired life lessons relating to the values of frugality, hard work, integrity and trust through a series of elaborate manipulated situations.
When his real maternal grandparents come to celebrate Jiye’s birthday, his grandmother becomes so overwhelmed by the poor environment that Jiye is being forced to endure, she cries and almost spill the beans that the family is exceeding wealthy. It is hilarious to see everyone scramble to stop the distraught grandmother from telling Jiye the truth by starting a cake fight. His maternal grandparents are forced to leave without staying for dinner to prevent any further incidents. Despite extensive “frisking” measures being taken to prevent the maternal grandparents from bringing expensive gifts or money for Jiye, his grandfather manages to pull out cash from under his wig to give to Jiye being leaving. Jiye promptly hands over the cash to his father for household expenses. His father is pleased that his son understands the value of being frugal and allow Jiye to take over managing the household expenses. Jiye notices his father’s worn out shoes and voice his desire to buy his father a new pair from saving money from daily grocery shopping by going early to the market to find best deals, despite his father’s protest that his worn out shoes are still fine and will last a few more years.
When Jiye secretly buys a pad with the savings instead of a new pair of shoes for his father, he is “punished emotionally” and an extremely remorseful Jiye earns money from selling used plastic bottles, despite being taunted and ridiculed as “trash boy” by fellow classmates.
Chenggang is so obsessed with the perfectly planned academic and succession path of his son, that he conspires to kill Jiye’s natural talent and passion for running. He secretly rubs an extremely strong anaesthetic gel on Jiye’s leg to cause temporary paralysis and rushes his son to a fake hospital where a hired doctor tells Jiye that he can never be a professional athlete.
Many years passed, Jiye (Pengyuan) has grown up and excels academically. He is waiting to take the “gaokao” (an entrance examination), so that he can enter the prestigious Tsingbei University, the choice of his parents'. Jiye begins to find the behaviour of everyone strange and eventually the lies and deceit are unravelled as Jiye discovers the truth of his parents’ deception and manipulation. In that moment of revelation, Jiye’s world falls apart and he loses everything which he believes in – loving parents. The core values in life which he has been taught are shattered and he questions if his parents are even real. When Jiye confronts his parents, his father is unapologetic and merely retorts to his devastated son, “What do you have to feel aggrieved about? Do you think it was us who controlled your life? You also controlled our lives.”
Will Jiye forgive his parents and continue on the charted path by his parents or will Jiye choose freedom and he seek his own path in life? Go see Successor at the cinemas and follow the manipulated shackled journey of Jiye to discover the ending.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the many comic moments of this dark satire, the film does leave me with a deep sense of injustice that the wealthy parents were willing and able to take such horrific measures to control and rob their child of his personal freedom, and arguably his childhood, to selfishly build a worthy successor whilst also depriving their various employees from helping others in society rather than focusing on their only child. Ironically, in seeking to teach their child all the desired values of a filial son and worth successor, Chenggang and Chunlan ignore another important value - honesty.
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