In my understanding, The New King of Comedy tells the story of an actress who harbors a deep love for her craft but whom heaven has not blessed with talent. Each of us, living in this world, carries some measure of this. Take me, for instance—I fancy myself a writer, but the truth is I'm not very good. My not being very good doesn't matter much, but if I insist on squeezing into the writers' circle, it becomes both comedy and tragedy.
This is Ru Meng's situation in the film. Is Ru Meng wrong for wanting to be an actress? Is she wrong for wanting it despite lacking talent? Neither is wrong. But when one becomes deluded, staking an entire life on a career one truly isn't cut out for, things grow less than wonderful. In the film, Ru Meng repeatedly asks what "you'll never make it" means—a scene that is both irritating and heartbreaking. For me, I received the general sense of tragedy contained within it: the delusions each of us carries. Living in this world, we can't help but harbor certain expectations. I don't know if there are people who live without any expectations whatsoever—I'm certainly not one of them. And as long as we carry expectations, they are bound to be shattered, and we must console ourselves, deceive ourselves. For example, I'm in my thirties now, and I can feel my face aging. If someone were to say, "You, Naozhong, you've aged—you'll never recover that youthful face"—this is a fact, a truth, but could I accept it? I'd think: not necessarily! Maybe after a good night's sleep I'll bounce right back. We can't even come to terms with the simple fact of aging. Ru Meng's delusion about her acting career is nothing special.
So when I watch that scene, I always think of myself—and of others too—that look of harboring delusions. Thinking of this fills me with sadness. And society keeps deceiving us, helping us fortify our faith in our delusions, just as Zhang Quandan does in the film. Really, society doesn't deceive us intentionally. Every person who deceives us has their own karma and causes. Tomorrow morning when I meet a woman, I'll inevitably say, "You look younger and younger," and I'll be that bastard Zhang Quandan—even though there's no particular malice in it.
I think what makes this film good is that within the story, it reveals these truths, these sorrows. And then it embraces them with enormous compassion. That compassion is what Ru Meng says to another version of herself after she's finally made it (words that were, in fact, all said to her before): "You're no good. From now until the destruction of the universe, you'll never have a chance." Then: "Don't mind what I say. Keep trying. You'll succeed."
These two seemingly contradictory points are equally true. Together, they are the truth of life.