After waiting for two years, "Lyceum Theatre" was released.
At present, 7.4 is not high or low in Lou Ye's works.
But black and white + handheld camera, chaotic background and clues, still give a lot of difficulty to watch.
Someone couldn't help but squirt.
There are also people who say "you can always believe Lou Ye".
So, is "Blue Heart" worth it?
The background has been urging, after brewing again and again, it is time to take it out and talk about:
Lyceum Theatre
01
Many people say they can't understand it.
But if you put aside the background of the times and the prehistory of the characters given by its two original books, the story of the movie is simple enough to be summarized in one sentence:
At the end of 1941, on the eve of the Pacific War, agent Yu Wei (Gong Li) used her status as a star to return to Shanghai on a failed mission.
All the clues in the film are divided into two lines by this task.
The bright line is the cover.
Yu Yan announced to the outside world that she returned to Shanghai to star in her good friend Tan Na (Zhao Youting) drama "Saturday Novel", and rescued her ex-husband Ni Zeren (Zhang Songwen) who was imprisoned by the Japanese.
Big stars, love new love, don't forget old love, which era is explosive news.
Dark lines are the purpose.
His superiors hoped to take advantage of the similar appearance of yui to the deceased wife of the Japanese intelligence official Saburo Furutani (Oda Chejō) to obtain information from Furutani Saburo.
What intelligence?
The time and place when Japan launched the Pacific War was a major international event involving hundreds of millions of people on both sides of the Pacific.
Pattern is a perfect score.
The corner of Shanghai is affecting the overall situation of World War II.
No matter how well the cover was, the change also attracted two people:
Two gossip gossip can't deceive people with hearts.
Bai Yunsheng (Huang Xiangli) from Chongqing and Mo Zhiyin (Wang Chuanjun) from Nanjing are close to Yu Yan, hoping to dig out her secrets.
What Chongqing and Nanjing represented at that time is self-evident.
It can be said that the foundation of "Blue Heart" is a very standard spy war story, with wind and snow, sword and light sword shadow, small love and small love, and also involves the international pattern.
It's also cleverly conceived.
Historically, the deciphering of the "Pearl Harbor" intelligence was real, but the war broke out as scheduled, and this intelligence did not play its role.
Why?
The disappointment of the audience may be that "Lyceum" uses extremely heavy historical events and does not give an answer.
So before watching a movie, you must adjust your expectations:
This is not a spy movie.
It doesn't focus on suspense, scheming, and fighting.
Don't expect a task, it's just a mission that is bound to fail.
02
There are many motifs in Lou Ye's movie.
There is one that is almost constant.
It is that he always respects human nature, always likes to show the emotional part of human nature, whether it is desire, lust, pity, dignity, or something else.
Yu Hong's indulgence, Qiao Yongzhao's derailment, Jiang Cheng's courtship and sorrow, as well as the blind man and the hair-washer, and even the policeman Yang Jiadong must lose himself in the investigation of the case.
Letting emotions win over reason is something that only in Lou Ye's films will be used so frankly over and over again.
In "Blue Heart", he recreates this process again.
Yu Yan in the movie is an agent, which is a job that requires absolute rationality and calmness, even cold-bloodedness.
But whether it is the reason for returning to Shanghai as a big star, or the experience after returning to Shanghai - facing old love, ex-husband, facing fans, being a stand-in to seduce the enemy...
For people, it is all a stimulus that challenges emotions.
Her inner emotions were so intense, but her exterior had to be as cold as the incessant rain in Shanghai.
Because in the dark line, everyone around her is reminding her that you better spend your energy on Furutani Saburo.
Lust, suppressed to death.
But the tighter the spring pulls, the faster it collapses.
The more perceptuality is crushed to death, the more likely it is to be angry.
The film has a "Lou Ye-style" interesting bridge section.
In the movie, after careful planning, a group of agents finally get the opportunity to obtain the meaning of the code from the mouth of the Japanese intelligence officer Saburo Furutani.
But while Saburo Furutani was talking, something suddenly went wrong with the listening device.
The only one who knew the answer was Yu Yan beside Gu Gu.
Long-term emotional repression and a high degree of tension wandering on the tip of the knife, so that she finally came to the last step.
But at the last minute.
In the eyes of the target Furutani Saburo, she suddenly found that the other party and herself were the same kind
Furuya's longing for his deceased wife, Miyoko, makes her moved, envious, jealous, and compassionate.
Say, or don't say?
The director handed over this information that would affect hundreds of millions of lives and deaths to Yu Yan.
After that, whether it is Yu Yan's expression, it is a kind of tiredness, loss, entanglement, or lines, the people around the camera are hinting:
Yu Yan she lied.
At least not the whole story.
In the end, emotion triumphed over reason.
Because of this, she must have insisted on taking away her lover Tan Na.
Mistakes are wrong, even if they are wrong to the end.
It is difficult to explain what kind of psychology yu Wei's ghost sent God to send, and to pity the same disease? Or willful? Or rebellion? In short, she betrayed her identity as an agent, did not tell the truth, and did not "stop the war".
Betrayal also has rewards.
When Yu Yan escaped from the theater and met Furuya again, Furuya, who was holding a gun, did not pull the trigger.
But this was hesitation from another poor man.
The man who had been deceived into emotion had a sad face and gave Yu Yan the opportunity to fight back.
They are enemies, but they are people first and foremost.
Looking at the photo of the deceased wife in the hands of the dead GuGu, Yu Yan also made up his mind and left a letter to his adoptive father and superior.
In the original book, the letter reads:
In the book, Yu Yan hides the truth that the "target is Hawaii" in order to drag the United States into the battlefield, which can rescue China more quickly.
But in the movie, Lou Ye deleted this sentence:
Dear Fred, my father, I know you will receive this letter on time, and now, I will tell you the truth. Yamazaki stands for Hawaii. Please forgive me, I feel like I've done what I'm supposed to do. Take care of yourself, Fred. I never said that, but I always wanted to tell you. Thank you, thank you for letting me have a father.
What is the "should-do"?
At least in Lou Ye's films, making the characters loyal to their emotions rather than reason is what should be done.
03
If you only talk about Yu Yan, it is too thin for "Lan Xin".
Several of the main characters in the movie have their own highlights.
A set of comparisons.
Light a cigarette.
On the streets of Shanghai, Yu Yan asked Bai Yun to light a cigarette; in the studio, Tan Na asked Mo Zhiyin to light a cigarette.
In movies, lighting a cigarette means a subordinate relationship, spiritual subordination, often more loyal than identity.
In Bai Yunsheng's eyes, Yu Yan was a god.
She wanted to be her and could do anything for her.
Even if you are a secret agent, it is a task to get close to You.
But as a high-achieving student who studied in Japan and a lover of literature and drama, to some extent, she still fantasizes about becoming an actress, and she still has a little literary dream in her heart.
In her case, emotion triumphed over reason.
To this end, she moths to the fire, is undefended against the viola, can hand over self-defense weapons, and is willing to become a tool for sexual dissipation.
It can be said that she is a trumpet of Yu Yan.
It's just that she's "dirty."
It wasn't Sir who said it, it was her peer Mo Zhiyin.
If there is a sort, in "Lan Xin", from top to bottom, the cleanest is Tan Na, and the most "dirty" is obviously Mo Zhiyin.
But it is no secret to say that Mo Zhiyin is Sir's favorite character design in "Lyceum Heart".
Because he has a certain emotional projection of director Lou Ye.
In the film, Mo Zhiyin's plot can be summarized in two sentences:
He is a secret agent of the Wang puppet government and a friend of Tan Na, who raped and killed Bai Yunsheng, and finally wanted to kill him.
A lewd traitor + secret agent + villain is simply a heinous crime that cannot be blamed.
But in the original work, Mo Zhiyin is far less obscene, he is a Japanese secret agent, but he is also a popular literati on the beach, or a screenwriter of Tan Na's drama, and even between Yu Yan, there is a layer of emotions that were once admired.
A multi-faceted man wandering in the middle ground.
Why did it change to this?
Many people will say that he raped Bai Yuncao and was physically castrated.
But in fact, being "castrated" (the sinking of unyielding) is the fate of many men in Lou Ye's movies, such as Zhou Wei, such as Qiao Yongzhao, such as Tang Yijie.
And Mo Zhiyin is the most thorough one.
In the car, he mocked Bai Yunsheng for acting, scorned her idea of being an actor, and then used obscene and vulgar means to invade Bai Yunsheng, tempting her to exchange information and change her salary.
As a secret agent, he believed that Bai Yuncao was "pretending" and was a fake Qinggao.
The subtext is obvious: in our business, no one can be so naïve.
But that slap baffled him.
But when he watched Bai Yunsheng approach Yu Yan step by step, mixed into the troupe, and even played for Yu Yan at the premiere, he actually became an actor.
He's crazy.
He must prove with practical actions that she is still the same person as himself, the same dirty person, otherwise what is he?
The swearing is even more pronounced:
You think you're a thing, it's all drama, bitch.
Therefore, his rape of Bai is definitely not entirely out of sex, but also out of dignity.
Even if you are a mud, you still have dignity in your heart.
This layer of anger, after being castrated, shot and killed the other party, and also showed more obviously in the gun to vent anger.
The woman in front of her not only made herself ugly, but also mutilated herself.
If the story just stays here, Mo Zhiyin is nothing more than a lewd villain who wants to regain his dignity and is physically castrated.
In the film, the director paves another line for him.
Remember the cigarette light at the beginning?
If Yu Yan is the idol of Baiyun Xie, then Tan Na is the white moonlight of Mo Zhiyin.
He used Tan as a safe containing ideals and dignity that he did not dare to carry.
Whether at the beginning he scolds Tan Na for not having contact with Yu Yan, his words reveal his protection for Tan Na.
At the end, he begged the Japanese not to hurt Tan Na, and finally became angry that Tan Na was seeking his own death.
All show the most bizarre relationship in "Blue Heart":
A naïve and romantic literary and art worker in a left-wing troupe is the only friend of Mo Zhiyin, a traitorous spy of the Wang puppet government.
Tan Na's "clean" has a contribution from Mo Zhiyin.
Sir can even imagine that in the world of "Blue Heart", Mo Zhiyin is just a Tan Na who has been mentally castrated prematurely.
He was dirty, but he wasn't reconciled.
Look back at the rape scene.
Obscene sex, the dignity of the mud, not false.
But there must be another layer that does not allow a dirty man to tarnish the cleanliness of his heart.
This kind of "castrated" grief, this layer of adaptation, known to those familiar with Lou Ye, must have the most real emotional projection.
04
From the establishment of the British Concession in 1843, Shanghai entered the fast lane of rapid development until the 1930s, when it grew into the largest city in the Far East and a paradise for adventurers around the world.
However, during this period, whether it was the Qing government, the Republic of China, or the Western powers such as Britain and France, none of the forces could dominate the city of Shanghai.
This kind of Chinese and foreign mixed places and cultural exchanges constitute the most unique historical imprint of Shanghai, and it has also made it almost the most important city in China's modern century-old history.
But it all ended in December 1941.
Japan waged the Pacific War and took over the public concession, ending a four-year period of isolated islands.
In the past hundred years, Shanghai, including the concession, has been ruled by the same force for the first time, and an era has officially ended.
This is also the source of the claim that the novel "Death in Shanghai" adapted from "Lan Xin" is also the source.
In a sense, The History of the Demise of Romanticism and the Lyceum form an intertext.
The former talks about the evil of human nature and destroys an old era that is nostalgic, which is a lament.
The latter talks about the goodness of the human heart, which will inevitably prevent the destruction of the old era, and it is helpless.
In the movie, the ups and downs of the main characters also show shanghai falling downward like a parabola.
Bai Yunsheng, who had committed childish illness, was raped and was the first to be beaten to death.
Tan Na, who has always been protected, and Yu Yan, who gave up his life to choose his lover, greeted death at the end of the arrival of the Japanese pursuers.
And Mo Zhiyin, who has committed many evils, has experienced double castration, and can still live to the end with a limp and escape the day.
It was an era that killed romance and sensibility.
The more important clue is a book.
In the movie, different people die for different values.
Some people are for love, such as Tan Na; some people are for ideals, such as White Cloud Dress.
But there are still people, for books.
For the sake of Nietzsche's words, Goethe signed the original German version of "The Troubles of Young Werther", and the hotel manager Shapier made a promise and fulfilled the promise.
Equated with love and ideal values.
Books, here refer to culture and civilization.
Some people may argue that the manager may not be for the sake of money? Because books are valuable.
One detail, light a cigarette.
Shapier lit a cigarette for Hubert, and Hubert seduced Shapier with a book.
But at the end, Hubert, who had nothing to do but carry a book to evacuate, was forced to light cigarettes for several Japanese soldiers.
Sir has said before that lighting a cigarette is an attitude.
When Shapil, who was killed by the Japanese, Hubert, who was respected before his death, had to submit to the Japanese soldiers on the eve of the war.
In a sense, Shapil was white dead.
The people of old Shanghai are dead.
The culture of old Shanghai is also dead.
In "Blue Heart", Sir saw a kind of helplessness.
It is a sadness that has not been able to save the world, and can only watch the world go bad.
The end of the movie.
After lighting a cigarette, a disgusted Hubert threw the book into the garbage heap as a group of soldiers passed by.
The implication is obvious.
Let this treasure be buried with Shapil.
It is also for the funeral of old Shanghai.
Because of the world left behind.
All that remains is violence.
And the Mo Zhiyin who are obscured by countless faces and survive under violence.
The picture in this article comes from the network
Editorial Assistant: Gilmour's Gyro