The reason for putting "The Gathering Number" and "Eight Hundred" together is because they are the two most special narratives of history and human nature in Chinese war films.
They allow us to see the flesh-and-blood soldiers in war, they are small, fragile, vain, fearful, withdrawn, cowardly... Because of this, they make the cruelty of war more real.
We love soldiers and remember sacrifices, but we have long been aesthetically tired of the heroic "robots" that have been set up with unified procedures and do not change their faces.
The two films are different, there is no empty and beautiful nonsense, no hypocrisy and cunning incitement.
They are undoubtedly also the main theme of the film, but they do not lose the artistry of the film - not only with the war as a gimmick, but with the struggle of human nature in the war, to explore to a deeper level.
In terms of narrative methods, shooting techniques, picture styles, as well as sets and costumes in artistic achievements, compared with domestic war films so far, "The Gathering Number" and "Eight Hundred" also have their own unique features.
Who wins or loses at that level? Beauty nagging.
Both stories have realistic archetypes.
"Eight Hundred" is the famous Battle of Songhu in 1937, which was the first large-scale battle between China and Japan.
(If you want to know more about this tragic, tragic and memorable war, you can go to the documentary "The Land of Life and Death - Record of the Battle of Songhu in 1937". ）
At the end of "Eight Hundred", those soldiers who rushed through the bullet forest to reach the bridge with the hope of life, the subsequent fate is still miserable, and they may finally use their remaining lives to awaken the originally numb anti-Japanese hot pillow of the concession people, but they failed to save their lives.
How cruel is this battle? According to the later recollection of the son of the Kuomintang general Chen Cheng, the Japanese broke the arms of 1,600 ordinary people and stood by the river waiting for the Nationalist army to see...
The prototype of "The Gathering Number" is a true story that the author of the novel, Yang Jinyuan, interviewed an old eight road named Chang Menglan.
In 1948, Chang Menglan, then a platoon commander of a certain unit of the 4th Column and 10th Brigade of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, led the soldiers on a blockade mission to cover the retreat of the whole regiment, and he received the order that he was not allowed to retreat before hearing the "assembly number".
In the film, Gu Zidi (Zhang Hanyu) receives such a task, but the rallying cry is never sounded.
Jiao Dapeng (Liao Fan) told Guzidi before he died: I heard the rally number, but Guzidi decided to continue to hold on because he did not hear the trumpet, and as a result, all 47 fighters were killed...
Don't evaluate history, just tell the story itself.
All the warriors in these two stories are individuals who have been ignored in war. The hero has become an obliterated being, and all his efforts are a drop in the bucket.
There is no tall persona, no one is Dong Cunrui who "fired at me", there is no selfless Lei Feng, there is no praise and criticism, just calmly tell the story of human nature in the war.
Some people may say that the great national righteousness is always more important than the sacrifice of the individual. In the eyes of these people, the resentment of Gu Zidi in front of Liu Zeshui's tomb in "The Gathering", and the intimidation of the soldiers and the sheep in "Eight Hundred" to the reporter, I will feel unconvinced and uncomfortable.
But Beauty just likes these strokes that don't look so "bright and bright" because it gives me a glimpse of real war:
Man loses all his identity in war, so he is bound to lose weight;
Anxiety and oppression will surely make him lose a while, and blood will definitely make him crazy;
Sober up in the midst of loss and madness, and then regain your faith... This is the man in the war, and man is not a god after all.
People will be afraid, greedy for life and afraid of death, confused, depressed, and vented.
So I love to look at the cold and gloomy temperament of Gu Zidi--is there any sunny and happy image of a warrior who treks through a continuous and brutal war?
Therefore, I love to watch the old abacus (Zhang Yi) stealing and slipping, letting go of the dignity of being a human being and kneeling in front of the Dragon Boat Festival, begging him to put a nest for a way to live--don't the ants will not plead when they see a big foot descending from the sky to trample on their own ant?
It is precisely because of these "negative" strokes that we see unprecedented heroes -
When the fierce feelings hidden in their hearts are stimulated, from an ant to a hound, and a tiger pounces on the cannon fire, as a spectator, my heart will tremble with it.
How much you have trusted the microscopic reality, you will now be touched by this "grand let-down".
In The Gathering, desperate warriors die for the sake of visible brothers, for visible trust.
In "Eight Hundred", when Chen Shusheng (Zheng Kai) tied the explosives to himself and jumped out of the warehouse, he made his teammates kill the red eye.
The warrior spirits of the soldiers awaken, they turn themselves into living explosives, jump off the warehouses one by one, stop the enemy's plot to blow up the warehouses, and make a name for themselves.
But beauty remembers. At this time, the lens is also cold -
At this end of the Suzhou Creek, the living life fell from the roof of the building several meters high and exploded to pieces.
At the other end of the Suzhou River, there was a dead silence, the people opened their mouths because of the death of the warriors, and He Xiang condensed tears for the brothers.
It not only depicts the battlefield of hand-to-hand combat in a positive way, but also focuses on the emotions of ordinary soldiers at the bottom to reproduce the deformation of human nature in the face of the absurdity of war, which is a common feature of the two films in audiovisual language.
In terms of lens language, they all use medium shots, close-ups, and large close-ups to reproduce the state of each soldier when facing the enemy.
In "The Gathering", the cultural instructor Wang Jincun first heard the shell explode and urinated incontinence; when Zhao Erdou stepped on the mine, Gu Zidi replaced Zhao Erdou with himself - he did not think of anything else at that time, only that Erdou was the eyes of the artillery of the whole army.
In "Eight Hundred", Xiao Hubei (Zhang Junyi) looks at the opposite stage every night and dreams, saving the western cake given to him by the guards, thinking that he still has the opportunity to go to the opposite side with his Dragon Boat Brother to see "Great Shanghai"... It wasn't until the guard died that he ate the cake, extinguished the unrealistic hope of "visiting Shanghai", and planted the seeds of revenge in his heart.
The level of a film, deeper metaphors and symbolism must be one of the criteria for judging, because it often determines the depth and evocative degree of the film.
In this regard, "Eight Hundred" may be better than "The Gathering".
At the end of the story of "The Gathering Number", when Gu Zidi learned that in order to avoid the loss of the large troops, the team did not let the trumpeter blow the assembly number, and he waved the bottle to smash the tombstone in anger.
At this time, Feng Xiaogang may want to express the theme he said, "Every sacrifice is worthy of respect", in Guzidi's heart, 47 lives are the same as 470,000 lives.
However, this has also become a major failure of the film. If the end of this place is removed, changed to a valley to burn the martyr's notice, go to the Wen River to commit suicide, or other blank space, will it be more shocking?
Without leaving a blank, the audience's heart stays in the sadness and indignation of "a martyr is equal to 700 pounds of millet", but it divides the bright and worthy of deep consideration.
In the film "Eight Hundred", Guan Hu handled this point very well.
The first is the blank space and metaphor on both sides of the Suzhou Creek.
On both sides of the Suzhou Creek, there is heaven on one side and hell on the other. On the one hand, it is a metaphor for the division of time and the survival gap of the people before and after the Songhu War. On the one hand, metaphor: at the crossroads of life and death, the warrior's sense of mission of "I will not go to hell who goes to hell" and the insensitivity of the people of the Shanghai Concession to the situation.
The second is the white horse running in the middle of the battlefield.
The white horse is led out by the "lucky coin" of the old abacus, and the moment the white horse comes out, it seems to glow with white light, although it is skinny and boneless, it is still difficult to hide the graceful style of the white horse.
The white horse symbolizes hope, and the guard Xiao Qiyue (Zhang Youhao) tames him to symbolize a glimmer of light in the defense of the Four Elements.
The state of the white horse symbolizes the situation of the war: frightened, timid, and afraid of war when it first appears; returning to Xiaohubei in the middle of the way symbolizes the confidence of the warriors.
In addition, in the film, Xiao Qiyue and Xiao Hubei, who have direct communication with Baima, are teenagers.
Xiao Hubei also used the white horse and the Dragon Boat Festival as fantasy objects, imagining Zhao Yun's heroism of seven in and seven out, "one husband when the pass, ten thousand people can not open". In the scene of the shadow puppet play, it is even more foreshadowing that "the Han Room is waiting for the future life"... All this is a metaphor, the white horse represents the awakening of the war soul of the Chinese people, the unity of all people to resist Japan, the rejuvenation of the country, waiting for the coming day.
Overall, these are two never-before-seen war films that look at human stories rather than heroic stories. "The Gathering" allows us to see how soldiers really died, just like the comrades-in-arms of Guzidi, who are tragic and dignified, and willing to give up their most precious lives in the face of national righteousness.
"Eight Hundred" allows us to see how soldiers really live, under the pressure and toying of politics, in Wujiang, which is used as a "stage", heroes can die generously for 40,000 compatriots, and they can also live for hope.
I have to say that there are still flaws in the integrity of the story, such as the "failure" at the end of "The Gathering Number" and what happened after the old abacus at the end of "Eight Hundred" was excited, all of which were not clear enough.
But Feng Xiaogang and Guan Hu, who are looking for a balance in blockbuster and realistic war films, finally let us see the hope of Chinese war films in terms of intention. #Film and television miscellaneous talk ##Favorite domestic war film and television drama ##电影八佰 #