Judging from the message, everyone is still interested in "Gathering Number", and posted an old work from the beginning of 2008.
The latest news is that Feng Xiaogang is already preparing to open champagne to celebrate the "Gathering Number"!
Of course, he has good reasons to celebrate, because for Director Feng, who "only cares about the market", the market has given him more than 200 million box office, which is a new record for the Chinese film box office, which is enough to make him stand out in the film circle. What's even better is that "The Gathering" has also won the unanimous applause of the official and the people, and the laurels of the "main theme" and the praise of "truly expressing the humanity in the war" have flown together, and "The Gathering" is really "assembling" thousands of pets in one.
Isn't there a problem? I can't see it.
A war that "clipped" from elsewhere
So, it's not just because the war scenes in the film were made by South Korean pyrotechnic effects engineers, so that they look more like they took place on the Han River Plain or Ohama Beach; it's not just because the soldiers in the film will go against the flexible and mobile tactics of the Plaster, and actually engage in so-called search forward in the middle of the streets in American sign language, foolishly exposing themselves to enemy fire; nor because their equipment and helmets look more like Navy SEALs or SWAT than like the "Central Plains Field Army". These glitches are forgivable.
It is said to be a "cut-and-paste" war because when we turn our attention to the Huang-Huai Plain in China in 1948, we cannot find a war between the millet land and the "Nine Companies".
The battle that led to the death of the entire "Ninth Company" gave people the impression that the main force fled in a very hasty manner, and the emperor did not dare to notify the cover troops to retreat after escaping from danger. However, if we look at the history of the war, we can find that in the Huaihai battlefield in 1948, there was no such situation -- the Huaihai Campaign ended with the complete victory of the "communist army" and the complete defeat of the "national army". In the course of the entire campaign, the "nationalist army" was successively divided and surrounded in several isolated areas such as Nianzhuang, Shuangduiji, Xuzhou, and Chen Guanzhuang, and completely lost the initiative in the campaign. All the blockade battles fought by the "communist army" throughout the campaign, including the most tragic battle of Xudong to encircle and annihilate Huang Botao's corps, ended in the final rout of the "nationalist army".
Of course, movies don't have to be exactly the same as history, but they can't be diametrically opposed to history, and how can a movie that makes people know that it is a fiction at first glance can achieve real power that shakes people's hearts?
Hearing the rally number to retreat is even more confusing, and this is a mistake that clearly violates military common sense.
In the absence of modern means of communication, the commander, when assigning the task of blocking, usually stipulates the time of retreat at the same time, because he can fully determine how long it will take for the main force to retreat to safety. The commander who is on the task of blocking the attack can order a retreat as long as the specified time is reached.
How to use the rally number to notify the troops on the cover mission to retreat, how to operate on the battlefield?
Will the main force retreat to a safe area and then send the trumpeters back to blow the rallying trumpet? The trumpeter has no scuds, and it takes twice as long to go back and forth, so isn't the cucumber dish all cold? What if a soldier is wounded or killed? Then watch the cover troops being completely annihilated by the enemy? In addition, on the battlefield, the enemy and we are close at hand, and the cover troops can hear the rallying call, and the enemy army can also hear it.
The "assembly number" only exists in the "assembly number", not in the real war, and even more does not exist in the combat regulations of the "communist army", which is the conclusion.
But what makes people feel most strange is that the regiment commander deliberately wants to push the "Ninth Company" to a dead end.
In war, sacrificing a certain part for the sake of overall victory is a frequent occurrence, and there is nothing to fuss about. But for a responsible commander, sacrificing parts should never be his goal, and completing the task is his goal. It is therefore logical to minimize casualties while guaranteeing the completion of the task, otherwise no one would be willing to charge under this commander.
But in "The Gathering", the regimental commander who let the "Ninth Company" all die seems to be the right thing to do, and what the task is is not clear. He placed the Ninth Company on the front of the enemy's attack, bore the brunt of it, and gave the death order that it was absolutely forbidden to retreat without hearing the trumpet. But he seems to have decided not to blow this trumpet from the very beginning, regardless of the development of the war situation and the completion of the task, which can be seen from the fact that he unusually gave Guzidi a big yellow dragon cigarette before the war.
What kind of army would make a part of itself a complete annihilation of the enemy as a combat target? Are there such armies in ancient and modern China and abroad? Isn't the "Ninth Company" a heroic company that can fight a hard battle? Aren't the regimental commanders and Guzidi the only remaining old comrades in arms of the "Eighth District"? Why did he deliberately put Guzidi and Jiulian to death? Is there a vendetta between the two of them for killing their father and taking their wives? Puzzling.
In any functioning army, subordinates always believe that their superiors will not sacrifice themselves for no reason, that they will not sacrifice themselves as direct combat targets, that sacrifices will always have to make painful decisions for the sake of larger goals—without which any army will fall apart.
"After watching "The Gathering Number", I knew that the organization was unreliable" - this is the conclusion that many viewers came out of the theater. It is hard to believe that the Chinese People's Liberation Army can be such an "unreliable" army, because it cannot explain how it has grown from small to large, from weak to strong, defeated countless strong enemies at home and abroad, and finally swept the country.
Is any war a disaster for all of humanity?
Look at the finishing touch in the Beijing Times article "The Gathering Number Reaffirms the Cherishing of Peace" on January 3: "The Gathering Number expresses a new view of war. A war, for all participants, is a lose-lose situation. Although the defeated side will suffer humiliation, the victorious side must also be scarred. In this sense, any war is a catastrophe for all mankind, and there is no such thing as a 'victor in war'".
"How precious peace is, how worth cherishing. The trauma of the war is not only the children given names by 47 fathers and mothers, who have become nameless wild ghosts on the banks of the Wen River, but also the near-turning of their sacrifices into a worthless void, and then completely disappeared in history. ”
On December 28, 2007, the Southern Metropolis Daily signed Zhang Ming's article "Can the Peace Dove Land on the > of the < Rally", which also contained the aphorism: "After the battle is over, the dead are Chinese... But the vast majority of the cannon fodder killed in battle is just cannon fodder, and they don't know why they should die." "Both sides of the war are people, and for the kuomintang-communist civil war, they are both Chinese, living Chinese."
It should be said that anyone who draws a similar conclusion understands "The Gathering Number"!
To some extent, "The Gathering" did play an "enlightenment" role, which gave the war that took place around 1948 a new name: "The Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party". Until then, we were accustomed to calling it the "War of Liberation," and the "academic" bit of the term was the "Third Civil Revolutionary War."
Chinese is the one who likes and is the best at "justifying the name", and once the name of a "civil war" is crowned, the right and wrong, meaning, and nature of the war will all become blurred. Since the "civil war" has become a "disaster for all mankind", then sacrifice naturally becomes a "worthless void", and "the vast majority of the cannon fodder killed in battle is only cannon fodder, and they do not know why they should die."
This effect is actually not unexpected by the choreographers of "The Gathering", and may even be exactly what they want. Screenwriter Liu Heng said very clearly: "First, we do not discuss whether war is meaningful; second, we do not discuss whether sacrifice is worth it. Chen Guofu, the film's executive producer, told reporters: "After all, it is about the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, so we deliberately avoided the controversy over the name of justice and evil, so that the audience could see the specific story, not the war itself." ”
So, what do the "concrete stories" tell? To put it simply, the film tells the story of a group of cannon fodder who have fought for some reason and are senselessly sacrificed and not recognized.
Some people say that "The Gathering" is comparable to "Saving Private Ryan", but the two movies are actually very different. In "Saving Private Ryan", although Spielberg also depicts the unusually harsh war scenes and the details of the blood and flesh on Ohama Beach, because the theme of the film is the humanitarian considerations of the US government when it gives orders, all the sacrifices are shining, and all the cruelty can only further highlight the greatness of the US government and the heroism of the AMERICAN soldiers. The whole implication left to the audience in "The Gathering" is only this conclusion - this is a worthless and inhuman war waged by an organization that resembles madness.
The interpretation of the war is also a continuation of politics
But the "Kuomintang-Communist Civil War" is certainly not a war organized by madmen, and no madman can instigate a war that involves hundreds of millions of people out of thin air. In the "Kuomintang-Communist Civil War," the "Communist Army" was able to achieve a decisive victory in the end, in addition to relying on Chairman Mao Zedong's outstanding military genius, mainly by relying on the full support of the peasants, and the reason why the peasants supported the "Communist Army" came from their desire for land.
During the land reform movement carried out during and after the war, more than 300 million landless or landless peasants in the country received 700 million mu of arable land (the total cultivated land at that time was 1.468 billion mu), and the annual rent of 70 billion catties of grain was waived, and the feudal exploitation that had been carried out for thousands of years was swept away, and the peasants were liberated.
In connection with this, the outcome of the "Kuomintang-Communist Civil War" also eliminated a high-consumption group in China. Whether this high-consumption group was named "reactionary" in those days or called "elite class" and "vested interest group" today, its socio-economic functions are the same: under the conditions of extremely limited Chinese resources, they have occupied and consumed an excessively high share of resources for a long time, thus repeatedly hindering China's industrialization process and making it impossible to start. It can be said that without the elimination of this group, there would be no independent and complete industrial system in China, no high-tech achievements represented by "two bombs and one satellite", and no fundamental improvement in the living conditions of the Chinese.
As Zhang Ming said, this war is unprecedentedly cruel, "the scale and intensity can be comparable to the Second World War", is "a large-scale fight between compatriots, flesh and blood, you die and I live". But I have to point out that the "vested interests" of old China had to bear the main responsibility for this! It was in order to maintain their monopoly on limited resources that they repeatedly carried out massacres – the CCP's early days were mainly engaged in peaceful rights protection activities, but from the Anyuan Road miners' strike (1922) and the Kailuan coal miners' strike (1922) to the Beijing-Hankou railway workers' strike (1923) and the Qingdao Japanese Textile Mill workers' strike (1925), these peaceful struggles were either defeated in a pool of blood, or although they won a small victory in the early stage, they were bloodily slaughtered without heeling. The Chinese revolution was really caused by the persecution of the "vested interest groups" in old China, and the tragic form of the "Kuomintang-Communist Civil War" was also chosen by this group in advance. As for their final elimination in the war, it was a bit unexpected, but it was just planting melons and melons, and planting beans to get beans.
Feng Xiaogang said in an interview with the "Sanlian Life Weekly" reporter: "Traditional war films are for political services, and this film still cuts from the market, hoping to win most of the audience in the market." Feng Dao's meaning is very clear, that is, he wants to avoid politics. But for a film about the history of war, is politics avoided when it wants to? Just as a person, if he or she is removed from the organ that determines his or her gender characteristics, he or she will show a gender characteristic contrary to his or her own nature, and will never be without any gender characteristics. The same is true of cinema, which does not serve "traditional politics" and inevitably serves "fashion politics" - through the fiercely shaking lens of "The Gathering Number", the war around 1948 changed from a "war of liberation" representing historical progress and justice to a "civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party" with ambiguous or even negative meanings.
Clausewitz famously said, "War is the continuation of politics!" "Now it seems that the interpretation of the war is also a continuation of politics - no matter how grandiose the advertisement is written, how sonorous and powerful, how innocent and innocent!