Some time ago, this number and 20 film critics jointly selected the 20 best world movies in 2001-2020.
We actually selected three Du Qifeng movies, not including "Underworld 2 Is Precious to Peace".
Professor Hao Jian, who chose him as the third place in the individual, decided to reinterpret the subtlety of the film.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > darker than the underworld? Darker than "Old And Nothing to Rely On"? I'm talking about Underworld 2: Peace Is Precious </h1>
Wen | Hao Jian
About author:Professor of Beijing Film Academy, Cooperative Researcher of Fairbank Center of Harvard University.
Underworld 2: Peace is Precious (2006), directed by Du Qifeng
01
Hong Kong, Hong Kong, black robber film technology pressure fang
Not a single shot was fired in Underworld 2: Peace is Precious, but it can smell a strong smell of blood.
If you throw films like "Peace is Precious" and "Dark Flower" and "Tree Trick" in front of the Coen brothers, they must also take a good look. Although they may not be able to understand the three tastes.
At the end of 2020, Gun Manuscript organized a selection of the top 20 movies in the new millennium, and I ranked "Peace as Precious" in third place.
In the past ten or twenty years, Hong Kong filmmakers have almost all the best black works, and they have made more black robber films than filmmakers in other parts of the world combined.
"Valuing Harmony" is also a work with a prominent aesthetic style of Du's
Those works are full of the coldness and absurdity of the characteristic context. "Dark Flower" writes about how Liang Chaowei, who is actually a policeman, and Liu Qingyun, a self-confident killer, run to death together according to the escape path designed by Mr. Hong; "Banishment" writes about the righteousness and despair of the brothers when they are scattered and fleeing; "Gunfire" plays the gorgeous gunfight music in the robber film; "Tree Stroke" laments the three thieves kings, but the sense of fatalism that is driven to the desperate road by the giant palm of history does not belong to the thief king.
In addition to this large pile of Du Qifeng, there are also liu Weiqiang's "Infernal Affairs" first and second episodes ("Infernal Affairs 3" has no black), etc., Qiu Litao's "Choosing the Old Top" also writes the underworld boss blood-stained.
Black robber films are the major contributions made by Du Qifeng, Liu Weiqiang and other cadres to world cinema in the past two decades. They have made unique developments and renovations in genre patterns, narrative rules, violent aesthetics, and so on. Hong Kong filmmakers have done a great job.
The gunfight scene in Du Qifeng's famous work "Gunfire" (1999) is exquisitely designed
02
Underworld 2 is darker than Underworld
In terms of the use of violence and the reversal of the dramatic structure at the end, "Peace is Precious" is more than one notch higher than the first episode. The story of "Underworld" is a road to the end: two people fight for the boss, and one of them fights. The film is also black enough, writing about brutal killing, and ending with Ah Le's sudden violence against Big D, but that is the evil of human nature, the fight of the underworld leader for the boss.
In "Peace is Precious", the sequel is better than the previous one, which is very rare! It is a more typical black robber film, which also seems to be about the fierce fight between the underworld leaders, but when you look back, you can see the red palm above the city.
"Underworld" uses the dragon head stick symbolizing power as Mac Guffin, and uses it as a hook for drama to start the life-and-death struggle between the underworld. The superficial story of "Peace is Precious" is still tightly tied to the scramble for the seat of the person to write, but the dragon head stick appears at the end, with the meaning of the end of the song. The deputy director handed the stick to Jimmy, a powerful man who presumably had GPS installed on the dragon head stick and knew its trajectory very well.
One of the most praised lines in this film
At this time, we can see that the story of the second episode is also the mode of "Dark Flower", behind the desperate struggle of the underworld characters, there is also a stronger force behind everything. The stick was handed to Jimmy by the deputy director, and the symbolism was very obvious, which was not only a royal reward, but also a condescending canon.
It turned out that the two episodes of "Underworld" were only the stories of authoritative officials harvesting the two major gangsters of "He Liansheng" and "Xinji".
03
There is no aesthetics to violence here
Du Qifeng creates a kind of cold violence that makes people shudder and can make the audience vomit on the spot.
To say that there is no aesthetics of violence here is that compared with the violent creation of Wu Yusen, Quentin Tarantino and others, there is less dazzling and extravagant, there is no romance, absolute blood.
In "Peace is Precious", violence becomes so cold and cruel. "Rolling pig cage", "stone smashing head", "knife cutting human legs", violence is almost over, we smell a strong smell of blood. Ah Le chased after his son, but was picked up by his former subordinates in the car and smashed his head and killed, and the car containing the corpse and the running child left and right at the intersection, and the tragic death.
The blunt scenes of violence are chilling
This kind of violent scene does not make us think of words such as beautiful, it does not have the romance and layness in "The True Colors of Heroes" and "Changing Faces", and it will not give people a sense of dazzling. This kind of violence brings with it a chill and a cold absurdity, and its connotation is to provoke reflection on the evil in human nature.
The violent peak of this film is made up of Gu Tianle. He brandished a kitchen knife covered in blood and slashed the hands of the other brother with one knife after another. Behind him, an unloaded leg was being stuffed into a meat grinder, and the paper money scattered on the ground was stained with blood. Bowls of human flesh were given to wolfhounds, and the wind music and strings played a dissonant, monotonous and humorous music. This passage, of course, is used from the wood crusher in "Ice Storm" to crush the thighs of dead bodies. The Coen brothers did not dare to despise Du Qifeng, and Du Qifeng would never say that he did not steal "Ice storm".
According to reports, when the film was released in Cannes, its violent scenes surprised the four seats, and some kind old ladies vomited on the spot because they could not stand its bloodshed and horror. Such bloodshed and brutality cannot even be endured by the actors and directors themselves. At the Hong Kong premiere of this film, Zhang Jiahui, An Zhijie, Zheng Haonan and others frankly admitted that they were shocked by this plot in the movie.
Needless to say, the gore aesthetic of the meat grinder breaking human legs here comes from the scene in the Coen Brothers' Ice Storm where the wood crusher draws a blood-colored arc in the air
04
The blackness here is quiet
The American drama "Ice Storm" is produced by the Coen brothers. Among them, the killer played by Billy Bob Thornton stared at the police, calmed the police after a conversation, and drove away by himself. It was the coldest black I'd ever seen.
And Du Qifeng's works are often filled with a strong sense of fatalism and desolation and despair in the face of history.
The Coen brothers write about the evil of human nature, and Du Qifeng is the black of existence. In Dark Flower and Peace, we see situations that are absolutely incomprehensible, places of death for political guidance. The Coen brothers' films are the absurdity of life (The Absent Man), the irrationality and stupidity of human nature (Snow Storm). And Ziggy in "The Old Man", doing evil is his motivation, is his desire.
In the two episodes of "Underworld", you Yong, a mainland actor who plays an authoritative official surnamed Shi, plays the role of "Black Bone Ren", the originator of Hongmen, in the opening retrospective historical scene. General Shi and Deputy Director Shi are so familiar with Hong Kong underworld figures, implying that this mainland personnel have a great relationship with the underworld. Is it difficult to do it, this is the story of the undercover boss of the Stone General Team? Deputy Director Shi and Jimmy pulled on their pants to talk about cooperation when they peed in the toilet, which made people spray rice, which was a scene that I liked very much.
Jimmy punched Deputy Director Shi with a fist, and Deputy Director Shi did not fight back at all. But Jimmy knew he had to do the underworld "from generation to generation."
Du Qifeng's underworld story certainly has a dialogue with "The Godfather". At the end of the first episode, several underworld leaders call Ah Le Daddy one by one, which is the same as the power transition scene in "The Godfather", except that everyone is standing, and there is less of a sense of ceremony than Al Pacino sitting on the couch.
Like several New York Godfathers, Jimmy only wants to do serious business. He was going to guangdong to build a highway, and later, we watched him evolve to put people into meat grinders for the sake of being a talker.
The thickest and most desperate black of "Peace is Precious" is in the ending. In order to be a talker, Jimmy was covered in blood, who knew that Deputy Director Shi ordered him to be a talker forever, "I hope this stick will always be kept by you from now on," Jimmy punched him four times in a row, but it was Jimmy who collapsed on the ground one step backwards. Deputy Director Shi put on his sunglasses and said calmly: Thank you for your cooperation, and then walk away.
Jimmy heard that his girlfriend was pregnant, and it was a relationship scene between the two. Jimmy's face behind his girlfriend is gloomy, he knows that his fate is to lick the blood of the underworld, and his son can't be a lawyer or a doctor.
For people who lick blood all day long, the family is a burden
05
Robber films are made into political films
I love the opening scene of Dead Underworld, where two tables of women rub mahjong, children running around, and a few big guys deciding to help out. The background music is Luo Dayou's "Yun Gong Tone", a hurried guitar pluck, not very peaceful.
From "Dark Flower" to "Underworld", there is a powerful force that determines the fate of the characters in the film. This character does not appear much, but he always makes a final decision. This situation always reminds me of the Italian political film "The Hand Above the City".
Deputy Director Shi's words let us know who is the boss. "On October 28, Lin Huaile's subordinate He Hui arrived in Guangzhou by the Hong Kong Hui train, and on July 30, He Hui took the stick to his grandmother's house at No. 46 Uprising Road in Guangzhou and hid it.
Jimmy originally thought that the gang boss was very good, and then he understood that you want to be able to be, and you don't want to be.
In terms of the inner meaning of the film's narrative, is this always the boss abandoning his previous violent achievements before writing Jimmy, and finally being trapped by a bigger big man, or is it an endorsement and reward for Jimmy's bloody violence?
The underworld leaders with unlimited scenery are just pawns of others
The English title of "Underworld" is "Election". The film certainly refers to the social atmosphere in Hong Kong and many major events in reality. Officer Hui, the boss of the O Department of the Hong Kong Police Department, said, "People choose the person to be the chief executive a hundred years earlier than Hong Kong chooses the chief executive. The characters in the film repeatedly recite the Hongmen 36 oath, and from time to time mention the "rules handed down from the ancestors" and "two years for a term, no re-election", which of course explicitly or implicitly touch the secret and hard heart of Hong Kong people.
Du Qifeng, as a film author and as an artist, has earned my respect and respect. The author of this capital letter insists that political discourse and political references be allowed to surface, and all social associations melt into the story to become metaphors. All political significance and historical complexes are our interpretations. This metaphor is written in a kind of conservatism of film art, which only tells good stories. Seeing this and that in its depths is our own business, and not seeing it is also our business.
At the end of the film, Jimmy is forced to become the eternal speaker of Lianzhuang. He went to the coffin of the dead Dumbor, stuffed the dragon head stick in Dumber's hand, and gave It to Dumber to bury. The dragon head stick, the election system of Hong Kong associations, the rules for the change of people who change every two years, and the so-called jianghu morality and Hongmen oaths, were all buried and vanished.
Editor| Xu Yuan
Typography | Turner
THE END