To be honest, a few years ago, Jiang Wen's bullet trilogy (let the bullet fly one step away, evil does not suppress the right) I really couldn't understand. There are many parsing articles and videos on the Internet, but the vast majority of them are unreliable now. It wasn't until recently that I watched several of Kurosawa's old films in a row, and I was enlightened and suddenly realized, ah ~ the original bullet trilogy and "Heart Stick" and "Tsubaki Sanjuro" said the same thing, but Jiang Wen had three different ways to say it three times, and also gave three different endings.
Before talking about Jiang Wen's trilogy, let's first look at the general routines in Akira Kurosawa's films.
In films such as "Heart Stick", "Tsubaki Sanshiro", and "Seven Samurai", he usually divides the characters into three parts: the local bully or the powerful, in short, the powerful, rich and scheming bad guys and the evil people; the oppressed or the cowardly and numb masses who are blinded; the heroes or heroes who break the order and uphold justice.
As the saying goes, the world's article is a big copy, Jiang Wen's film in the composition of the role is almost unchanged copy of Kurosawa Akira's setting, but if the reader thinks that Jiang Wen just transplanted Kurosawa's setting, and then changed into a layer of Chinese clothing, and then interpreted it in Chinese language and background, then Jiang Wen's trilogy is of little value, and I will not write an article to interpret his trilogy.
Although Jiang Wen copied Akira Kurosawa's setting, he did not completely follow Akira Kurosawa's routine, but added some of his own thinking and development, and even subversion.
The first part of the trilogy, "Let the Bullets Fly", is almost copied from Akira Kurosawa's "Heart Stick", but in the Heart Stick, Ronin uses the contradiction between the two evil forces to make the two gangs kill each other, and finally the fisherman gains and kills all the bad guys.
In letting the bullets fly, Jiang Wen only set up a bad guy, that is, Huang Laoye, played by Zhou Runfa, and cleverly set the other group of people as the masses. In the end, Zhang Mazi used a clever strategy to convince the masses that the real Huang Silang had been beheaded, and now the person in the watchtower was just a useless stand-in, and then rushed into the watchtower under zhang Mazi's leadership and beat Huang Silang to the local tycoon.
Personally, I think this is a huge development of Jiang Wen's model for Akira Kurosawa, in Akira Kurosawa's films, the masses are usually just spectators or the logistics team of heroes. But Jiang Wen actually set the masses as a powerful force, and even in the end the hero had to use the power of the masses to defeat the bad guys, which was probably a modification that Jiang Wen, a Chinese director born in the 60s, could make, on the contrary, Kurosawa Akira, a Japanese born in the Meiji era, could not think of this layer.
"One Step Away" continues the routine of letting bullets fly. It's just that in this part, both the masses and the bad guys become more complicated.
In the case of the bad guy camp, there are warlords like Wu Dashuai, there is also the public knowledge of Teacher Qin's morality, there is also the rich second generation of Wu Qi's money laundering, and there is also a good and shameless traffic star like Wang Tianwang.
In addition to those spectators in the Wang Tianwang Theater, there were also those who were angry and angry at the ceremony of extraditing Ma Day, and even Wu Liu's quasi-awakened people who wanted to explore the truth and wanted to live a little more clearly.
However, there are no heroes in this part, and there are no heroes. The role of Ma Zhaori is difficult for you to define as a hero or a hero, you can only say that he is a normal person who still has a little conscience and bottom line. The reason why he risked being arrested and returned to Shanghai was to let everyone understand a truth: it was not that he killed Yan Ying for the donations raised by the president of huaguo, this was just a traffic accident, and Yan Ying was not just a bitch who could do her best, she also had the feelings of a normal woman, she loved herself, but she was sorry for her. He could not tolerate the masses and those bad people so consuming themselves and Finish Yan Ying.
But the one-step ending should be a tragedy, on the execution ground, just at the moment when Ma Was about to tell the truth, a bullet completely ended his life.
That is to say, in this one, Jiang Wen completely subverted the ending of Akira Kurosawa's film in which justice will triumph over evil, but changed the ending to: the bad guys and the masses take what they need on Ma Gori. The masses hope to see the divine drama of shooting the big bad guy Ma Zhao ri (Wang Tianwang wrote and directed himself) to satisfy his cheap sense of justice; Wu Dashuai hopes to show justice by shooting ma and walk the day, showing that he is a good marshal who upholds justice. And Xiang Feitian has become a big hero on the beach because he cracked the Murder Case of Ma Zhaori. Wu Qiqi is ready to make a big movie that reflects the murder of Ma Zhaori and make him a big profit. When Ma Zouri decided to tell the truth and let everyone get off the stage, the masses joined forces with the bad guys to shoot Ma Zaori.
The masses want to see the horse walking day: a violent pervert
Personally, I think that in the bullet trilogy, the depth and breadth of one step is the highest, and it is also a social allegorical film that is worth watching repeatedly and can see things every time you watch it. But ironically, the most brain-burning and stuffy movie is actually the lowest-rated and word-of-mouth in the trilogy. Because Jiang Wen offended the masses in this film.
The story of "Evil Does Not Pressure Righteousness" is more complicated than the previous two.
First of all, there are not only several bad people, but also differentiation. That is to say, there are more than one group of bad people, they do not belong to each other, and their purposes are not the same, and there are even two foreigners. Therefore, there is no agreement on the opinions and methods of dealing with Li Tiantian.
The Japanese Nemoto Ichiro is a Japanese agent, and his purpose is to make Japan successfully invade China, so for Li Tiantian, he does not have to get rid of it quickly, as long as Li Natural can be used as a traitor for him, he does not necessarily have to kill Li Tiantian.
The earth snake Zhu Qianlong has always shown himself as the nemesis of the great hero justice guardian god, so for Li Tian, who knows his details and wants to seek revenge on him, Zhu Qianlong not only wants to kill him, but also wants to be bright and upright, and execute Li Tiantian in the name of cleaning up the portal and eradicating the scum of the same door
It seems that Yang Dad is for Li Tian's good, and even he will speak fluent Beijing dialect, but in essence, Yang Dad is just to cultivate Li Natural as an agent of American interests in China. From this point of view, the seemingly good-looking foreign father and the Japanese Nemoto Ichiro are actually the same hill. And what Li Tiantian received in the United States for so many years was actually secret agent training. At the end of the film, Li Tian's leaders in the United States came to China and actually wanted to open a secret service school. So in this movie, Americans are not good, but belong to the camp of bad people.
In the third film, the bad guys don't have to bully the masses, and the bad guys have begun to seek "cooperation" with the masses. For example, in the Japanese academy of the Devil Nemoto Ichiro, a group of Chinese college students are eager to learn the Analects that Have been tampered with by Nemoto Ichiro.
As for Mr. Lan played by Jiang Wen, further degenerated.
In the bullet, Zhang Mazi is the hero who leads the masses to fight the tower
Within a step, Ma Has degenerated into a charlatan whose conscience and bottom line have not yet been completely extinguished
In the third step, the evil does not suppress the right, and Mr. Lan has in fact become a thorough spectator. You will find that Mr. Lan, who prides himself on being a revolutionary elder and planning big things every day, can only be knocked out of his teeth by Zhu Qianlong and Genichiro and locked up in a dark room, and he has no way to face all this.
Jiang Wen's trilogy is actually modifying or even subverting Akira Kurosawa's classic model, and this modification and subversion is not irregular: the bad guys are becoming more and more hidden, so that in the third part, many viewers have not found out, in fact, Yang Dad is not a good kind; the hero is becoming more and more degenerate, so that in the third part, Mr. Lan, played by Jiang Wen, has been difficult to classify as a hero, and he can only be counted as a common man who thinks he is a hero. In other words, in the movie, Mr. Lan should actually be a person in the mass camp.
What about the masses of the third part?
The path of mass evolution in the trilogy is that the masses are getting stronger and stronger.
The masses in the first part are all a herd of sheep, only the herd effect, when they think that Huang Laoye is dead, someone takes them to the watchtower and they go. As for who is a good person and who is a bad person between Huang Laoye and Zhang Mazi, and even whether Zhang Mazi is called Zhang Mazi or not, the masses do not care at all.
The masses in the second part obviously have their own judgment, a sense of justice and patriotic enthusiasm, so almost all the bad guys show their faces as good people, and then the masses are deceived. That is to say, in the second stage, the masses began to have some sense of autonomy, but they would still be led by the draft contest planned by Ma Zhaori and the vulgar comedy of Wang Tianwang.
The masses in the third part, that is, Li Tiantian and the tailor Guan Qiaohong, and even the mistress of Zhu Qianlong, are not simple, they no longer need heroes to guide them, to tell them the truth of the facts, and they do not even need heroes to kill bad people for them. It's just that these three people all have their own flaws: Guan Qiaohong has brains and courage, but his feet are disabled; Li Natural has martial arts and guts, but he has no brains; Miss Tang has knowledge and education, but she obviously has no courage and no ability, and can only cling to the earth snake Zhu Qianlong. However, at the end of the film, when these three people join hands, the bad guy Zhu Qianlong will undoubtedly die.
It should be said that Jiang Wen only talked about one thing in three films, that is, the evolution and development of Akira Kurosawa's classic model.
In the 60s, Akira Kurosawa, or all mainstream movies, was always the victory of good over evil, the heroes were eliminated, the bad guys always seemed to be stupid, the heroes could never die, and the masses were always timid, cowardly, kind, and simple. The difference or test of the director's skill is only how to interpret this template a little more brilliantly.
In the 21st century, Chinese director Jiang Wen has developed this model, and the center of this development and change is to let the masses replace heroes. At first the masses need the leadership of heroes, and finally the masses awaken themselves, no longer rely on heroes, act on their own, and discover the bad guys and destroy the bad guys.
In the words of a chairman's poem:
There are thousands of spring wind willows, and 600 million Shenzhou is shunyao
In the words of the lyrics of the international song
There has never been a savior, nor a god or an emperor, and it is up to us to create human happiness.
In essence, Jiang Wen's bullet trilogy continues the story of Akira Kurosawa's closed environment in which justice eventually triumphs over evil. However, Jiang Wen abandoned heroism, at least partially, and even emphasized that under certain conditions, if the masses' consciousness is not thorough enough, there will also be bad people creating public opinion, the masses blindly following, and then the situation of the hero's end appears. However, in the third part, Jiang Wen still gave a bright ending in which the masses united, learned from each other's strong points, self-awakened, and evil did not suppress the right.
Purely from the connotation of the trilogy, I think Jiang Wen actually surpassed Akira Kurosawa. Developed a heroic myth into a people's myth.
Kurosawa Akira expressed a similar ideological connotation in one of his later works, "Shadow Warrior", but the expression was quite vague, and in the end it was a complete tragedy, compared with the main theme of Jiang Wen's film is clearer and more optimistic.
So I think that Jiang Wen is indeed a great director and actor, and the bullet trilogy is also a very in-depth film, but the bullet trilogy is still a good wish after all, which has reflections and analysis of the real world, and many places can even be said to be quite profound. However, as far as the theme of the movie is concerned, it is still evil or not right, or a comedic ending of a reunion. This may be the biggest difference between Jiang Wen and Akira Kurosawa, if you have seen Akira Kurosawa's movies, you will find that Akira Kurosawa's vision of the world is often much darker.