The official release of "Lyceum Theatre" in China has been nearly 2 years since the original fixing time of the film. During this period, Lou Ye has carried the film into a number of international film festivals, but the overall evaluation of foreign media is not high.
"Lyceum Theatre" final poster.
In addition to the director's own appeal, "Lyceum Theatre" has attracted attention because it is Lou Ye's first genre film. Since its release, fans' evaluation of this film is still polarized, some people criticize Lou Ye is still Lou Ye, the consistent shooting method and visual style, but less real characters and cores, some people think that Lou Ye has completed the deconstruction and breakthrough of traditional spy films.
In the view of the author of this article, Lou Ye's strong personal style makes "Lyceum Grand Theatre" "Yang Feng Yin violates the paradigm of genre films". Compared with suspense and gunfights, the close interweaving of plays within plays forms the main feature of the narrative. Rather than linear development and solving problems after laying suspense, "Lyceum Theatre" prefers to build a narrative labyrinth full of identity doubts, and with the last scene, Yu Yan's story becomes a "snake with a tail".
Written by | Wei Ziwei
The young Werther with an unknown motive
"Expecting love in return is not a demand for love, but a kind of vanity."
At the end of Lyceum Theatre, French spy Hubert (Pascal Gregory) steps out of the French Concession hotel, which is already controlled by the Japanese army, and throws a copy of "The Troubles of Young Werther" into the garbage. On the open title page, nietzsche's autograph is written.
As Lou Ye's first genre film, "Lyceum Theatre" also has a stronger plot than Lou Ye's two previous works, "The Mystery of the Floating City" adapted from the Tianya Net post and "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind", which was ridiculed as a dog blood popularization column drama. Around the power relations of many parties, psychological warfare and street warfare are staged in turn on the black and silver screen. Gong Li, who plays the heroine Yu Yan, even contributed a gunfight scene of up to ten minutes with a healthy posture, and it is difficult not to think of it slightly: "Great luck, eat chicken tonight."
Stills from the movie "Lyceum Theatre".
The clip of "The Troubles of Young Werther" is a rare idler in the film: earlier in the story, Hubert used this old book as a reward to ask his subordinate Shapier (Tom Rasziha) to protect his adopted daughter in action. Even considering the economic value of being an out-of-print book, this is a fairly elegant gift in spy movies.
At the end of the film, Hubert finally learns in a secret letter to him that Yu Yan has deliberately tampered with the information obtained during the operation: The mountain cherry blossom corresponds not to Singapore, but to Hawaii. Subtitles were then subtitled to show the Japanese invasion of Hawaii and the outbreak of the Pacific War, which meant that the United States was involved in World War II, thus hastening the end of World War II. The subsequent history is the history that everyone is familiar with. Hubert stepped out of the hotel after the subtitles disappeared before throwing "The Troubles of Young Werther" into the garbage, with the scene mentioned at the beginning of the article.
But why did Yu Yan betray his adoptive father and tamper with intelligence? This is probably the most confusing question for the vast majority of viewers from this scene to when they leave the theater. "Lyceum Theatre" also at this moment, "Yang Feng Yin violates" the paradigm of the genre film: it sets up a suspense like the usual spy film, and unveils the truth (the truth can also echo the foreshadowing), but the audience only gets more confusion, because the motivation of the characters is still unresolved until the end of the play.
Regarding Yu Yan's motives, there are two main speculations among the audience:
First, although Yu Yan was raised by the French, he had a Chinese heart after all. For the sake of her country's righteousness, she deliberately involved Americans in World War II so that her home country could be freed from the scourge of war as soon as possible. This kind of speculation is most in line with the routine of spy movies, but it is far-fetched in rationality, because it is difficult for Yu Yan to have enough context, information and even vision to make such a decision in a short period of time.
The second speculation revolves around Nietzsche's inscription at the beginning. Taken literally, this sentence carries a clear admonition. After taking Yu Yan out of the orphanage and raising him, Hubert undoubtedly had a fondness for his adopted daughter, but this feeling was obviously also conditional. Hubert trusted Yuyo absolutely to determine the confidence level of the information in the telegram. But when Yu Yan refuses to be a pawn and delivers the wrong information according to her personal will, the sense of trust between Hubert and her dissolves, but this may also dissolve the "vanity" that expects returns, rather than the "love" itself. Therefore, Yu Yan still expressed his final thanks and confession to his adoptive father in his letter. Considering that Yu Yan gave up her escape and went to find Tan Na (Zhao Youting), who loved her unconditionally, this statement may also have room for self-consistency.
Both of these speculations make sense and are far-fetched. Why Yu Yan decided to make an out-of-control chess piece, Lou Ye did not point out in the film in the end, and even the clues were half-understood. This is probably the DNA that Lou Ye can't give up even if he is a genre film director. The past and present lives, the causal relationship, which may be explained too clearly, can kill him. Constructed on a hazy human nature, hanging a little rational emotion, it dominates human behavior.
In "Lyceum Theatre", he made a lot of close-ups of Gong Li, static, and actionable. On the big black and white screen, it is still clear and blurry - Lou Ye has an explanation that looks more like a joke, saying that compared to "Rome", his black and white images are "inferior", not so "middle class". Yu Yan always looked tired. Even in the close-up, it seems to be a long way from the audience - after all, we only intervened in this woman's life halfway through. As Bazin, whom I quote ten thousand times, said: "Simplicity is the absence of reality." ”
Back to "The Troubles of Young Werther", perhaps some viewers have noticed that in the theatrical version of "Lyceum Theatre", Nietzsche's sentence is not translated in Chinese and English. Chinese subtitled "Expecting a Return of Love, Not a Demand for Love, But a Vanity" does correspond to the German text written in the book: Das Verlangen nach Gegenliebe ist nicht das Verlangen der Liebe, sondern der Eitelkeit. But it doesn't fit in with the English translation of "It's the desire, not the desired, that we love." Xu is the mistake of the film side.
In fact, the English translation of the sentence is also from Nietzsche's mouth: "Man liebt zuletzt seine Begierde, und nicht das Begehrte." People ultimately love their own desires themselves, not what they desire. In my opinion, this sentence should perhaps be more of a footnote to the Lyceum Theatre.
When talking about desire, Lacan also likes to say, "Desire is fundamentally unsatisfied, and one of the characteristics of desire is that it is a process of infinite delay of the object of desire, and it is the eternal delay of desire itself or the satisfaction of desire." ”
Desire or reality. The state of not being fully filled and satisfied is what people love most. Our desire to fill in dissatisfaction is like a story of dissatisfaction.
Intersecting asymptotes
The most unignowable feature of "Lyceum Theatre" is certainly the interweaving of the real and the virtual. Real-virtual, above-ground-underground, form two sets of simple and complex dichotomies that are interwoven into four quadrants, allowing the main characters to jump over and over again in these four quadrants. For example, Yu Yan's underground & real identity is a spy, but the aboveground & real identity is an actor. She also has an above-ground & virtual identity as Miss Cholan, a striker played in "Saturday Novels", and an underground & virtual identity, which is the deceased wife of The late wife of Japanese officer Saburo Furutani (Oda Cejō), who pretends to be a Japanese officer in action.
In terms of national identity, Yu Yan is also quite contradictory. She is of Chinese descent, has a face no different from that of a Japanese (Miyoko), and Chinese name is Yu Yan, which has an overly appropriate counterpart in French, Jean. It turned out that she had been an orphan since childhood, raised by French agent Hubert.
The interpretation of these identities was slightly playfully downplayed in Lou Ye's interview: "I told Gong Li that there is no problem at all, this role is a big star, you are a big star, so you don't have to act; this is a spy with a secret mission and mission, and a spy can't act, so there is no need to act." The last thing left is a woman, which is the most important thing. ”
It's certainly not that simple. What makes the narrative more complicated is that Lou Ye uses a lot of play-in-play, and enters and exits without warning. For example, in one scene, Yu Yan is exercising the duty of spying (identity A) to spy on Japanese officers, and Tan Na suddenly appears, forcing her to respond with the attitude of an actress (identity B). Tan Na got into the car and said to the driver: Go to the dock bar. The next second, Yu Yan and Tan Na came face to face and talked about love. But observing their dialogue, the camera unknowingly substitutes the audience into the rehearsal set of "Saturday Novel", and Yu Yan incarnates as Miss Qiulan (identity C).
Here, there are also implied echoes between several identities: the dialogue between Tan Na and Yu Yan is both the words of the people in the play and almost the dissection of the two people in reality. Spatially, the rehearsal site they were at was arranged according to the dock dock that Tan Na had asked to go to earlier. Reality and narrative are therefore highly intertwined, forming a sense of destiny.
In fact, what is more likely to be produced in a play-within-a-play is the distancing effect proposed by the German dramatist Brecht. Brecht criticized traditional drama for its tendency to bring a paralyzing sense of immersion, as we are today familiar with Hollywood narratives. He supports the use of unfamiliar language by theatre creators, constantly reminding the audience that what they are watching is a play, so as to stimulate the audience's critical perspective and motivation to change reality.
However, in Lou Ye's works, the interweaving of reality and virtual forms more of a sense of chaos. The audience is confused by the switching of narrative and identity. Lou Ye's signature handheld lens further exacerbates the visual distraction.
The switch and echo between identities reaches a climax at the end of the film. Yu had said that this was the last role she would play, but when she missed the premiere of "Saturday Novel", her true mission was revealed: she specially returned to China to play not Miss Qiulan, but Miyoko. It's not "Saturday Novel" to star in, but her spy mission. When Yu Yan completed her task and rushed back to the premiere scene, the lines that had been rehearsed thousands of times constituted the dialogue between her and Tan Na. All serendipity and coincidence have become predestined and uncertain prophets.
If at the beginning of the premiere, the staff pulled up the curtain to show that the tavern scene where they had been rehearsing was actually set up on the stage, revealing the invisible fourth wall, then the messy gunshots completely shattered the fourth wall. The sound of gunfire from and offstage seems to show that reality and narrative share a cruel face.
Hong Shangxiu once said that film and reality are asymptotes, and the world of film can only be infinitely close to reality, but cannot intersect. In the world of "Lyceum Theatre", at the moment when the gunfire of the Japanese army in reality coincides with the sound of gunfire in the script, the two lines finally intersect, and then bounce off violently, pointing to the vast fate.
Grand national history and vague personal history
Regarding Yu Yan, Hubert said: "She is a woman, an actress. There is a more ugly version of this sentence, from Mo Zhiyin (Wang Chuanjun): "She (Yu Yan) is like you (Bai Mei), a drama and a bitch." ”
In these two sentences, the woman corresponds to the bitch, and the actor corresponds to the drama. Unlike Yu Yan's identity as a spy, these two attributes are relatively personal and do not carry too much of the great righteousness and historical responsibility of the family and the country. The former emphasizes gender, while the latter explicitly refers to her profession and skills, alludes to her cunning, and perhaps also refers to her like a person in the play, with some unrealistic pursuits.
These two evaluations, one positive and one negative, corroborate each other, which just shows that Yu Yan is a separate but integrated role between identity switches. Counting down, she borrowed lines on stage to say the most truth, but she couldn't help but lie the most understage. And all this stems from the fact that she is an actress. The identity of the actor allows her to play the fake, and the drama is more real than the real false. And the female identity allows her to give up the futile survival very personally after completing all the tasks, and to wait for death on the shoulders of her lover.
One of Lou Ye's characteristics lies in his lust for photographing people. Calculated, "Lyceum Theatre" is like the thinnest part of his lust, and it may also be like the news on the Internet, and there are some reasons for deletion. In this film, in addition to the scene of Yu Yan and Tan Na'er grinding, and the rape scene between Mo Zhiyin and Bai Mei - too straightforward to be symbolically over the substance - the closest thing to lust and surprise is a scene between Yu Yan and Bai Mei.
Bai Mei and Yu Yan in the movie.
Bai Meifu has a purposeful appearance as soon as she appears, and she claims to be a fan of Yu Yan and can memorize all the lines in the play. But it was soon pointed out by Mo Zhiyin that she was actually a spy in Chongqing, and she was close to Yu Yan because she had a mission. However, as the plot unfolds, Bai Mei becomes more and more a forgotten friend of Yu Yan, or rather, a self-projecting/mirroring role of Yu Yan himself. They enjoy a similar fate, a missing family, a shared love of theatre, and an experience in a troubled world where their lives hang in the balance. Bai Mei was drugged by Yu Yan and lay on the bed, muttering to herself in Yu Yan's induced questioning. The air smells of same-sex lust, but it's like a restrained touch, secret.
Bai Mei did not try to complete any of the tasks in Chongqing. She was shot to death by Mo Zhiyin after she had spoken for Yu Yan. The two met again, and it was Yu Yan who saw Bai Mei's body. The two men came together purely by recognizing each other's smells and emotions, and in the era of war and chaos, they mysteriously shielded the intrusion of grand narratives. This also reminds me of the unconclusive feelings of Li Ningyu and Gu Xiaomeng in "The Sound of the Wind". Whatever its actual name, it was powerful enough to drive Li Ningyu to make a choice other than faith.
Stills from the movie "The Sound of the Wind".
This may be a common choice for Lou Ye, or many sixth-generation directors: to remain separated from the position, which is maintained by personal ambiguous emotions. Or rather, it is precisely because I know that there are ambiguous feelings between individuals that I know that it is difficult to be blamed for maintaining a position of simply and neatly killing everything, especially in the midst of war.
Just like Bai Mei and Yu Yan, there is another pair of same-sex relationships in "Lyceum Theatre", which is Mo Zhiyin and Tan Na. Although Mo Zhiyin was a traitor and loyal to the Japanese, he was despised by Tan Na and others. But when the bad things are done, don't forget to tell your colleagues in a good voice, and remember to keep your old friend Tan Na safe. It just so happens that there are also fifth-generation directors who have made the first attempt at spy war genre films this year, which can be contrasted: "On the Cliff" cannot accommodate so many ambiguous fields between right and wrong.
At the end of the film, Yu Yan makes one of the most personal choices - of course, given her injury, it is not unreasonable - she did not try to escape, as agreed, came to the dock, quietly crouched on Tan Na's shoulder, as if waiting for the verdict of fate. The gun falls to the ground, and the scene is transformed into the drama they rehearsed at the beginning of the movie, without explaining whether Yu Yan is dead or not, nor the whereabouts of Tan Na. The story is connected from end to end, forming a snake with a tail.
Perhaps, yu yan and Tan Na are dead, becoming thousands of vague stars in the grand narrative. Perhaps, they have gained eternal life in the Lyceum Theatre, living forever in The Saturday Novel. The people in the tavern had been dancing, and they had been dancing.
Author | Wei Ziwei
Edit | Qingqingzi and Luodong
Proofreading | Li Shihui