The duel between man and technology, highlighting the hero who is integrated with the people of his home country - commenting on the movie "Sniper"

Poster for the movie Sniper

When "Sniper" was still called "The Coldest Gun", the author had already begun to look forward to it. Not because the director is Zhang Yimou, but because the subject matter is relatively new and unique in Chinese films.

What determines the outcome or defeat of a war and the direction of a war are many factors: strategic deployment, tactical application, equipment logistics, the quality of officers and men, morale and style... Team battle scenes are often magnificent, especially in modern large-scale wars, the strength of individual combat capabilities can not play a role in influencing the overall situation, which dooms snipers to be marginal roles in war. But for the viewing and entertainment of the movie, the sniper has a huge charm because of its mysterious and legendary characteristics, so in many war films, there are snipers as a brilliant supporting role. Therefore, from the very beginning, the author was full of curiosity about how Zhang Yimou told the story of the sniper in such a large-scale war as the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.

When the film was released, the name had been changed from the cold-sounding and poetic "Coldest Gun" to the plain and realistic "Sniper", which was appropriate, because although the whole story was based on the "Cold Gun cold gun" movement in the position warfare stage of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the plot was extremely condensed, condensed into a sniper between the fifth class of the Volunteer Army and the elite sniper team of the United Nations Army, and the two sides were actually no longer playing cold guns, but a duel between each other. The shift in emphasis from "things" (guns) and "skills" (cold) to "people" (snipers) is not only a change in the title of the film, but also a shift in the center of the narrative.

In order to trap Liu Wenwu, a volunteer sharpshooter led by the US army, the UN sniper team set a trap with a wounded and captured volunteer scout Liang Liang as bait, and when Liu Wenwu led more than a dozen soldiers of the five squads of sharpshooters to rescue his comrades-in-arms, the two sides engaged in a battle. After quickly explaining the plot framework, the film spends most of the time describing the battle of wits between the two sides. This is almost a minimalist plot, which contains huge dramatic tension in a small space and a limited time, and the way of processing is quite similar to the freehand and blank space in traditional drama, leaving the space for the most exciting actions and scheduling. From an aesthetic point of view, the round-and-round fight between the two sides of the duel is like the master move in a martial arts film, which is a way of expression that sees the small and the big and lifts the weight lightly.

The difference between a cold gun and a duel is the technology and the people. "Sniper" reverses the expectations based on history-based imagination: instead of volunteer soldiers fighting cold guns, they let them carry rudimentary guns into enemy traps, and the other side uses more sophisticated equipment and ground-to-air assistance to relax. Whether from the opportunity of the battle, or from the level of strength, the sharpshooters of the fifth class are in a weak position. How to flip against the wind, where are the opportunities and possibilities? This seemingly disparate setup is undoubtedly full of gripping tension. There is no doubt that the overwhelming superiority of the United Nations army in terms of timing and modern equipment caused great casualties in the first five squads, but even if the five squads fought to the last man, the task was completed. The volunteer army, which had been baptized in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, took advantage of the limited conditions to give full play to the fierce combat wisdom in the course of the bloody revolution in a situation of survival in a desperate situation, which was the result of the combined forces of the people's army's comradeship in war, the sense of cooperation, the spirit of sacrifice in going forward and succeeding, and the tenacious and flexible style of work. That is, in the end, it is man who triumphs over technology.

The warriors of the fifth class may be an insignificant group throughout the war, but each of them is a flesh-and-blood person. They are not war machines, but soldiers with brains, who can maintain a calm and analytical mind in an inferior situation and quickly kill on the spur of the moment; they also have the fearless courage to exchange their lives for victory, knowing that they will drag back the bodies of their comrades under the muzzle of the enemy's guns and die for a lifetime. What underpins their fight to the end is a belief in victory, which is highlighted in the film through a singing plot. Lying in the middle of the battlefield, the bright light was dying, and in order to keep him awake, the remaining three people of the fifth class began to sing the battle song loudly. At this time, they did not lose their temper, but raised a more urgent fighting spirit, and this belief and confidence was the key to their victory.

Compared to guns and gun skills, Sniper focuses on portraying characters. Its breakthrough in the previous sniper movies is that the snipers of the volunteer army are in an "exposed" situation at the beginning, and we know that the biggest feature of the sniper is precisely to hide, so that the opponent does not know where he is. Re-concealing the opponent in the exposed situation can highlight the wit and heroism of the characters, and when the opponent proposes to exchange liu Wenwu for light, Liu Wenwu strengthens the spirit of sacrifice and dedication with his own exposure.

It's a group portrait play, and almost everyone has their personality. Liang Liang, who was seriously injured and did not forget the intelligence, the fat mound who carried the iron plate to rescue his comrades-in-arms, xiao Xu who always remembered the telescope... The most prominent are undoubtedly Liu Wenwu and Chen Dayong, Liu Wenwu never smiles, mature and calm, and is the enemy's primary hunting target. Dayong is a novice, wooden and sensitive, the sacrifice of his comrades always brings him to tears, and the brutal battle makes him grow rapidly. When he was the only one left in the class, almost faced with an impossible task, he used Liu Wenwu's method to successfully kill his opponent and bring back the information. The warriors died, but the fifth class did not die. If Liu Wenwu represents reason and sacrifice, Chen Dayong symbolizes growth and inheritance.

In this inheritance, we can see a spiritual vitality of the unity of the individual and the collective. Each of the five classes has its own characteristics, but it also has its own commonalities. It is a new type of relationship in which the individual is integrated into the collective: the individual resides in the commonality, and the structure between the individual and the collective is not a dualistic opposition, and the individual is not a part of the whole, but the individual is expressed as a collective form. From the perspective of long-term history, the individual has always been an abstract symbol, and he or she must have been united with a certain community, with a specific society, and acquired a certain identity to have historical significance. In the pre-modern period, the nameless individual, as Marx said, was nothing more than a potato in a dark cloth bag, and did not belong to each other, until the revolution since modern times has shaped the people in the true sense (children and soldiers). This was especially true for China in the 20th century, when the scattered masses of the people were united into a people with a sense of community in the process of anti-feudal, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial revolutionary construction, so that they would also share the same hatred and hatred in the internationalist war to resist the United States and aid Korea.

Back to the film, the shaping between the group portrait and the personality is easy to form a contradiction, war or pan-struggle movies (such as martial arts, espionage, police and other genres) is the portrayal of individual heroes, highlighting the extraordinary physical and spiritual abilities of individuals, which is rather a variation of classical heroes and modern individualism. The image representation of contemporary heroes or heroic models has always been a difficult problem, and this problem has a partial breakthrough in the "red classics" of socialist China, that is, the individual is placed in the collective, and the individual hero has become a symbol of the hero of the times. The main theme of the film often takes this approach, but how to balance the relationship between the individual and the collective is difficult to grasp, it is easy to fall into the symbolization, so that the hero characters become hollow, so that it is difficult for the audience to empathize.

On the one hand, "Sniper" absorbs the traditional drama and film to express the imagery of individual talents, on the other hand, it inherits the narrative of individual and collective unity in the "Red Classic". As a result, the snipers of the fifth squad are heroes with special talents, but they are not heroes in the individualistic sense of Hollywood films, their talents are beyond ordinary people, their identities and emotions are close to ordinary people, and thus they are integrated with the country and the people. This kind of hero who is integrated with the people of his home country is both a concrete individual and a representative of the collective, who incarnate as a collective, and the collective is expressed through them. In this regard, "Sniper" has the meaning of "refracting the sun with a drop of water, reflecting the whole war with a class", which allows the inspiration of the main theme to penetrate into the shell of the commercial film, just like salting into the water, and the water into the river and the sea.

(The author is a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Author: Liu Daxian

Edit: Wang Bumi