"Chosin Lake No Shuimen Bridge": Continues the temperament of the previous work "Chosin Lake" war epic blockbuster

Summary of views

The film revolves around the specific space of "Watergate Bridge", the story of "Three Explosions of Watergate Bridge" directly faces the contradiction and conflict between attack and defense, the wisdom and courage in "attacking the strong with the weak", the tenacity and perseverance in repeated tug-of-war, showing and constructing the process of ups and downs of the battle and the rich level of significance, the fearlessness and enthusiasm of the volunteer soldiers, and the heroic feat of "sacrificing life and forgetting death to preserve peace" produce a lofty sense of tragedy, so that we understand that the hero is an ordinary person who cares about the motherland, defends peace, and sacrifices his life and forgets death. The tempering of ice and fire allows us to see the bright red battle flag and the heroic legend of the ancestors of the volunteer army.

"Chosin Lake No Pratunam Bridge" continues the temperament, style and production level of the previous "Chosin Lake" war epic blockbuster, while focusing more deeply on the "Battle of Pratunam Bridge". In addition to the necessary connection and echo of the previous work, the two-and-a-half-hour film content fully shows the "Battle of Pratunam Bridge" in the "Battle of Chosin Lake".

"Pratunam Bridge" is a hydropower station, is the only way for the US First Marine Division to retreat in the Battle of Chosin Lake, is the key point in the entire campaign to completely annihilate the enemy, the volunteer army's "three explosions of the Pratunam Bridge" constitutes the basic structure of the story, and the enemy who is intolerant of water and fire, and the environment of ice and snow, but it is not easy to really open the shell of this battle, show and construct the ups and downs of this battle and the rich level of significance. Our army's subjective and firm will to complete the task, selfless sacrifice, heroic battle and objective obstacles, as well as the historical facts that did not prevent the withdrawal of the US army in the end, make the presentation of such a shocking battle under the restrictions of "impossible tasks" and "tasks that have not been really completed", which requires the values and narrative strategies to be handled well, the characters are shaped well, the sense of resonance and seeability are highlighted, and the scale needs to be grasped in contradictions.

The ups and downs of the three-bombing Watergate Bridge battle are rich in multiple layers of meaning

At the level of the story, the volunteers and soldiers of the Seventh Company on mission first had to face the contradictions of attack and defense, bombing and repair. With the dialectical relationship of weak attack and strong, steel less gas and more gas, we borrow the passage in the movie to describe it like this: The seventh interspersed company "steel less" but called the steel seven company, dare to fight with the powerful enemy and dare to win, but the enemy finally relied on the large steel frame structure of the airdrop to repair the Watergate Bridge, I think of our flesh and blood bridge in "King Kong River", and the air supremacy of the enemy aircraft shown many times in the two movies poses a huge threat to our army, which will make us sad.

There is a detail in the movie, in the face of the enemy's helicopter, Yu Congrong and Wu Qianli have a conversation, Yu Congrong said", "We must have these new equipment, we must be better than them", Wu Qianli said "sooner or later". This makes people think of the story, think of the reality and the current road to a strong army and a strong country, the "Straight Nine", "Wu Zhi Ten", "J-20" fighters, "Yun-20" heavy transport aircraft, aircraft carriers and other advanced weapons and equipment. "Qi" is a fine revolutionary tradition and confidence, but we who are advancing with the times can no longer suffer the loss of "steel" and less, and today's China is already a prosperous world as the ancestors wished.

Cold war and the blood of defending the country, war and peace are also contradictory and dialectical, and there is a lyric in "Hero's Hymn": "Sacrifice life and forget death to preserve peace." The Seventh Company of Steel had to complete the mission to defeat the enemy, which was concretized into several company-level battles in the film. As the battle progressed, in the part of the Watergate Bridge, the balance of forces between the enemy and ourselves was constantly changing: In the objective comparison of military forces, the enemy became stronger and stronger, and the seventh company became weaker and weaker, but the soldiers of the seventh company did not give up until they reached their goal, which not only had to fight wits and courage, but also to fight will and faith, and at the end of the battle, the heroic feat of "sacrificing life and forgetting death to preserve peace" produced a lofty sense of tragedy.

Xu Ke once showed the image narrative with clear space, rich details, spectacle action, and good narrative rhythm in the battle of "ZhiZhi Wei Hu Shan", which handled the relationship between attack and defense very well, quite a bit of the archetype of "Seven Samurai" "weak and strong". In "The Watergate Bridge of Chosin Lake", Xu Ke repeatedly pulled the saw around the specific space of the Watergate Bridge, "attacking the strong with the weak", and the story of "Three Explosions of the Watergate Bridge" still deals well with the contradiction and conflict between attack and defense. The sense of space such as the south of the bridge, the north of the bridge, the commanding heights, the enemy's command post, the pipeline, and the pumping station are very clear, and the purpose, strategy, and execution process of the seven companies of several attacks are also very clear; moreover, the unexpected situations in the attack, as well as the game and "hide-and-seek" between the enemy and us, make the process of the battle not according to the map, but gripping. The sacrifice and selflessness of the attack, the difficulty and uncertainty of the attack, make the film narrative full of drama, and the battle process is complete and compact and tortuous. The enemy's incendiary bombs and flame guns, the fearlessness and blood of the volunteer soldiers all made this icy and snowy land have "temperature". Fighting, selfless battles again and again, heroic sacrifices, let ordinary soldiers become heroes, let us know that heroes are ordinary people who care about the motherland, defend peace, and sacrifice their lives and forget their deaths. In the midst of contradictions and difficulties, the tempering of ice and fire allows us to see the bright red battle flag and the heroic legend of the ancestors of the volunteer army.

The "micro-legend" in the revolutionary epic and the Chinese story that touched people's hearts

"The Watergate Bridge of Chosin Lake" has its historical background and realist foundation, the cold and cruel of the war, the tragedy of the ice sculpture company, the only way for the enemy to retreat, the great efforts made by the volunteer army to be limited by the actual conditions, and the historical facts that failed to completely annihilate the FIRST MARINE Division of the US Army. But at the same time, as a war film in the sense of genre, it is necessary to have rich and meticulous battle details, a display strategy for war scenes and the game between the enemy and ourselves, and "small places" can be "informal".

"Chosin Lake" and "Chosin Lake's Water Gate Bridge" are linked together, which together have the characteristics of the epic legend of war, which absorbs the elements of the "legendary narrative" of Chinese films, especially the revolutionary historical theme films: for example, the heroism of the Seventh Company of Steel, the strong will and outstanding skills of the soldiers, the personality and team of the group portrait heroes, the brotherhood and brotherhood of comrades-in-arms, the sacrifice and "immortality" of the heroes, the formation of human shells by the soldiers, and the final battle of the entire company to the "real to one person" when counting the list of personnel. The content of these revolutionary heroisms is combined with revolutionary romanticism: the sniping and blasting of Pinghe, the immortality of Yu Congrong in the fire, Mei Sheng's blindness and driving into the enemy camp, Wu Qianli's last bombing of the lone hero, Wu Wanli's "thawing" under the enemy's flame gun, the warning and symbol of the red scarf, and so on. These contents, which are in line with the authenticity of art and have a spectacle and romantic atmosphere, can be warm-blooded and sympathetic, continuing the tradition of Chinese war films that "have war" on the basis of "there is an enemy and us" and have developed to a new realm at present.

Another important artistic feature of "Chosin Lake's Pratunam Bridge" is that it is both specific and subtle, and it is also small and large, using a "micro-legend" narrative strategy in the context of epic poetry. The film takes the audience to explore the subtle mysteries, and gradually unfolds the battle process and battle details that originate from history and are highly legendary, and "micro-legend" has become a narrative means for the concretization of genre elements. Although "legend" and "genre" have an inherent coupling, genres tend to dominate at the level of narrative mode.

As we know, "legend" as a narrative mode can be said to have evolved from Wei Jinzhiwei novels to Tang legendary novels, and has a far-reaching influence along the way, and is considered to be one of the dominant paradigms of Chinese narrative literature. This narrative paradigm is mainly based on the "strange people and strange events" in the life of the world, integrated into the traditional Chinese ethical values, and expresses the moral theme through a story of tragedy and joy that is as tortuous and complex as possible, and with a bizarre and touching plot setting. From the point of view, the foundation of the legendary narrative is in ethical and moral representation, which makes it have some pre-modern color in the expression of values, and genre films are the product of the two-way interaction between modern cultural industry and mass culture, which is more easily accepted by audiences in the new industrial environment and modern global context. After the new century, the revolutionary saga is being improved in the grammar of genre narratives, which are attached to genres in the form of a "micro-legend". More directly, the "micro-legend" instead attaches itself to the genre in a locally existential way, and it still retains some of the formal representations and bridge designs of the legend. For example, the two works of "Chosin Lake", including "Sniper" and previous film works such as "Railway Hero", "Wise Tiger Mountain", "On the Cliff" and so on, the design of heroic characters often has a sense of legend of "hero": battle hero, sharpshooter, lone hero who goes deep into the tiger's den, lurker, etc. The heroes in the legend of revolutionary heroes are familiar to readers, and their appearance, behavior and personality can evoke readers' memories of traditional martial arts novels and heroes in heroic legends. In the legend of revolutionary history, the difference between them and the former is that all their "chivalrous actions" stem from the firm belief in their hearts and point to an ultimate sacred combat mission or revolutionary task.

Between the upper and lower parts of "Chosin Lake", the structure of "The Water Gate Bridge of Chosin Lake" draws on the chapter structure of the legendary narrative to a certain extent, and the "three explosions" advance the narrative layer by layer, and more properly deal with the problems of repetition and lack that may result from insufficient narrative development; or the problem of story clarity caused by the large amount of information and the strong density of dramatic conflicts. At the same time, the group portrait characters have the chivalrous group elements in the traditional legend, and the narrative combines the sense of partial suspense with universal morality, and the "literary drama" integrates the "love ontology" of brotherhood, comradeship, family and country feelings, and patriotic feelings, and then through the highlighting of moral ethics and values through "love", they have found the content and way of Telling Chinese stories that can touch people's hearts.

Further, the local existence of "micro-legends" is also embodied in a "discrete-encounter" plot paradigm in legendary narratives. The life and death parting of the Wu brothers, the passages that echo the return home with ashes, the frozen together of Wu Qianli and Wu Wanli in the snow, and after being ignited by the fire, they are separated by life and death, Mei Sheng's concern and separation for his wife and daughter, the life and death roster of the Seventh Company and the life and death parting of his comrades-in-arms, the seventh company and the ninth company, the encounter and separation with the artillery battalion, and so on, these movie contents show this plot paradigm very well.

In the new context, "Chosin Lake" and "Chosin Lake's Water gate Bridge" as a new mainstream blockbuster, major theme creation, the renewal of its revolutionary historical war narrative paradigm, can be divided into three paths: first, the type elements: large-scale production, spectacle, star system, etc.; second, the legendary narrative to the genre mode, such as war films, etc.; third, the use of "micro-legend" embedded in the specific and local type narrative. These constructions have largely broadened the subject matter vision and narrative strategy of domestic films, but this is another process on the road, how to combine multiple elements with contradictions to form a more organic unified whole, which can also be described as a kind of ice and fire quenching for Chinese filmmakers.

(The author is a professor and vice dean of Shanghai Film Academy of Shanghai University)

Source: Wen Wei Po