Pulling out lou ye's fog, this is the best Gong Li

How many people think that "Lyceum Theatre" is "Gong Li's best performance since the film", how many people scoff at this statement. This is not based on the quality of Gong Li's own performance, but about your acceptance of the work "Lyceum Theatre".

Today, Lou Ye's work, which was originally scheduled to be released at the end of December 2019, was fully released nearly two years after the withdrawal, and the Douban 7.2 rating may not be enough to give most ordinary audiences a clear guide of "watch or not to watch". Black and white, play-within-a-play, anti-genre narrative... Because of Gong Li's existence, "Lyceum Theatre" may become the most popular one of Lou Ye's works in recent years, and at the same time, it is also the most controversial one.

1 Complex mystery "not met in a hundred years"

"Lyceum Theatre" has a Douban score before it was released, mainly because it was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 76th Venice International Film Festival as early as early September 2019 and held a world premiere in Venice. At that time, screenwriter and producer Ma Yingli first announced that the film would be released in Chinese mainland on December 7, 2019. However, the film suddenly announced its withdrawal on the day of release, and it took nearly two years before it officially met with the audience.

Based on Hongying's novel The Death of Shanghai and Toshiichi Yokomitsu's novel Shanghai, Lyceum Theatre is based on the events that took place in 1941 after the famous actor Yu Yan returned to Shanghai during the "Island Period". On the surface, she seems to be back in Shanghai to rehearse her old lover, director Tan Na's new play "Saturday Novel", but in fact she has another mission. In the undercurrent, allied Far East intelligence personnel, Nanjing Wang pseudo agents, Chongqing military commanders and other parties set up a situation to spy on the real purpose of her return. In just six days, nine characters fought life and death under the heavy spy shadow of the enemy and the dark...

Why Gong Li? In fact, Lou Ye decided at the beginning of the casting to reduce the difficulty of the actors when they were close to the characters. He believes that it is necessary to "find a real big star" instead of "playing a big star". In the end, he found Gong Li, who was described by Wang Chuanjun, who played Mo Zhiyin in the film, as "two meters and eight meters in aura".

Playing a big star, why is it difficult for a big star? Gong Li believes that it is still difficult. "I've acted in more than 30 films and haven't played a role like this," she said. The character itself is set to be able to speak five Chinese words, and in order to shoot, she must at least be fluent in Japanese and French lines, in addition to learning to shoot to cope with the fierce gunfight scenes, and even learn hypnosis - in the end credits of the film, there is even a clear "hypnotist" guidance position.

What is more difficult is the complexity of the role: a female spy with a mysterious mission, a famous star, but also an ex-wife, lover, and adopted daughter. In an interview with the media, Gong Li even used "a hundred years of encounter" to describe Yu Yan, saying that the "complexity" and "mystery" of this role have deeply fascinated her.

2 Free performance There is a play in the play

For people who have not worked with Lou Ye, Lou Ye's "everything is performance-oriented" shooting mode also needs time to adapt. Zhang Songwen, who has worked with him four times, revealed that on the set of Lou Ye, it is even difficult to see the staff of other departments except the photographer. In Lou Ye's request, the actor does not need to "die" the script, but only needs to enter the space set by the script and then express it freely. In the process, the actors don't have to worry about their own performance, and the camera will capture their every subtle detail.

This kind of rehearsal method is quite evident in the "play-in-play" of "Lyceum Theatre". The drama director Tan Na, played by Zhao Youting, seems to have become Lou Ye's "double", and under the close-up shot, his keen eyes quickly sweep through all the details of the set. After a "start", everyone on the set naturally flowed: someone danced, someone chatted, someone drank, and in a small corner, Qiulan, played by Yu Wei, was quietly smoking. Tan Na, who is both a director and an actor, plays her suitor in this play, and he comes forward and asks, "Miss Qiulan?" Qiulan lazily raised her eyes and responded indifferently: "I'm sorry, you recognized the wrong person." ”

In this play-within-a-play, Tan Na rehearsed many times, so Yu Yan and his opponents also played many times - each time, the performance of the two was different. In the shot of Lou Ye, the "big director behind the scenes", the state of Zhao Youting and Gong Li is also different. According to Gong Li, in this scene, Lou Ye gave them enough time, and the two of them chatted and talked, and finally they were sleepy with each other. In this process, the two actors also need to constantly be self-vigilant: we are still Yu Yan and Tan Na, we can't chat and talk, and we become Gong Li and Zhao Youting.

To what extent is Lou Ye open to performance? He asked every actor and even the crew to think about an ending to Lyceum Theatre. Zhao Youting revealed that he had seriously thought about three or four endings, and although it was different from the current ending, he really felt that his ideas contributed to the ending. Interestingly, Gong Li's feelings were similar to his. Both of them deeply felt a sense of participation in the fate of the characters, which may be exactly what Lou Ye hoped to achieve when he first arranged this "homework".

3 Handheld photography Time and space blur

The anti-genre of "Lyceum Theatre" can be seen from the color of the whole film. The whole film is black and white, only the sound effects have no soundtrack, and the seriousness and literary sense of the work come to the fore. In this regard, if the audience is not mentally prepared, or even plans to watch a shanghai beach version of the cool film "007", it is bound to be disappointed.

The handheld camera method also has a "dissuasive" effect on some viewers. This was a topic of conversation when Lou Ye's 2018 work "Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind" was released — the film's shaky camera language shook some viewers and even threw up. It is also from that work that "it is best to sit in the back row to see Lou Ye films" has become a kind friendship reminder among fans.

Compared with "Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind", "Lyceum Theatre" is obviously more challenging to ordinary audiences in terms of time and space structure. For example, at the beginning of the film, the direct entry is the "play within a play" rehearsed by Tan Na. The rehearsal year for the play was 1937, but with the end of the "play within a play" rehearsal, the time spanned directly to the week before pearl harbor in 1941. In the four years in between, Yu Yan's departure and return, the plot was not clearly explained, but only through the mouths of various characters.

What is more intriguing than the ambiguity of time is the de-boundaryization of "Lyceum Theatre" in space and even in the relationship between the characters. "Saturday Novel" is a play that will be performed at the Lyceum Theatre, which means that the entire stage has only three sides of the set at most, and one side must be left to the audience's vision. But as the film follows the characters, you will gradually forget that this should be a stage, and if you pay attention, you will find that the "fourth side" of the entire stage that should be blank does not know when it has long been filled with sets.

In addition, Yu Yan and Tan Na are an old pair of lovers, and Yu Wei returns to Shanghai to complete the task and wants to take Tan Na away. In "Saturday Novel", the relationship between the characters played by Yu Yan and Tan Na and the actual relationship between the two is also corresponding to each other. This further breaks the boundaries of the film's narrative.

Whether these "tricks" played by Lou Ye in time, space, and character relationships have raised the threshold for the audience to watch movies, or added the fun of watching movies, perhaps they will have to wait for the large-scale release of the film to have an answer.

4 See Gong Li Forget Gong Li

Screenwriter Ma Yingli once said that making "Lyceum Theatre" into a "black and white film" is to break people's stereotype of "red wine and green" in old Shanghai. This tendency to de-symbolize is also reflected in the shaping of each character throughout the film—like most of Lou Ye's past works, he focuses more on the state and emotions of the characters at a certain moment than on their identities.

This is also the reason why some fans believe that Gong Li dedicated her "best performance since the film" in "Lyceum Theatre". Because with the help of Lou Ye, Gong Li used her own performance more than relying on the "notification" of the plot, showing the fate of a small but crucial woman in the torrent of the big era. Her life was wrapped up in everything, but she finally seized the only and last opportunity to say no to the fate of the "pawn". In the process, none of the characters have given any verbal explanations about their outlook on life or worldview. The audience can only follow the choice of the characters, watch their hesitation or determination, and feel the multi-faceted perspectives and states in that period of history. This is also Gong Li's own feelings, she once said that she had been "in a trance" and did not know whether this was "a feature film or a documentary".

Zhao Youting also said that he was once very confused when filming "Lyceum Theatre", but in the end he found that when filming Lou Ye's film, the real "right direction" is to forget the "right direction". Judging from the finished film, Gong Li obviously grasped this point more purely. There is no need to talk about how many memorable crying scenes or gunfight scenes she had in the whole play, because as a star and spy with history, story and background, Yu Yan in 1937 and 1941 has been completely frozen in Lou Ye's shots in "Lyceum Theatre". Also frozen is Gong Li herself, who is 56 years old and still has more performance possibilities.

Some viewers said that almost from the first scene, they had forgotten that the person in front of them was Gong Li. When the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, the British film magazine Total Film commented on Lyceum Theatre and Gong Li: "Lou Ye, the sixth generation of Chinese director, has a new work that combines action, romance, espionage and betrayal." This is Gong Li's best role in years. ”

Gong Li herself hopes that the audience can give this slightly threshold film a chance. She said in an interview: "When we make this movie, we want the audience to watch a pure movie quietly and find out what the movie itself looks like, rather than watching a movie while visiting the mall." ”

Yangcheng Evening News reporter Li Li

Source: Yangcheng Evening News