Ma Gui (PhD student, School of Liberal Arts, Chinese University)
The story of Lyceum Theatre (2021, hereinafter referred to as "Lyceum") takes place a week before the outbreak of the Pacific War. In the "isolated island area" of Shanghai's concession, several forces are surging undercurrents. Tan Na (Zhao Youting) is a left-wing director who is rehearsing a play called "Saturday Novel" at the Lyceum Theatre. Mo Zhiyin (Wang Chuanjun) is ostensibly working as a producer of Tan Na's drama, but secretly collects intelligence for the Wang puppet government. The young girl Bai Yunsheng (Huang Xiangli) loves literature and art, and the lines of the drama come out of her mouth, in this way, she hides her identity as an intelligence officer of the Chongqing National Government. As the plot gradually unfolds, international forces also enter our field of vision. At the Chinachem Hotel, another important scene space, the hotel manager, Saul Shapil (Tom Raschiha), greets him with a straight suit and a smile, but he has a hidden Allied intelligence liaison department inside the hotel. The Japanese government's intelligence officer, Tanifuro (Oda Chejō), arrives from Tokyo with instructions for the Japanese's next battle plan. When Gugu stays at the Chinachem Hotel, he is already being targeted by manager Thor and the secretly commanded Allied spy leader Hubert (Pascal Gregory).
The anxiety of the political situation is projected on the "Ten Mile Ocean Field" in Shanghai, and the lighting hits the heroine of the film, Yu Yan (Gong Li), who is at the center of the storm of forces. Ostensibly, Yu Yanshang is a popular star, and this time back in Shanghai, the news tabloids have hyped her to save her down-and-out ex-husband Ni Zeren (Zhang Songwen), but her ex-husband is just one of the means she uses to stimulate public opinion and play cover. In fact, she secretly received Hubert's orders to carry out an intelligence-stealing program called "Double-Sided Mirror." The success of the plan is related to the change of the entire "World War II" pattern.
Poster of "Lyceum Theatre"
The politics of espionage is erotic
"Blue Heart" belongs to the spy war film in terms of the structure of the story line. As a genre, spy films are fascinating in their atmosphere, often accompanied by themes such as camouflage and suspicion, game and checks and balances, justice and testing. They encapsulate the possible dramas of different forces when encountered, and reflect the tense nature of politics as a "game of play" as you come and go. In order to increase the ornamentation, adding love condiments to spy war films is also a common technique, China once made a number of "anti-special films" in the 20th century, and "female secret agents" left an "indelible" impression on the audience at that time. However, in "Lan Xin", director Lou Ye fully loves the political game with his usual stylized means. Love is not embellishing politics, in a sense almost inverse. In the film, the characters of several forces cannot help but "surrender" to the deep love energy she carries when confronting Yu Yan. This role seems to be tailor-made for Gong Li, which fits her middle-aged style, plump figure and deep-minded temperament.
Director Tan Na is jokingly called "Little Milk Dog" by some audiences, he is Yu Yan's lover, subservient to the latter's lover and motherly temperament, from the beginning of the firm belief that she returned to Shanghai because she was invited by him to participate in his play, and then continued the love. When he found that he was just a "chess piece" that Yu Yan used to play cover, he still swore "choose to believe". Bai Yunsheng appeared with the task of military command, but she was also a fan of Yu Yan, and it was difficult to say whether her enthusiasm for Yan was disguised or genuinely admired. After following Yu Yan to the dim bedroom, she stripped off her coat and lay on the bed in a daze, spitting out her secret almost unguarded. Perhaps after a night of bondage, she walked over, crouched down, and leaned quietly on Yu's half-naked chest. The love between them has the same sex color, and there is also some sympathy for each other, but it is still Yu Yan who captures this agent with literary and artistic dreams. As for Saburo Furutani, he was a Japanese intelligence officer who could not relax in mourning his dead wife. The "Two-Sided Mirror" project seized on his mourning sickness and allowed Yu Yan, who looked similar to his deceased wife, to attract his attention. After being wounded in an elaborate shootout, Mitani pretended to be Mitani's wife, kissed and caressed, and code-named Japan's next military plan while he was unconscious. Saying "pretend" is only on the level of plot discernment, Gong Li's excellent performance makes pretending real, at least while Mitani is lying in the clinic muttering, the two bodies are so touching.
"Lan Xin" is Lou Ye's once again loving treatment of political themes, and similar ideas may date back to 2006. In this treatment, love is the source of the continuum, which becomes the theme and essential driving force of the film's inquiry. In "Blue Heart", the desire relationship between the characters gradually integrates into the political relationship, and the love desire tries to exert a positive political transformation ability. Wife, lover, actor and spy, each role can be calmly controlled by Yu Yan, with charm and boldness, she wanders between the various forces. To varying degrees, the other characters in the film are in a lack of love, and Yu Yan "takes advantage" of this and appears at the right time to make up for them. This does not mean that love is indiscriminate, nor does it mean that love is simply equated with sexual desire, which is premised on a "desire-response" relationship. Think of the seductive caresses of Yu Wei in the film, once in the dim bedroom, and once in the clinic, whether lovers or enemies, will find comfort in the touch of the body. A "counterexample" to understand the entanglement of love and politics in "Blue Heart" is Mo Zhiyin, whose desire for Bai Yunsheng has been repeatedly frustrated. The first time he was slapped, and later when he was raped, Bai Yunfei swung the drawn dagger mercilessly into his crotch, so he had to endure the task in the melee. Considering that the two of them were under the orders of the Nanjing government (the Wang puppet regime) and the Chongqing government respectively, "rape was frustrated" and "counter-castration" may be a metaphor for the political contest of the Kuomintang in the 1940s. The relationship between the two governments has been emotionalized, and their inability to "agree" makes it fundamentally difficult to engage in dialogue. Compared with the lack of Mo Zhiyin, Yu Yan plays the role of a political "axis" as the center of energy. Along this line of thinking, there can be some explanation. Yu Yan can no longer remember her ex-husband's old feelings, and the film shows early on that at the moment when everyone must make a "decision", Ni Zeren's political opportunism of using the war to get rich has reached the end of the road. Through the intermediary of Yan, Bai Yunsheng and Tan Na also had a brief cooperation. When the two of them performed on the same stage, it symbolically hinted at the possibility of Chongqing's cooperation with left-wing forces. Of course, their collaboration is both a performance and an alternative option, and can only occur in extremely urgent situations.
In fact, it is somewhat reluctant to simply correspond the character to the political forces. To frame an individual by identity, status, or ideology is rigid, and love provides an opportunity to loosen and soften barriers. Modernity is well known to be rational, calm, and good at estimating, while love is passionate, passionate, and dedicated. In the last film, Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind (2018), the depiction of physical desire is in tension with the "age of development". In the gloomy and grim historical atmosphere, it seems that people are only "alive" in moments of joy. The theme of love is through Lou Ye, and he must think that no matter how much you ask about the meaning of love in our lives, it is not too much. In a modern society with abundant material information, people are still suffering from repression. To borrow Marcuse's words, this "extra repression" applies a hidden "principle of operation" that people are unaware of, and whose work so desperately is to serve some form of dominant interest. In the end, people are crucified in a certain position under a high degree of division of labor, and the body loses its vitality in alienated labor. People also seem powerless to imagine a non-repressive civilization. The question of lust can be replaced by another expression: when the body becomes more and more numb to machinery, is it possible for us to reopen our organs to develop sensitivity to people and the world?
The crisis of running out of love
The most crucial scene in "Lan Xin" takes place after Yu Yan draws out the information from the mouth of the valley. In fact, yu did not truthfully report the information to the Allies, but only wrote to her adoptive father, Hubert, to apologize after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At this moment, the tension between her and Hubert was completely exposed. In fact, although Yu Yan is at ease, she is not without weakness, just as we can feel the repression of her shadow in addition to desire. When she first meets Hubert in the film, the same erotic breath is born in the soft light, but this breath is quickly dissipated by the intelligence mission assigned. She was loving and grateful to her adoptive father, Hubert, but had to submit to him in political relations. Behind Yu's complex psychology is a typical patriarchal situation for women, in which women are both assisted by men and in the balances of the latter. From this perspective, we may understand the rejection implied by Yu's last-minute "lying", which she tries to break free from the long suffering.
According to the original book "The Death of Shanghai", Yu Yan's choice was out of the protection of the country's great righteousness, if the United States entered the war, it would greatly shorten the process of "World War II", and China could also end the "War of Resistance" as soon as possible. It is not unusual to set up a national justice with personal choice, but Lou Ye's adaptation of "Lan Xin" does not have a clear explanation for this. Some strict viewers have pointed out that from the perspective of realpolitik logic, the key plot of "Lyceum" does not stand up to questioning. For example, how could Japan's war secrets end up in the hands of ordinary intelligence officials like the valley, while the recording equipment of the Allied Intelligence Department suddenly turned out to be in a state of emergency. On the one hand, such a significant "flaw" discounts the credibility of the narrative, especially for spy films that emphasize plot reasoning. But on the other hand, this question seems irrelevant to Lou Ye, because he is not drawn to some kind of objective, rigorous and in-depth "history". "History" appears as a background, and in his place it is often swaying, smudging and atmospheric, which constitutes one of Lou Ye's most unique parts. Moreover, film, as an art, is not responsible for the interpretation of historians. Out of the protection of artistic style, it can be said that for a director like Lou Ye, who explores inwards, asking him to make layers of arguments about historical details is itself a kind of dislocation. If we are willing to accept Lou Ye's logic, we can understand that Yu Yan has enough subjectivity to make these strange things and strange things negligible. Attributing Yu's choice in the film to "national righteousness" is not necessarily accurate, she has the leeway of free decision, just as in the end she can abscond safely, but still return to the theater where the crisis lurks. Yu's choice is to illustrate the political and moral abilities of people with a lot of lust in extreme conditions.
For Lou Ye, the main question is not how much love can be overdrawn. In the film, Yu Yan supports the intelligence plan, which can also be said to support the film itself. The final gunfight staged a scene that would not be absent from other spy war blockbusters, which was considered a "compromise" to commercialization, but this scene was still marked with Lou Ye's rough personal mark because of the black and white images and the light and dark of the scene. In the icy rain and dim theater, the gunfire flickered, and Yu Yan transformed into a "lone hero". As the camera continued to shake violently during the gunfight, we saw her finally get tired and the pistol slipped feebly. In the earlier Tuina (2014), the "stumbling" handheld camera mimics the blind man's vision, creating an experience of an obstacle world, and the film finds an organic touchpoint between form and content. Similarly, we can ask what handheld photography brings to Lyceum? The answer is that broken, shaky follow-up shots and free-form editing involvement exacerbate the depletion of viola/love. If "Blue Heart" is driven by love, then its ultimate purpose is to exhaust this love desire. In this regard, Lou Ye's understanding of love, desire, and the body is still youthful: abundant but bound to be lost, squandered but cannot be regenerated. Centered on Yu Yan, the film once again repeats the pattern of "repression and release", just like her accumulated worries are waiting for the final gunfight to be released. Some people have discussed Lou Ye from the perspective of Shanghai's "New Sensation School" aesthetics, believing that desire is his form of expression of life. But just as "New Sensation" literature is only good at capturing urban Yoshimitsu Katayu, the desire in Lou Ye's films seems to lack the endurance to move towards deep existence, and it is difficult to transform into giving, lasting and renewable energy. Lou Ye's "loss" mode has developed an inertia, and a slight step forward is "squandering". Of course, this situation cannot be attributed only to style, but mainly depends on the understanding of love desire, and it remains to be seen how the body narrative will behave in Lou Ye. In the film, Hubert's book that Hubert finally throws into the garbage heap contains a Nietzsche inscription that may be cited as a footnote to this looseness and emptiness: "People ultimately love their desires, not those whom they desire." ”
Play-within-a-play: Fiction and Reality
There are two details in "Lyceum" that most people overlook, a woman who irons clothes in the laundry room of the Chinachem Hotel, and two prostitutes who roast fires in front of the hotel, who are swept away. Lou Ye mentioned them in an interview and acknowledged that the main story of "Lyceum" is "middle class", and in order to supplement the perspective outside the middle class, he introduced a story about the strike through "play within a play". This is a symptomatic choice, Lou Ye wants to invest in the bottom, but only in an indirect way. Perhaps he also understands that the theme of "entanglement of love" needs to be a "suitable" environment, and that it is not self-evident in the case of women workers and prostitutes. Imagine what would have happened if he had actually pointed his camera directly at the barren and ugly crowds on the side of the road.
The strike of "play within a play" brings two spatial levels as a glimpse beyond "love desire", and the film deliberately explores the connection and boundaries between the two. One of the characteristics of "Blue Heart" is that it frequently switches between theater and real scenes, so that the boundaries of space are often on the verge of disappearing. When Tan Na and Yu Yan first went on a date at the dockyard bar, we might mistake it for a rehearsal, because the transition from theater to stage was too fast and without a trace, and because the theater and bar were the same. At both the level of drama and reality, the characters in "Blue Heart" can cross layers without obstacles, so does fiction affect reality or reality swallow fiction? The "Saturday School", also known as the "Mandarin Duck Butterfly School", is a civic literature that arose in Shanghai and other cities in the early minchu, advocating a literary attitude of not asking about the world and entertaining. The "play within a play" play uses the name "Saturday," but the rehearsed plot tells us that it is a play about strikes and protests, something that the disgruntled literary left seems to want to awaken. When they put the drama and social movement together on the stage, the middle-class audience in the theater was sitting on the edge. It is not difficult to imagine that the latter looked at it with relish, and walked out of the theater as before. This may be what Brecht calls "the illusion of naturalistic drama," and the audience does see the Saturday Novel as a "Saturday school," as pure fiction. Obviously, "Blue Heart" here makes a double ironic reference to the "Saturday novel".
In the end, it was the sound of gunfire from the stage that made the audience panic and find that the world was not peaceful. In this regard, the viewing obstacles created by "Blue Heart" with shaking and fast cutting are like a faint "gunshot". We believe that Lou Ye will continue to "go his own way", using his improvisation and freedom to disrupt the habits of the theater, and will not let the audience chew popcorn to finish the movie.
bibliography
Rainbow Shadow: The Death of Shanghai, Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House, 2005
Han Shuai: "New Feeling Film: Aesthetic Style and Formal Characteristics of Lou Ye's Film", Jiangsu Phoenix Education Publishing House, 2020 edition
CineCina: "CineCina Interview with Lou Ye and Ma Yingli: Everyone is a pawn", Douban WEBSITE: https://movie.douban.com/review/10556517/
A No. 10: "From a professional point of view, can Yu Yan's intelligence story be established", Douban website: https://movie.douban.com/review/12097121/
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