January 23, 2023 issue | Issue 3125
Director Cheng Er, his past works have always been sandwiched between literary expression and commercial genre. Some admire his talent, others complain that he is "too pretending". Wang Yibo, a popular idol, who works hard and boldly develops in his career. As many fans as he can, there are as many black pinks and black him. When director Cheng Er used Wang Yibo to star in the new work "Nameless", it basically doomed the fate of polarizing the film's word-of-mouth reputation.
Like "The Third Man", "Border Storm" and "The History of the Demise of Romance", Cheng Er's screenwriter and director edited with one hand, which once again separated "Nameless" from the audience's intended form by a distance. Many viewers can't understand "Nameless", not that they are still confused after watching it, but in the process of watching, they will often lose their state because of Cheng Er's different treatment.
If the audience can be moved heartily after the truth is revealed, then the discomfort of the process will be written off; If the audience fails to dissolve the discomfort in the process after the truth is revealed, then it is necessary to seek catharsis with verbal or textual evaluation. So, why do many people feel "can't understand" in the process of watching "Nameless"? It mainly stems from the following points:
01
Since the title of this film is "Nameless", director Cheng Er uses a very extreme sense of form to support this theme in the overall temperament. Not only does the film not have any introductory subtitles when the characters appear, but the names of other characters are rarely mentioned in character communication. When the lines really can't avoid referring to demand, they only use titles such as "Miss Chen", "Minister Tang" and "Miss Jiang".
The character poster has only the actor's name, not the character name
Even if the audience wants to preview and review, they will find that on the data pages of mainstream platforms such as Baidu Encyclopedia, Douban, Maoyan, Taobao Ticket, and Time.com, the names of the characters in the film cannot be found.
Although simplifying the character name can be regarded as the personal style of director Cheng Er, the simplification of this film is already a bit too much. So far, only Wang Yibo's fans have excavated the full name of the character he played through the novel "Once Upon a Time in East Asia" directed by Cheng Er. For ordinary audiences, this kind of information cannot be found in the film.
Extreme avoidance of character names does closely follow the theme of the film, but it also really causes a lot of trouble to the audience, and even hinders the communication after the screening.
After all, this film adopts an all-star cast, can the audience not know the characters without knowing the actors? The audience must gradually outline the relationship between the characters in the film in their minds during the viewing process, and in the absence of character name information, the actor's name will be used as the top.
In this way, whether it is the viewing process or the post-screening communication. The audience can only discuss "how Tony Leung" and "how is Wang Yibo", which seriously blocks immersion and substitution.
02
Although this film does not have subtitles that introduce the characters, there are subtitles that introduce the era node, and the font size is still very large.
Anyone who has watched several previous works knows that he does not like linear narratives. However, unlike directors such as Guy Ritchie, Quentin Tarantino, and Christopher Nolan, there is an obvious linear main line in Cheng's non-linear narrative. Those non-linear passages, which basically only retain one or two shots, do not participate in linear advancement themselves.
As a result, his non-linear narrative does not have a sense of multi-line parallelism, but in a main line, part of the camera is inserted in a non-linear posture. Its viewing experience is closer to flashbacks and interpolations.
If it's just flashbacks and interludes, the audience may be able to sort it out. But if combined with the huge era node subtitles of this film, the two types of time information disturb each other, which will increase the audience's burden on the timeline.
03
In the era node subtitles, several use the same wording format: "XX days before Japan's surrender."
This is equivalent to a countdown and can often add urgency to the film's atmosphere and boost dramatic tension. This is common in Hollywood commercials and American dramas. However, "Nameless" does not achieve this effect, because the audience does not know what the end of the countdown is.
The most easy thing for people to "not understand" in "Nameless" is that the latent purpose of these nameless people is not concrete enough. Chinese audiences have seen too many spy war dramas, and they will naturally have the inertia of watching spy war movies: there must always be a target similar to "XX operation", "XX plan" and "XX intelligence".
Because the audience never knows what intelligence the underground party wants to steal in the film, the theft of intelligence on the two occasions is very similar to an unexpected harvest. What role it played after the first intelligence theft was brought with a picture. The value of the second intelligence theft is presented in the lines, but at this time, the audience's attention is more focused on the reversal of the character's identity.
Therefore, although Cheng Er filmed the characters in the film particularly stylishly, and the inner drama also dug deep, the audience's cognition of the work of the unknown person is not enough, and the importance, influence, value, and significance of his work seem to be understood.
04
Before the release of "Nameless", some netizens worried that if the whole film was in Shanghai dialect, it would affect the understanding of the plot. The film side then sent a picture to clarify that the film is not full of Shanghainese, but includes Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, Japanese and other dialogue languages.
Sure enough, this film is indeed a multilingual film. Japanese characters speak Japanese, Chinese characters speak Shanghainese, some speak Mandarin, and some speak Cantonese. It can be said that more than half of the lines in the film need to read subtitles.
There are also several scenes, mixed in different languages. You ask in Japanese, I answer in Cantonese. The characters chat in different languages without barriers, although they do not jump the scene, but it is not rigorous enough to match the pursuit of high restoration of the picture texture.
05
I have to say that the characters in Cheng Er's movies are always so catchy. Gao Yuanyuan, who is lonely and lonely in "The Third Man", the ruthless Yang Kun in "Border Storm", and Zhang Ziyi, who pursues freedom and love in "The History of the Demise of Romance", have all gained highlight moments on the screen.
Wang Yibo, who has almost zero screen acting experience in "Nameless", was also filmed very close by Cheng Er, and he couldn't see his obvious immaturity and youthfulness.
Director Cheng Er once said that he didn't care what the actor had played before. He only needs to chat with the actors to determine how they look in front of the camera through "subtle messages conveyed by gestures". Unlike the "tempered actor" that audiences often hear, when he creates characters, he wraps the actors in elaborate sets and costumes, and can shoot the appearance of the person in the play in one shot.
This is a very stylized approach, and different people may feel completely different. Some people think it's high-class, others it's too much like advertising.
All in all, "Nameless", like Cheng Er's previous works, cannot predict your personal feelings through the feelings of others. It's not easy to understand, but after understanding it, I still want to taste it.
【Text/Full Hoard】