The English title of "Nameless" was given by Jia Zhangke.
Hidden blade, translated as Hidden Sword, has the characteristics of light and concealed, suitable for assassination and secret warfare.
The title is the theme, and "Nameless" tells a group of nameless stories, in the shadow of the undercurrent, in the chaotic world of canine teeth, in order to seek the dawn, go forward and follow.
In the story structure of "Nameless", Cheng Er uses narrative trickery.
Deliberately misleading certain characters and certain things to the audience, this reverse use of the audience's "God perspective" is really very clever.
The seemingly complex non-linear narrative of "Nameless" comes from this, but it is actually a scrambled and reorganized timeline.
Then with the help of interludes, flashbacks and other means, let the audience be dazzled, one second thinking about a certain character, the next second to pay attention to the new story line, which does require a little threshold for watching movies.
And this is exactly the movie we need, for a long time, too many running account movies, many cutscenes are very boring, which makes the audience develop the habit of looking down at the phone, and "Nameless" is to take the audience back from the phone.
For "Nameless", my advice is to keep an eye on He played by Tony Leung, and Ye played by Wang Yibo, He and Ye are the main trunk, and the rest are branches.
Each branch can lead to many sub-branches, but many subsets can be ignored, just look at the main stem to sort out the main story, and then connect the branches according to the grass snake gray line and clues.
The relationship between Dapeng, Zhou Xun, Huang Lei and Liang Chaowei, the relationship between Zhang Jingyi, Wang Chuanjun and Wang Yibo, are ultimately covering the relationship between Liang Chaowei and Wang Yibo, so that they point to the topic, "Nameless" is really nameless.
This practice of "deceiving the audience" is more interpretive than directly looking for the truth.
Cheng Er has been playing games and hide-and-seek with the audience, and offends the audience from time to time, because the audience is born with suspense, and the director is responsible for satisfying the audience's hobbies with a wonderful story.
Therefore, "Nameless" is not like the classical narrative, the beginning, development, climax, ending, ending, ending, each step is strictly in accordance with the regulations, when the answer will come out, the focus is in the audience's expectations.
It's just that Cheng Er doesn't want to just make a simple story that is easy to understand, interact with the audience, and let the audience's focus always be on the movie.
For example, the MacGuffin in the film has not changed, from beginning to end whether the underground work can proceed smoothly, but Tony Leung's self-explosion, Huang Lei's defection, Wang Yibo's humiliation burden, and Zhang Jingyi's puzzlement caused the audience's attention to continue to shift.
When the audience thought that Wang Yibo had no other identity, and the mortal struggle with Tony Leung was a battle for the top, the director put a third party to peek at the camera and the reversal at the end, and MacGuffin repeatedly jumped sideways for a long time and returned to the original.
Such a text design does not reveal the truth until the last moment, which requires a careful taste and the patience of the audience, if you only pursue simplicity and clarity, you may miss many details and metaphors of "Nameless", resulting in a poor viewing experience.
Since metaphors are mentioned, we have to say the visual symbols in "Nameless".
This is one of the keys to the design of the film's text, which helps the audience sort out the clues and facilitate the viewing of the film, and it is also a way to deconstruct the film, such as Tony Leung and Zhou Xun's use of dim sum boxes to transmit information is an obvious pretext.
Dim sum symbolizes beauty and sweetness, intelligence represents the destruction of the enemy, and the situation is full of crises, and the combination of the three is the poster "There is light at the end of the tunnel".
There are also dogs when bombing Guangzhou, life and life under the chaos, there is no need to render suffering, one or two shots contrast, naturally self-evident.
A valuable King Charles Spaniel sits on the ruins, and a leather collar around its neck tells us that it was once a pet of a dignitary, but was abandoned because of the war.
It looked around, sighed helplessly, and did not know where to go in the face of devastation, so it could only stand in place, at a loss, from which it can be concluded that in that war-torn Shanghai, no one can be spared, the enemy's aircraft and artillery are never reasonable, and the smoke is full of mourning.
In addition to this dog, there is a Shiba Inu wearing pilot equipment in the film.
Its shot is proud, high-spirited, and its name is Roosevelt, but it didn't have a long time to usher in the end of the crash.
Cheng Er set up this way, on the one hand, to reflect the arrogance of the enemy, and concluded that the biggest obstacle to survival is not ignorance and fearlessness, arrogance is, on the other hand, it also shows that the enemy is indeed strong at that time, and it is a relaxed attitude on the battlefield.
It can be seen that at that time, the gap between us and the enemy was indeed too large, and we could also see the hardship of underground work from the side, and if we were not careful, we might die on the spot.
Treating human life like grass mustard, the director also presents it through animals.
The enemy passed by the factory and found the bodies of their own people in the well, the workers said that no one would throw "dirt" into their well, and the invaders were furious.
With this anger, the lives of the workers were at stake, and they buried the workers alive with cement, and then turned around and walked out of the factory, and saw a sheep, which became their full food.
As it came and went, the sheep appeared and disappeared, and the human camera followed the picture of the sheep, and the man became a two-legged sheep, treated as livestock by the enemy, and there was no humanity at all.
In addition to metaphor, composition and color are also a major feature of Nameless.
The composition in the film adopts central symmetry, the characters are always in the center position, and the background is mostly solid colors, highlighting the importance of people.
This corresponds to the story of "Nameless", Director He and Secretary Ye, who have no specific names, in the crisis-ridden Shanghai, relying on themselves, comrades-in-arms, and faith, doing great things that people will conquer the sky.
The theme of each picture structure is clear, and the audience immediately realizes the director's intention, which is the psychological promotion effect of reasonable changes in composition on the audience.
In terms of color, the most obvious is black and white.
Black is the lightest of all colors, with dark, confused, sinful meanings, and can trigger low, solemn, and solemn emotions.
White is the brightest color, symbolizing light, stability, peace, and its symbolic role can also profoundly express people's ideas and beliefs.
These two contrasting colors are intertwined in the film, the visual effect is quite different, and the meaning is obvious, suggesting that the black night of the nameless sacrifice will eventually be replaced by day, and victory will finally meet the day
The ultimate target of these techniques is the theme of Nameless.
Miss Fang had a misunderstanding with Secretary Ye, and even died without knowing that her fiancé had the same beliefs and mission as herself, unlike Director He and Miss Chen, at least there was a hug.
This kind of pathos is the dedication of the nameless, perhaps a lifetime of incognito, knowing that there is no end to the darkness of his life, but still thinking about the dawn that cannot belong to him, so that future generations can enjoy the happiness of the predecessors.
Similarly, "Nameless" also relies on the nameless people to explain clearly what the anti-Japanese national united front is.
In many anti-Japanese war films, anti-Japanese resistance has become a matter for a small number of people, but here in "Nameless", we can see that different people with different positions are contributing to the anti-Japanese resistance.
Let the audience have a deeper understanding of that history and many nameless ancestors, peace is not achieved overnight, respect is not innate, and living and working in peace is the indomitable progress of countless nameless people.
This is "Nameless", using a full range of true restoration of history, using wonderful techniques to correct the audio-visual, enriching the market with rare spy war themes, and using an all-star cast to let young people understand history, such a movie is indeed worth a ticket.