"Nameless": The "alien" of the Spring Festival file is a choice

The Spring Festival file arrived as scheduled, and the highly anticipated film finally met everyone in theaters.

Up to now, "Manjiang Red" starring Shen Teng, Yi Yangqianxi and Zhang Yi has received 2.5 billion box office, ranking first in the box office of the Spring Festival file; "The Wandering Earth 2" starring Wu Jing, Andy Lau and Li Xuejian followed closely with a box office of 2.1 billion, and the animated film "Bear Haunted, Bear Core" ranked third, with a box office of 700 million.

"Nameless", directed by Cheng Er and starring Tony Leung, Wang Yibo and Zhou Xun, ranked fourth, with a box office of 500 million, but the number of films ranked at the bottom of the top few, accounting for about 8.5%.

Throughout the Spring Festival file, "Nameless" is undoubtedly the most controversial film.

This spy war theme film with the slogan of "super commercial film" during the propaganda period has made a more popular design than the director's previous work in terms of narrative and expression, telling the story of the CCP's special branch maneuvering between Wang and Japanese spy agencies during the Anti-Japanese War, lurking inside the enemy, obtaining important intelligence, going forward and succeeding, and ushering in the dawn of victory.

Director Cheng Er once entered the public eye with "The History of the Demise of Romance" and "Border Storm", although Director Cheng's output is not high, the film has a unique style and extraordinary quality.

His film stories often have undercurrents, ups and downs, and hidden mysteries under the bland surface; In the torrent of the times, the world is hot and cold with the facets of different characters.

The performance of the actors in the film is extremely forgiving and restrained in the first and middle paragraphs, without a clear expression, at most it is only a polite and polite smile that is conducive to identity and work on the surface, and everyone does not show the mountains and waters, guarding their own identities.

"Identity" is the means by which the characters in the film make a living, and it is also one of the mysteries that the audience is most looking forward to revealing.

When identity becomes a kind of representation, individual sacrifice and struggle become part of the collective, and the young, the old, the folk, and the upper class are linked into a collective, and their names may become historical dust, or they may become objects of secrecy, or they may be known by future generations, but this "identity" will be attached to the position and will not be erased.

(The following contains spoilers, please read selectively with caution)

"Nameless" makes full use of the film ontology audiovisual to advance the narrative, shape the image, and make the greatest compromise on both the aspects of preserving individuality and helping the audience understand. The recurring footage and the yellow point-in-time subtitle prompt remind the node of the narrative loop, and the three prominent female characters also pull out the contradictions and main lines of the film:

Miss Chen (played by Zhou Xun) is an important part of Mr. Ho's (Tony Leung) plan, Mr. Ho's carefully arranged network requires Miss Chen to participate in weaving, and pulls out the two most important suspense of the film from beginning to end: the husband and wife relationship between Miss Chen and Mr. Ho, and the successor relationship between Mr. Ye (played by Wang Yibo) and Mr. Ho.

Miss Jiang (played by Jiang Shuying) is a female spy who makes a living from politics, and during her interrogation by Mr. He, she exposed Minister Tang as a wall-rider, seeing that the situation turned to both Chinese and Japanese forces. He was also left with a roster of Japanese sojourners, which pointed out the direction for Mr. Ho's mission.

Miss Fang (played by Zhang Jingyi) is a civil anti-Japanese who is determined to establish the labor world and trust communism, originally Mr. Ye's fiancée, but because she misunderstood Mr. Ye's undercover nature, thinking that he served the Japanese side and parted ways with him, and was later murdered by Mr. Wang (played by Wang Chuanjun), leading to the final showdown between Wang and Ye.

From the beginning of the film, Wang and Ye, who seem to be brothers, one insists on serving the country to the end, and the other becomes a half-way rebel, and the confrontation between them is superficially based on love and hatred, but in fact it is based on position.

In addition, the elements of food culture are integrated into the narrative, and the careful scrutiny of the lines is integrated to achieve the effect of "showing people with food" and "using the meal to illustrate the overall situation", the director constructs a symbolic field based on East Asian food culture and implies the emotions and positions of the characters in "Nameless".

Captain Wang and Mr. Ye had breakfast and ordered steamed pork ribs, during the meal, Captain Wang was unhurried, enjoying the food that could be the last meal at any time, suggesting that he was not too heavy and ambitious like He and Ye, more sleek and casual, did not pursue an unchanged position, did not maintain permanent feelings, and only sought stability, benefits and enjoyment in the present.

From the conversation in the car, it can be seen that both of them ate the same steamed pork ribs, and the two had a good relationship, at least eating the same bowl of rice and doing the same job on the surface; The two disagreed with each other's views on ordering a few ribs, emphasizing the character on the one hand, and predicting that the two would eventually have different positions and eventually part ways.

Ningbo drunken shrimp is also a delicacy closely related to Wang and Ye. The drunken shrimp in the glass bowl soaked and jumped in the red soup, with a slight sense of struggle and horror, which is a metaphor for the blood-stained accident in the contradiction between the two.

Drunken shrimp is a good dish that Captain Wang's family is good at, and after Captain Wang eats drunk shrimp, he privately finds Mr. Ye's fiancée, Miss Fang, and abuses it; After the mission, Mr. Ye happened to eat at the small restaurant opened by Captain Wang's house and also ordered a drunken shrimp, while Captain Wang's mother was talking to him about having a son who was not much older than him, and that Captain Wang had been killed by Mr. Ye while lurking in Shanghai.

The struggling drunken shrimp churn in a pool of bloody sauce and is eventually devoured, like an unchangeable fateful feud.

When Mr. Ho talked to the Japanese officer, the officer saw that Mr. Ho ate very little Japanese food, and Mr. Ho said that "I am not used to eating", and the officer suggested that "it is time to get used to it." This alludes to the strong strength of the Japanese side at that time, and the officers had the determination of the Japanese side to win, and took the land for themselves.

Mr. Ho's position was hidden in the conversation, and Mr. Ye, in order to win the trust of the Japanese side to the greatest extent, never missed the Japanese officers' dinners, and was the only one of the three who used Japanese to communicate with the officers from beginning to end.

The repeated appearance of food is a symbolic symbol of the bonding of the characters. Food, emotion and stance, chosen based on human needs and desires for survival, also form a closely linked language system in the film text.

In addition, as the director himself once said, "the expression of the film is more filtered information." This kind of screening may be exquisite, everything in the frame is very elegant and perfect, it may also collapse, but this collapse must also be through the creator's very rigorous and careful thinking. ”

The visual shaping of the film also highlights the texture, and the composition and color matching of each shot are like magazine photos. Cyan and yellow with different saturation and brightness, combined with the black and white of the characters' clothing, constitute a rich spatial layer, constructing a saber rattling and cold and cruel real space.

"Nameless" is a meticulous film, but it is difficult to define whether it meets the publicity of "super commercial". Including the star lineup starring Tony Leung , Zhou Xun , Wang Yibo, etc., exquisite service Tao, exquisite audiovisual language are indeed factors that can become a good commercial film.

However, the heavy and obscure theme of the film is not compatible with the cold and deep style and festive atmosphere, and the "cold noodles" performance, the decryption-style looping nested story structure, and the lines in the words are compromised, but they are still not designed to be friendly to all audiences.

Some people say that ""Nameless" may be better to pick a non-Spring Festival schedule." In fact, "controversial" is also a kind of return and discussion that the long-dormant film market needs since the epidemic era.

As mentioned in an interview with "Zhizu GQ" magazine, "The audience's thinking, criticism, the audience's self-selection, maintaining aesthetic sharpness and appreciation, nerves and souls are at least active, "Nameless" just gives us such a choice and space." ”

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