Domestic top spy war film, Tony Leung pays tribute to "Color Ring", 300 million investment, the story is bold and dares to shoot

This year's Spring Festival topical movie, when there is "Nameless".

There is rarely a Spring Festival movie like this film, and there have been endless off-site topics since its release.

But putting aside external factors and returning to the film itself, "Nameless" is indeed a movie worthy of discussion and attention.

For the author personally, there is only one biggest reason to look forward to this movie -

Director Cheng Er.

So far, director Cheng Er has only made four works, but he has been praised by critics for his unique personal aesthetic.

"Nameless" is no exception, in a star-studded luxury commercial blockbuster, director Cheng Erjian took the wrong side and brought his unique film aesthetics to the extreme, creating a spy war suspense movie with great authorial attributes, exquisite romance and cold and profound depth.

According to real-time data, the movie "Nameless" was released for 7 days, and the total box office has exceeded 500 million, showing a reverse downward trend.

In this issue of "Theatrical Movie Detoxification", let's talk about this movie -

"Nameless"

Cheng Er is an all-round director, and his scripts, directors, and editing are basically completed by him alone.

So far, Cheng Er has only made four feature films and one short film, but all departments have a strong lineup and big cast.

His graduation short film "Criminal" when he was a student at Nortel was a blockbuster and was known as Nortel's best graduation work, starring Xu Zheng and Huang Yi.

Cheng Er's first independent directorial debut in the feature film "The Third Man" is his second cooperation with Xu Zheng, and Gao Yuanyuan and Tao Hong joined in the film. The second work "Border Storm" invited popular actors such as Sun Honglei, Wang Luodan and Ni Dahong.

Cheng Er's last work "The History of the Demise of Romance" was eight years ago, the film gathered more than ten stars including Ge You, Zhang Ziyi, Asano Tadanobu, Du Chun, Zhong Xintong, Ni Dahong, Yuan Quan, Yan Ni, in the hearts of many fans, the film is an untimely masterpiece.

The lens language is stylized and delicate, mixed with Wong Kar-wai's romantic light and shadow and Quentin's violent aesthetics, the details are full of symbols and metaphors, and the non-linear narrative technique and a large number of symmetrical compositions are used to depict a very contemporary and tonal sense of the Republic of China.

Now, director Cheng Er has sharpened a sword in eight years and brought this equally star-studded spy war movie "Nameless".

The film gathers many stars such as Tony Leung, Wang Yibo, Zhou Xun, Huang Lei, Dapeng, Wang Chuanjun, Jiang Shuying, Zhang Jingyi and so on.

In a previous interview, producer Yu Dong said that "Nameless" is a good movie to go down in history, costing more than 300 million yuan, and is the third part of Bona's "victory trilogy" (the first two are "Chinese Doctor" and "Changjin Lake").

The trailer directly punched out the promotional slogan of "super commercial film", directly filling the audience's expectations.

The film focuses on the eve of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Shanghai Communist Party of China under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, in the hidden front and the process of desperate struggle with various forces, showing the unsung heroes of the party's secret front that are indispensable in the process of victory, the heroic deeds of the heroes lurking within the hostile forces to fight against them, and the heroic deeds of the heroes who lurk within the hostile forces to fight against them.

Spy war films have always been a classic genre of domestic mainstream films, almost accompanied by the history of new Chinese films, from the classic movies "The Undying Airwaves" and "Heroic Tiger Guts", to the word-of-mouth works "Wind" and "Above the Cliff" in recent years, spy war movies are full of spies, clash of wits, thrilling and twisting storylines, and mysterious suspense throughout, which fascinates the audience.

But if you just regard this movie as a spy movie, you inevitably underestimate director Cheng Er's ambition.

Just as his last work "The History of the Demise of Romance" is a sad song about the order of the old Republic of China era in the genre of gangster films, then this "Nameless" is highly similar in the core of the theme, telling the arias of the chaotic era in the context of the turbulent and turbulent era from the perspective of spy warfare.

The so-called "nameless" in the title of the film is not only representative of the "unsung heroes" represented by Tony Leung, Wang Yibo and Zhou Xun in the story, who fought to the death with the enemy on the hidden front, but also the title also carries a layer of mourning in it, symbolizing the "nameless people" who disappeared in the smoke of history during those dark and turbulent years.

All the characters in the movie do not have a positive description of the identity background and name information, and the title of each character is only a code name, such as: Director He, Minister Tang, Secretary Ye, Miss Chen, Captain Wang, Miss Jiang, Miss Fang, the Duke of Japan, etc., the reason why the identity information is deliberately hidden is because each character in the story is a representative of a type of people of that era.

In the grand historical context, everyone is actually an insignificant "nameless".

Director He played by Tony Leung and Secretary Ye played by Wang Yibo are openly the head of the Wang pseudo-secret service and the cold-blooded executioner, but they are actually red agents lurking behind enemy lines, and the two have an ideal inheritance and relay to complete the identity relationship in it, when Director He's identity aroused Japanese suspicion, Secretary Ye took over him to complete the undercover hidden mission.

Miss Fang, played by Zhou Xun, represents an underground party member with firm ideals, who can give up personal love and sacrifice his life in order to complete the task; Mr. Zhang, played by Huang Lei, is a traitor who betrayed the organization, as he confessed in the movie, "I am a weak person who does not adapt to the era of great change".

Miss Jiang played by Jiang Shuying is the female spy who assassinated Minister Tang, but because of her feelings for the assassination target, she was captured, and the fate of this character is very similar to Wang Jiazhi in Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution", and the scene of Director He's interrogation and confrontation in prison is also reminiscent of the story in "Lust, Caution".

Minister Tang, played by Dapeng, represented the wall-riding faction at that time, speculated in his political position, and when Wang Jingwei died of illness, he immediately threw himself to Chongqing, and even represented Chiang Kai-shek in secret peace talks with the Japanese.

Traditional spy movies often have a more direct task line, the protagonist undercover behind enemy lines need to complete or perform an important task, but "Nameless" is more bold and avant-garde at the creative level, the choreographer does not use a conventional linear narrative, but adopts a non-linear narrative technique that is constantly flashbacked and interpolated.

Although the story still takes Director He and Secretary Ye as the main core characters, it tells the story of their behind-the-enemy struggle between Chongqing, Wang Qiao, and Japanese spy agencies, through the intricate intelligence system behind enemy lines, plotting against the enemy, obtaining intelligence, and killing traitors.

But the uniqueness of the film lies in the narrative structure - the story is disassembled into fragments of different branches, and the director's focus is not to make people guess who is undercover and who is a traitor, but to solve the mystery while narrating, and the audience needs to reorganize these story fragments to truly understand the director's submerged connotation in the story.

Therefore, the process of watching the whole film is like a jigsaw puzzle game between the audience and the director.

The sets of shots at the beginning of the movie are actually not the real opening of the story:

Director He, dressed in a suit, stomped lightly in a tall building, as if waiting for someone to meet; In a café, the mysterious man ordered a cup of coffee for the customer, Miss Chen; Secretary Ye carefully sorted out his tie in front of the mirror; Captain Wang and Secretary Ye had breakfast together, and the two at the dinner table argued over a steamed rib.

These four sets of shots seem unrelated, but in fact each scene represents the most important "starting and turning point" of the entire story.

Watching the whole movie, you can know that Director He was waiting for Secretary Ye to come to the junction in prison, and the person who ordered a cup of coffee for Miss Chen was also Secretary Ye, implying the identity of the three in the same camp; The reason why Secretary Ye carefully sorted out his tie was because he was ordered to go to arrest Director He, whose identity was exposed, and the two had to stage a fierce fight in order to hide from the sky; As for the discussion around ribs between Captain Wang and Secretary Ye, it hinted at the "parting of ways" after the two.

Cheng Er's film is like a timeless and profound novel, the 128-minute movie does not have a single superfluous waste, most of the characters' lines are hidden in the edge, and the narrative has a lot of white space, which requires the audience to associate according to the plot, leaving details worthy of interpretation and play for the movie.

The whole film has a grand historical background, showing important historical events such as the Japanese air raid on Guangzhou, the fall of Shanghai, and the death of Wang Jingwei, but the director almost did not directly portray the frontal battlefield, but used a few shots to show the shattering of mountains and rivers in the shadow of war.

The film begins with the "Great Bombing of Guangzhou" in 1938, and the perspective begins with the Japanese pilot flying the bomber crossing the sea, and there is a Shiba Inu wearing the Japanese flag named "Roosevelt" on the plane, and he talks with his comrades about how beautiful the land under his feet is.

Immediately after, the next shot is the ruins of the devastated city of Guangzhou, and the protagonist played by Tony Leung follows a group of refugees, hiding in a bomb shelter, and there is a lame dog nearby who has nowhere to hide in the rain.

The two scenes before and after create a strong visual contrast, neither any bloody scenes, nor deliberately sensational rendering of the tragic atmosphere, but creating a huge sense of suppressed fear, bringing the audience into the scene of the movie instantly, achieving the effect of silence winning over sound at this time.

There are many shots like this that deliberately create a sense of contrast, such as: the previous shot is a group of Japanese soldiers cycling in the countryside field in the warm spring light, which is the brightest scene in the movie, as the Japanese soldiers go to the well to fetch water.

The next shot is the brutality of the Japanese army to kill ordinary people, a group of ordinary people at the bottom of a dark well, they desperately look up at the only sky overhead, a large amount of cement pours out, swallowing these innocent lives in the darkness.

This is the most shocking shot of the whole film, which portrays the cruelty of the Japanese army as real and terrifying, and also expresses the national grief and indignation of the country's destruction to the extreme, resulting in a shocking effect that makes the audience shudder, anger and grief.

The atmosphere of the whole film is like this, showing that painful historical period from the perspective of Kerryang.

The most typical example is a shot at the end of the film, Secretary Ye continues to walk up the steps of the underground passage entrance, the photography here is extremely elegant, the light is sprinkled from above, Mr. Ye walks towards the light, and the camera position of the lens is shot from the back of Secretary Ye, suggesting that the character of Secretary Ye is looking forward to getting rid of the darkness and embracing the light as soon as possible, which corresponds to the slogan on the movie poster - "There is light at the end of the tunnel".

In addition, there is a stroke of genius in the movie, a metaphor for "sheep". After the Japanese squad completed the massacre, a white sheep standing alone in the ruins appeared nearby. This silent white sheep symbolizes the Chinese who were slaughtered and enslaved, and the desperate fate of swords and fish.

According to director Cheng Er in an interview, Aries appeared here not in the design of the script, but by chance encountered by the crew. However, director Cheng Er cut the footage of the white sheep with the scene of the Japanese army eating mutton in front of the bonfire at night in the post-editing, which is a metaphor for the different survival conditions of the two warring sides, forming a strong dramatic tension.

This is called "cinematic", using montages to create visually striking picture scenes.

There is also an important clue in "Nameless", director Cheng Er integrated food culture into the narrative in the script, so there are many scenes of the characters eating in the film, using "food" to hint at the fate of the characters.

After killing the traitor Mr. Zhang, Mr. Ho realized that his identity would be exposed, so during a dinner with Japanese officers and Minister Tang, he took the initiative to express his position, emphasizing that he was "not used to eating Japanese food", so as to draw a line with the Japanese.

There is also a scene of Secretary Ye eating drunk shrimp, drunk shrimp is a specialty dish of Captain Wang's family, Secretary Ye came to Hong Kong alone to find Captain Wang's family, silently finished a drunken shrimp, live shrimp struggled in the blood-red soup, but in the end it was impossible to escape the fate of being swallowed, suggesting that there must be an unending killing between Secretary Ye and Captain Wang.

This is also the advanced place of the film, and the director has carefully crafted every shot and every detail of the film.

All in all, "Nameless" is a film worthy of brushing, its exquisite cinematography, non-linear narrative structure, and rich story white space all show director Cheng Er's authorship and film aesthetic pursuit.

As director Cheng Er said, "the audience should not be underestimated", "Nameless" is also a movie that should not be underestimated.