Beijing Daily Client | Reporter Gao Qian
In the Spring Festival file that focuses on family celebrations, "Nameless" is really not a flattering movie. Its story takes place during the Anti-Japanese War, when the island-like undercurrent of Shanghai is raging, and the forces of all parties are fighting to the death, and in the end, the communists, who have been hidden in the darkness and have experienced countless sacrifices, ushered in the dawn of victory. For today's well-informed audience, the spy front of "Nameless" is not difficult to guess, but the background is heavy, coupled with the non-linear narrative, the look and feel is indeed not friendly. At present, the Douban score of "Nameless" is stable at about 6.7 points, and the short comment column even has a special official reminder that "the current audience has a large difference of opinion", which shows that the evaluation of the film is quite polarized.
Many viewers who gave "Nameless" a low score felt that the narrative of the film was too fragmented, and the constantly looping clues and repetitive shots made it much more difficult to understand the plot. To a large extent, this does reflect some shortcomings of "Nameless", because the story itself is slightly thin, it is necessary to rely on editing skills to create a sense of suspense and substitution, but back to the old topic - is narrative the whole criterion for evaluating a movie?
Obviously, "Nameless" is an atypical main theme movie, which wants to pay tribute to those "unsung" heroes who hide their identities and carry the weight for the people of their homeland, but they do not adopt the familiar presentation method of the audience, but connect the group portraits of characters in the chaotic world with intricate clues: Captain Wang mentioned a tragic case when chatting with Secretary Ye, where four members of the gold shop owner's family were killed by the Japanese army and thrown into a well, which was met by a small detachment of a Japanese duke, which led to another bloody case of brutal murder of Chinese laborers; Miss Jiang, a female Kuomintang special agent, thanked Mr. He for saving his life, and left a list of important Japanese figures with a snack box, because of which the duke was killed, the negotiations between the Kuomintang and Japan broke down, and the whereabouts of Mr. He's cousin Minister Tang are unknown; Secretary Ye's sweetheart was killed by Captain Wang, and he personally ended this former "friend", however, after time passed and everything seemed to settle, Secretary Ye met Captain Wang's family in Hong Kong...
In the interlocking progress, "Nameless" greatly mobilizes the audience's sense of participation, allowing everyone to piece together and interpret the truth of the story by themselves, and calmly and coldly dissect the cruelty of war. Throughout the film, direct death scenes rarely appear, replaced by a scream of a stray dog drowning in an air raid, the faces of laborers disappearing under billowing cement, gagging chatters between colleagues, several corpses of Japanese soldiers falling in the wind on the shore, a news in the newspaper about the murder of a woman in the flower season, and the blood stains on the cuffs of Mr. Ho's shirt that could not be wiped off... One by one, the living characters suddenly leave, leaving no trace, death is like a part of daily life, plain, like a shadow, this is the cruelty of war.
In terms of shaping the temperament of the entire work, the picture of "Nameless" contributes a lot. For example, when Japanese officers fly planes across the Pacific, when the city of Guangzhou is devastated by bombing, and when laborers look up in despair, director Cheng Er uses his usual preferred top-down vision to show the small helplessness of people engulfed in the torrent of fate and war. The rich colors like oil paintings and the extremely neat composition that seems to be obsessive-compulsive not only complement the dark and somber tone of the film, but also are a rare visual aesthetic feast. To take just a very simple example, when Special Agent Miss Jiang thought that her death was approaching, she was in prison and changed into a red cheongsam. In such a dark and dirty environment, the cheongsam is dazzling red and cold, like roses, like blood, without much dialogue or telling, just relying on the picture itself, the tragic characteristics of this character's troubled and long-lasting love have been highlighted to the extreme.
If many works of the same subject are tightly paced and emotionally charged novels, then "Nameless" is a refined and restrained prose poem; If you are not obsessed with understanding the story as the only purpose of entering the cinema, but are willing to appreciate the charm of film as an art form itself, and are willing to find fun in the unpredictable montage and the extremely beautiful light and shadow, then "Nameless" is indeed a work that can bring a lot of pleasure, and its reputation is polarized, I don't need to repeat it. And despite the discussion and controversy, it is still gratifying that "Nameless" can appear in the Spring Festival file: the Spring Festival file is not only a theme of family fun, and the diversified choices of a hundred flowers are a strong proof of the continuous maturity and improvement of the market and audience.