"Nameless" tells the story of all living beings in the big time. (Infographic/Figure)
After a long cold winter in film and television, the film industry finally ushered in a long-lost "spring" in the 2023 Spring Festival. The seven films unveiled in the Spring Festival (including "Chinese Ping-Pong", which was released on a small scale in the form of point screenings, not only created 6.758 billion box office in six days of vacation, but also drove the total box office (including pre-sales) in 2023 to exceed 10 billion early on the tenth day of the Lunar New Year. In stark contrast, the total box office for the whole year of 2022 only ended with 30.067 billion.
These movies released during the Spring Festival are rich in content themes, including the costume suspense "Manjiang Hong" and the future universe's "The Wandering Earth 2"; There are both the Republic of China spy war "Nameless", and the contemporary fantasy life "Exchange Life"; Even cartoons have two, namely "Bear Haunted, Bear Core", which is suitable for parents and children, and "Deep Sea", which is more adult-oriented.
Theoretically, these movies are enough to meet the viewing needs of different audiences during the Spring Festival holiday, but they still give people a monotonous feeling. The reason may be that in addition to the fact that the films are basically occupied by "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2", I am afraid that it is also related to the fact that the themes and characters of these movies always give people a sense of déjà vu.
To use a perhaps inappropriate analogy, these films look like a variety of flowers, but in fact they are more like variations of different forms of the same melody, which at first sound very lively, and when you listen to them, you feel repetitive and tedious. After experiencing the "film and television winter" in 2022, we are of course happy to see a more prosperous film market, but if we carefully examine several films in the Spring Festival file, we feel that there is a lack of novelty, and there is a feeling of blindly pouring "chicken blood". As someone said in a Douban review: "After three years of the epidemic, I don't want to see such movies anymore." ”
"Manjiang Red" stills. (Infographic/Figure)
Tired heroes
In recent years, "civilian heroes" have basically become an important character paradigm in mainstream Chinese theatrical films. On the one hand, works such as "I Am Not the God of Medicine", "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Life Events", which tell the extraordinary deeds of ordinary people, have achieved a double harvest of word of mouth and box office; On the other hand, the main theme movies of the revolutionary war theme are also accustomed to using the narrative of ordinary people growing up to heroes to shape the protagonists, and films such as "Me and My Motherland" and "Changjin Lake" are all representatives. Looking at the Spring Festival movies, almost every one can be included in such a narrative framework, most of which take the transcendent events of ordinary individuals as the core, playing a role in igniting the audience's emotions.
"Manjiang Red" directed by Zhang Yimou ranked first at the box office of the Spring Festival file, and the film clearly stated to the audience at the beginning that this is the story of a small person intervening in big history. It fictionalizes a history in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, with the small soldier Zhang Da and a colleague approaching the traitor Qin Hui at the cost of their lives, forcing the other party to disclose to the public the deeds of Yue Fei's final "Manjiang Hong" before his death, expressing the little person's pursuit of righteousness, which is quite infectious.
But in this movie, the heroes' sacrifice is not for Qin Hui's life, nor for the stigmatized Yue Jiajun to justify the name, nor to question the culprit of his own tragedy - imperial power. They may not be able to change the structural problems of reality (or the creators of the film cannot change the historical truth), so they set their sights on the future that their lives cannot reach, and pinned their hopes on the writing of history, which gave "Manjiang Hong" a sense of tragedy of "born to death", and also made the protagonist's actions seem a little helpless.
Cheng Er's "Nameless" adopts a non-linear narrative to depict the faces of Shanghai during the Anti-Japanese War period, and the growth history of the male protagonist Mr. Ye is the core of the film, and the camera reveals the inner world of this young man little by little, witnessing the heroic epic of the bloody era. At the end of the movie, Mr. Ye's underground party identity is revealed, and the audience understands the rationality of his previous unreasonable behavior. During the long lurk, Mr. Ye lost his love and fell into the shadows of being unable to be humane to outsiders.
"The Wandering Earth 2" is a masterpiece launched by director Guo Fan after four years of silence since the release of "The Wandering Earth", the film has been greatly improved from creativity to technology, and the length has reached three hours, using three clues to tell what happened before humans implemented the "Wandering Earth" plan. The actions of Chinese official Zhou Zhou, the Chinese official to the United Nations, connected the unconnected astronaut Liu Peiqiang and the scientist Tu Hengyu, thus showing the Chinese's contribution to the future of the universe in all aspects.
But it is worth noting that although Liu Peiqiang and Tu Hengyu have both fulfilled their human careers at the expense of themselves, their original intention in entering the project is for their families. Liu Peiqiang is in exchange for the opportunity for his family to enter the dungeon, and Tu Hengyu is to let his deceased daughter get a complete life in virtual space in the form of "digital life". In a way, it is precisely because their happiness as ordinary people is deprived by uncontrollable factors that they are forced to become heroes. These two clues form a contrast with Teacher Zhou's speech at the United Nations, which is not only a response to the "home-country isomorphism" in traditional Chinese culture, but also reveals a sense of tragedy that has to be done.
The comedy "Exchange Life" does not have a grand and heavy theme, and calls for the return of family affection with the theme of whether you are willing to "exchange family" after "exchanging lives", focusing on the family fun mode, which is most in line with the Spring Festival atmosphere. The male protagonist of the movie, Kotani, has a crush on Jin Hao, a woman ten years older than him, but does not have the courage to express it, until he exchanges identities with Jin Hao's blind date in an accident, and finally bravely fulfills what he wants. But to some extent, the reason why Xiao Gu gained courage is precisely because he has someone else's identity as a shell, which does not really change, and when the time comes, the magic ends, and everything seems to return to the past.
"Deep Sea" is also related to "magic", the depressed girl Betelgeuse accidentally falls into the sea, is saved by the clown on the cruise ship, and in a coma adrift at sea, she enters a fairy tale world and experiences life and death with her friend Nanhe in that world. The original intention of this cartoon is to focus on the mental health of adolescents, and is intended to encourage people in emotional haze to get out of trouble, but intentionally or unintentionally puts the possibility of redemption in the fantasy world in the narrative. The reality is that Betelgeuse is saved, the clown dies, and the lost warm family never comes back...
There is a scene in "The Wandering Earth 2", astronauts over fifty years old have automatically appeared in line, detonated nuclear bombs in the flesh, and embarked on a journey with no return. (Infographic/Figure)
Absent women
As early as during the Spring Festival, the topic of "this is a Spring Festival file without women" on Weibo attracted many netizens to participate in the discussion. The so-called "no women" does not mean that there are no female characters in the Spring Festival movies in 2023, but that these women often only exist as "vases" in movies, basically only assuming the necessary symbolic role of narrative, and lack real individual will and subjectivity.
The singer Yaoqin in "Manjiang Hong" is such a typical character, she was originally a woman in the Qinglou, who was rescued by the male protagonist Zhang Da and became married to her, and is the woman with the most scenes in the whole film. In the movie, in order to help Zhang Da complete his task, Yaoqin disguised herself as a singer and mixed into Qin Hui's temporary mansion to approach the ceremonial officer of the golden people. In the film, the meeting between the two takes place after the ceremonial officer is assassinated, and when Zhang Da discovers that the other party is his wife, he immediately asks the other party whether he has an affair with Jin Ren under the pretext of interrogation, and this blatant examination of female chastity appears naked on the screen.
In the second half of the film, Zhang Da's identity is exposed, and his relationship with Yaoqin is also revealed, and in order to force Zhang Da to confess, officials of Qin Hui Mansion threaten him with Yaoqin to speak. At such a critical time, Zhang Da's request to the enemy turned out to be "kill her, don't spoil her", as if he was the master of Yaoqin's body, and he had more power to decide the life and death of the latter. As for Yaoqin, who hopes to participate in the just cause with her husband, her sacrifice and courage seem to have not been seen and recognized by Zhang Da. They were originally partners with common hatred, but they were shaped into a subordinate relationship, which also made the film focus on praising civilian heroes less conceptual.
Coincidentally, "Nameless" also added several beautiful women to the intrigue of a group of men, namely Miss Fang, Miss Jiang, a progressive young man, Miss Jiang and Miss Chen of the underground party. Although these three women have their own pursuit of the future, they are fighting in their own ways, and the male protagonists lurking inside the Japanese army are comrades who stand together, and they are as bold and daring to sacrifice.
But similar to "Man Jiang Hong", the movie always highlights the close-up of their beautiful characteristics, showing how they use their gender advantage to fight the enemy, Miss Fang and Miss Jiang both directly adopt the "seduction" method, and Miss Chen also needs to play husband and wife with comrades to cover their identity. At the same time, the peeping shots given by the film make us realize that these women's revolutionary actions must often be completed under the protection of men, or wait for their salvation, otherwise they will be mortally in danger.
"The Wandering Earth 2" takes place in the future, but the women in the film are still in a clearly subordinate position. Among them, Liu Peiqiang's wife Han Duoduo especially made the audience regret, this character was originally a well-trained astronaut, Liu Peiqiang fell in love with her at first sight, the movie directly showed Liu Peiqiang's imagination of the future life of the two after the first meeting: cave house flower candle, early birth of a noble son... In the later plot, Han Duoduo gave up her career after getting married and having children, and began to marry and teach her son, but unfortunately suffered from cancer. For the benefit of the whole family, she chose to give up entering the dungeon and gave Liu Peiqiang the place obtained as an astronaut to her father, allowing him to live with his son (which also caused the father-son gap in the first part).
This is of course a depiction of marriage and family life that is most common in movies, with the male protagonist outside the female protagonist and the female protagonist, one party making meritorious contributions and the other paying for the family. Of course, there is no problem with similar dramas, and most families in reality may be similar models, but this is a science fiction movie that takes place in the future, and today, when Chinese female astronauts have actually traveled in space, we expect Chinese science fiction movies to give Chinese women a broader space for development.
As for "Exchange of Life", although one of the important themes of the film is the "leftover girl" problem, the heroine Jin Hao is not the real core of the work, she basically exists in Xiaotani's imagination, as a beautiful illusion, everywhere seems very passive. Although she did not want to be urged to marry by her mother, let alone blind date, she did not make any resistance. Just the fluttering sentence at the end of the movie "Don't force me to go on a blind date again" completes the growth of the characters, and also makes the values of this movie seem very thin.
Silent beings
Director Cheng Er said that "Nameless" is about the story of all living beings in the big time. There is an unforgettable scene in the film, filmed during the Japanese bombing of Guangzhou, people took refuge in bomb shelters, and a desperate stray dog also wanted to hide in, but was driven away, and finally was killed in order to find food. This lame stray dog, the Shiba Inu raised by the Japanese pilots in the film, and the murderous wolf dog in the secret service form a set of juxtaposed metaphorical relationships, suggesting the fate of people in the war.
In the entire movie, none of the characters have names, and the protagonists are mostly secret workers who cannot reveal their identities, they are tragic, or obscene, or heroic, or retreating... As history rolls forward, they all turn into silent dust.
To be honest, the supporting role in the movie is more memorable than the male protagonist who is always in danger in the movie, at the end of the movie, Mr. Ye leaves Shanghai for Hong Kong, but unexpectedly reunites with the family of his former "colleague". This "colleague" chose the wrong side in the war and later disappeared. His family, however, are honest ordinary people who opened a restaurant in a foreign land for a living, and when they met Mr. Ye, they did not know the magnificent inside story behind them, only sighing and gratifying for the rest of their lives after the disaster. It seems idle here, but the movie is more related to the theme of "living beings".
Perhaps, it is precisely because the heroic narrative of the Spring Festival movie is still full of these silent public, we are more likely to be moved by the fictional script. These characters can be said to be inconspicuous, so that we can forget them in a flash, but it is they who make the protagonist brilliance and provide a relatively solid realistic foundation for the film.
Zhang Da and his colleagues in "Manjiang Hong" are all heroes who dare to sacrifice, and they used death to achieve the originally numb Sun Jun, allowing the latter to awaken and participate in the action, transforming from Qin Jun's "eagle dog" into a hero. I believe that many viewers were moved by the righteousness of Sun Jun at the end, and I am afraid that they have long forgotten how cruel this character is at the beginning, in order to complete the task of his superiors, he can kill his subordinates and colleagues at will, and these people have become unimportant plot elements in the movie because they have no names.
As for the setting of the climax of this film, Sun Jun did not kill Qin Juniper, but just let him live with humiliation, seemingly far-sighted, but in fact, it is also irresponsible to all living beings, because in reality, all living beings will continue to be ravaged by traitors represented by Qin Juniper.
When we were moved by the loud recitation of "Manjiang Hong" by everyone at the end, perhaps we had long forgotten the sacrifices of Genfu Ding Sanwang, Mafu Liu Xi and others, they did not doubt the feasibility of the cause at all, and resolutely went to die, although they did not hear Yue Fei's heart of "thirty meritorious fame dust and earth, eight thousand miles of clouds and moon" at the end, but with their humble lives as the white paper for writing history, they added thickness to the blank paper on which history was written.
"The Wandering Earth 2" also has a highlight moment, about the need for humans to plant a nuclear bomb on the moon, but for technical reasons can only recruit volunteers to sacrifice their lives to complete it by manpower, and astronauts over fifty years old have automatically appeared, they detonated nuclear bombs in the flesh, and embarked on a journey with no return. In this film, Guo Fan reveals to us the puzzles of the first movie: before starting such a huge project as "The Wandering Earth", is there any other possibility, will there be anyone opposed, and will someone ask "Is such a sacrifice worth it"?
Tu Hengyu in the movie believes that his daughter can transcend the physical body to have a "digital life", because as long as there is memory, human beings are not considered death. His colleague Teacher Ma questioned him, arguing that "no civilization without people is meaningless" and that his daughter is dead when she dies. In the end, Tu Hengyu enters the virtual world after physical death, and he completes the task with a digital life, rebelling against inherent prejudices. He responded to the question with the phrase "You are not qualified to define what reality is," shouting out his pent-up voice.
Southern Weekend reporter Yu Yaqin