Text | Fire House Bike
When watching "Lyceum Theatre", you must keep two points in mind.
First, I want to go to the theater to see it. It takes money to force yourself to sit honestly in your seat and walk into the "vertigo" it creates.
Second, try to sit in the back row, otherwise it is too "dizzy".
Lyceum Theatre
Director: Lou Ye
Writers: Ma Yingli
Starring: Gong Li / Zhao Youting / Oda Chejang / Pascal Gregory
Genre: Drama
Country of Production: Chinese mainland
Language: Mandarin Chinese / English / Japanese / French
Release: 2021-10-15 (Chinese mainland) / 2019-09-04 (Venice Film Festival)
Duration: 126 minutes (Venice Film Festival) / 127 minutes
In 1941, the famous actor Yu Yan returned to Shanghai during the isolated island period, ostensibly to star in the play "Saturday Novel" directed by her old love, but what was the real purpose? To rescue her ex-husband? To gather intelligence for the Allies? To work for an adoptive father? Or to escape the war with your lover? What is her real mission? As she embarked on the mission, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between the enemy and the enemy. A woman's fate is tightly pulled by the times, how can she make the choice to change the world pattern? Inside and outside the play, who can be spared? (Douban)
1
Star + spy, Gong Huang deserves it
Gong Li said that "Lyceum Theatre" is destined to remain famous in film history. Gong Li, who said this, was already in his fifties.
But the face she had on the screen made people just stare intently, and didn't have the heart to explore anything else.
She plays Yu Yan, who is both a drama star and an allied spy. Lou Ye said, "It's best to be a star to play." Pretending to be a star is the worst thing to do. ”
But isn't it? Nowadays, there are very few people who really have a star style. The "stars" of the all-media era, while consuming themselves through various exposures, have also fallen off the altar and fallen in value.
Therefore, everyone calls Gong Li "Gong Huang", and the reason is like this.
Stars/actors and spies are somehow isomorphic.
They all require performance/disguise. The actor's task is to complete the performance; the spy's mission is to complete the task. Every good actor is a spy who moves between the audience and the work; every senior spy is an actor who is hostile to me.
It is necessary to enter the play and be emotional in order to ensure the trust of the audience / the enemy; but also to play, always keep sober and remember the task, once the performance / disguise fails, the final is a fatal ending.
From a star to a spy, Gong Li is convincing. In the "Qiu Ju Fights the Lawsuit" that year, Gong Li deceived everyone, who dared to say that it was not an ordinary peasant woman?
The most dangerous place, but also the safest place, the most powerful disguise, is no disguise.
Some people mock Gong Li's "expressionless face" in "Lyceum Theatre", but I want to say that the most powerful acting skills are no acting skills.
2
Drama + movies, confusing
I have been looking forward to more directors shooting our local "drama within a play", and the last time I did this was Chen Jianbin's "Eleventh Time". And Lou Ye was really amazed at me this time.
In the first scene, Yu Yan and Tan Na (zhao Youting) said the lines in the script "Saturday Novel", talking and talking, running out, the camera also followed up, which is still rehearsing the drama, the "movie" began!
The ignorant audience reacted, oh, this is what is called "play within a play".
Interestingly, at the end of the film, there is also a scene that echoes reality.
At the official performance, Yu Yan and the Japanese had a fierce gun battle, and the audience at the bottom sat still, thinking that it was the gunfire in the play. It wasn't until an audience member was killed by mistake that the people next to them began to scream.
Everyone (whether it's the "audience" in the movie or those of us) is lost in the sense of form that this drama/film brings.
Interestingly, it was the black-and-white images and the dangling handheld lenses that made us dizzy / real.
In the interview, Lou Ye used the word "chromatography" to explain the form of this film.
"Not the color spectrum of color, but the color spectrum of the whole of Shanghai in 1941", "including the works of the left wing, and its opposite, the Mandarin Duck butterfly school, no level should be lost."
I think that's probably what it means. In total fiction, we should allow, and if we can, actively capture some overflowing truth.
3
Politics + freedom, gone with the wind
Lacan said, "Women don't exist."
This is not really a sentence that provokes war. It is Precisely when Lacan sees the inconsistency of the male-dominated world, and sees the rift in this symbolic world.
Male and female are not biological predetermined. Women are precisely the gaps in the male world, outside of "reason / order / symbols / rules".
Therefore, in Lacan's sense, love is always "feminine".
Men always act for this and that, sex, money, power... All male root worlds are named desires.
Only women can act for "love".
We see this in more and more film and television works.
Like Wang Jiazhi, she entered the play, did not come out, and died.
Like Yu Yan, in the end, the banknotes, documents, boats, everything was available, but she had to go back to save her lover, and she also died.
But they are precisely the real women who have escaped from the dominant ideological world.
Nietzsche's sentence in the film can be described as the finishing touch: "Expecting love in return is not a demand for love, but a kind of vanity." ”
Lou Ye may have understood.
End