Wen | Qian language talks about the style of writing
Editor|Humble language on book style
"Untouchable" is the film "debut" of the famous mainland TV series director Zhao Baogang, although this is Zhao Baogang's first venture into the film industry as a director, but he has already achieved great achievements in the field of TV series.
"The Story of the Editorial Office", "Addiction", "A Matter of Wind and Snow", "Never Blind", "Like Fog Like Rain and Like Wind", "What to Save You, My Love", "Struggle", "Harbin at Night", "Gang of Men" and other classic TV series are all by Zhao Baogang, he has always been familiar with urban emotional TV series.
The story of "Untouchable" spans 70 years, but the main plot of the film takes place in the fifteen years from 1935 to 1949, telling the love story between Fu Jingnian (played by Sun Honglei), an underground party member lurking inside the Kuomintang intelligence system, and Ning Zhu (played by Gui Lunmg), a dance teacher.
A combination of spy war movies and romance movies
It can be said that this film is a combination of spy war films and romance films, combining the concept of "waiting love" with the turbulent national crisis and the dilemma of the protagonist Fu Jingnian in the face of love and duty, outlining the beauty of love and the pathos of life.
In the cultural puzzle presented by the anti-special films of this period, the presentation of emotions depends on the purpose of ideological propaganda. In the film "Yangcheng Dark Sentinel", scout Wang Lian and the enemy special eight aunts married a fake couple at the behest of the enemy to hide their eyes, but due to the different ideological positions of the two sides, the identity of the fake husband and wife can only become an expedient measure for the investigator to complete the task.
In the film "The Undying Airwaves", Communist Party member Li Xia and female spinning factory worker He Lanfen completed the transformation of "real and fake couple" under the guidance of the common revolutionary goal, providing an emotional model model for later anti-special films and spy films such as "Red Lover", "Autumn Joy", "East Wind Rain" and "Wind Listener".
In the war rear, where young men are generally lacking, beautiful women are often able to replace men as the protagonists of such war stories, either selling themselves on days when food is scarce, or cheating on their husbands in exchange for emotional comfort, but all suffer the consequences of war.
These days of pain can only truly come to an end after the war, with the return of male characters who have been traumatized and even physically mutilated in the war. The common feature of these female characters is that they are looking forward to the return of their husbands, which should be counted as a realistic version of "waiting love".
Different from these films, the background of spy warfare allows young officer Fu Jingnian to appear in the rear of the war and dominate the development process of the entire film, replacing the emotional entanglement between one woman and multiple men in the above rear story with the emotional entanglement between one man and three women, realizing the reversal of gender narrative.
The film not only opposes the beauty of love with the cruelty of war, but also wants to express a "waiting love". As early as 2006, the feature film "Yunshui Ballads" directed by Yin Li also tells the story of "waiting love" over a period of sixty years, but compared to the former, it pays more attention to the beauty of love with "fairy tale" brushstrokes.
"Yunshui Ballad" pays more attention to depicting the pain of separation and war in a realistic and caring tone. Therefore, although both films have the theme of "waiting for love", they present two completely different styles and meanings.
In comparison with the above "rear story", it can be found that "Untouchable" pays more attention to the "fairy tale" style of writing the narrative theme. Perhaps for this film, the presentation of feelings is more important than the logic of war in history, so the character and storyline are first of all serving "waiting love", and do not blindly force the rationality of the plot and logic.
Love and war
First of all, unlike the traditional image of underground party members, Fu Jingnian is not a character who is completely obsessed with work and duties and forgets emotions, but appears as an anti-traditional "yuppie" image. The film shows Fu Jingnian's cruel side when he ostensibly acts as a military commander agent, and prefers to torture innocent people under the "criminal permission" brought by his identity.
He also shows his tenacious character with inner entanglements that have not appeared in Fu Jingnian. In the film, when "Echo" finds himself deceived and tries to escape with his wife and children, there is a shootout with the secret service, and the camera follows Fu Jingnian, who has just returned from outside, to quickly hide in the next room, through the carved glass on the wall behind Fu Jingnian.
You can vaguely see the chase of the spies and the blazing gunfire, the gunshots, the screams of women and children are constantly heard, and the camera has been looking at Fu Jingnian's cold, expressionless face, which is impressive.
In other words, as a "two-faced man", Fu Jingnian did not just blindly obtain intelligence from within the enemy after penetrating the enemy's "heart", but hid his determination to fight for the highest goal of the "revolutionary" under the actual manifestation of "enemy" behavior.
In response to the power comparison relationship of the "love" war in the theme of the film, Fu Jingnian once applied to take a back seat on the eve of the outbreak of the civil war, trying to recover Ning Zhi, who had left, on the eve of the Battle of Crossing the River, partially departing from the previous image of the underground party that was blindly forging ahead and forgetting personal feelings.
Instead, the film uses Fu Jingnian's stoicism and decisiveness when he abandoned Ning Ping several times, showing through the sense of smallness and powerlessness of personal choice in the face of war. The whole story also ends after Fu Jingnian's active pursuit of Ning Zhi - because of the abandonment of the mission, it continues to circulate until finally Ning Zhu dies of artillery fire, and Fu Jingnian goes to Taiwan for the mission of liberating Taiwan.
What's more, when the music of the tango "One Step Away" was first heard on the record player, Fu Jingnian danced on the street like Jim Carrey in "Singin' in the Rain", and made provocative gestures to surprised foreigners in restaurants.
In addition, he was able to wander the social places of senior Kuomintang officers, and was proficient in pastimes such as playing mahjong, which is often described as "official wife-style entertainment".
In short, hiding the political pursuit of the revolutionary behind Fu Jingnian's previous choices, paying more attention to highlighting his emotional and artistic pursuits, striving to present the characters in a more three-dimensional way, and constructing a "yuppie" image that does not completely match the traditional image of the revolutionary in the involvement of multiple forces.
Waiting for love
Secondly, unlike the women who have suffered the consequences of war in the common "rear stories", there seems to be only one theme in life, that is, waiting for love with Fu Jingnian. From the perspective of emotional continuation, Ning Cheng undertakes the emotions of "Shadow" (played by Xu Jinglei) in Sun Honglei's heart. It can even be said that Ning Zhu is the "ghost" of the "shadow" in Fu Jingnian's heart.
From the plot point of view, whenever Fu Jingnian comes out of a war or begins to desire love in his heart, he would rather always appear just right and get together with Fu Jingnian for a short time; And when Fu Jingnian had to separate from her because of a new task, Ning Zhi disappeared again and came and went without a trace.
In the process of waiting, how to make a living and what he did is completely explained in the film, and it is difficult for the audience to make reasonable speculations. In addition, although she would rather live in a time of war, and was electrocuted because she was suspected of being an underground party, and also helped Fu Jingnian assassinate the Japanese, and finally died in the artillery fire of the civil war, she is still essentially an "insulator" of war.
If it weren't for love as an inducement, it would not seem to intersect with war. At the end of the film, the elderly Fu Jingnian danced the tango again in front of Ning Wait's tomb, and a seemingly Ning Zhu hand was on Fu Jingnian's old hand, perhaps still echoing the speculation that Ning Zhu's existence was an imaginary continuation of Fu Jingnian's feelings for the "shadow".
At the beginning of the film, it vaguely explained the emotions between Fu Jingnian and "Shadow" for many years, and Ning was adopted by "Shadow", and her sister, who has a strong dependence on her, both of them invested their emotions on "Shadow". After the death of "Shadow", Fu Jingnian's strong desire for her and the same-sex sisterly feelings between Ning and "Shadow" collided together, resulting in a new chemical effect.
Perhaps it is also possible to make a bolder guess, when Ning faced Fu Jingnian, who electrocuted him, he always knew in his heart that the other party was safe, and Fu Jingnian was both an abuser and a protector who preferred to be desired in his heart.
It may be argued that a changed "Stockholm syndrome" has emerged. In addition, it seems difficult to explain why Ning Cheng's emotions can explode when he faces Fu Jingnian.
From Fu Jingnian's relationship with these three women, it can be seen that the film tries to construct a gender order composed of active men and passive women. The three women have always been waiting for Fu Jingnian and his love, but Fu Jingnian is often torn in the dilemma of duty and love, looking for them whenever he needs emotional comfort, and resolutely leaving when duty comes.
Their main function was to wait, until Fu Jingnian finally chose to stay on the eve of the battle of crossing the river, but Ning Zhi eventually died in the artillery fire of the war. From this point of view, the film still consciously or unintentionally constructs a male-dominated gender order. It is actually paired with the character "label" of "yuppie" and "infatuated girl".
It reflects the gap that girls and adult men cannot cross in terms of emotional processing, and from another perspective, it may also be regarded as a war text expression of the urban love story of the current fashionable girl and "uncle". Moreover, the film elevates this emotion across time and geography to a "feeling".
The manifestation of feelings
With the change of historical context, today's word "feelings" has begun to point more to nostalgia and memories. Feng Xiaogang's "Do Not Disturb If You Are Insincere" can also be regarded as a typical work to express the feelings of middle-aged men, in which Qin Fen's friendship with several brothers even overrides love, life and death, and expresses the bitterness and sentimentality of life with a cynical attitude and the tone of people who come over.
Films such as "To Our Dying Youth" and "In Those Years, the Girls We Chased Together" also consume the "warmth" of youth in a nostalgic way, and comfort the audience with feelings. The "feelings" of "Untouchable" are completely different from the former, although it is also a narrative that is different from the current "fast food" emotional treatment.
However, unlike the old-fashioned gesture of "Do Not Disturb If You Are Insincere", "Untouchable" still shows the fresh temperament of first exploration of love through the girlish feelings of Ning, and also highlights the romantic lyricism of "waiting love" with the cross-time and cross-regional nature of its "feelings".
In the film, "feelings" are important because time and space changes, storylines, character genealogy and even character and actions must serve the theme of the film. Unfortunately, when "feelings" face logically unreasonable problems, there is a rift between content expression and viewing effect.
For example, a second ago, Fu Jingnian and Ning Zhu were still discussing Ning's acquittal, and as soon as the music began, the two immediately fell into the emotional "imagination realm", leaving all the hatred of the duty of the agent and electrocution out of the clouds. This logical irrationality hinders the expression of the theme to a certain extent.
epilogue
The box office of the film "Untouchable" showed a situation of "high opening and low going", and on the first day, it defeated a number of Hollywood "blockbusters" such as "Air Rescue" and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" in the same schedule with a box office of about 14.6 million, and won the first place. Unfortunately, despite the joining of movie stars such as Sun Honglei and Gui Lunmg, the film was released for ten days, and the total box office was only 67.03 million yuan.
According to insiders, the production cost of "Untouchable" is about 60 million, plus the cost of publicity, how can the box office be close to 200 million to recover the cost. And now this achievement, even if you add other income such as network copyrights and TV copyrights, it is very difficult to return the cost. ”
In front of audiences who are increasingly addicted to popular culture, the combination of romantic love and "feelings" movies still faces conflicts brought by the real context, and how to resolve the contradictions is the problem that the narrative of "feelings" movies needs to overcome.
Moreover, "feelings" should be full of pain without losing hope, romantic love is often irrational and immature, and how to achieve the ultimate reconciliation between the natural contradictions between the two through the charm of light and shadow is still a question worth considering.