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"Rescue Mr. Wu" is adapted from the 2004 Wu Ruofu kidnapping case, and director Ding Sheng uses documentary methods to present this case on the big screen. "Rescue Mr. Wu" has a real power from the beginning, but it does not indulge in a simple imitation of reality, but completes the retelling of events through documentary handheld photography and cross-editing.
Through plain, trivial language dialogue and three-dimensional, vivid character shaping to complete the true lyricism of human nature; Grafting movies into our lives with various details blurs the line between film and reality by prompting them. Theatergoers are watching a real rule of law TV show.
"Rescue Mr. Wu" as a police and bandit genre film presents anti-genre, anti-dramatic audio-visual characteristics, showing a documentary style, the most striking thing in the film should be the handheld photography that shakes and rests throughout the film. Usually, the photography of police and bandit films requires speed, accuracy and stability. Fast is to strengthen the external rhythm of the film, and enhance the tension and excitement of the film from the audiovisual form.
It is required that the information conveyed by the picture be complete and accurate, because police and bandit stories are usually suspenseful and ups and downs, and if the information of the picture is not clear, the audience's understanding of the smoothness of the narrative will be affected.
Stability is the rule that all commercial films must follow, because a smooth and clean picture is usually a high-spec, high-standard image feature, which is easier to bring to the audience a comfortable and pleasant viewing experience. In this sense, the photography of "Rescue Mr. Wu" is indeed anti-genre.
Cluttered ways of photography
The film adopts a shaky, messy handheld photography method, which is documentary and increases the realism of the content of the film. This realism comes from the aesthetic experience that documentaries and television programs have cultivated over a long period of time. In addition, because of the particularity of the subject matter and story, the shortcomings of handheld photography play a different artistic charm in "Rescue Mr. Wu".
First of all, the long-term shaking of the picture will cause the audience to be tired and disgusted, but because "Rescue Mr. Wu" is a police and bandit story, this visual oppression can mobilize the audience's emotions and participate in the gripping story.
Secondly, the movement of handheld photography will inevitably lead to the erratic meaning of the picture, the information direction is not clear, and it is likely to cause difficulties in understanding or the problem of unsmooth story in general suspense stories, but this film is more special, and the audience is familiar with the ins and outs of the movie story itself.
They go to the theater to see not only the content of the story, but also the vivid, concrete way to tell it, and handheld photography is the ideal way. This documentary technique has also become a prominent feature of the film's anti-genre.
As the screenwriter and director of the film, Ding Sheng also holds the role of editor, and his editing method is to disrupt the time clue in an interest-guided way. In the police and bandit genre, suspense setting is a very important narrative technique, especially the process of good and evil is the most exciting.
"Rescue Mr. Wu" tells everyone at the beginning that the kidnapper party has been arrested, and this editing method of dissolving suspense is an anti-genre and anti-dramatic technique. However, because it is in line with the development trajectory and psychological cognition process that the audience is interested in, it will feel that the story is extremely real.
For example, when Xing Feng interrogated Huazi in the interrogation room, when he asked about arresting people: "Did he make trouble on the road?" Hanako didn't answer, the camera cut directly to the scene in the car when the arrest was made, and Mr. Wu calmly talked to Hanako. The camera cuts back, Xing Feng then asks the way of the gun, and without waiting for Hua Zi to speak, the camera cuts to the scene where Huazi trades guns on the Sino-Russian border.
In addition, when the police broke down the door to rescue the hostages, Ding Sheng processed the entire paragraph into a silent form, no deterrent shouting, no exaggerated sound effects, no high-pitched music, for police and bandit films, this kind of moment belongs to classic scenes, which is a necessary configuration for the film to impress the audience and sublimate the theme.
The distance of the characterization
"Rescue Mr. Wu" here refuses to sensationalize, refuse to be typical, refuse to be dramatic, and this calm and rational special treatment pulls the audience back to the case itself. Indeed, the power of truth moves audiences far more than any dramatic hyperbole.
The truth and emotion of "Rescue Mr. Wu" are not only because of the documentary characteristics of audiovisual language, but also because of the sense of scene of the film's language dialogue and the sense of distance of the characters. The language of this film is plain and trivial, just like a daily chat that happens around you, with a strong sense of scene. This sense of presence can make the audience feel extra intimate and real.
The dramas of general commercial films emphasize the refinement of language, one sentence and one beat, so that the internal rhythm of the story is tight, and the plot is promoted to develop non-stop. Such a story, while wonderful, lacks credibility. The dialogue in "Rescue Mr. Wu" seems to have a lot of gag "nonsense", which has little to do with the development of the plot, but it is very important to the meaning of the film.
The screenwriter uses these "nonsense" to construct a linguistic situation. They are like "redundant information" in the concept of communication, although they are useless in plot development, they can spy on the psychological activities of the characters and the relationship between the characters on the scene. Because the information has not been screened and refined, the audience feels as if they are on the scene and extremely real.
For example, in the kidnapper's den, the conversation between Mr. Wu and his "movie fan" fat kidnapper is like this, and in such a situation, talking about trivial things seems both real and absurd.
The sense of distance created by characters is difficult to grasp, and few creators can have enough rational and calm spectator attitude to keep the characters and audience at a sufficient distance at all times. Ding Sheng once said frankly in an interview: "Huazi once had a large line saying that he was a child, in fact, he told Andy Lau, 'Why am I such a person'.
The scene was good, but I couldn't let it in because I wouldn't let the audience get too close to him and I needed to be measured. "The film uses God's perspective to tell the whole story, not leaning towards any of Mr. Go, Hanako, or the police, and carefully keeping a certain distance to portray the characters.
Real humanity
It is an attitude of demanding truth, driven by the powerful rationality of focusing on the case itself. Nevertheless, the superb acting skills of actors such as Wang Qianyuan and Andy Lau in the film interpret the characters vividly and fully in the only pen and ink, which makes this so-called "rule of law TV show" look not boring and boring.
Although the creators keep their distance from shaping the characters, they do not prevent the characters from showing their true humanity. For example, Huazi, played by Wang Qianyuan, does not accept his fate when facing the cruel reality, and he confronts it in his own more cruel and extreme way, and we can see that Huazi's madness comes from the huge gap between his ideals and reality.
We can't identify with him, but we can understand him, which is in line with what we know about real human nature, not as a vicious monster. In addition, the scene in the film where Hanako meets his mother before his execution does not show his remorse or cowardice.
It's just that people feel Hanako's deep helplessness, although he doesn't think of his crimes, and even doesn't think of his life and death, he still shows the softness of his heart when facing his mother, which is a character with a distinct and vivid personality.
What is a domestic police and bandit film doorway? Satisfying the interests of the film itself and various censorship departments at the same time without basically affecting their own expression is a huge breakthrough for domestic police and bandit films in recent years. The humanization of the police, the legend of the villain, and the three-dimensional victim are the elements of the success of this panoramic film.
Similar to "Poison War" and "The Hunt for Bin Laden" ("Captain Philip"), the film relies on events rather than a single protagonist to sustain the entire film, and the main line of the film takes place within twenty hours of Mr. Wu's abduction (although there are side stories of the Kong brothers).
The characters involved are very complex - the police law enforcement line (dominated by the big leader, Cao Gang, that is, Wu Ruofu and Xing Feng, that is, Liu Ye), the kidnapper line (Huazi is Wang Qianyuan, Fatty, Disobedient and Soy Sauce) and the tied line (Mr. Wu is Andy Lau, Xiao Dou is Cai Lu).
The script opens with the beginning of the kidnapping and the eighteenth-hour confrontation, and then slowly unfolds the case net, and gradually closes the net. With such a global situation, it is easy to be boring or even inseparable, and empathy is a major challenge for similar films.
The fun of naming
The intertextual relationship between "Mr. Rescue Me" and reality is another important reason why the film looks real and moving. The "wu" in "Rescue Mr. Wu" means "I" in Chinese, and the title translates to both the homonym of "Rescue Mr. Wu" and the meaning of "Rescue Myself", which is somewhat of a creator's game.
Mr. Wu Ruofu, the party involved in the kidnapping case, played the role of a police officer in the film to organize the rescue of hostages, and the meaning of "saving myself" was produced after the reality and movie were folded. This kind of intertextual relationship between film and reality abounds in the film, and it is through the careful design of these details that the creator tries to graft the entire film into our real life.
In the past, there were also movies adapted from real people, but they were limited to the one-way imitation of reality in the movie, and did not have this self-deprecating interactive relationship. Many of the details in "Rescue Mr. Wu" are redirected to the real world. In addition to playing the role in the story, the actors are also playing themselves.
Wu Ruofu is like this, Liu Ye and Andy Lau are also like this, they all look like they are acting in their real lives. Although Andy Lau is playing Mr. Wu in the film, many hints of details point to Andy Lau's real life, and the audience seems to have broken the boundary between film and reality.
For example, the kidnappers reflected the fact that Andy Lau was secretly married; Borrowed from the mouth of the kidnapper: "Didn't you play "God of Gamblers"? "Marking Andy Lau's important film and television works; The melody of "Wishing you prosperity" that appears in the film is his well-known musical work. In addition, the theme song of the film "Joker" is both Mr. Wu's comfort to Hanako's endless despair.
It is Andy Lau's self-mockery of his bitter 30-year acting career. This kind of processing method of grafting screen stories into real life blinds the audience's rational thinking, believing that the story in front of them is reality itself, making the film show the power of truth.
Similarly, the criminal policeman Xing Feng played by Liu Ye seems to be himself, and he often cannot reunite with his son because of work reasons, which is the same as the situation shown by Liu Ye's father and son in the reality show that swept the country, and this deliberate contrast is confirmed by calling the name "Nuoyi" at the end of the film.
The actors seem to be starring in their real lives, even Jackie Chan on the wall calendar still plays the role of the "big brother" in reality, and the self-deprecating interaction between this movie and reality is far more interesting than the one-way imitation of reality in the movie, and the sense of realism to the audience is much stronger.
epilogue
"Rescue Mr. Wu" is not difficult to see its efforts in creating a sense of realism in terms of the structure of the story content and the design of the audiovisual language, in the era when the box office of Chinese films is reaching new highs every year, and in today's increasingly noisy and flashy movie content, there are still film creators who can live with the police in the police station for three months and complete seven kidnapping cases.
Restore the real details to the audience in detail, and use documentary techniques to make the audience feel like they are in the scene. Whether it is photography, editing, dialogue design or character shaping, "Rescue Mr. Wu" has certain results in its exploration of documentary films, and the practice of letting star actors play themselves is bold and intelligent, introducing the audience to the gap between film and reality.
Fortunately, Mr. Wu Ruofu's courage in the face of his unbearable past and the rigorous and sincere creative attitude of the creators can present this wonderful and evocative film to the audience.