It's been a long time since I've seen a national drama with such an efficient narrative.
With just one shot, several layers of reversal were completed.
Exchange of information, comrade joints.
The lesbian was wounded, and the man moved her from the café where she was handed over to the intelligence station to rest.
As a result, when I helped her sit down, I saw the other party's inadvertently exposed wrist.
Pay attention to this look.
said don't worry, there will be your own people to help you later.
But the next second.
He silently retreated into the room, closed the door, and secretly pressed the table and chair against it, opened the window, one by one, and began to burn the papers.
On the other side, the woman who was shocked that something was wrong also changed her sick appearance and got up and slammed the door frantically.
At the same time, there was a gunman who arrived downstairs, and the accompanying gunshots.
Who is the initiative?
Who is secretly hidden?
Who's playing whom?
As soon as the play opens, the brains of the audience are filled with information.
Even if it is Sir, it suddenly dawned on him after watching the first episode that the question mark at the beginning is just the first link of a series of thrilling reversals.
And just in the first episode, this reversal of strong conflict has come three times.
Deception, traps, accidents, and the yellow finch are behind.
The drama is full of conflicts.
Well, no detours.
What I want to talk about today is this spy war drama "masterpiece" that directly entered the top three on the hot list as soon as it was launched:
Harbin 1944
To say that it is "a masterpiece" is not nonsense.
starring Qin Hao and Yang Mi, the topic of strength is hot, and the absolute national drama is high.
And the director Zhang Li.
Born in photography, famous works, "Red Cherry", "Red Lover", "Born Out of Thin Air", "Big Names", "No Thieves in the World", ...... And as a director, he went one step further and directly became a god: "Ming Dynasty 1566", "The Right Way in the World is the Vicissitudes of Life", "Forty-Nine Days: Sacrifice", "Young Marshal", ......
is definitely one of the best creators in the domestic film and television industry, not to mention the story background this time, which has elements of historical era that the director is good at.
It's still a spy war theme.
Long before the start of filming, this drama was expected by countless people.
Even Yang Mi also contributed the first absolute "villain" role in his acting career in this play.
But the strength of the lineup and the breakthrough of the protagonist, although it has brought a huge amount of attention, are not the biggest attraction of this show.
Because in a way.
This "Harbin 1944" is not only for director Zhang Li, but also for the theme itself.
It's probably a very new attempt.
01
A spy war drama, and it is a spy war drama of the Republic of China, the biggest attraction is never the ending.
Instead, let the audience feel the psychological oppression of the characters in a game of cat and mouse.
Especially the more realistic the story, the more exciting it is.
For example, "Latent" is the leader in this, throwing Yu Zecheng into the military Tianjin Station, putting spy warfare into the workplace, and then cooperating with the background of anti-Japanese resistance and civil war, so that the whole story is connected to life again, and full of the heaviness of the times, pulling the audience's nervousness in the horror of being recognized again and again.
And for spy war stories.
The chaos of the background is the first step in the story.
In terms of setting, it can be said that "Harbin 1944" has achieved this to the extreme.
The title of the film is given, 1944, Harbin, what is the concept?
On the eve of the Great Chaos.
Because of the agreement between Japan and the Soviet Union in the early stage of World War II, the northeastern region, where the puppet state of Manchukuo was located, maintained fragile social stability during the war.
As the largest city in Northeast China, Harbin during the war brought together our party comrades, Soviet intelligence officers, Japan's Kwantung Army, and puppet Manchurian spies......
It is the front line of international intelligence warfare.
And in 1944, with the successive victories of the World Anti-Fascist War, this "stability" was already shaky.
The signs of Japan's defeat were becoming apparent, but the final frenzied counterattack was also underway, and a war between Japan and the Soviet Union could break out at any time, and the survival of the puppet state of Manchukuo was in jeopardy.
This is the context in which the story takes place.
And under the background, there are also contradictions in reality.
Don't look at Harbin in the play, it looks like a bustling modern city.
But the lines have already told the audience that here, people are divided into three, six, nine and so on, not only food, clothing, housing, transportation, food and clothing, but even business and small business.
There is blatant discrimination.
In the puppet Manchukuo, the Japanese were the first class, followed by the puppet Manchurian bureaucratic agents, and then the ordinary Chinese people.
Therefore, in the play, Guan Xue played by Yang Mi, although she is the section chief of the Special Service Section of the Harbin Police Department, with her subordinates, she can easily kill all sides in Harbin on the grounds of anti-communism and anti-espionage, and run rampant.
But when I met the Japanese, I was still dwarf:
A little secretary was smoking in the office in front of her, and she could only endure it, and only when she was gone did she dare to open the window to breathe; when she encountered the Japanese who were spilling on the street, she did not dare to take care of them, and when she encountered a case involving the Japanese, she had to be sincerely afraid, as if she were facing a great enemy.
Therefore, the difficulties facing the underground party comrades were not only suppressed by the puppet Manchurian violent agency (the Special Service Section of the National Police Agency), but also the direct threat from the Japanese Kwantung Army.
The latter, in particular, are more brutal than ordinary reactionaries, who have no regard for social repercussions.
In addition to identity contradictions, the complex relationship between the characters also has enough dramatic tension.
Guan Xue is the head of the National Police Agency.
Song Zhuowen played by Qin Hao is an underground party, but Song Zhuowen's twin brother was once Guan Xue's life-saving benefactor.
Therefore, in order to retrieve the information transmitted by the comrades desperately, and also to carry out better work in the future.
Under the organizational arrangement, Song Zhuowen had to disguise himself as his long-missing brother to talk to Guan Xuexu and the snake, and take advantage of Guan Xue's good impression of his face to enter the secret service department.
Even, when necessary, it is necessary to stage false feelings......
The difficulty can be imagined.
And what is waiting for him, in addition to the danger of being seen through by the other party, there are also complex personnel relations and workplace conflicts in the secret service department.
As an underground party, he has people around him who get along day and night and desperately want to catch the king of the underground party; there are "rivals in love" who admire Guan Xue and regard him as a "thorn in the eye"; and there are old fritters who are worried about being hindered by their related households and think of ways to make them stumble.
What's even worse is that just when Song Zhuowen had just made a breakthrough.
His brother came back suddenly...... At one point, all his arrangements were disrupted, and every minute was exposed.
Let's just say, this spy war drama is definitely the best in the same type of work in terms of setting.
The changes of the times, the multiple contradictions between the nation and the country, the hearts of the people in the workplace, and the repeated entanglement between emotions and morals, and even the drama design similar to the brothers in "Chasing the Murderer in the White Night" with the same identity.
"Harbin 1944" wants almost all of them this time.
In domestic dramas, Sir has rarely seen such a greedy creator.
But all this, for director Zhang Li, seems to be explainable:
After all, in the creation of multi-dimensional narratives on historical themes, Zhang Li is a leader.
Or rather.
It is a forerunner.
02
When "Ming Dynasty 1566" was first broadcast, it was difficult for many viewers to understand why there were always a few black and white clips in the key plot of the play.
For example, Emperor Jiajing's tiger roar.
For example, Yan Song's roar in the sky.
It is neither a flashback of the audience's known plot, nor does it have the function of promoting the progress of the current plot, on the contrary, it also interrupts the story and disrupts the viewing habits of ordinary audiences.
It was once criticized.
But when "1566" was repeatedly taken out to taste and ponder, everyone suddenly realized that this black-and-white fragment was a stroke of genius in the play.
It sometimes replaces the traditional voice-over, presenting a more realistic psychological state of the characters, contrasting with their lines on the stage, and showing the grandeur of the characters, such as Yan Song's disguise and old spicy.
Sometimes it is from the perspective of God, vaguely presenting events that may have really happened, details that may have been overlooked, stringing together different clues, and highlighting expressions, such as showing Jiajing's cruelty.
And this trick was also used by the director in "Harbin 1944".
At the beginning, Guan Xue pretended to be an underground party to go to Lao Duan (played by Tian Xiaojie) to set up information, and remembered the reason for the exposure.
There is a black-and-white clip of the wrist and herself:
Through Lao Duan's words, she answered the doubts of the audience and herself.
The exposure was because the imprint of her watch was contrary to the work habits of the intelligence officer sleeping in the deep mountains and old forests, and she was recognized by Lao Duan.
Similarly, after Lao Duan was rescued by Dr. Shi, he revealed the location of the information hiding, and used a black-and-white frame as a plot supplement, which also explained why Lao Duan had such a shape in front:
There is a stove to burn documents, why smoke a pipe?
Because the true body of the intelligence is hidden under the ashes of this pipe.
Such designs abound in the play.
Not only is it the scene where Song Zhuowen suddenly shoots himself when he suspects that Song Zhuowen is the gunman who injured him.
also appeared in Song Zhuowen's conjecture about the upcoming outcome of Dr. Shi and Tian Xiaojiang when he heard about the execution method of the Secret Service Section.
The director knows that a high-energy spy war story must hold the audience's attention.
However, too high information density will inevitably be high and low ("Ming Dynasty 1566" has been verified).
That's why this trick was reactivated:
As long as the black and white clip appears, it is to remind the audience that this is the point and that they should watch it carefully.
Because if you don't care, you will be overwhelmed by the information density of this story.
So how high is this density?
Take the first episode as an example, every reversal is a race against time, and the difference is a fraction of a second.
1st meeting.
Guan Xue's routine intelligence officer Lao Duan took off the dead man's cheongsam and put it on himself, and then drew his own blood to paint the camouflage on his clothes.
After the camouflage was recognized, he quickly attacked, and the party organization had arranged for Song Zhuowen to cover the evacuation of Lao Duan, but he was still guarded by Pan Yue (played by Zhang Zixian) and waited for the rabbit to squat.
Second meeting.
The secret service department used the torture to no avail, so it decided to torture Lao Duan with traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture, and found a familiar doctor Shi.
But Dr. Shi is a secret son of the underground party, he let Lao Duan fake his death to deceive the secret service department, and followed the corpse carrier to save Lao Duan and find the intelligence location.
And the secret service department just guessed that something was wrong from the fact that Dr. Shi got off the train in advance, quickly reviewed the situation, immediately counteracted, and directly targeted the train station to search and arrest.
Third meeting.
The large-scale search at the train station, if it weren't for the fact that Dr. Shi used the tacit understanding of the secret service department not to touch the Japanese to create chaos, it would have been almost impossible to pass on information.
Interestingly, even if the fight was to the extreme, the intelligence was not transferred according to the predetermined plan, but was taken away by a wandering "lone wolf", which made the secret service department and the underground party pounce.
If these are just the daily performance of the secret service section's arrest operations.
So when Song Zhuowen entered the secret service department, the repeated temptations and pulls between him and his boss and colleagues are the wonderful parts of the story.
For example, Song Zhuowen's former boss, Watanabe, the railway sheriff, was counter-murdered for attempting to rape a student.
Song Zhuowen originally wanted to recover the brand-name fountain pen that was snatched by Watanabe, but accidentally broke into the scene, and after saving the victim, he used the fountain pen to mend the knife to the dying Watanabe, and then disguised the scene as a theft and murder.
This was supposed to be all alive.
As a result, the police arrived at the scene, and the camouflage was directly punctured.
Shih Tzu brand alabaster cream, ink in the wound.
forced Song Zhuowen to make a plan and help Guan Xue analyze his "arrangement":
There is also a woman at the scene, Watanabe is lustful, Watanabe knows the murderer, and the murder weapon is a pen......
Although he won Guan Xue's approval, he felt that he could join the secret service department as a policeman.
But unexpectedly, a well-intentioned colleague wrote down these details.
For example, Tian Xiaojiang (played by Jiang Qiming), who was in the same room with Song Zhuowen later, discovered his pen, and deduced that Song was an underground party by himself.
If it weren't for the party organization's arrangement, this report alone would almost put Song Zhuowen in danger again.
And that's just a clash between colleagues.
What is even more terrifying is the repeated temptation from the superiors.
You know, it's hard for one person to disguise themselves as another.
He has to weigh the impostor's interpersonal relationships, personality, past memories, labels, and be careful every step of the way.
As for Song Zhuowen, he knows very little about his brother and Guan Xue's experience.
I can only pretend to be stupid and stunned, and slowly deal with it while feeling the stones.
But this time, the secret service department showed amazing sensitivity again, and every time it was in the details, it was almost one step away from biting out the lurker:
Time to fix the nib, temporary replacement of house numbers, dust on the clock's clockwork.
As long as you take one wrong step, the story is GG.
It looks quite mysterious.
However, big and small characters, regardless of decent villains, as long as they are deeply involved.
The episode also presents the consequences:
For the average person.
A speck of dust in this great era.
It's really a mountain on everyone's head.
Once it falls, it will be doomed.
03
That's right, from the perspective of genre films, "Harbin 1944" is not a historical theme, but more like a legendary story with suspenseful spy war elements.
But this is definitely a new challenge for Zhang Li, who has always been good at historical dramas:
A creator who is good at serious expression should resist his desire for expression and obey the genre narrative.
In Sir's view, compared with what many people said in the past, the history is restored with service.
This time, "Harbin 1944" pursues more of a "god-like", focusing on the traction and impact of the audience's emotions.
During the puppet Manchukuo period, especially in Harbin in 1944, although there were many Western-style buildings and neighborhoods, it was difficult to have the clean and tidy street scene, the crowded prosperity of commerce, and the government workplace story full of regulations.
So, where is this "godlikeness"?
One word: anxiety.
The series creates an environment that seems to be quiet, but under the cover of this well-organized surface, everyone has uncontrollable anxiety.
For example, ordinary people:
Song Zhuowen, who is a railway policeman, said a sentence when comforting ordinary people who were bullied by the Japanese:
Isn't it over if you pretend you don't understand?
For ordinary people, if they want to live, they have to pretend to be deaf and dumb.
It is dangerous to have emotions.
Only by denying one's own existence as a "human" can one survive in such a chaotic environment.
Or the Special Services Section:
An example is that Pan Yue, who is in charge of the intelligence of the secret service department, is obviously a villain, but his anxiety at work makes him rather violate discipline and go out to see a doctor.
What he is anxious about is definitely not the workplace in front of him.
It's a smart person's worry about not being able to see his future clearly.
After all, it is visible to the naked eye.
If such a situation evolves, everything that I have been familiar with and struggled with in the past more than ten years in the puppet Manchurian world will soon come to naught.
Beneath the appearance of cruelty, there is actually vulnerability.
There are even underground parties:
The "lone wolf" who got the pipe information at the train station was seriously injured, and in the end, in the painful torture of day and night, he chose to succumb to reality and became a cowardly traitor.
Why?
Because if you hand over the information to the organization, the battle will continue, and the pain will be endless, but if you hand over the information to the secret service department, you can exchange it for the gold in front of you and live in a chic life in troubled times.
Yes.
In a political environment where the situation is changing rapidly, and everyone is unable to see the future path, and does not know how to fall into a completely different path, everyone is fragile to maintain the semblance of peace.
But my heart has long been full of holes.
Those so-called morality and dignity often do not cover the reality of whether or not they can live.
The edifice will fall.
What will greet them, no one is sure.
And because of this.
We can see the state of most of the characters in the play, who will suddenly go crazy.
For example, Guan Xue.
There is a passage in the play where a subordinate explains the situation to her, and when it comes to Song Zhuowen, he says, "Pan Yue's people and I are measured, we won't mess around, you have to take care of your people."
She suddenly went berserk:
What your people are my people
You are all my people
Why is it suddenly out of control?
It's coercion, but it's also anxiety.
She finally stopped being bullied by others through her own means, even if everyone scolded her, she could be ruthless and quiet.
But now what.
Seeing that everything she got was about to be out of control, she was powerless, she doubted, but at the same time, she had to continue to walk hard, pretending that she could save the situation.
In such a situation.
We can also see that there are many close-ups of wounds in the play, which gives people a sense of pain.
Guan Xue's gunshot wound, Watanabe's fatal wound, the intelligence officer's leg wound, and the underground party in the interrogation room, who was tortured to the point of not being human.
This pain, which is rarely seen in modern society, is juxtaposed with the bright and warm colors of the streets outside the torture chamber, suggesting the true face of this era.
Under their suits.
Covered with bruises and lice.
It gives people a shocking visual sting.
So the question is, why capitalize these anxieties?
The reason is also very simple.
In real history, there has always been such a group of people who, when people's hearts are at their most fragile, can still stick to their beliefs and fight to the end, instead of choosing to survive.
They may be anti-union fighters.
In a winter of minus 30 degrees Celsius, where there is no room for struggle in both rural and urban areas, and where the enemy's strength is incomparably strong and extremely brutal, the fighters of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Federation have shown the world the most brutal war that mankind can experience with 14 years of arduous fighting.
Lacking weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, and heating supplies, dozens of generals were killed, and almost all of the troops with the number were wiped out, from tens of thousands at the peak to only a few hundred retreating to the Soviet Union.
The sentence "The Anti-Japanese Federation has passed since then, and the children and grandchildren will continue to head up" was the most desperate and exciting cry of that era.
They may also be ordinary people.
There is such a dialogue in the play.
The Japanese officer was assassinated by the "Manchurian Robin Hood" on the railway, so Guan Xue asked Song Zhuowen, "Do you know the Manchurian Robin Hood?"
Song Zhuowen replied that everyone knew about the Manchurian Robin Hood.
Anyone who dared to assassinate the Japanese was called Manchurian Robin Hood.
Guan Xue felt that Song Zhuowen's answer was not leaky.
But at the same time, we know that it is these warriors who stand up one by one who are the cornerstone of the struggle against Japanese rule, they may not have any lofty ideas, but for a simple right and wrong, they can fight against power, even if it is sacrificed.
They are all heroes.
So looking back, why does Sir say that this is a new attempt by director Zhang Li?
Because he no longer tries to present the historical context in a big panorama, nor does he explore the entanglements of human nature in historical stories that do not need to be argued.
He just created real people.
And with a more confident attitude, put them in a gorgeous feast, to show those inhumane feelings, and then wait for the end of the era.
Only 12 episodes of the series have aired so far.
How it will develop in the future, Sir doesn't know yet.
But for now.
We have at least seen a kind of courage to seek innovation and change despite the difficulties.
It's just that determination.
Sir is willing to continue to look forward to it.
The picture in this article comes from the Internet
Editorial Assistant: Gilmour's Spinning Top