From the small-cost war movie "Breakthrough", we can see the historical, realistic and emotional logic of literary and artistic works

When all parts of the country were immersed in the audiovisual shock and historical touch created by the movie "Chosin Lake", a small-cost film produced by the China Propaganda Film Channel and reflecting a small-scale siege war in the Central Plains during the Liberation War, "Breakthrough", attracted the attention of the audience with its solid and meticulous historical research, unique and skillful narrative strategy, and exquisite and exquisite artistic expression.

For various reasons, this three-year-old film temporarily abandoned the theatrical release and chose to broadcast on the Zhongxuan Movie Channel on the evening of October 3. Even so, the film still achieved nearly 2% live attention and more than 12% market share, ranking first in the same period of the day's viewership.

The film "Breakthrough" is based on the 28th Brigade of the Tenth Column of the Jinji Luyu Southern Expeditionary Field Army (also known as "Liu Deng's Army" at the time, later renamed the "Central Plains Field Army") during the Liberation War, and launched a siege campaign against 11 security regiments of the Kuomintang army gathered in the county seat of Deng County, Henan Province. In the course of the campaign, centering on the basic content of offensive and defensive warfare, the enemy and us constantly staged legendary plots such as position warfare, street and alley warfare, blowing up sluice gates, and designing and obtaining city defense maps.

As a small-cost war film with little investment, "Breakthrough" has carried out reasonable artistic processing on the basis of respecting real history. By portraying several key figures in the Deng County Campaign, the special strategic value of this local war is told, and the historical inevitability of the victory of the people's army led by the Communist Party of China over the Kuomintang reactionary army is artistically revealed. With its sincere creative attitude, solid quality of works, and good audience feedback, it is destined to become a fine work that can be "standing, spreading, and retaining". The author believes that its enlightenment to similar literary and artistic works is mainly reflected in three aspects: historical logic, realistic logic and emotional logic.

1. "Breakthrough" has a clear historical logic

Historical logic is the "root" of a literary and artistic work on the theme of revolutionary history. The word historical logic is used because it can express a richer connotation than "historical truth" in the ordinary sense. As we all know, all history is contemporary history and reflects the rational thinking of contemporary people on history. This kind of rational thinking with logical labels is the basic element of the creation of literary and artistic works with historical themes.

The historical logic expressed in the movie "Breakthrough" is that through a small-scale county liberation war, it reveals the inevitability of the historical development of the people's army led by the Communist Party of China in defeating the Kuomintang reactionary miscellaneous army. The basic clues of the film - "the enemy defends the city - I attack the city", "the water retention sluice - the explosion sluice" and "looking for a breakthrough - opening the breakthrough" are all based on historical facts, and also follow the general logic.

The logical starting point of "Breakthrough" is because Deng County is in a strategic position of "connecting Nanyang in the north and Xiangyang in the south", and is a military town connecting the north and the south. After the battle, it is of great significance to Liu Deng's army in establishing the Tongbai base area; the unfolding of its logic is that the enemy and us have fought with wisdom and courage in the specific offensive and defensive battles, the people's hearts and minds have been turned back, and the ideals and convictions have wavered and adhered to; the end of its logic is attributed to the PLA camp represented by Guo Wengeng in the film, which has finally won the war after various efforts.

"History is the best textbook and the best sobering agent." Historical self-consciousness is the premise of artistic self-consciousness. The film uses an advanced view of history to lead the audience to obtain realistic judgment, and then becomes more confident in the historical process of the People's Liberation War led by the Communist Party of China to carry out the People's Army, and further prides itself on the historical path of the Chinese nation in the past hundred years of standing up, getting rich, and becoming strong. This kind of historical consciousness, which is basically followed by historical facts, is undoubtedly a powerful correction for the historical nihilism that has been criticized by people in recent years in film and television creation.

2. "Breakthrough" has a realistic logic that is closely integrated with historical logic

Reality is the fact of objective existence, and the logic of reality is the rational thinking and regular grasp of objectively existing things. In literary and artistic works, this grasp of regularity often needs to be judged by history to be more valuable.

In recent years, most literary and artistic works that closely combine the logic of reality and the logic of history have been successful. For example, the movie "Embroidered Spring Knife" combines the historical logic of the Ming Dynasty with the logic of contemporary love reality; the movie "Journey to the West" contrasts the single thinking of the previous "Journey to the West" genre, and digs deep into the historical logic of the three dozen white bone essences - the most humiliating fatalistic body of women in ancient Chinese history, plus the original realistic logic of "Journey to the West" - the combination of master and apprentice in order to seek the truth and kill demons, and then combine the reincarnation created by the screenwriter to solve the traditional single image of the white bone essence. Thus realizing the unity of historical logic and realistic logic.

The title of the film "Breakthrough" is good. The main creative team at least gave three meanings to this title: the first layer is Deng County as a strategic breakthrough in the historical pattern of the Central Plains Liberation War; the second layer is the tactical breakthrough point of siege warfare in the Deng County Campaign; and the third layer is based on the most fundamental element that determines the outcome of the war - the people's will. As the line in the film goes, "The will of the people is the real breakthrough." ”

The screenwriters of "Breakthrough" have grasped the theme of "people's hearts" and focused on performance through vivid plots, which is undoubtedly grasping the bull's nose of the creation of liberation war films. This is more valuable than using brutal war scenes to attract the attention of the audience. You know, both sides of the war of liberation are Chinese, no matter how tragic, in the final analysis it is a civil war.

As early as May 1938, Mao Zedong clearly put forward the famous thesis that "soldiers and civilians are the basis of victory" in his speech "On Protracted War.". Historians generally believe that since then, Mao Zedong's idea of people's war began to take shape. The Battle of Deng County, just 10 years later, in early 1948, was also the concrete practice of Mao Zedong's thought on people's war. Almost at the same time as the Battle of Deng County was underway, the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Field Army (Liu Deng's army) was renamed the Central Plains Field Army. Subsequently, from the end of 1948 to the beginning of 1949, the Central Plains Field Army, together with the East China Field Army, won a great victory in the Battle of Huaihai. After the battle, Chen Yi once said affectionately: "The victory in the Huaihai Campaign was pushed out by the masses of the people with a cart. This famous sentence also expresses the problem of people's hearts and minds.

The realistic logic of "the people's will is the real breakthrough" based on the movie "Breakthrough" follows Mao Zedong's people's war thought. It also echoes what General Secretary Xi Jinping said: "The people are the jiangshan, and the Communist Party fights the jiangshan and guards the jiangshan, and guards the people's hearts in order to let the people live a good life." The history of our party's century-long struggle is the history of seeking happiness for the people. "This is undoubtedly a deep cultural confidence.

3. "Breakthrough" is cleverly designed with emotional logic to improve the fluency of the story

Generally speaking, emotional logic is mainly a narrative need, which is the category of "informality" in the principle of "big things are not vain and small things are not informal" in the creation of historical themes, but it still needs to be unified with historical logic and realistic logic as much as possible. It turns out that the emotional logic that is too bizarre and hoarse will destroy the integrity of the story and dilute the theme of the work. The "degree" lies precisely in the word "logic". This year's more successful TV series "The Age of Awakening" has done just the right thing in dealing with the emotional logic of the relationship between Chen Duxiu and Chen Yannian chen Qiaonian: on the one hand, it respects the basic historical facts such as the early father-son feud, mutual aid society, and work-study in France, on the other hand, it is rigid and soft in the handling of emotional details and returns to human nature itself.

"Breakthrough" designs three emotional logical clues: one is the teacher-student friendship between Ding Shuheng, who is a Kuomintang warlord, and Guo Wengeng, a communist party member; the second is the husband and wife between Guo Wengeng and Wu Minxi; and the third is the emotional contrast between ordinary people in the face of the Kuomintang and Communist army.

In presenting the first emotional thread, the creators did not adopt a binary, black-and-white narrative strategy. The film does not portray Ding Shuheng as an unforgivable reactionary. Rather, while showing his foolish loyalty, he also properly explained his good deeds of building schools and benefiting the people. Although Ding Shuheng and Guo Wengeng have a deep friendship between teachers and students, they are very different in ideals and beliefs. Wrong ideals and beliefs eventually made Ding Shuheng an accomplice to the Kuomintang's reactionary rule, and eventually made him a prisoner of the order. However, his proud protégé Guo Wengeng, inspired by correct ideals and beliefs, outwitted the city defense map, dived and exploded the sluice gate, and completed the key blow of the war to liberate Deng County. Behind the plot of the movie, the metaphor is the realistic logic between ideals and beliefs and life choices. This can't help but remind us of General Secretary Xi Jinping's speech in 2012 at the first collective study of the 18th Politburo of the CPC Central Committee, which compared the image of ideals and beliefs to the spiritual "calcium" of communists, "Without ideals and beliefs, ideals and beliefs are not firm, the spirit will be 'calcium deficiency', will get 'hypochondriasis'." ”

The second emotional clue designed by "Breakthrough" does not make a simple expression, but focuses on the change of feelings between Guo Wengeng and Wu Minxi. Wu Minxi went from the beginning only seeking the love between men and women with Guo Wengeng, to the end being willing to sacrifice her precious life to fulfill her husband's ideals. This kind of plot design makes the characters more plump, and the plot development is more objective and scientific, more logical.

The third emotional clue of the film focuses on achieving a high degree of unity with historical logic and realistic logic, and reveals the historical inevitability of people's hearts by showing the attitude of the Kuomintang army towards the people and the emotional changes of the people.

Objectively speaking, any literary and artistic work can be regarded as a point in the literary and artistic coordinate system composed of history, reality and emotion. This is especially true for films and television works with revolutionary historical themes. It is precisely because it is necessary to reasonably grasp the logic and combination between the three, which also puts forward higher requirements for literary and artistic creators. In this sense, "Breakthrough" may become a good reference for the creation of films of the same genre. (Author: Zhao Zhengyang, Associate Researcher, China Film Art Research Center)

Editor: Qian Zeng