As a world-famous director, Ang Lee's family films have always had a very high status, such as "Wedding Feast", "Eating Men and Women", and "Sense and Sensibility".
But many people don't know that director Ang Lee also has a special love for a theme, and has made three movies, and this theme is war.
"Riding with the Devil" about the Civil War, "Color Ring" that took place during the War of Resistance, and "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" that reflected on the Iraq War from a new perspective.
Different from other classic war films such as "Saving Private Ryan" and "Hacksaw Ridge", in Ang Lee war films, the focus is never on the big scene war scenes, but on the complex inner drama.
What Ang Lee was really interested in was not these three wars, but in three extreme cases, the remnants of but great humanity.
Ride with the devil: The body lock is easy to solve, and the heart lock is difficult to open
Ang Lee's first war movie was called Ride with the Devil.
The story of "Riding with the Devil" takes place during the American Civil War, and as a civil war that had a great impact on the United States, many books and film works in history have reflected this war.
However, most of these works are developed from a white perspective, or even from a white standpoint, that is, most of the Northerners in the story are righteous and brave, the Southern slave owners are full of evil, and the liberated blacks are grateful.
Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil does the opposite, setting the two protagonists as men from the Southern slaveholder camp, one a white German and the other a semi-free black.
Jack, a white German, is kind and impulsive by nature, because Jack's father's estate is in the South, jack grew up in the South, and young Jack rightfully thinks that the "Yankees" are a bunch of bastards.
Daniel, a slave to the Black Slave, was a slave of the Southern farmers, but, paradoxically, he firmly helped his master against the Black Liberation Movement.
The reason is simple, Daniel's master never treated Bob as a slave, daniel can not only be parallel to the master, but even have his own horse and gun.
After the Civil War officially began, many young people in Jack and Daniel's town also joined the guerrillas and fought guerrilla warfare with the Northern Army.
The war seemed to have no end, but friends fell one by one around them, never to get up again.
Whether it is Jack or Daniel, they actually face the same dilemma in the movie.
Is that what we should pursue with all our lives, should it be given by the outside world, or should it be believed in the heart?
In the northern army, the idea of "equality for all" has become more and more widespread, and the thinking of many southerners has begun to waver a little.
Jack began to wonder if the views of his father's generation must be correct. Why are more and more ordinary people also beginning to oppose and resist their positions?
Daniel is even more tormented by his heart, he is fortunate to be a free black, so why resist more and more black people to gain freedom?
The ending of Ride with the Devil is ironic, in which Daniel, a black man, is shot in a fight and is not rescued.
Daniel wept bitterly on his master's body, because the master had always regarded him as a friend, and he had already had a real friendship with his master.
The war finally came to an end, and the brothers who went to the battlefield together, only Jack and Daniel survived.
Bob finally saw his heart—he found that the moment his master died, he felt pain, but at the same time he felt freedom like never before.
Color ring: color is easy to ring, love is difficult to receive
Compared with the obscurity of "Riding with the Devil", "Color Ring" can be said to go to the other extreme.
It's so famous.
For some well-known reason, many people not only don't see Color Ring as a serious movie, let alone as a war movie.
But "Color Ring" is a real war film, although this is the smallest scene in Ang Lee's war trilogy, but it is the one that reflects on war the most.
In the war years, there are many people who will die on the battlefield, but there are many more people who will not be directly exposed to war, but their lives will also be completely changed by war.
Wang Jiazhi, an unfortunate girl in the chaotic world of war, grew up with her parents dead, raised by her aunt, and relied on the money left by her father to study.
In the university's drama troupe, Wang Jiazhi met Kwong Yumin, who was highly patriotic and enthusiastic, and he not only rehearsed the drama, he accidentally found out from a friend in the same village about the residence of Mr. Yi, the head of Wang Jingwei's secret service, and his extreme resentment made him decide to assassinate Mr. Yi.
At the instigation of Kwong Yumin, the members of the drama troupe were determined to join, feeling Kwong Yumin's hazy special feelings for himself, and Wang Jiazhi also decided to participate.
Due to professional reasons, Mr. Yi is very cautious, and the only drawback is that he is a good woman. In order to play Mrs. Fu close to Mr. Yi, Wang Jiazhi even sacrificed her first time.
In the end, however, Mr. Yi was suddenly appointed to evacuate Hong Kong, and the assassination failed.
Two years later, hong Kong fell, Wang Jiazhi moved to Shanghai, and met Kwong Yumin again, but unfortunately the subtle feelings of the past were gone, and Kwong Yumin revived the assassination of Mr. Yi, and Wang Jiazhi agreed darkly.
This time, Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yi's private affair developed rapidly, and the assassination plan seemed to be going smoother than the last time.
But Wang Jiazhi was also horrified to find that Mr. Yi was not only drilling into her body, but also into her heart.
As a "female agent", she should not have such feelings; but as a "person", a person who had lost all hope in the war, Mr. Yi had now become her own.
At the juncture when the organization finally decided to assassinate Mr. Yi, Mr. Yi actually sent a "pigeon egg" diamond ring to Wang Jiazhi, and Wang Jiazhi's innermost heart was suddenly torn apart, just as Zhang Ailing described in the original work-
"This man really loves me, she suddenly thought, and her heart exploded, thoughtfully."
Wang Jiazhi eventually let Mr. Yi go, and the consequence of this decision was her complete demise.
Under social justice, individual emotions should be something that can be discarded, but Wang Jiazhi is not a hero, just a person, a most ordinary woman.
She did not choose to live as a part, but to die as an individual.
In a war, the people as a third party will always be the biggest victims, whether it is success or failure, it is the price of countless people with their lives.
Billy Lynn's Midfield Battle: The Halftime Event of war, the Halftime Battle of The Grand Event
Ang Lee's third and final war film is Billy Lynn's Halftime War.
From filming, publicity to release, one of the things that the film has been passionately discussed about is what revolutions it has brought in technology, such as from 2K to 4K in resolution, from 24 frames to 120 frames per second.
However, no matter how advanced the technology is for the film, it is a relationship between form and content, and Ang Lee's real ambition still lies in the idea of the film.
Billy Lynn takes place in the most recent war of global concern, the Iraq War.
If Ride with the Devil focuses on America's past, Then Billy Lynn focuses on America's today.
The cause of the iraq war is not clear in one or two sentences, there are political, economic, resource and military and other angles of the game and consideration, but one point is beyond doubt.
This is an unjust war.
To put it more bluntly, it was a war of aggression.
Ang Lee is once again, as always, putting the protagonist in an abnormal, even awkward position.
Billy Lynn was forced by his father to join the army because he beat up a scumbag for his sister. As a party of injustice, Billy was hailed as a hero during a mission to rescue his teammates heroically.
The title of the film, "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle," is very clever —
Throughout the film, it is actually a halftime event of the war, telling the story of Billy and his party taking the stage at the midtime break of the Dallas Cowboys football game on Thanksgiving Day. Eventually, Billy and the rest of the veterans were sent back to the Battlefield in Iraq by the Bush administration.
The climax of the movie is actually the halftime battle of the grand event, and the soldiers are awarded the Medal of Honor on the brilliant stage. The music of the outside world and the cannon fire of the heart sounded at the same time, and the joyful dance performances and the tragic deaths of comrades alternated between each other, which was extremely shocking.
Billy's honor was bought with the death of his teammate, as he himself said: "It's a strange feeling, someone to praise you for the worst day of your life." ”
Throughout the film, the sister is persuading Billy to leave the battlefield through some connections, and the essence of this dilemma between "returning to the battlefield" and "staying" is actually a choice between false war honor and real desire for peace.
One naval soldier said online about his own movie-watching experience: "Watching the film with anticipation and relaxation, thinking it was a pleasure, turned out to be a nightmare that almost collapsed." ”
He said that in the process of joining the army, how many times he sang military songs in a similar pro-army party, but his mind was whether his wife would be cold at dinner and whether the children had grown taller.
Every soldier in the deepest part of his heart will long for an ordinary and peaceful life, but back in life, he is always troubled by the wars of the past.
At the end, the naval soldier uttered the same exclamation: "Do you know how precious human identity is under the oppression of all kinds of political correctness?" ”
At the end of the film, Billy and his comrades-in-arms clashed with the security team, and were secretly attacked and beaten by a group of people of the security team, which was very depressed and helpless.
Under the light, their persistence is opposed by many people, and even spurned.
But Billy eventually decided to return to the battlefield. He hated the battlefield, but he knew he belonged there, and it was his destiny.
Director Ang Lee also said in an interview: "I think there is a sense of fatalism in soldiers, just like making a movie is also a kind of fate for me. Soldiers are told how to survive on the battlefield, but not how to survive outside of war. ”
In the midst of war, there is no winner.
Under the turbulent changes of history, any good human emotions such as love, friendship and affection will be destroyed, and human nature will become bleak and even distorted.
Whether it is forgiveness or hatred, future generations have no right to make choices for those who have experienced it, and all we can do is to see, to reflect, to remember.
In the "Color Ring" documentary, Ang Lee once said: "If our generation does not tell the story of the past, then where should future generations see it?" ”
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