The New Folk Art Review | the "Lyceum Theatre" after viewing

Looking at Lou Ye's "Lyceum Theatre", I think that "black and white" is the best choice for this movie.

Only the rich layers of black and white images can wrap our breath like gentle cotton wool and invite us to breathe with the people in the play. Black and white is the gentle breathing of the image, and this film, which tells the story of the "Isolated Island Shanghai" spy, is about breathing. In the key points of the film, Lou Ye tries to capture the truth and emotion of the characters through "breathing", which has the accuracy and efficiency of "four or two strokes".

As an audience, each of us knows the way of breathing, but only under the accurate performance of the actors can we "breathe and share the fate" with the people in the play.

Pictured: Stills of "Lyceum Theatre" Official picture

In "Lyceum Theatre", another thing Lou Ye tries to do is to push the charm and experimentation of moving images to the extreme. Lou Ye invites the audience, following in the footsteps of a photographer and camera that seems to be invisible, to shuttle through Shanghai in 1941, and to watch the every move of those masked and not unpretentious characters: female stars, male directors, hotel classes, chaotic small openings, double-sided spies, Japanese spies, revolutionaries... Through the movement of the camera, a sense of intimacy is created between the audience and the characters: as if the audience can walk around the actors with the camera, as if they can reach out and touch their shoulders and hair; as if we are shuttling among the characters, feeling their breathing and hesitation: Tan Na is light, Yu Wei is dignified, Mo Zi is frivolous, Baiyun is full of vitality, Hubert and Shapier are calm and composed, Furutani Saburo is obsessed and almost innocent... They are people with completely different personalities and life pursuits, but because of the ruthlessness of the times, they have come together, entangled with each other, and hurt.

It was as if they were a group of people locked in a time box, living in their own time and space, in Shanghai, a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Singing and dancing, on the surface the merchant women do not know the hatred of the country, but behind the scenes, they are terrifying waves, youth and blood are intertwined, love and hate are intertwined, patriotism and faith are intertwined.

In "Lyceum Theatre", the male and female protagonists are drama directors and big stars respectively, which is indeed a choice that best reflects the "literary and artistic style" of Shanghai in the 30s and 40s of the last century. In 1937, after the "August 13" incident, Shanghai was reduced to an "isolated island", and Fei Mu withdrew indignantly because the Japanese army took over the film industry in the concession, and led a group of people to start drama performances and creations; Yu Ling, Ke Ling and other left-wing literary and artistic workers stayed in Shanghai to insist on the creation and performance of films and dramas. Their works and deeds have played a role in uniting the people and consolidating morale. Yu Yan and Tan Na in "Lyceum Theatre" are undoubtedly the representatives of this group of people. Similar to 2003's Purple Butterfly, Lou Ye tries to reveal the subtlest and most intimate psychological activities of the characters to prove that they have indeed existed, lived, and struggled.

Unlike the almost desperate emotions of Xin Xia and Xie Ming in "Purple Butterfly", the emotions between Yu Yan and Tan Na are more similar to true love. Gong Li almost played the image of a female star with sincere emotions, complex heart and involuntary. She is undoubtedly adept at expressing the pressure and freedom that this type of personage endures. When Lou Ye shows The emotional interaction between Yan and Tan Na, Furutani Saburo, Bai Yunsheng and others with a large number of close-ups and close-ups, he is undoubtedly very sure of Gong Li's charm and the spark between these actors. In "Lyceum Theatre", the camera is like Gong Li's fans, persistently following and staring at the object of their love.

The performances of the actors were wonderful, but it was Mo Zhiyin, played by Wang Chuanjun, Tan Na's friend and producer who successfully captured my attention. Lou Ye showed his frivolity, ridiculousness and lustfulness several times, when he still endured the pain of reporting to the Japanese after being stabbed by Bai Yuncao, and took the Japanese to arrest people; when he provoked the Japanese in the restaurant because of frivolity, he almost caused trouble for the crew; when he constantly assured Tan Na that "as long as he sits still, it will be okay, and the Japanese want to catch Yu Yan", I suddenly understand a little bit why the director should spend so much pictures and plots on such a ridiculous, shameful and ignorant person.

Yu and Tan Na are characters who are sacrificed by the times — or actively sacrificed for the times — but in a way, Mo Zhiyin is a more common type of character — both chinese and foreign: frivolous, ignorant, bored, unscrupulous for the satisfaction of desires, without a sense of responsibility, and everything they do usually harms not only others, but also themselves — as the voiceover at the end of the film suggests. However, such a person will also enjoy "success", happiness and trust for a period of time: in the film, Tan Na regards him as a good friend who is moralistic and capable, and the Japanese trust him, and it seems that the puppet government also trusts him.

If such a figure has its own reasons for being "prolific" in a troubled world, the sense of familiarity it evokes today is disturbing.

Yu Yan later deceived his adoptive father for the sake of his motherland. After reading the confession letter she had left for him, Hubert got up and picked up a book, "The Troubles of Young Werther," and opened the title page of a passage written by someone who wrote it with a pen: Expecting love in return is not a demand for love, but a kind of vanity — Nietzsche.

How much love there is in the world, you can measure it with this sentence. (Ren Ming)