· This is the 4169th original debut article with a word count of 2k+ ·
· Lu Shutian | Wen Follow Qin Shuo Circle of Friends ID: qspyq2015·
After Lou Ye's new film "Lyceum Grand Theatre" was finally released after the rescheduling, the Douban score went all the way up, and this 1.85:1 format black-and-white film with great film professionalism and fandom complex, in addition to being praised by many loyal fans, "every frame is long on the aesthetic point", of course, it also encountered some sharp criticism.
Criticism is not terrible, even necessary, for a film, especially for a good film, and it is the touchstone for testing whether the latter is "tough after a thousand blows".
However, when a certain type of critical perspective is wrapped in the speaker's strong potential energy generated by emotional instability or consciousness first, and makes a condescending catharsis to the object of criticism, others naturally have the right to counter such criticism.
For example, when a domestic film critic commented on "Lyceum Theatre", there was such a conclusion:
"Watching this spy battle carefully, everyone seems unprofessional... The Allies, on the other hand, do not have any backhand, and the private clinic does not have any strict precautions... The biggest suspense in the whole film is why Yu Yan did not report the intelligence of the attack on Pearl Harbor in time, but why the mystery will be revealed in the letter to his adoptive father. This forced the audience to make up for it, and Yu Yan was probably tired of his espionage career and dissatisfied with the intertwining of his multiple identities. But this is not entirely convincing. What the film really wants to express is that the key characters in the film hope that the Pacific War can be triggered, and the situation is bad enough, but it is better to be bad to the end. Let's not talk about the divergent opinions at the time of the pearl harbor incident archiving, only to say that the film at this major historical node exposed the decadent sense of broken jars. And in the creation of the atmosphere of the whole era, it is really a lack of a day is a day's survival. The infiltration of such decaying emotions is far less than Lou Ye's similar previous work "Purple Butterfly". ”
Although Lou Ye is not a "good understanding" director, the complexity of his work is more reflected in the ideology and artistry, does not represent how obscure the narrative itself is, at least in the "Lyceum Theatre", Lou Ye still fully relies on the genre framework of spy films, the play-in-play does not affect the audience's understanding of the main narrative, compared with the critics' accusations against the film, I did not find how confused the theme of "Lyceum Theatre" is, so that "forcing the audience to make up for it".
Domestic film critics do not understand history, and it is also common, but to judge based on this cognition is really sorry for the clarity of "Lyceum Theatre". At least compared with the pure art film "Purple Butterfly", which also has spy elements, Lou Ye's new work this time is much simpler and more universal in terms of film grammar and audiovisual performance. In other words, only by clearly understanding the historical background of "Lyceum Theatre" can we not fail to understand the motives of the heroine, and then criticize the film for not knowing what to do.
Just like the title of the original film "The Death of Shanghai", the concession before the Pacific War was an "isolated island" in the period of fall, a prosperous area where foreigners gathered, the same song and dance rose to the level, and the lights began to rise, and the critics believed that the rendering of the decay of "Lyceum Grand Theater" was not as good as that of "Purple Butterfly", which can only show that the critics' understanding of the situation is conventional, and as everyone knows, the tranquility under the fly camp is the ultimate end times.
This is not a "broken jar and a broken can", but only when such a concession is "dead", can the Long Dead Huajie be "alive", and only when Shanghai, which is dead but not stiff, is completely desperate, can the whole country see hope. In China, which has been in full swing for four years, what has long been lost is not just a Shanghai? Just 3 kilometers away from the theater, on Jiaozhou Road, more than 300 lone soldiers who were already here in the battle of four lines and one battle were also detained.
Yu Yan, played by Gong Li, is an international spy, and the employer is likely to be the United States, after all, the United States is most related to the later Pearl Harbor incident. First of all, the film critic said that Yu Yan was hired by the Allies, which is wrong, not to cut the words here, but there was no alliance at that time - Britain and the United States and other countries were staunch implementers of the appeasement policy, how many years of war in China, how many massacres occurred, had nothing to do with them, did not delay its business with Japan.
| In the 1940s, Lin Yutang supported the War of Resistance through the mainstream media in the United States
Lin Taiyi's "Biography of Lin Yutang" has a cloud: "Since the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, although China has won sympathy from the Americans, the US government has a cold attitude toward China and still wants to make war money. The U.S. government sold gasoline, light and heavy weapons, and military supplies to Japan in large quantities, supporting the massacre of Chinese by the invaders. The United States and Japan later turned against each other because Japan's "southward march" moved its economic account. After the Outbreak of the Pacific War, Lin Yutang, in addition to lamenting Washington's aid as "too little, too late", also wrote the following text in the book "Laughing at Nothing":
"Whatever form the World Alliance will take, in China's experience during the War, China will not be truly equal. The reason is that China is an Asian country, and at the end of this war, if her allies can control it, she will not be allowed to have her own air force. China will not be truly equal unless, like Japan, she will be able to build her own tanks, artillery and warships in two decades. At that time, China did not have to fight for equality and inequality. This is the modern norm. ”
Secondly, the appeasers can watch japan's invasion of China, and their only wish is that the waters of calamity not be diverted to the west. In "Lyceum Theatre", it is precisely because of the attitude of western politicians represented by her adoptive father towards China that Yu Yancai is determined to leave the information she sacrificed her life in vain, and is determined to betray the organization that has long nurtured her, for the simple reason that she wants to save her motherland.
To save China, it is necessary to drag the United States into the water, and if Yu Yan transmits the news in time, her superiors may be able to prevent this incident or reduce the damage value to a minimum, so that the United States and Japan can still maintain relations. But when the bombing has been achieved and the two countries must go to war, it is not possible for the upper echelons to make peace if they want to.
Try to see the end of "Godfather 2", Tom just said a sentence "after the oil embargo, we should have expected", the hot-tempered Sonny scolded - "Whether we expect it or not, the Japanese throw bombs are the opposite of him, what do you mean by this, are you pro-Japanese", from the perspective of the American people, the enemy has come to the door, and not fighting back is the biggest political incorrectness.
In other words, as a spy, a professional, what yu yan did in this incident was completely unqualified; but as a Chinese, yu yan did not have any problems, and she knew that if she did not make this decision, the country would probably have little time left to wait for death. In this sense, Lou Ye made a real main theme movie, which is telling a real story of serving the country, but does not indiscriminately play the "patriotic card".
Behind the logic of Yu Yan's behavior, there is also a historical background, that is, the intelligence that Japan wants to bomb Pearl Harbor was intercepted by the Kuomintang military command, and there are several versions after interception: one is that the Chinese side told the US side, but people did not take your intelligence capabilities seriously and ignored them; the second is that the Chinese side chose not to tell, which is the same as Yu Wei's starting point in the movie; the third version is to tell that Roosevelt was also willing to help China, but the Congress refused, so there must be a "Pearl Harbor incident".
As for the Americans who did not hesitate to go to war with Japan, there were also americans at that time, and Luce, the founder of Time Magazine, said that his father, who was a missionary in Shandong in his early years, had always paid attention to the war in China since the Japanese invasion of China, and also deplored the inaction under American conservatism.
On the day Pearl Harbor was bombed, Luce went home to tell his father the news, and the old man laughed, "Thank God, China has been saved." Luce recalled that night, his father died in a state of extreme peace.
Author: reporter, commentator, public number: Lu Shutian small station.
" Picture | Visual China"
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