After the film ended, some viewers said: "I still don't dare to say that I can't understand Lou Ye, it seems that I have no artistic accomplishment." ”
After more than two years, from the finalization to the withdrawal of the file to the final meeting of sentient beings, Lou Ye and the movie "Lyceum Theatre" ushered in the polarization of audience evaluation as expected. The first is about the handheld mirror and the resulting "large motion sickness scene" that exists in almost all of his films, and "being thrown up by Lou Ye again" has become a tacit thing for some fans.
More is from the film critics, fans of this "late" multi-angle analysis and deconstruction, talking about the "Lou Ye style" spy war is always a more attractive after-dinner dessert than watching movies.
When Zhang Yimou used the neat "On the Cliff" to prove to the audience that he could also "spy war", Lou Ye insisted on using a familiar (shake) Xi (shake) handheld lens, no soundtrack (except for the stage play rehearsal part of the music), ambiguous pictures, delicate emotional links between characters and challenging the audience's narrative method to complete the discussion of the choice and entanglement of individual fate in the historical era and other related propositions.
This time, Lou Ye, who has a certain connection with the sense of fate, focuses the camera on the female movie star Yu Yan and her era fate.
1 Lyceum Theatre and "Saturday Novel"
The movie "Lyceum Grand Theatre" is adapted from Hongying's "Death of Shanghai" and Hengguang Liyi's "Shanghai", in which the popular movie star Yu Yan (Gong Li) and her spy story mainly rely on the first Chinese "Hotel Novel" - writer Hongying's "Death of Shanghai", the story takes place in just 10 days, and the film shooting also advances according to this timeline; the film's drama plot, the stage play "Saturday Novel" directed by drama director Tan Na (Zhao Youting), is based on Heng Guang's novel "Shanghai". This book, which an English scholar called "both international elements and humanistic devastation, describing Shanghai that only exists in fantasy", was embedded in the stage of the big screen by Lou Ye and became a veritable illusion on the stage.
The "play within a play" approach adds to the sense of wartime oppression and the complexity of the story. Even if director Lou Ye said in the interview that the setting of the play within the play is to complete the reasonable structure of the story, it actually caused some viewers to "interfere" with the viewing of the film in the first half of the film.
"Lyceum Theatre" is a standard spy war story, when the popular movie star Yu Yan returned to Shanghai to star in the old love of the new work "Saturday Novel", in fact, because of the spy work required her to steal Japanese intelligence.
During this period, whether it is rehearsing dramas or rescuing her ex-husband, it can be seen as part of the "double-sided mirror project" planned by the organization she served; and whether it is the timeline from December 1941 or the various forces representing the different regimes at that time, the story of this spy war that does not seem to exist in reality is placed under the real history, and the final film also uses a line of subtitles to play the familiar December 7, 1941, Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor.
Whether you are familiar with the history of World War II or not, you will be brought into a story atmosphere of virtual reality and uncertainty by the twists and turns of the plot and the performance of the actors, and whether there is a story behind the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor that "the star female spy encountered a machine failure in the process of taking the Japanese intelligence chief, and she finally sent the wrong intelligence address to her companions", which just built a "romantic" temperament belonging to the movie for real history.
In a previous interview, director Lou Ye said that "Lyceum Theatre" is based on the feeling of Rainbow Shadow novels, but whether it is a story or a shooting method, it ultimately shows the "privilege" of a certain film and television work: dreamlike.
The story structure of "play within a play" also allows some fans to sink into the game of distinguishing between "reality and stage" in the movie.
Some people use director Tan Na's glasses as a sign of entering and playing: wearing glasses is in the drama "Saturday Novel", and taking off the glasses suddenly returns to the Shanghai island period built by Lou Ye.
Interestingly, the alias of the movie "Lyceum Theatre" is "Saturday Novel", which is not difficult to feel the realistic influence of literary and artistic creation in any era from the intermittent rehearsal plot of words such as strike and parade.
To make such a choice of text and dramatic structure, director Lou Ye and screenwriter Ma Yingli present the individual fate under the torrent of the times and the choice of characters in historical events in front of the audience in a way that combines virtual and real, as for the boundary between virtual and real, the creators obviously respect the personal feelings and thinking space of each audience, until the end of the film, the answer to fate is handed over to fate itself.
2 blameless Gong Li, wonderful group portrait
Some viewers commented that "Lyceum Theatre" was like a one-man show by Gong Li, and such an overflowing statement had fans' preference for her, which also confirmed her brilliant performance in the film.
The female star in the film, Yu Yan, has the dual identity of star and spy, and Gong Li almost interprets the two with her appearance temperament and acting skills. Director Lou Ye said that Gong Li, who is herself a female star, does not have to have a burden on this person, so how does her side perform in the spy war?
There are several highlight moments in the film: she disguises herself as the ambiguity created by the whispers and eyes of the ex-wife of the Japanese military aircraft department Furutani Saburo (Oda Chejang) to obtain information; the same-sex attraction she showed when she seduced the fan Bai Yunqiao disguised herself on stage between the bedposts, and even some viewers said in a ridiculous tone that they hoped Lou Ye could release the bed scene between Yan and Bai Mei (Bai Yun), which showed the emotional tension of this scene.
And a kiss scene between her and Tan Na, a drop of clear tears across her face, it is difficult for you to decipher Yu Yan's complicated heart at that time. For Lou Ye, a director who is extremely delicate in his handling of character relationships, emotions and inner emotions, Gong Li undoubtedly accurately completed his setting and imagination of the characters.
And the other characters in the film, whether or not they achieve the audience's vision of the character, Lou Ye has completed the "role" that the role should be: Tan Na's idealism, the despair of Ni Zeren as a pawn, Shapier's professionalism and loyalty, Bai Yun's slightly childish romance, Mo Zhiyin's (Wang Chuanjun) sinister and devious...
The relationship between each character and the main character Yu Yan is clear and evocative. Among them, Yu Yan, who made many viewers "bump into sugar", and her fan Bai Yunsheng, the encounter between the two people had a sense of the story of the idols and fans in "Comet Beauty", and eventually the relationship between the two led to a real wartime friendship.
In the foggy and gloomy weather of Shanghai, different characters traveled to the rehearsal hall, Chinachem Hotel and other places to complete a thrilling spy battle. "Lyceum Theatre" should not be called "Yu Yan and her men and women", Yu Yan is more like a mirror, everyone in the place where she looks has left their own mark, when she looks back at herself, it presents the tiredness, boredom, antipathy to war and yearning for a better life that will eventually be revealed when the heavens descend to see adults in ordinary people.
So, Yu's eventual mistake in saying the wrong intelligence address, and the trap of her returning to the Japanese alone, seems less difficult to understand.
3 "Not good" "Lyceum Theatre"
On the first day of release, the Douban of "Lyceum Grand Theatre" opened a score of 7.2, which was the same as Lou Ye's last "Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind", and then the score rose to 7.4, accompanied by the score of Douban, which is not bad, and the score of these ticketing platforms is also about 7 points, which is not satisfactory.
To be sure, Lou Ye has always used his "silence" and artistic aesthetic to create a variety of interesting topics: some people say that Lou Ye is doomed to box office failure, some people use "only recommend Lou Ye and Gong Li fans to watch, because this movie is not good" to describe the watchability of this film, some people say that this film is the "mirror" of theater screening (because of the format problem, some theaters are not standard due to the projection of subtitles), more people are entangled in the inexplicable strong shaking of handheld lenses...
Earlier, in Hitchcock's documentary film about Truffaut, Truffaut mentioned that some of Hitchcock's films did not respond well at the time, and these films were "probably made for directors."
Of course, this is a kind of self-ridicule that belongs to the creator, and Lou Ye's film has always shown a clear creator style, holding the lens, black and white color grading, no soundtrack throughout the whole process, and even the all-black gun battle scene at the end of the film that almost no one can see, these shooting methods that are not friendly to the audience have unexpectedly created a spy atmosphere, nervous and exciting, desperate and tired, these are Lou Ye's proof of trying "spy war", disappointment or expectation, Lou Ye is proving that the film belongs to the possibility of mass pan-entertainment every time.
There is a symbolic presence that seems to be full of metaphors, a German version of "The Troubles of Young Werther" signed by Goethe and added by Nietzsche. Nietzsche's words written in the book are given inappropriate translations, and the usual version should be "Ultimately, what people love is not the object of desire, but the desire itself." (Translation of the film: Expecting love in return, rather than a demand for love, is a kind of vanity.) ）
When asked in an interview whether Lou Ye's book represents anything for the film, he said that it does not really mean anything special, and at the end of the film, the book is thrown into the garbage by Hubert, indicating that it is a useless thing in itself.
Such an answer seems to be out of line for Lou Ye or "Lyceum Theatre", this "not good" movie for some people, like a rare book that has been thrown away casually, and for others, it is enough to infinitely reminisce 126 minutes.