The movie "Arrow Soldier Liu Bai Ape" is adapted from Xu Haofeng's short story, one is "The Republic of China Assassin Liu Bai Ape" and the other is "Liu Bai Ape Biography". In fact, it is not, but a mixture of the two.
In the novel, Liu Bai Ape's identity is an assassin, with the profession of "killing". In the movie, he became the arbiter of the martial arts dispute. Disputes are mediated by martial arts in order to uphold justice. This means offending everyone. Liu Bai Ape is not afraid to make a vendetta against the world, because he has a martial arts body. But there is also a price, that is, to develop the habit of sleeping under the bed.
【Negotiation between Liu Bai Ape and Kuang Yimin】
"Willow White Ape" is just a code name, behind it is an identity, a place that exists in the world.
When Shuangxi got this code name, he had to keep this identity: not to be deceived or insulted. However, the martial arts master Kuang Yimin and the world-famous Pity Crescent Moon Red joined forces to bully him. Therefore, Liu Bai Ape had to say harsh words: "The woman who cheated on me must die", and he wanted to regain the momentum of his own loss in Kuang Yimin. This is also the reason why he agreed to compete with Kuang Yimin.
【Kuang Yimin, the Sorrow of the "Soldier"】
Kuang Yimin thought that he was 70% sure that he could defeat Liu Bai Ape, but he was reluctant to act rashly at first, only because he had ulterior motives to protect Yang Laozong, who had gone down into the wilderness and was trying to make a comeback. The director's setting of Kuang Yimin is "shi", and this class hopes to realize its own ideas by assisting others.
Unfortunately, Kuang lived in an era with few first-class figures, and he did not understand that "the people do not need heroes haojie, they need a good system." When Mr. Yang died, Kuang finally asked for a contest, which was actually a comfort to this sense of loss.
The irony is that the same person that Liu Bai Ape wants to kill and Kuang Yimin wants to protect are the same person, but this person is eventually shot and killed by the agents - the era of cold weapons ends, and then the unique traditions and culture of this era end. Xu Haofeng seems to have been working to maintain the "three-hundred-year-old city wall": "The Trail of the Wokou" intends to justify the lost Qi family's Wu Dao, and "Taoist Descending the Mountain" writes various "escape methods" to reminisce about the traditional Chinese society "life can escape". "Master" criticizes people for unscrupulous means and broken rules in order to achieve things.
【Willow White Ape Finally Closed】
The arbitration power of Liu Bai Ape in Wuxing can be seen as a system of Chinese civilization resident culture. He was anxious to go back to his hometown to find his sister, but unfortunately, the "old house" collapsed too quickly, and his sister was nowhere to be seen. The sister of the willow white ape is not so much a living individual as a cultural symbol. He had witnessed his sister being mutilated and her reputation damaged, and was powerless to do anything about it. Because he could not face reality, he did a monk who jumped the wall. After returning to his hometown, he could have killed the evil person who insulted his sister, but he finally gave up, only because he felt that his attitude towards his sister was not much better than that of this evil person.
The choice of willow white ape is certainly worth playing, but it is also true that such a female image is criticized for having a straight male cancer tendency, even if you are shooting a martial arts film. Not to mention crescent red's dedication and martyrdom of "as long as this man does not die, I will have to follow him", the feminist-minded audience refuses to buy it. It is the mixed-race beauty Erdong who is stunned to make a date with the willow white ape in revenge for killing her father, but the cold humor section that has been repeatedly rejected is also very embarrassing.
【Crescent Red Singing "Falling Son"】
The way of martyrdom of men is a revolutionary ideal and professional dignity, and the way of martyrdom of women can only be a man? Of course not. Women want to achieve things, can only rely on or use men? Nor is it.
[The prototype of "Generation Grandmaster" Gong II also has reference to Shi Jianqiao]
In fact, the role of the mixed-race beauty Erdong in Xu Haofeng's original novel "The Assassin of the Republic of China Liu Bai Ape" is based on the Republic of China's strange woman Shi Jianqiao. In the novel, Gu Lan (Shi Jianqiao's original name) once married a young military officer, hoping that her husband would avenge his father's murder for himself, and realized that "women are beautiful and useful". But her husband has no intention of revenge, Gu Lan feels that the woman is beautiful and useless, and then divorces and lets go, learning gymnastics, equestrianism and shooting. In the end, the Fengzhi warlord Sun Chuanfang was killed in front of the Buddhist Hall.
【Mixed Race Beauty Second Winter】
The "Gu Lan" in the novel is too preemptive, and Liu Bai Ape is just a narrator. This movie is mainly based on "The Legend of Liu Bai Ape", so Er dong/Gu Lan is just a lead-in - using her desire for revenge to ask Liu Bai Ape for help, giving Liu Bai Ape the identity of an "assassin", and then being excluded from the drama core.
Erdong and Crescent Red both have their own demands, but their appeals are not the first, because the men's business is not over. According to this, giving the director a straight male cancer diagnosis certificate should not be considered wronged.
How to combine genre narrative and authorial style may be a problem that needs to be considered by directors. Xu's "Master" combines well with a partially genred narrative while holding a personal style, and the overall production is also relatively mature. Looking back at "Arrow Willow White Ape", which was created four years ago and has only been released so far, there are obvious flaws and loopholes in both character shaping and narrative, and the significance of the director's exploration of personal style may be greater.
[More typed and more mature "Master"】
Director Xu is from a science class, and there are thresholds and requirements for the cognition of movies. He said that he was writing about a film critic who conceded defeat and was determined to make another kind of movie. In the epilogue of his short story collection "Hidden Behind the Knife", Xu Dao confessed that the reason why he wrote the novel was to make movies later. He despises the Hollywood standard of the unity of novel law and drama writing, and hopes that the play method will return to the poetry system, emphasizing the omitted aesthetics of poetry and history, and believing that ideas and true feelings are greater than everything:
"Another kind of movie, in terms of plot, dares to cut corners, dares not to dig out the heart and lungs in the characters, but because there is an open-minded concept and a true feeling worthy of discernment, people feel complete." 」
【Enough ideas, insufficient true feelings】
And he did exactly that in "The Arrow Willow White Ape". The concepts of "not seeking to tell a good story" and "the key is to have culture" are actually the remnants of the fifth generation that emerged in the early 1980s. A glance at Xu's novels and films shows a high degree of consistency in the ideas he wants to convey. The understanding of martial arts and the display of martial arts on the screen are also self-contained, opening up a generation of customs. But only one thing, the characters in this film are too much like marionettes, making it difficult for people to empathize.
The characters don't speak human words, which is not a big problem. Holding it for a long time, the audience will get used to it. Isn't that how Wong Kar-wai was "refined"? Originally, "duplicity, square for the line" is the artistic principle that the director believes in. The problem of emotional saving and symbolic freehand is not big, the director said: "Reading a novel and watching a movie is not a confession of a prisoner, half a blindfold and half guessing, is the narrative."
The problem is that the cloud mountain fog cover and the cavity play well will block the channel for the character to empathize with the audience. You can have the character's back to the audience, three hundred meters away from the audience. But you can't make the audience find the character or not care at all where the character is. This point is not good for "Arrow Warrior Willow White Ape". The performance is also a problem, Song Yang is good, but this play is still too tender to support the willow white ape. In the words of the play: "There is a lack of nature".
When I usually chat with my friends, I often joke about who can watch for a few more years. For example, Wang Xiaobo and Wang Shuo can watch for three years and three years; while Feng Tang can take three months at most, and there can be no more. Xu Haofeng's film, I believe many viewers still want to watch a few more years. Although he wrote martial arts novels and made martial arts films, when I watched Xu Haofeng, I felt that it was a rare and long-lost "literati film" in the Chinese film industry.
【Unity of Knowledge and Action, Literati Film】
Academic definitions aside, "literati films" have at least three levels of personal understanding. First, the director has a high and comprehensive humanistic quality. Second, the director must be a choreographer and a director, an absolute author of the film. Third, the director can explain his creative concept relatively systematically and completely. Xu Haofeng is in line with all three of these: he is a director, screenwriter, has written many martial arts novels, is a collator of folk martial arts, is still a teacher in film school, and has published a film review collection...
According to this, I cherish every creation of Xu Haofeng. So, if you ask me if "The Arrow Willow White Ape" is worth watching, of course it is! Because watch once less than once.
But there is no need to be hard-hearted, and the advantages and disadvantages of this film coexist, which should be seriously examined. Three years ago, I wrote a reading note of Xu Dao's "Knife and Star", and some netizens left a message saying that the author said better than the guide. My reply was: "You are in the unity of knowledge and action", and this judgment has not changed so far.