As early as 2019, when it was shortlisted for the Golden Lion Award at the 76th Venice International Film Festival, "Lyceum Theatre" set off a lot of discussion. On the one hand, the popularity comes from the fans' attention to the world's three major film festivals, on the other hand, because of director Lou Ye.
The film festival-popular director, who began testing commercial films with the last "Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind", was controversial for his unique directing style.
Poster of "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind"
I have to admit that Lou Ye's works do have a certain threshold for viewing movies - handheld photography that challenges the audience's physiology, trivial and fast mirror movement and cross-editing, and thematic expression that is always hidden under the surface text. These signs connected to the word "Lou Ye" still exist vividly in "Lyceum Theatre".
Many netizens have questions about "what is the meaning of messy handheld lenses", "character emotional space holes", and "literature and art and business do not match".
Poster of "Lyceum Theatre"
Film criticism is both objective and subjective, and the voice of criticism has its own reasons. However, after these questions, we may wish to think again:
Is the handheld lens just pandering to the director's aesthetic pursuits?
Why are character emotions always so bland and empty?
Why does the film have a "split" structure that is half artistic and half commercial?
When we ask further questions, we will find that there may be a deeper connotation behind these seemingly distinct questions.
The chaotic and subjective perspective brought by the handheld lens allows us to experience a sense of urgency and crisis from the dual levels of physiology and psychology, and at the same time, we are like the characters in the film, falling into the chaos of dreams.
Beneath the empty and numb expression of the characters, there is a repressed desire and emotion that has nowhere to release. Everyone is wearing a mask, every minute of every second, acting.
The finally refreshing spy design is a kind of self-deprecating joke, which uses the spirit of business and entertainment to completely dissolve the heavy sense of history, turning this dark and lightless history into a real drama, and also turning people in history into people in the play.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" data-track="38" > helpless island</h1>
The story of "Lyceum Theatre" takes place in Shanghai during the "Lonely Island Period".
The famous actor Yu Jin (Gong Li) returned to Shanghai to play the drama "Saturday Novel" directed by his old lover Tan Na (Zhao Youting), and various forces speculated that Yu Yan returned to rescue her former husband Ni Zeren (Zhang Songwen) who was in prison, but did not know that Yu Wei also had a secret identity - an allied spy.
Under the double disguise of acting in drama and saving her ex-husband, she also has a final mission: to steal Japanese combat intelligence from Japanese intelligence officer Furutani Saburo (Oda Chejang).
Saburo Furutani and Yu Yan (stills from "Lan Xin")
After the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1937, they were not ready to go to war with European and American countries, and the center of Shanghai still existed as a concession, and was besieged by the Japanese army as an "isolated island" until December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War broke out. The story begins a week before Pearl Harbor, the Monday on which Yu landed in Shanghai.
From Monday to Friday, what unfolds slowly in front of us is a Shanghai with arrows on the string and an undercurrent, a woman with multiple faces, and a dream in which illusion and reality merge.
It was a fraught, desperate epitome of history, with people coming and going in black and white, and everyone's face was shrewd and tired. At that time, people were always on the line between life and death, and they lived like tightrope every day.
The Chinese in the concession is even more "an island in an isolated island" at this time, and the humiliation under the fence and the stubbornness in the face of the jackal and the tiger make the film run through a feeling of being choked in the throat from beginning to end.
In the contrasting black-and-white images, the Shanghai Concession is the shanghai concession where the homeland has collapsed and everyone is afraid. Everything was so unreal, like a nightmare, but cruelly, it wasn't a dream, it was reality.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" data-track="97" > repressed emotions and desires</h1>
Under a cloud that was so breathless that people's emotions and desires were suppressed, and no outlet for release could be found.
There is no shortage of chaotic emotional connections in the film: as the heroine, Yu Wei and Ni Zeren, and Tan Na, and even Bai Yunsheng (played by Huang Xiangli), all have either marriage or ambiguous relationships. However, all emotional connections eventually give way to the sadness of the times.
Ni Zeren and Yu Yan (stills from "Lan Xin")
When Yu Yan went to visit her ex-husband Ni Zeren in prison, her words revealed her worries, but when the more important target (to obtain intelligence) was in front of her, she resolutely abandoned her ex-husband, who had long been the target of everyone, and threw herself into the mission; Tan Na, who had been looking forward to Yu Yan's return, wanted to have further contact with her, Yu Yan indifferently avoided, leaving Tan Na alone to be sad; in the hotel, Yu Yan was full of pity for the caresses of Bai Yunsheng, who was also a spy, which was not desire, but pity for the same disease as a "person who came over".
Yu Yan and Bai Yun (stills from "Lan Xin")
Desire is imprisoned, love is not like love, and personal integrity is no longer important.
When politics and survival become the most pressing issues, all desires become insignificant, interspersed with endless deceit, like a brief gasp.
However, even in moments of respite, people are still wearing masks.
Yu Yan trusted Tan Na, but did not reveal the slightest information about his identity as a spy; Bai Yunxi admired Yu Yan but would not give up the task of assassinating her ex-husband; Hubert was Thor's ally boss, but always hid the final mission from him.
Tan Na and Yu Wei (stills from "Lan Xin")
Everyone has unspeakable secrets, they can never truly expose their hearts to the sun, and can only continue to perform alone until death. In this historical quagmire full of lies, everyone is a muddy and splashed drama person.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" data-track="100" > eager to identify with the play</h1>
"Lyceum Theatre" is undoubtedly a big heroine film, and Yu Yan is the absolute center of the film. She was strong, sharp, calm, a good spy, a good actress, but also a person who hid herself deeply. Whether on stage or offstage, she has always played various roles, and the time belonging to herself is pitifully small.
After wearing the mask for a long time, it grows in flesh and blood, occupying the position of the true self.
Yu Yan observing the enemy (stills of "Lan Xin")
Most of the time, her vicissitudes and indifferent expression were full of confusion and fatigue. Yu Yan, who moves between the various camps, clearly knows that he does not belong to any one group.
As a spy, she was just a pawn of the Allies; as an adoptive daughter, her adoptive father's love for her was full of use; as a woman, her body became a tool for obtaining intelligence, and there was no place to fully accept her, and she could not fully accept others.
In an era when love and desire are suppressed, the last straw that underpins Yu Wei is an identity that cannot be erased—Chinese.
In the original novel "The Death of Shanghai", there is an inner monologue of the adoptive father Hubert:
This "straw" is not revealed until the end of the film, and it is at this time that we suddenly realize what is the thing that Yu Yan suppresses all emotions to protect. She chose to conceal japanese intelligence and pullEd Europe and the United States into the battlefield, and as an Allied spy, she still longed for the emotional connection and value meaning brought to her by the country.
However, the faith she guarded was the most inconspicuous force in the Shanghai Concession at that time.
We can't see the inner monologues of the characters in the film, we can only see the suppressed political expressions in the concession Chinese during the war when the political position dominated, and the confusion that they could not fight.
The naïve left-wing young director Tan Na indulged in his indignation on the stage, but silently endured in the actual conflict with the Japanese army, comforting Yu Yan with a sentence of "getting used to", while Mo Zhi simply became a traitor because he wanted to survive.
In the vast majority of the pages, we see the confrontation between the European and American forces and the Japanese army, and the contest between the fascists and the anti-fascist camp, but only at the moment when Yu Yan singles out the Japanese army can we truly feel that there is a weak and tenacious force called "China" struggling bitterly.
Yu Yan single-handedly challenged the Japanese army (stills of "Lan Xin")
In the Shanghai Concession, where countries are fighting openly and secretly, the forces that belong to China are weak and powerless, like a lone grass in the wind and rain.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="04" data-track="103" > use fiction to provoke history</h1>
The "play within a play" structure of the film is distinct, and the entire story is gradually advanced in the intersection of film time and space and drama time and space. One second, Yu Yanzheng, who incarnated as Qiulan, and Tan Na ran hand in hand, and the next second, the camera cut to the scene where Yu Jin landed in Shanghai. In this way, the two narrative lines intersect with each other, forming the film's illusory emotional experience and basic narrative framework.
Yu Yan returns to Shanghai (stills from "Lyceum")
Interestingly, "Saturday Fiction" points not only to the stage play that will premiere on Saturday, but also to the film's final climax, the saturday gunfight scene, and the film itself (Saturday Fiction).
"Saturday Novel", also known as "Mandarin Duck Butterfly Saturday School", is a popular genre of urban popular novels after the Xinhai Revolution, named after the poem "Traces of the Flower Moon" in the Narrow Evil Novel of the Qing Dynasty, "Thirty-six Mandarin Ducks with The Same Fate Bird, a Pair of Butterflies Poor Worm". Because of the greatest influence of "Saturday" in the Mandarin Butterfly Sect publications, it is also called "Saturday Sect". This genre likes to write love stories of talented women, advocating literature as a tool for games and pastimes, and the style is secular and kitsch.
Part of the "Saturday Novel" (Douban screenshot)
The freehand lens language of "Lyceum Theatre" is also full of secular flavor.
In the heavy historical background of the "Lonely Island Period", Lou Ye inserted elements of spy wars, gunfights and other genre films, and visually borrowed from the depressing and contrasting black and white style of Film Noir.
And it's worth mentioning that whether it's the title or the focus on structure, Lyceum Theatre is always reminiscent of Pulp Fiction. This unique film that plays with narrative structure represents a provocation of a vulgar art to a noble tradition.
Secular entertainment and serious history collide with each other in the film, and through Gong Li's "thriving" gun battle scene at the climax, the reality is brought back to the drama, turning history into a legend, and completely dissolving the sense of gravity and seriousness of history.
Looking back at the film, Saturday's gunfight scene and the film's straightforward English translation of the film unabashedly convey the message to the audience that the film is a fictional Shanghai, and everything that happens is a legendary drama divorced from reality.
And when we begin to question the authenticity of the story, there is room to think about the strong game color and joke behind the film.
We all understand that history is somehow fictional and constructed. It is like a huge literary work, we fantasize about the blank space through a small number of words, and then through imagination, reflect on ourselves.
People often say "take history as a mirror", but it is not only history that can be used as a "mirror", novels, movies, music... Those things that contain human wisdom and emotions can become our "mirrors". Why is there a thousand Hamlets in a thousand eyes? Because what they see is themselves.
The Shanghai in the film is not at that moment, but in today's present, it is the externalization of the spiritual world of modern people. The difficulties faced in creation, the hardships in the workplace, circling between the various camps, and playing many roles, are not we as numb and empty as the characters in the film?
At the end of the film, we return to reality, and in the day after day, we bury our hearts deep and continue our performances.