Film Critic 丨 "Lyceum Theatre": Lou Ye's experiment and success

After watching Lou Ye's "Lyceum Theatre" for a few minutes, I began to feel that "black and white" was 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".

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

The reality and effectiveness of breathing is just one of the truths that Lou Ye tried to capture in "Lyceum Theatre". Another thing he tried to do was to push the charm and experimentation of moving images to the extreme. Lou Ye invites the audience, following in the footsteps of an invisible photographer and camera, to walk through the Shanghai Concession in 1941, and to watch the every move of those masked and not unpretentious characters: female stars, male directors, hotel classes, chaotic xiaokai, double agents, Japanese agents, revolutionaries...

The characters in "Lyceum Theatre" seem to be a group of people locked in a time box, living in their own time and space, in Shanghai, a week before the outbreak of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Singing and dancing, on the surface the businesswoman does not know the hatred of the country, but behind the scenes, it is a terrifying wave, youth and blood are intertwined, love and hate are intertwined, patriotism and doctrine are intertwined.

Such a Shanghai is the richest, most dramatic, and most emblematic of the influence of modernity on people's destiny, and it is also the most suitable Shanghai for making movies and dramas.

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. Shanghai, which was reduced to an "isolated island" after the "August 13" incident in 1937, may best reflect its spiritual temperament, and perhaps its "literary and artistic style": at that time, 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 also stayed in Shanghai to insist on the creation and performance of films and dramas; their works and behaviors played a role in uniting the people and condensing morale. Yu Yan and Tan Na in "Lyceum Theatre" are undoubtedly a representative of this group of people. Similar to 2003's Purple Butterfly, Lou Ye sought to reveal the subtlest and most secret psychological activities of the revolutionaries—to prove that they had indeed lived, lived, and struggled. This way of expression does not conform to our usual cognition and expectation of "revolutionaries", so it is not recognized and accepted by most viewers.

However, where "Purple Butterfly" fails is precisely where the success of "Lyceum Theatre" lies: the latter's black-and-white images successfully bring us into memory and imagination, resonating with the characters.

Black and white and color are undoubtedly two different mediums for film.

Unlike the almost desperate lust of Xin Xia and Xie Ming in "Purple Butterfly", the emotion between Yu Yan and Tan Na is 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 familiar with the pressures and freedoms that this type of personage endures. When Lou Ye shows his emotional interactions with Tan Na, Furutani Saburo, Bai Yunsheng and others in a large number of close-up and close-up shots, 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.

In addition to the choice of black and white images, the biggest experiment and achievement of "Lyceum Theatre" is, of course, the sense of intimacy created between the audience and the characters through the movement of the camera: as if the audience can follow the camera around the actors, as if reaching out to 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 Shapiert are calm and composed, and Furuya 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.

Yu Later deceived his adoptive father. 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.

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