In Ang Lee's new film "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle", the "120 frames/4K/3D" technology used to make all the subtleties appear, the stereoscopic effect is more obvious, and the bright picture quality is something I have never experienced before.
It is not clear whether the experience was good or bad. The movie is a little too bright, the light forces the characters into the sun, and the details in the darkness have nowhere to escape, this "light" is not the form of light in the previous movies.
There is also the lens design, and it can be felt that Ang Lee has added a lot of actors talking to the audience for the sake of new technologies, painting and coloring, as bright as photos. Compared to previous films, the technical progress for me is only that.
Movies like this are not so cinematic, but they look comfortable.
Fortunately, Ang Lee has never been a director with surprising images. Movies in his world are simple and interesting, like saying one thing in life, sometimes there are many more truths that you haven't thought of.
The film begins with a team's halftime performance, and several soldiers known as "American heroes" become actors. As the plot progresses, soldier Lynn keeps plugging war scenes into his head. The mention of this halftime in the original novel is very long, which also shows that for this group of soldiers, their psychological journey is by no means alleviated by the time of a performance.
Each soldier entered the Iraqi battlefield for different reasons. Death was all around them, and it no longer mattered what reason to go into battle. When they experience death, face loss, and return triumphantly, the peaceful world confuses the warriors. Their confusion comes from the understanding of them and their inability to adapt to a peaceful environment.
Peace and war, intermission performances and the death of squad leaders, these things that should not be used as references, correspond one by one in the film.
In fact, Lynn's inner demons are the focus of the movie. Soldiers are called heroes, but they are also ordinary people. The value of this film lies in the fact that it allows the hero to return to ordinary people, so that the audience can return from the imagination of the hero to the perception of themselves.
Stills from Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle
In the film, the soldiers will be happy that their story will be made into a movie and each will receive $100,000, they will be spring for a cheerleader girl, and they will be angered by the words of a young man... The joys and sorrows of these heroes are dotted under the big plot of the movie, vividly showing their side as ordinary people.
At the same time, the anxiety represented by Lynn is also that their ordinary side is obscured from time to time, and one of the most obvious points in the film is that love comes, Lynn wants to stay, but the girl says, you are a hero.
The image of the hero fulfills their love, but also destroys it. Love makes a clever connection between the battlefield and the halftime performance. Originally, the discussion of love is often not together, but this movie focuses on where love is. Love is an unattainable fantasy here. Heroes and beauties are fantasy and reality, and the tragic ending has long been predestined.
Lynn's war after-effects are another thing that is obscured. "Death is not a feeling, and killing people on the battlefield is not something to be proud of." In the scene at the press conference, instinctive avoidance is a kind of inner torment. Lynn and his comrades paid the price of peace for the sake of peace. But when they returned to their homeland, they did not gain understanding. People prefer heroes. In essence, they need real respect rather than false celebrations.
From the beginning to the end, the stills film "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" pursues an understanding between people that "may not be possible at all". The first is the understanding between the protagonist Lynn's sister and brother, followed by the understanding of the "hero" and the manager or the public around him, as well as the understanding of the cheerleaders to Lynn, the soldier's understanding of the dead squad leader... I'm guessing director Ang Lee's understanding of war.
Should the protagonist obey his sister and retire because of his mental state? Should I say to my beloved girl that I am not going to fight, that we will always be together? Should I accept the meager pay for making a movie? Each point contains a value judgment.
Stills from Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle I especially like the phrase the dead squad leader says to Lynn: "When you get shot, prove that someone else has already fired." "Everything is destined. Where to go, the protagonist of the movie, Lynn, made a choice. Ang Lee has almost cleverly applied elements of his past works to this new film, as he himself once said: "This story is about brotherhood in the barracks, about their deep feelings and sacrifices." ”
The title of the movie is "Halftime War", but there are very few scenes that actually show the war. The reason for the low evaluation abroad may be because under the technical conditions of 120 frames/4K/3D, the audience expects to see a big scene or a war scene, but Ang Lee moved the battlefield to a stadium performance, further saying that it is placed in the heart of the young soldier "Lynn".
The theme of the film is not the imaginary anti-war blockbuster, but a bit of a literary film feeling. The film adopts the treatment of literary and artistic films, and the parallel editing follows Lynn's reaction to the scene, and constantly interpolates under the line of the big story. It is difficult for the audience to concentrate, the posture is very large, and the emotions are lost.
And this is exactly what Ang Lee is good at, so relative to the technology, in this movie, I still see the previous Ang Lee.
For example, in the intermission performance, this group of people who face life and death every day walk off the stage, instantly take off the air, smoke spews out, and the soldiers panic, making people feel the horror of estrangement.
There is also Lynn standing alone behind the True Destiny Goddess Group, in front of which is the carnival of thousands of people, and behind her is the sadness of life and death parting on the battlefield. The film uses this to convey an ironic loneliness - among countless individuals, you are left with only yourself, no one understands, no one cares. It seems that everyone loves you, but in fact, you know that they love you in fantasy.