The film is two and a half hours long. I watch it every night before going to bed, and I haven't watched it for a few days in between. It took me more than ten years to finish it. Except for a group of Chinese people in the film, from the ministers of the Qing Dynasty to the Red Guards, who opened their mouths in a string of neat English, and their voices and emotions made people uncomfortable, I must admit that this is a good film.
The attitude of shooting is serious. This is the first foreign-language film approved by the Chinese government and shot on location in the Forbidden City. It can be inferred how much preparation the director has done in advance. A foreign director, but the film is a strong Chinese flavor. The entire tone of the first half of the movie is dim and dark. In the scene of the death of the Empress Dowager Cixi, the huge palace seen in the camera rotation, a group of old ministers who are obedient, the scriptures in the mouth of Dalai Lama, people are depressed and decadent, and the sun is declining. I feel that the camera is pushed to a face that has been painted ten centimeters thick and has ravines. The owner of that face, Cixi, a dying old woman hidden in the courtyard of the deep palace, has dominated the entire first half of modern history in China, which has been completely humiliated. .
A total of 19,000 extras were used in the film, and 2,000 soldiers shaved their heads to play the bannermen. Similarly, during the filming of Lust and Caution, more than 200 workers were hired, working day and night for 4 months to rebuild the most prosperous section of Nanjing West Road. Fine films have a solemn production attitude. This point is difficult to compare with commercial films that make quick money.
The storytelling angle is right. If it is a Chinese director, due to the ideological restraint of the authorities, due to the immersion of various local ideas since childhood, and due to their own preferences, it is difficult to be frank and unbiased, and it is difficult for modern directors to be able to do it. A magnificent historical film is propped up with a documentary technique. Puyi is just a chess piece, used by people who want to repeat the Qing Dynasty, used by the national army, and used by the Japanese and puppet troops to control the northeast. He is also a sinner, because he is willing to be a puppet and sign a treaty. However, the last emperor is just a person driven by the wheel of history. The general trend has been set. This is a period where the old and the new alternate. All the old struggles have lost the opportunity to come back, and a new round of changes has long been unconscious. Puyi is only in his position, driven by the times, and in the film, he is just an ordinary young man from a wealthy family who wants to study in the UK.
The skinny camel is bigger than the horse:
Puyi moved out of the Forbidden City, thinking it was a dead end. What I didn't expect is still the life of a rich man, renting the whole mansion, bodyguards and guards, and the room is full of fashionable foreign goods, splendid, silk and satin, and there are people serving in front of and behind. No matter how down and down the aristocrats are, relying on their previous family background, their life will not be worse than that of ordinary people. Even if the predecessors of the family did not think about the troubles and did not think of many ways to escape, their lives plummeted. difficult to achieve.
If you fall behind, you will be beaten:
2 hours and 20 minutes of a terrible video, I re-acquainted with a sentence, you will be beaten if you fall behind. In recent life, there is an impressive sentence, "Before the age of 30, people can't live by their temperament. It's not good to be too casual. After the age of 30, it's time to repay the debt." A heavy burden suddenly fell on his shoulders. I used to think that living a comfortable life is a kind of happiness, and it is indeed the happiness of smooth sailing in life, but one cannot forget the upward force in the good times. Wen Duan means seeing the old life at a glance, because boiling a frog in warm water, you don't. Know how far behind you are relative to your peers around you. For a family, this generation is fixed, the generation is stagnant, and the birth of the next generation is difficult to change. It will repeat the arduous struggle history of the predecessors and mend the unfinished gap of the predecessors. And a person, a family, an organization, a nation, all are like this. You can't be too comfortable with the status quo, don't think about progress and seek pleasure, because one day the accumulation of gaps will make the strong bully the weak.
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