Compared with the original novel, the narrative strategy of the adapted film undoubtedly shows the goal and positioning of the film very clearly. The old priest in the original book was replaced by a young Persian wanderer played by Bell. This change brought more than the label of Hollywood's first-line male star, not only his arrival was a sign of this business spectacle. Sexual meaning, his more immediate role is to provide the film text with an active protagonist, a character full of action; and his dramatic transformation from cynical man to careful protector, tender lover and silent hero, Take on the heavy responsibility of pushing emotions to a climax. In fact, the transformation runs through each of the main characters, the prostitutes from their savage appearance to the demure when they decide to dedicate, the girls from their hostility to gratitude, George's cowardice to the final brave decision, this typical Hollywood narrative The character development model of the film dominates the characters in the film.
Compared with him and them, the soldiers of the national army are undoubtedly quite embarrassed. Under the dual oppression of politics/history, Chinese military soldiers have always appeared as negative characters in the past movies (of course, they are also in most cases now). In recent years, with the excavation of historical data, although the younger generation has seen a great improvement in the role of the national army in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, it cannot change their fate in this film that they are separated from the main line of the narrative. In this film, they are a dangerous intruder (Church at night) and a false rescuer (the captain's sniper didn't really save the schoolgirl, but attracted Kato instead). But as a commercial movie with the appearance of a war movie, they are also indispensable elements. They are the bearers of visual spectacles. The death of the captain is the biggest climax in the middle of the film, and it is a small obscenity of nationalism. But that's where their story ends.
So who is the real hero of the film? Not a priest's priest, not a hero's heroine. They belong neither to the Eastern nor the Western tradition. The identity of the false priest makes it unnecessary for the film to touch the core values of the West, and the identity of the prostitute also makes it unnecessary for them to bear the heavy burden of ethics and morals. All their actions are motivated by only one motive: to protect female students. In this sense, the climax of the film eliminates the grand narrative of nationality, religion and tradition and replaces it with another grand narrative, that is, the grand narrative of business and human nature. The conflict in the film is also separated from the complex national/national background, and becomes a binary opposition between good and evil that can be easily understood.
This can also be seen from the rewriting of the character Shujuan. Although the film still unfolds in Shu Juan's "Gaze", it is already different from the "Gaze" of the ambiguous adolescent girl in the original book, which is a mixture of "voyeurism" and "Electra plot". Shared by men, it becomes the carrier of fragrant visual spectacle, the high-speed photography of graceful women through colored church glass, and the indulgence of women in smoky basements (it is necessary to say that the director is shooting When I got here, I mentioned that as a child, Shu Juan’s most vivid memory of the war may be these colorful pictures). Laura Mulvey pointed out: "Her visual presence is often detrimental to the development of the storyline, and often freezes the flow of the plot at the moment of erotic gaze." And the conflict between the girl and the woman is undoubtedly simplified by the film, the hostility The core of the source and conflict revolves around space (fighting for toilets) and resources (the female students also have no bread to eat), so the reconciliation between Shujuan and Yumo at the end of the film is no longer mysterious to men. , belong to the hidden feelings between women, and become a part of human nature that can be generally understood. In this character, the commercial (spectacle) meets the human (reconciliation) harmoniously.
From this point of view, the controversial topic of sex in China becomes easy to understand. And the discussion of the overly inappropriate body politics of sex (Zhu Dake blames the film's two devotions, one to the West and the other to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television) is undoubtedly missing the point. The act of having sex is still dictated by business/human logic here. Sex and sexual innuendo have always existed in Hollywood movies, both before and after the Hayes Code. Sex is deeply embedded in Hollywood genres, as well as our veiled memories of watching movies from childhood, where our family covers our eyes every time we encounter such a scene, promoting the formation of new viewing fetishes, and also Be a source of visual pleasure. The film does not turn "political narratives into physical narratives" here, because politics itself is an issue that the film strives to avoid. In addition to commercial considerations, this is also in line with the inherent plot logic of the film. The question of whether to shoot a bed scene was also finalized a few days before the filming. The director's statement at that time was to the effect that the emotion was right, and it could be filmed. Just imagine what would happen if there were no sex scenes? Do you want to argue with each other and then stay silent? Here, what the men and women who got rid of the traditional value burden of the East and the West do belong to the release of humanity in today's era. Plus, if there's anything wrong with the sex scene, the problem with it is that it's a misreading of a Hollywood approach, or rather a Chinese rewrite. In Hollywood movies, the sex scene mostly takes place around 45 to 1 hour, in the middle of the second act, before the next downward turn of the situation; there is no time for the less important episodes to happen before the climax, Because there are still action scenes and final conflicts to be resolved, not to mention that the heroine at this time is likely to be under the threat of evil forces or have a serious misunderstanding of the protagonist. The difference between this film is that the climax of the action has long been over, and the final rescue is only the climax of the emotion, so the sex scene also has a very important emotional foreshadowing here.
The film writing of the Nanjing Massacre has become more and more mainstream in recent years, but it faces an unavoidable historical dilemma. As Levi Strauss said, the purpose of myth is to provide a reasonable model capable of resolving contradictions. So we see that the perspectives of various film narratives focus on Rabe, Americans in the safe zone, Japanese soldiers, fake priests and real prostitutes. In the future, we may also see Weitling's story, Foster's story, but It is extremely difficult to find the image of the savior and write a pure national myth from a local perspective, at least not in Nanjing. Today, when the memory of war is getting weaker and weaker, the personal attempt to text is still meaningful, and cheap tears are not worthless. After all, the film not only talks to history but also talks to the present. As Shaz believes, conflict resolution can enhance public consensus. At least, the sex here is much more righteous than the innocent love myth that dare not have sex, can't have sex and won't have sex.
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