English title of "Putting Names": the warlords (Warlords)
Summary of the story:
1. Troubled times.
2. The warlord Pang Qingyun was defeated and pretended to be dead to survive.
3. The bandits Zhao Erhu and Jiang Wuyang robbed the army and lost it.
4. Instigated by the warlord Pang Qingyun, the bandits joined the Qing army.
5. The Qing and Taiping troops fought tragically.
6. The war has divided the bandits and the warlords, and the brothers are watching the wall.
7. The bandits were the victims of warlords, Zhao Erhu was assassinated by Pang Qingyun.
8. Warlords are victims of politics. Pang Qingyun was assassinated by the court.
9. Jiang Wuyang is serious about justice, abides by the contract of surrender, kills Pang Qingyun, and slays him.
Chen Kexin added a quote at the beginning of the film: chaotic times, warlords are divided, wars are continuous, life is ruined, and the people are struggling. A tragic battle scene, one side was slaughtered.
Afterwards, the title of the film is given by the juxtaposition of two themes:
the warlords - warlords, originally referring to the freaks who existed in the war in China from the 1920s to the 1930s.
Voting for the name - Song Yijiang bandits usually use the form of friendship to kill innocent people in public and show their loyalty to each other. It can be understood as a social group living under this concept, bandits.
The opening topic will be about two groups that exist based on troubled times: warlords and bandits.
1. Bandits
are not in troubled times, and bandits cannot emerge.
Officials force the people to rebel, the people rebel, and rebels are bandits. Bandits are in a dynamic stage in the transition between two extreme classes: the mob stage from the commoners to the ruling class. It can neither gain the sincere support of the majority of the common people, nor be tolerated by the rulers, so it has anti-social characteristics and can only exist as a stage, but cannot form a stable class. Bandits are the sharp opposition of the ruling class. If they cannot become the ruling class, they will definitely be eliminated by the ruling class. The film expresses this perception powerfully through the collapse of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom after the battles of Suzhou and Nanjing, the assassination of Andy Lau and the final execution of Takeshi Kaneshiro.
2. The Survival Law of Bandits
An anti-civilian cannot become a bandit, but a group of anti-civilians can be called a bandit when they gather together. If rebels want to form a bandit, they must gain deep trust between each other, and the source of this trust is brotherhood. The transformation from fear to trust requires a sufficient reason and test, and of course the most direct and convincing one is life and death. Therefore, the bandits use the lives of others to start this trust, that is, to take the name and blood as an alliance; to use their own lives to consolidate this trust, to live and die for the brothers, and fight for their lives.
Paying less attention to life and death and emphasizing trustworthiness is the rule of survival for the bandits, and it is also the core of the bandits' philosophy of life, right and wrong, and values. This concept has been expounded in depth in John To's "Underworld".
In this film, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro are both manifestations of this belief. The difference is that Andy Lau, as the original eldest brother, embodies righteousness, such as advocating forgiveness of the brother who raped the girl, keeping the promise to release the surrendered prisoners of war, and privately dividing the army's salaries, etc. Wait. As the younger brother, Takeshi Kaneshiro embodies small righteousness. In his concept, only the eldest brother and the second brother and his existence are meaningful. Everything else can be sacrificed and abandoned. The oath of sworn sworn is his only belief. So he beheaded the brother who made mistakes, slaughtered the prisoners, killed the second sister-in-law, and stabbed the eldest brother who broke the oath.
"The eldest brother said that he did not believe in the application, but he believed in me and the second brother."
In the eyes of warlords, bandits are very suitable to be used as tools of war, but when bandits lose their positive significance for war, bandits and bandit beliefs become worthless. In the film, this is the reason for all the conflicts between Andy Lau and Jet Li.
3.
There is no war between warlords, and there is no warlord.
The concept of warlords was formed in the 1920s and 1930s in Chinese history. Warlords are also a stage, an intermediate stage from the separatist forces to the ruling class. Its fate is also two: to be eliminated or transformed into the ruling class. Although the separatist forces are also part of the ruling class, their narrow local interests conflict with the fundamental interests of the ruling class representing the state apparatus, so they cannot escape the fate of being eliminated. The politician's words in the film are all about the authority, "Although he is a general, he does not understand the way of being an official. How can the queen mother trust outsiders."
4. The survival rule of warlords
For warlords, only victory means survival, so the only creed of warlords is to win in war, and they can do anything to achieve this. Under such a creed, what seems ruthless is reasonable, and what seems cruel is acceptable: the law of war is that there is no law.
Using Jet Li's words, Chen Kexin stated his understanding of war: this is war. A war is cruel because it has to keep killing people; it is unrighteous because it requires unscrupulous means; a war is to be won, so it must be sacrificed.
Unexpectedly, Chen Kexin's understanding of war is surprisingly consistent with the understanding of Japanese war criminals in the Tokyo trial, and even the reasons for massacring prisoners of war are exactly the same (no extra food, fear of resistance) - war itself is anti-human, Therefore, it is meaningless to emphasize human nature in war. The self-sacrifice of the Suzhou guards in the film did not exchange for more lives. Although the tragic and solemn prisoners of war moved the soldiers holding butcher knives, they still failed to change their fate of being massacred.
5. The ruling class
The ruling class is not the focus of the film's performance, but it also uses a few strokes to outline a clear outline: it is an attempt to make all the people in the chess game, and coerce the courtiers to gain power and gain.
6. The essence
of war is that the people are not living well, so the people are bandits and soldiers.
The soldiers meet each other, and the killings are tragic.
The dead bones of all ages have been wiped out in the chatter and laughter of politicians of the past dynasties.
The so-called war is a conspiracy of politicians.
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