Although the two films point in completely different directions from the beginning of their creation, let’s leave them alone for the time being. Let’s start with the two beautiful female spies—Alice and Wang Jiazhi—the most similar part of the two films.
The pain of losing a loved one VS the feeling of loss of eagerness to identify
Let’s take a look at the motives of the two of them for accepting the espionage mission. Alice’s motives were very intuitive. She saw her whole family die tragically at the hands of the Nazis. This grief and hatred were enough to prompt her desperate revenge. But Wang Jiazhi’s motives are worthy of scrutiny. Although on the surface she is motivated by patriotism, but it contains other elements after all, such as heroism, idealism, and the desire to realize one's own value in the recognition of others. Therefore, Alice's behavior is always permeated by strong emotions, anger, sadness, hatred, and she is striving for life. Wang Jiazhi's emotions are rather ambiguous, I am afraid she herself can't tell why she is a female spy, and her behavior has become paradoxical because of her unclear motives. Of course, this cannot be blamed on the low consciousness of Wang, after all, the patriotic enthusiasm on campus is incomparable with the tragic death of his relatives. Going
deep into the Nazi base camp VS going into the traitorous harem
In addition to the motives, the working places of the two female spies are also very different. Alice became a secretary in the Nazi office through Munz. There are many opportunities to eavesdrop on the enemy's first-hand secrets. The resulting risk factor is also extremely high. The spy plot is naturally thrilling. However, Wang Jiazhi only entered the home of Mr. Yi. Most of the time, he could only obtain information from Mrs. Yi and a few other mahjong friends at the mahjong table, and was drowning in the short stories of the parents of the three aunts and six poems. Even after having a very close relationship with Mr. Yi, Wang’s workplace was still not too far away from the bed. He just visited the prison facilities in the office building of Lao Yi before he died, and went to the west with hatred. This is destined to be Wang Jiazhi unable to give the audience a compelling and exciting story.
Natural and generous VS coy and contrived.
When watching movie reviews, some netizens mentioned two erotic passages and expressed their appreciation for the natural and generous erotic scenes in "Black Book", and at the same time expressed disdain for the contrived works of Lust Caution. In fact, this is easy to understand. The degree of sexual openness in China and the West is different, and the characters' attitudes towards sex are of course different. It would be really strange if Wang Jiazhi undressed like Alice. Moreover, the setting of the character’s personality is also one of the reasons. Alice’s personality is probably much more open than the girls of the same age who are in the same cultural background. "Dyeing" and other plots can be seen. In fact, Wang Jiazhi also made her best efforts. In order to play the role of a married woman, she committed herself to a wretched man without any feelings. Under the background of "five thousand years of sexual depression", her behavior has been It's very rare, let's not demand it.
The real events in the war VS the petty bourgeoisie's little entanglement
finally returned to the original creative intentions. Paul Van Hoeven aimed to use the "Black Book" to express the complex human nature in the cruel war. There is no pure black and white, there are conspirators in the Revolutionary Party, and there are pacifists in the Nazis; women sell their bodies for their lives, and men sell innocent Jews in order to have a way to survive after the war. One of the terrible aspects of war is that it can confuse black and white and make people lose their minds. And Alice is the lead of seeing all this and thinking about it all. The original material of the film is all derived from the collection of real materials by the director, coupled with the director's superb control of commercial films, the natural scene of the film is magnificent, the plot is rich, the rhythm is also compact and intense, and it is fascinating. In contrast, the spy segment in "Lust Caution" is really pediatric. The reason is that neither the original author Zhang Ailing nor the director Li Ang did not want to express the ideology of war at all, but only regarded war as a triggering story. It’s just an opportunity. To talk about the connotation of the film, Zhang Ailing is to satirize the selfishness and ugliness of human nature, while Ang Lee replaces the embarrassment and loss of the little people, but no matter what, the emotions in the story are not exclusive to the specific environment of war, but us. The general inner entanglement that everyone may face. Therefore, these two films present such different image styles.
I write it in this way, as if I am extremely dissatisfied with "Lust Caution". In fact, I like both of these movies. They have different styles, and they bring me different feelings and thoughts. But it is precisely because I like them that I can't help but use them to make fun of them.
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