The biggest problem with a movie is that it is a movie. Movies, or more precisely commercial movies, are based on creating gorgeous imaginations that are out of reality to win consumption. Analyzing dreams by means of creating dreams is the crux of "Martial Arts".
In the game of killing Yan Dongsheng in the cabinet, the audience intuitively saw two versions of Liu Jinxi and Tang Long: the former is an intuitive expression of the world, and the two men are stupid and melee; the latter is a legendary martial arts spectacle, and martial arts masters use their strength to fight. force. The onlooker of the famous detective Xu Baijiu tried to bridge the gap between watching the bustle and the doorway, using anatomy to interpret the symbol system commonly seen in traditional martial arts imaginations. This is a very ambitious attempt, and it is also the core gimmick in the most attractive seven-minute film.
Unfortunately, this gimmick is destined to be unsustainable, just as decryption magicians are always forgotten and cast aside by the audience. Chen Kexin also understands very well that if you continue to deconstruct the "wuxia" imagination, then Chen Kexin's position will be questioned like Xu Baijiu, who is constantly harassing Liu Jinxi: Do you hate it or not. In the current film industry where the box office is the first element to survive, Chen Kexin's insistence can only end here, and it has also overturned the first domino of the film's embarrassment.
Submission to the audience and box office pressure led to the biggest break in the plot of "Wu Xia", from the decryption at the beginning to the tribute at the back, and returning to the traditional narrative from a fresh perspective. For this reason, the whole movie is divided into two stories by two protagonists.
After the fragmented plot, contradictory characters appear. In the first half, Liu Jinxi had no power to act, and he retreated all the way to persuade people with reason. In the second half, Tang Longguo dared to be firm. Although his desire to maintain a peaceful life has not changed, his mobility was overwhelming. Hesitating, this resoluteness can't be combined with the logic of the previous action of not killing Xu Baijiu. In the same way, Xu Baijiu firmly defended the dignity of the law from the front to the point that he sacrificed his father-in-law and his wife at the expense of him. In the back, he helped Liu Jinxi complete the transformation of his incognito dream at any cost.
With the fragmentation of the plot, the worldview as the background falls apart. In the first half, Chen Kexin spent a lot of effort to construct a framework of rules that is very close to real life: Rangers and refugees are almost the same, the weak are beggars, and the strong are robbers, and they are influx of people who have lost their mainstream social identity and status. Marginal people, in the real social order, they are actually disadvantaged groups. In Xu Baijiu’s statement of Jianghu, Chen Kexin’s honesty is also revealed: the source of masters is nothing more than gamblers, escorts, Daliwan salesmen, and the underworld. Wang Yu's own underworld experience) are basically stinky hooligans.
In "Martial Arts", the first dialogue between the two groups of citizens and knights began when the hotel owner made complaints about the swordsmen. Matching it is the expectations of the elders of the ancestral hall to the younger generation: reading and literacy, getting promoted and making wealth, shining ancestors and ancestors. This realistic contrast between strengths and weaknesses is the reason why Liu Jinxi retires, and it is also the actual basis for "returning to seclusion", which is touted as a fantastic imagination in the "chia culture".
But this kind of honest and interesting worldview without a box office was quickly burned out by the mysterious organization in the second half. The government, which was responsible for the stability maintenance work in the first half, completely withdrew after an informative scene by the county official with a very strange logic. Vulnerable refugee groups have become the dominators of the power of life and death in this world. In this way, the film returns to the inherent framework of traditional martial arts narratives that boast and cannot justify. It also means that Chen Kexin's efforts to describe the new martial arts concept ultimately failed.
Looking at only the first half, the knights of "Wu Xia" are not heroes who serve the country and the people in the traditional sense. Chen Kexin disassembled the word "Xia", and he was a person in the cracks, an ordinary person caught between the social order of the two and begging for life. This was a setting that gave birth to a masterpiece, but as mentioned earlier, Chen Kexin failed to implement it after all.
But this is not a reason to criticize "Martial Arts". Chen Kexin himself, is he not a filmmaker who is struggling to survive in the cracks, struggling between ideals and reality. The spectators who are accustomed to the traditional consumption of the "Xia" imagination are just one of the complicity in forcing the "Wu Xia" to break.
This is Chen Kexin's helplessness, but not the innocence of the audience and this era.
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