If you happen to look like a big man, you will easily get a job that is the hardest and easiest to get in the world: becoming a stand-in for a big man, experiencing key historical moments, and even blocking assassins for them. You are included in the key link of conspiracy and conspiracy theories, and you will not often incarnate the most important person in the power map, enter a class far beyond yourself, enjoy the world that does not belong to you, and fundamentally bid farewell to your "self".
Zhang Yimou's new film "Shadow", released today, is a masterpiece about "substitutes".
The big man here is the Governor of Peiguo, Ziyu; his stand-in is "Shadow".
Ziyu, one person is less than ten thousand people, he came from a famous family and made great military exploits. His prestige is far beyond that of madness and he is always unwilling to send troops to collect the Lord Peiguo in Jingzhou; his "shadow" does not have a name of his own. Unfortunately, he looked exactly like Ziyu, when he was eight years old, he was tied back by Ziyu's uncle from the lost state of Peiguo.
Finally, the governor was dying but his ambitions were immortal. For the unrecoverable Jingshu and the throne that could not be ascended, "Shadow" represented the governor Ziyu on the stage of history. Homer’s epic said: “Those who chase shadows are shadows themselves.” This is enough to illustrate the endless tension behind the setting of “shadows”. What is shocking is that both the governor and the "shadow" are played by Deng Chao alone. Like Christian Bale, he lost weight crazily and recovered his posture, yin is vicious, yang is chic, sick and haggard, and fighting turbulently, each of his personality is the performance of the actor-level.
If you look at the plot alone, it seems that "Shadow" is like Kurosawa Akira's "Kagemusha" as a stand-in. It is a dauntingly complex and grand narrative; but I prefer to define "Shadow" as an action art film, highly stylized , Exquisite—in fact, Zhang Yimou condensed the story line that should have been told with an epic into a clever dramatic situation, that is, the yin-yang gossip map.
In this picture, "boundary", "class", "strength" and even "gender" have been eliminated: using a woman's figure to be an umbrella can break the god's sword technique that no one can break in the world; high position The captain, who is imprisoned in a sick body, and the "shadow" who is free to fight when imprisoned in a small room, the two are both virtual and real, both Yin and Yang, both imprisoning and being imprisoned by each other. The stronger the light, the more the shadow. Thickness, together they constitute a complete "identity";
One had to rely on the actions of the other body, and the other had to rely on the other brain to think. The two sides were forced to share joy, anger and sorrow, soul and sin, self and love-such as a wife.
This is the Tai Chi diagram, this is the theory of Pisces. The yin and yang coexist, the five elements overcome each other, and offense and defense are in harmony, creating the beauty of life, so that apart from black and white and the subtle sexual breath that wanders in between, no other color is qualified to penetrate it. Paradoxically, the solid ink aesthetics in the screens of "Shadow" has won crazy praise from all audiences; but at the core, it is different from the ink philosophy that emphasizes "Deng Donggao to comfort and compose poems against the clear stream". The "circle" intertwined with white has become a rolling historical wheel here, crushing one body after another into a thick blood.
Around this picture, "Shadow" has designed extremely beautiful war scenes and action scenes.
It’s no wonder that the governor’s wife had calculated the hexagram from the beginning: “In this hexagram, there is no place for a woman.” When this yin and yang picture finally revealed the hideous face as a weapon, we thought we would blend in with those feminine, Maternity and gentleness have also been thoroughly proved to be an illusion-there is only a naked power clash, which is to conquer the city, overthrow the opponent, make meritorious achievements, and stay in the history, to be superior, superior, superior.
So we see that from the governor to the lord, to the "shadows" and ministers who later joined the game, all male figures in Peiguo are playing a naked survival game. The beauty of life has nothing to do with them. They are like the purest selfish genes, returning to the most primitive and boring appearance of survival competition. Every step of thinking is only dealing with: is it betrayal or cooperation? Which is more worthy of the harvest of betrayal and the reward of cooperation? The punishment of betrayal and the price of failure, which one can bear? When to betray and when to cooperate?
In such a troubled world, everyone has a ghost in their hearts and chooses to "betray" and gains the most. Choosing "always betray" has become the safest move. They are too intriguing, and they spend day and night in calculations. The success of the strategy depends not only on their own deliberations, but also on the strategies of their opponents-the people are the people, the things are in the sky, and the sense of powerlessness is permeated in the darkness. , This desperate path makes people swallowed by a huge void.
There is no principle, no persistence, no trust, belief, or creed, only survival itself. We no longer have hope in our hearts. Long-term benefits are elusive, and it is worth trying to harvest now. In this state, the word "civilization" is pale and fragile. Where are people going? People have nowhere to go.
In this way, Zhang Yimou cleverly used ink and wash to create an alternative wasteland. In "Shadow", there is no entry and birth as implied by ink and wash, only nothingness and barrenness; Peiguo under the ink and wash has become a large-scale ruined photography art. The moment the governor’s true body fell, he reached an unprecedented unity with the last words of the famous traitor Macbeth:
Life is nothing but a walking shadow, a fool who gesticulates on the stage and quietly retreats in silence for a moment, full of noise and commotion, but can't find any meaning.
(Excerpt from Zhu Shenghao's translation)
"Shadow" also has a "Godfather" ending. Almost all the good qualities of Xiao Ai in the whole film, after witnessing the killing of several close relatives around him, were imprisoned in the palace, opened the door and looked out the door-in front of the bright hall, she had loved The "shadow" who only wanted to find his mother became a traitor like the captain, just like Michael Corleone who accepted the "admiration" of the crowd after completing the Great Purge. Love and home, in this yin and yang picture, are so confused and so insignificant-there is no place for love and home in this hexagram, unless the role of love and home is to become an important pawn to consolidate power.
Stop talking about love, fighting is a serious matter. Let us spend our entire lives pursuing a life of being hurt and insulted, deceived and tortured.
"Shadow" deliberately did not discuss how people's livelihood will be affected after the restoration of Jingzhou-this is already complicated to be unimportant. It is just showing a group of people fighting with each other along the genetic code. Almost all syndicate movies are talking about the same thing: "Fighting with people is full of joy; but when the struggle is over, there is nothingness, and even if it is destroyed, it cannot be reborn." The syndicate has fallen into the technical aesthetic of "struggle"-when When a thing is done well enough, it is indifferent to appreciate it, and forget its original meaning. All the characters are condescending together, obsessed with the graceful posture of their own strategy, hoping to betray more technical content in the next round.
Only when death comes can we escape.
The Governor said in his "Last Words": "I have never seen good mountains and rivers in my life, so you can go and see for me..." Some pastoral and Walden meanings were revealed in this. I am willing to believe that this man with countless lies is at least partly sincere at this moment; but only those who are tired of fighting can realize the true meaning; but that idiot in Jingshu, he has just been released, he will not Understand, so he ran along this road again, re-enacting the road the governor had walked-when will he wake up?
This is also "Shadow"-extremely simple, and extremely difficult, so that I can't help but want to use Le Carré's famous line in "The Potmaker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" as the title: Sometimes, betrayal is not For other things, it is a kind of instinct, instinct, instinct.
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