We have no reason to oppose the movement of cameras. What needs to be blamed here is only a vulgar treatment. According to the spatial pattern of the film, a continuous motion shot walking on the edge of the city wall seems necessary, and the processing of these shots seems quite difficult. However, what the film ultimately proves is that these motion shots cannot arouse our interest, and what it shows is nothing more than an army of distinct colors and the name of a beast. The highly formalized group gymnastics performance was shown to two captured mercenaries (their conversation was full of praises such as Incredible China), and people usually regarded it as an ideological treatment to promote national power. This seems to have become the ideological imprint of Zhang Yimou's film. However, the nature of the film is anarchism. It is unfair for Zhang Yimou to blindly ideologicalize it. An open form is always what he wants to avoid, and the overtones hidden under the form are what he wants. of.
The overtones here are pornography, an absolute pornography. The Great Wall as a battlefield has constructed an excellent pornographic scene, and groups of gluttonous gluttons provide the necessary support for the realization of this pornography as an illusion. When those long hairs, flying spears, and hooks frequently pierce the body of the gluttonous, Zhang Yimou presents a group of pornographic performances. This is different from the battle where you stabbed me and I stabbed you on the battlefield, but people stood on the Great Wall. The safe haven casts the spear out. That is to say, they use pornography in a safe position. This is a typical form of voyeurism. If we examine every film of Zhang Yimou’s past, this voyeurism is the unshakable foundation, and it is also his The subject matter and type itself. In a scene in "The Great Wall", the arrow shot by Peng Yuyan flies in the air, using slow motion processing, just like bullet time, it accurately demonstrates this voyeurism, and then it is heavily shot into the gluttonous body. This scene is so explicit and vulgar, it makes the form of pornography only a kind of sensory appetite, in other words, it is a cheap form of pornography.
The relationship between William and Lin Mei constitutes the opposite of pornography, and the two can talk in English, which is equivalent to constructing a private language. The dialogue between them is the driving force for the advancement of the film’s plot. We need to pay attention to William’s wonderful performance during the first gluttonous attack. This is not so much a demonstration of the technical and tactical qualities of the Europeans, as it is a hidden desire for sex. In the crowded hall, he once again gave a wonderful performance. Under Lin Mei’s agitation, he sent three arrows in a row to fix the bowl on the pillar. This was a flattering and selfish performance. The potential audience was Lin Mei alone, which means that the ultimate lustful object—as A killer, assassin, desperado, a great pleasure is to conquer the queen of a foreign land, and Lin Mei, as the army commander in the near future, meets this standard. William’s role is like the leader of the second son group in A Song of Ice and Fire. He can choose to submit to the queen’s pomegranate skirt, or he can choose to maintain a delicately balanced and independent relationship. Only the latter option can make him the protagonist. .
The pornography of Lin Mei constitutes a sequence of actions of the characters, first of which is a kind of technical pleasing (showing a clever arrow technique), and then proving one's courage. We can see William’s second adventure, which is to fly down the city wall along the flying lock. This action conforms to the spirit of desperadoes and is also the second test of pornography. After successfully returning to the Great Wall, Zhang Yimou used an incredible lens to show that Lin Mei's gaze looking at William's naked back was like a reward. If the director uses such a lens, I think he should have a description of its purpose (you can refer to the lens in "Nie Yinniang" where the mirror-grinding teenager sees seven naked backs, Hou Xiaoxian shows that this is a process of applying medicine), otherwise it is Erotic and erotic. Here, this line of sight has become a kind of erotic and tacit understanding of each other, which prompted William's third adventure.
At this time, Ballard (William Dafoe), who was fleeing in a hurry, said to Toval, "As long as there is money, what woman can't play?" In daily experience, this is equivalent to pornographic common sense. But William obviously wanted to reject such pornography. The third adventure proved the sense of form that pornography can achieve—the hot air balloons that rose in the air filled the visible space with pornography. In this shot, we see the significance of Zhang Yimou’s command of the battle. This is a ritualized pornography. Its highest performance is to use all available manpower, material resources, props, environment, and visual forms, but it is always a quantification. Pornography (the endless "new breastism" in "Golden Armor" is a typical example of pornography quantification). Pornography in the true sense is actually manifested in the scene where Andy Lau played Wang Junshi blew himself up and the camera peeped at the spiral staircase from the top of the tower. Here, it is not difficult for us to think of Hitchcock's "Victoria". Intuition tells us that Zhang Yimou has the intention of paying tribute here, but he did not use the signature sliding zoom (Dolly-Zoom), because the colorful colors themselves have constituted a "vortex" of eroticism and desire, which seems to be possible. The colorful vortex that swallowed the hero and heroine. To be sure, the color expression that Zhang Yimou likes is pornographic. From "Red Sorghum" to "The Big Red Lantern" to "Hero", the ubiquitous red is a symbol of pornography burning, and it is also a kind of The most superficial symbol. In "The Great Wall" we see the dazzling blue (blue is a pornographic symbol in Western culture, and Blue film refers to pornographic movies), and the bright blue armor like tights keeps the female soldiers from the masses. It is highlighted in the middle, with the light rope acrobatics-like body movements, it constitutes an erotic and seductive scene. In the war, they seem to be gluttonous bait. The camera captures the scenes of these women being bitten and torn apart with great interest. Pornography is expressed by a sickly and fanatical sadistic/masochistic pleasure. Here, the blood-stained steel rings that were taken back to the city wall prove that André Bazin’s “death is equal to sexual pleasure” is not unreasonable.
On this lonely tower, between the lonely man and the beast approaching below, between desire and death, constitute the tension of the erotic whirlpool. At the same time, the scene of gluttonous feeding outside the tower also formed a "vortex". William still shot three arrows on the tower, but all three arrows failed. This is a technical failure and a failure of technical pornography. It proves that a simple repetition is vulgar and can no longer be effective. However, pornography still has the possibility of self-saving here, that is, "trust". We can recall the scene when William first boarded the high-altitude platform. At that time, he chose to refuse. The reason for the refusal was "I only believe in myself." . However, at the last critical moment of the film, he accepted this trust. Unlike Lin Mei's "trust is our flag", the subtext here is actually "trust is eroticism". In other words, "trust" is the essence of the actor's third adventure, a kind of pornography tacitly leads to the climax of dizziness. Their final action to kill the Beastmaster was done with a rope exercise on the Great Wall. We can see their trajectory-a rotation around the tower. The world is changing, and the men and women are also changing. The hell scenes of life and death are just a continuation of the images of desire they created. After this pornographic "trust" was confirmed, the Beastmaster was wiped out, and all the beasts that climbed the tower became lifeless dolls. The illusion is over, and pornography returns to reality.
The gluttons in the film are pornographic things. God made them to punish human greed, and pornography is a direct test of greed. When the flower gun finally shot at the Beastmaster, William also shot the arrow of desire at Lin Mei, and this violation was also eagerly recognized and responded by the latter. Is porn complete here? At the end of Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element", pornography ends in a sex scene. However, for Zhang Yimou’s pornographic world, this is far from enough. George Bataille once said, “The highest form of pornography is indifference.” Zhang Yimou must choose to let William leave at this time. Only in this way, pornography can To be preserved and stretched. He has conquered a queen, a country, it is enough.
The film ends in the sight of two people parting, trying to make pornography become poetic, but the actual effect is very vulgar, because it is empty, with a kind of idol drama-like joy, is one of the film's most tragic flaws. If Zhang Yimou chooses to change Jing Tian back to women's clothing, and hold a grand farewell ceremony (even if it is very bloody), it will be relatively more able to reflect the meaning of the film's pornography-Mulan-style pornography has this power. After all, we have seen Zhang Yimou’s extreme expression of pornography. When Christian Bell played the role of priest, he used the hands of the enchanter to rejuvenate prostitutes back to innocence. We have also seen Zhang Yimou’s highest form of pornography. It was the scene of the truck driving the prostitutes away, in the flying dust, it appeared as Thad's indifference. In "The Great Wall", although we saw the erotic structure, we failed to witness such a distorted indifference.
First published in Sohu Movies
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