"Nanjing! Nanjing! ": The
Composition / Pressing the Road
"Nanjing!" "Nanjing" because of the director's grand ambitions, the film's many advantages and disadvantages coexist amazingly. The film is thought-provoking enough, but also has many shortcomings, but its own creative courage is enough to make it stay in the history of Chinese film. Heavy strokes.
If you come to the cinema to watch this new film directed by Lu Chuan with the mentality of crying a lot and touching yourself, I can only tell you regretfully that you will be very disappointed. "Nanjing! Nanjing! is a rare domestic film that expresses the cruelty and absurdity of war in a rare calm, even ruthless manner. Although there are some warm moments in the film, sitting in front of the screen, you don't feel the blood boiling, and it is difficult for you to snot and tears because of being moved or shocked. You will only feel an invisible depression, The suffocating air waves came from the surface, a steady stream. So, either you can't stand the exit, you can try to ask for a refund on the grounds that it "doesn't meet your expectations"; or you stick to it to the end, but then get caught up in thinking about a question for a long time - what kind of movie is this?
If you want to be entertained, or to be provocative, then go directly to the cinema next door to watch "Wolverine" or "Slumdog Millionaire"; if you want to take the opportunity to show off your inner narrow nation I would like to point at the little Japan and scold him in the theater, so I suggest to dig out the DVD of "Ip Man" and go home and perform as much as you like in your "home theater". But unfortunately, the above "Nanjing! Nanjing! ' are not satisfied.
For a long time, there has been very little domestic film like "Nanjing! Nanjing! "This will make the audience think a lot - about the creation of the film itself, but also about the outside of the film. Perhaps the most controversial part of this film is that the film spends a lot of time describing the role of the Japanese army in the massacre, and shows a large number of daily life situations and details in the massacre of the Japanese army from the "Japanese army's perspective", which is obviously beyond the domestic audience in the past few years. Ten years of movie viewing experience.
Although it is very common in foreign countries to use this "human nature perspective" to shoot movies about war, domestic war movies rarely escape the shackles of the "main theme movie" ideology. Everyone has human nature, and the "enemy" is also human, so the "enemy" also has human nature - these syllogisms seem reasonable and smooth, but domestic war films that truly express the human nature of the "enemy" are extremely rare, let alone in the "enemy". In domestic films with the theme of "Nanjing Massacre", the human nature of the "enemy" is directly used as the main perspective and narrative line of the whole film. So far, it is estimated that only "Nanjing!" Nanjing! "This one.
The "Japanese army's perspective" is actually the "humanity perspective", a universally applicable film art creation technique, which has encountered embarrassment for decades in China, "Nanjing! Nanjing! "The "humanity perspective" has become a bold innovation in Chinese film creation. This time Lu Chuan seems to play the child in the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes". He told the audience the story of the "Nanjing Massacre", which is actually possible. speaking.
From the perspective of Chinese film creation and development alone, this time Lu Chuan has really taken a brave and bold step forward. But to say that this step is just right, is it too far ahead? Time will give the final answer. Therefore, no matter how controversial this film is in the end, I think the respect and dedication to the film creation itself and the courage to innovate that this film reflects are all worthy of respect and should be affirmed.
"Nanjing! Nanjing! "proves that filmmaking is so wonderful, because so many amazing strengths and so many surprising flaws are shockingly opposed, coexisted, and sometimes intertwined, in the end to be such a thought-provoking and fraught film. sorry movie. The advantages of the film, in addition to the candid attitude of daring to be the first, as mentioned above, the overall production level is quite superb, the overall art style is outstanding, and the historical texture is strong, especially the photography of the film is world-class. The film is full of brilliant shot scheduling (the death of Secretary Tang), magical moving long shots (the dreamy subjective shot of Lu Jianxiong's death), and breathtaking continuous close-ups...
From a technical point of view, "Nanjing! Nanjing! "Absolutely reached the level of mainstream Hollywood productions. And such a film costing nearly 100 million yuan, from the director Lu Chuan, to the director of photography Cao Yu, and the art director are a group of young filmmakers. They are more energetic and vigorous than the fifth and sixth generation filmmakers, and They prove their production ability with the quality of their work. So if we say from "Nanjing! Nanjing! "It is no exaggeration to see the rise and hope of China's film technology production in the future.
Ambition! This is "Nanjing! The root source of so many flaws and regrets in Nanjing.
Maybe the director wants to shoot a master work that surpasses all previous war movies, or maybe the director wants to present a brand new audio-visual experience to the audience. In the end, from the perspective of the movie itself, some things have been achieved, but it has also paid a considerable amount of money.” cost". The biggest regret of the film is the symbolized characters and broken narrative, which cannot be covered up by how many wonderful real scenes and poetic passages.
The Japanese Kadokawa is one of the important characters in the film, but although it took a lot of space, the role of Kadokawa is still vague. Instead, Mr. Tang, Rabe's secretary, has become the most complete and full-bodied character in the film. At first, Lu Jianxiong, who organized the resistance, could easily make the audience mistake him for the protagonist, but he died just one third of the film. The film needs a good reason to explain to the audience why less than half of the film with star actors playing important roles is gone? The video doesn't give an adequate answer. All other characters are either symbolized or flattened, although some characters have distinctive characteristics, such as the prostitute Xiao Jiang, or the Japanese Ita, because of the limited space, unfortunately only a few strokes.
It may be because the film has too much information to convey, but because of the strong director and author stylization of the film as a whole, the film deliberately weakens the story and focuses more on the inner portrayal of the characters. This makes the film full of freehand and poetic state paragraphs, and some important information and plots of the film story have no space to convey to the audience.
But because of "Nanjing! Nanjing! ” is not intended to be a film that follows the mainstream narrative rules from the very beginning, so there is no traditional feature film narrative in the film, which does not apply here. The film directly connects events one by one, and cooperates with the director to guide the audience to think about the film. The most important question to ask is the relationship between the slaughtered and the slaughtered in war.
Another regrettable and helpless problem is that the "humanity perspective" is "Nanjing! Nanjing! " is the most valuable, but it can actually be said to be one of the failures, because it has not been done more thoroughly and deeply, which makes the film's narrative perspective constantly change, wander, and even chaotic.
"Nanjing!" can now be understood Nanjing! "In fact, it can be said that it is a literary and artistic ethics film that reflects on the relationship between people in the war and massacre. "Nanjing Massacre" is only the background of the topic to be discussed in the film, not the topic itself. "Nanjing! Nanjing! ” did not intend to assume the responsibility of fully explaining the tragic ins and outs of the “Nanjing Massacre” to the audience. For example, the film did not answer why the Kuomintang retreated from Nanjing, nor did it show how the Japanese army carefully planned the massacre and tried to make it invade China. How important is the strategic significance of the war, etc., these are all things that this film cannot answer.
Of course, no one has stipulated that to make a film about the "Nanjing Massacre", it is necessary to answer these questions. Therefore, Lu Chuan's film is just an attempt to answer a series of questions raised by him in his own way in the tragedy of "Nanjing Massacre". That's why I repeatedly reminded the audience not to have wrong expectations at the beginning of the article, because Lu Chuan never intended to make this film a popular melodrama.
The intention of setting English postcards throughout the whole film is obviously to further enhance the "poetic" of the film, which is a good idea, but due to the lack of consideration in details, the effect is not obvious.
Because the Chinese subtitles that appear every time the English postscript is broken, the time for each subtitle to appear is very short. At the same time, because of the large amount of content and small subtitles, the use of special fonts is not easy to identify, and it is still in vertical layout, so I estimate that in the theater, except for the former There are not many viewers who can see all the Chinese subtitles in time. What's more, the subtitle before Rabe's parting finally contained important information in the subsequent plot - the other assistant of Rabe that Secretary Tang finally exchanged for his life was not a real assistant, but a military doctor! If the audience does not have the previous subtitle prompt, then the significance of Secretary Tang's self-sacrifice will not only be greatly reduced, but may also have an inexplicable feeling.
Because of ambition, "Nanjing! Nanjing! "Gives the audience a brand new movie viewing experience. It turns out that "Nanjing Massacre" can still be shot like this; also because of ambition, the film director's style is too strong, resulting in a lack of a balanced overall sense of the film, and there are many shortcomings.
In some ways, this lack may not be a bad thing, after all, this movie shows the huge potential of this group of filmmakers, which will only make audiences look forward to their next film even more. For such a controversial film, I personally think it is appropriate and not ahead of its time. I even think that this black-and-white film will be supported and recognized by the majority of the audience amid the controversy. On the one hand, the talent and charm that this film exudes cannot be ignored. With their own strength, Chinese people need to gradually build up a kind of cultural self-confidence.
Treat "Nanjing! Nanjing! "The courage to explore and innovate should dare to support and affirm, but also criticize and suggest frankly for the shortcomings and deficiencies.
I hope that both the media and the audience can maintain a healthy attitude when reviewing this film directed by Lu Chuan, that is - encouragement, tolerance, prudence, and self-awareness.
09-4-22 On the release day
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