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The finished product of "Assassin Nie Yinniang" looks more like a compromise product between director Hou Hsiao-hsien and screenwriter Xie Haimeng. How to say this, it gives people the feeling that Teacher Bingshan has read the original book, read the script, and is particularly proficient in the aesthetics of Hou Hsiao-hsien's director. In fact, it is not, it is not like this. Totally guesswork from the film's mise-en-scene and montage strategy.
We see that the character of Nie Yinniang does not drive the narrative, she occupies a time and space all by herself. That is to say, the rebellion and the palace fight between Zhang Zhen and Zhou Yun became a closed narrative without relying on Nie Yinniang. Yin Niang's decision to stand alone is the director's request, but the director did not want to show it, but adopted a wait-and-see and spying attitude. In this way, the whole film becomes the director's attempt to understand (rather than construct) Nie Yinniang's mental journey.
Some people say that Hou Hsiao-hsien is using this film and the image of Yin Niang to refer to himself. This formulation is a little problematic. The mention of looking in the mirror in the film is not actually the theme of the film, but brought in by the director's unknowing identity. For Hou Hsiao-hsien himself, the film is a mirror of "being born".
Once we figure this out, we can move on to the film's core mise-en-scène strategy—the handling of "off-set" (note not "off-screen").
In each scene, the deliberately continuous ambient sound is not realistic, but to allow the off-field and on-field to proceed separately and to meet at a certain moment. The camera is in an ambiguous position, determined by the director's own hesitation. In Zhang Zhen's first appearance, we meet Nie Yinniang on the roof beam in the next shot, only to know that the previous long shot is actually (possibly) Nie Yinniang's main point of view. Similarly, in the scene where Zhang Zhen and Concubine Ai were chatting on the bed, we saw Nie Yinniang outside the gauze in the next shot, and only then did we know that the previous long shot was actually (possibly) Nie Yinniang's main point of view. This is just the opposite of the introduction of the main perspective lens that we usually see. It is more like a perspective waiting to be captured. That is to say, the director first gives a perspective, and then summons Nie Yinniang outside the venue to claim this perspective, for this Perspective gives the subject. The physical presence of the camera is largely eliminated, which appears to be somewhere between off-field and on-field, but is actually just a vector of centripetal force.
On the other hand, Zhang Zhen, Zhou Yun, and Princess Jia Xin all used their bodies to summon Nie Yinniang outside the arena, but they were all reacted to this force to varying degrees. It is fully present off the field, but must never be summoned. At certain points in Wei Bo's complete story line, Nie Yinniang seems to intervene and change the direction of the story, but in fact, she just picks up the camera, prompting the continued presence outside the scene. The more obvious scene is that Concubine Ai was almost killed by a paper figurine. The camera was originally in the corridor, but after Concubine Ai fell, it suddenly cut to a large panorama far away from the corridor, and then cut back to the long corridor. In the corridor, Nie Yinniang appeared.
It is worth noting that in the middle of the film, after Nie Yinniang rescued a group of people, the screen was diluted to all black. Later we found out that it was in a cave. Nie Yinniang held a torch high and led everyone through the dark cave to her small village house, which was her safe haven. In this space, we unexpectedly got a glimpse (what the director imagined?) off-site, and it was here that Shu Qi took the initiative to express some inner feelings. Here (and at the end of the film), the director seems to have given up his understanding of Nie Yinniang, or, in other words, the director feels that the failure of purely showing the summoning cannot satisfy his inner desire for the mirror of the film; at the same time, the screenwriter tries to make Nie Yinniang stronger. the initiative, the director had to let the screenwriter save himself, so as not to fall into nothingness.
So, Yinniang's final exit, and the cheerful folk music that followed, brought the film into an awkward situation. On the one hand, the director's hard work to create a mirror for himself to look at failed because the director did not insist on keeping the off-site always on the off-site. On the other hand, the screenwriter has set up another image of Qi Qi. She has seen torrential rain in the desert, and seen the sea kissing sharks, but she still wants a better and rounder moon, and she wants unknown madness.
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