Affected by the global epidemic, the Cannes Film Festival was forced to close, and the appointment of Spike Lee as the chairman of the Cannes Jury was postponed to 2021; but this did not affect Spike Lee's continued active public view.
Whether it is a short film documenting New York under the epidemic or the voice of the "Floyd" incident in the United States, the 63-year-old Spike Lee has shown a kind of rare enthusiasm of "young people", and we may be able to In other words, Spike Lee is exactly the kind of director who will never be afraid of "saying the wrong thing."
And Spike Lee is no stranger to the majority of movie fans, whether it is the award-winning but controversial "Black Party" in 2018, or the genius work "Do What It Should Be" when he was only 32 years old. ", all left interesting screen memories for movie fans.
It can be said that Spike Lee has slowly stepped into the current mainstream Hollywood from the "rebellious kid" of the year, relying on his radical and bold creative attitude and meticulous depiction of the black community. In today's film creation environment that is riddled by the epidemic, he still brings his new work "Blood Five" to the audience, which has more or less inspired the global film industry.
But in any case, the movie itself is the most important thing. There is still a big gap between "Blood Five" and the masterpieces of Spike Lee's own creative career. Although the film still portrays a profound portrait of black characters and traces the Vietnam War in a media-reflexive form, it fails to combine the two organically and feeds back the expression, and it also stumbles on the "anti-genre" narrative.
The story of the film "Blood Oath Five" mainly takes place in Vietnam. Four black Vietnam War veterans return to Vietnam after a lapse of forty-five years. However, the originally pleasant journey of seeking gold encountered unexpected obstacles.
From the perspective of the story, "The Bloodsworn Five" is still Spike Lee’s best set in recent years: "Observe the lives of a certain group of people, and let them play in a traditional genre story. Juggling to achieve a certain degree of irony.” And often the construction of the group portrait of the characters is also achieved in these daily or jokes.
In the first few paragraphs of the film "Blood Five", Spike Lee continued his tradition of using vivid black social life scenes as the order. Like "Black Party members", he gave the black community an intuitive right from the beginning. The commonality, followed by the arrangement of four protagonists to sit and chat together, the four main characters are also given individuality one by one from this scene.
At the very beginning of the dialogue, Spike Lee asked the characters to quickly throw up the topic on the life level: "About Melvin's 18-year-old son." However, in a few simple conversations, the opening of the chapter showed "intimacy". The four-person relationship of "Wu Jian" has revealed their differences.
Bauer looked at the photo, but then asked Melvin if he had a gun, which undoubtedly laid out Bauer's activism ingeniously. Later, the emergence of disabled Vietnamese children and small talks about Trump’s policies, while clarifying Bauer’s activism tendencies, also divided the other main character, Eddie, as the opposite of Bauer, and buried the characters. Seeds of disagreement.
But after that, the film suddenly changed its aspect ratio and became a film shot. At the same time, the classic soundtrack "The Ride of the Valkyrie" from "Apocalypse Now" sounded even more. The main story is temporarily suspended, and what is inserted is the memory of the five-man battle in Vietnam that year.
In fact, this seemingly obtrusive approach is precisely the moment of "joking" that Spike Lee deliberately designed. Interrogate the genre narrative in the middle, and take out an independent time to present the "historical images" closely related to the main character groups (here can be understood as the historical images reproduced by Spike Lee himself), which is deepened by the escape from the media The audience's perception of group portraits.
And because of its clear content, this section of "Blood-sworn Five" undoubtedly echoes the historical image at the beginning of the film, thus directly leading to the issue of the Vietnam War. In a sense, this video still belongs to the life of the main character black group, and it shows the commonness of the main character group's memory of the Vietnam War.
Obviously, in addition to commonalities, a complete set of group portraits needs to be different. And Spike Lee's "tool" for gradually establishing an identity counterpoint within the four-person group in "Blood Five" is obviously Bauer. In the middle and later part of the film, Spike Lee treated Bauer as the protagonist, and it could even be said that Bauer became the "citizen Kane" in the film.
During the journey of searching for gold, Bauer's radical attitude and weird words and deeds caused him to constantly collide with the outside world (here the outside world refers to groups other than the black group), and in turn caused trouble for the master group. The contradiction between the main character groups is also unfolding from the attitudes of other people towards the "crazy" Bauer.
Melvin and Otis apparently maintained a neutral attitude. In the face of Bauer, on the one hand, they opposed and even clashed; on the other hand, they still attached importance to the feelings of their comrades-in-arms and compatriots and showed concern for Bauer.
And Eddie is on the opposite of Bauer, just as the bar chatting scene paving the way shortly after the film began, Eddie obviously maintained his gentle style. But interestingly, it does not mean that Eddie and Bauer will frequently conflict. On the contrary, Eddie was the one who had the least conflict with Bauer, and he did not directly participate in the disputes of the other three most of the time.
More ingeniously, Spike Lee let the character carry a film camera, and briefly inserted the perspective of the Eddie camera from time to time in the course of the story. The significant difference in the media means that this character is isolated from the group and is constantly examining this group relationship with his own unique perspective.
It can be said that Eddie is actually a bystander who stands on the opposite side of Bauer and is far away from Melvin and Odys, and because of the uniqueness of his medium, this character examines the face of Vietnam from the perspective of "retro", and also assumes Retrace the duty of war to the audience. As a result, an identical but three-dimensional and hierarchical relationship framework is constructed between the main characters.
After the framework is established, adding a core to the group portrait obviously requires more expression on the director's level. In "Blood-sworn Five", Bauhan Norman, who is always "absent", is the soul of this group of black people in the film.
At the video level, Spike Lee has repeatedly used obvious lighting, props and even religious appearances to deify Norman’s character; at the same time, at the narrative level, the role of Norman has also been set as the event’s role. One of the important motives; finally, to return to the relationship itself, Norman also plays a certain role in maintaining the "multi-layer" relationship of the main characters.
Through the interweaving of memory fragments and historical images, Norman has thus become the embodiment of the perfect black spirit in the film. He is defined by Spike Lee as a collection of Malcolm and Martin Luther King, who maintains an appropriate balance between violence and "love and peace."
He also used the perfect spirit symbolized by Norman as a reference, and he divided multiple factions within the group portraits of the main characters. Perhaps, Spike Lee just wanted to use dialectical thinking on the spirit of perfection in the other films to find the best solution for black equal rights that can be put into practice.
But the most important thing about Norman's role is to contrast the two extremes of Eddie and Bauer. These are two allegorical "joking" segments, and Eddie, as a "peace medium" retrospective of the war, was violently killed by the legacy of the Vietnam War.
The death of the media undoubtedly represents a reflection of the failure of the war from the perspective of "complete peace". But after a period of Eden-like experience, Ball was finally revealed his crazy "rose bud". His radical and weirdness is ultimately due to his gentleness and sensibility in the war.
This contrast is undoubtedly a great irony of the Vietnam War, and Norman's long-term thinking on the relationship between the Vietnam War and black equal rights in the film is clearly the attitude that Spike Lee wants to respect when facing this issue. The role of Bauer's son and Norman's counterpoint in the "five" seems to have confirmed this. As the young future of black people, Spike Lee seems to expect them to have the spirit of Norman.
Although the film "Blood Five" portrays clear-cut portraits of black people to describe the issue of equal rights, and uses a lot of media to retrospect the Vietnam War to review the war, the two eventually appeared to be independent, and they were not combined to make the expression better. Take a step up.
As mentioned above, the key to Spike Lee’s combination of the two issues is the character of Bauer, but he chose to save Bauer’s "rose bud" until the end of the film to be revealed. In fact, there is something wrong. Proper. Combining the previous Bauer's "shining" constant madness and constant accidents, the film as a whole looks too dramatic.
The film information in the first two hours all pointed the source of Bauer’s bizarre behavior to his extreme desire for gold, but in the last half an hour, he suddenly revealed an unprepared reversal that brought Bauer to the character. The motivation for acting in the whole film is forcibly reversed, which is actually too far-fetched for the audience.
More importantly, it affected the clear positioning of Bauer. With such a turbulent reversal, it is actually difficult for the audience to involve too much relationship between Bauer's tragedy and the equal rights of black people and the trauma of war. Under such a strong emotional impact, it seems more like Bauer’s guilt and self-blame for manslaughter of friends, and this must not be what Spike Lee, who has always been keen on pursuing condemnation of real problems, ultimately wants to express. .
At the same time, in the process of shaping Bauer and Eddie's counter-characters, Spike Lee's considerations were not rigorous. The distance between the bystander Eddie and several other main characters is too far, and even almost completely absent in the key bar scene in the middle, which has caused a clear disconnect between Eddie and the main narrative. It is completely reduced to a media perspective.
And Eddie died in a hurry shortly after revealing the bankruptcy facts, making this transition meaningless, and at the same time completely wasting Eddie, a character who could have stood on the opposite of Bauer and made depth. And the weirdness of this character Bauer also seemed a bit too much. Whether facing whites, Mexican immigrants, yellow races or even his black compatriots, he more or less showed maliciousness, but he did not see how much he has feelings for the black community itself.
In a sense, Bauer is more like being portrayed as an antisocial model, used to graft the irony of Trump and "MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN". Excessive "playfulness" obviously weakened the close connection between this character and the issue of black equality.
Another problem is Spike Lee’s over-reliance on the media and his “anti-type” strategy. As the "Blood-swearing Five" nested with classic gold rush stories, Spike Lee chose to intersperse some historical images or memories of the five-man Vietnam War from time to time during the course of the main line narrative.
In the first and middle part of the film, this design has indeed achieved the role of "anti-genre" in the narrative and strengthened the theme to promote the advancement of the plot; but in the second half of the film, the main line of narrative has a major turning point when it comes to the climax of the plot. In the process, I still switch to historical images and memories without interruption.
However, since a large number of memories and historical images have appeared in the first half, the content of these historical images and memories that have reappeared is the same as the ones that appeared before. This not only did not combine with the main line to increase the depth of expression, but indirectly interrupted the narrative rhythm of the climax part of the main line, making the main line seem unusually messy and procrastinated as a whole, and the two-and-a-half-hour film length is not proportional to the actual content thickness.
As for the failure of the "anti-genre" narrative in "Bloodfighting Five", it can actually be seen in comparison with the previous work "Black Gangster". The "Blood Five" and "Black Gangsters" are the same. Under the main narrative of the genre frame, daily and historical images are mixed to weaken the plot and serve the director's personal opinion expression.
But the difference is that every day-to-day and dialogue that seems to be out of touch with the mainline narrative is actually related to the front and back of the mainline narrative or the relationship between the characters, and the same is true for the use of historical images.
In the film "Black Party Members", the parallel montage of the 3K Party collectively watching "The Birth of a Nation" that left a deep impression on the audience, in addition to completing the director's personal political satire, it is still connected with the main line narrative; Even the photographic techniques of the two time and space are also related to each other.
As a result, the use of images and the addition of daily plots in "Black Party Members" help the film break away from the rigid genre narrative framework, without breaking the main line. Moreover, these "extra" images, daily and mainline narratives have also built a bridge around the same social issue.
Spike Lee practiced similar ideas in "Blood Oath Five", but did not achieve the harmony of "Black Party Members". Large sections of "private goods" dialogues and historical video data with a high repetition rate, coupled with the excessive switching between scenes in the editing, make the narrative of the whole film loose and lengthy.
Conversely, the "extra content" originally designed for joking and irony has also become full of preaching because of the boring main line. The film is two and a half hours long, but the final refinement of the director’s personal expression mostly comes from three short breaks of the "fourth wall" in the latter half of the period, but the "anti-type" designed by his painstaking effort On the contrary, it means useless work.
It can be said that the international success of "Black Party Member" undoubtedly gave Spike Lee a lot of confidence to continue to carry forward his genre narrative + ironic discussion style. Combining with the drastic changes currently taking place in the United States, Spike Lee may also want to use this "Blood-worn Five" to comment on current affairs and support his compatriots. But the excessive desire for expression has ultimately reduced the quality of the film.
After "Blood Five", Spike Lee may need to find a better balance between avant-garde creative consciousness and the audience's movie-watching experience. Although "Blood Oath Five" is not so successful, Spike Lee's solidarity with the times has clearly been conveyed in place.
At the end, the North Vietnamese female announcer broke the "fourth wall" and blurted out the phrase "good luck". Perhaps it was Spike Lee who would like to dedicate to the streets and lanes of the United States that still persist in the United States for the rights of black people. The blessings of the broad masses of compatriots who waved the flag and shouted.
Author | Huang Moyu; Official Account | Seeing Death in Movies
Edit | Riding a Rooftop Boy; please indicate the source for reprinting
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