First published on "Entertainment"
After passing five levels and beheading six generals, "Eight Hundred" is finally officially released.
The idea of making this film has been haunting director Guan Hu's mind for many years. It started in 2017, finished in 2018, and withdrawn in 2019. Then this year, the most special year of the Chinese film market, it became a sustenance. The industry's highly anticipated "rescue work".
Inside and outside the play, these 800 warriors are all ill-fated. The attitude of public opinion towards history, Schrödinger's schedule, the strict new regulations on issuance and keys, are like cold guns waiting around, and a few bullets fly unexpectedly.
These peripheral factors aside, today we return to the film itself:
Is "Eight Hundred" an excellent war movie?
The new version of "Eight Hundred" has words like "The story originates from real historical events" at the beginning and end of the film. But of course, war films are not video materials, and there must be a lot of artistic processing elements.
So far, there have been three films devoted to the Eight Hundred Heroes, the 1938 version, the 1975 version and this year's new version, all starring the popular stars of that year. The same stories, born in different times and environments, naturally convey different perspectives and shoulder their respective missions.
The story of the Eight Hundred Heroes is indeed very suitable for film and television——
There is a clear time to fight for the front: Chairman Jiang ordered to hold on until October 30, the day the League of Nations met in Brussels; and the Japanese army promised to use all means to take the four-line warehouse within three days;
There is a special specific location: the Sihang Warehouse. Because it is the warehouse of the four major banks, it has strong walls and thick walls, with grain and grass inside, and it is also close to the concession. With the warehouse as the boundary, it is half hell and half heaven;
There is a disparity between the enemy and us: the millions of troops of the National Army have been defeated in the Battle of Songhu. Chiang Kai-shek ordered the 88th Division to stay behind in Shanghai, but the "flying general" Sun Yuanliang was as timid as a mouse, and he took the lead in running away, taking Xie Jin. Yuan's group of 400 people stayed. In order to boost morale, Xie Jinyuan claimed that there were 800 people.
What is the composition of these 400 people? They were basically recruits and newly recruited skirmishers from all over the country. Even Xie Jinyuan was originally from Cai Tingkai, not the orthodox national army. This regiment is a "motif army" destined to be abandoned.
The most joking point is that the essence of this battle is a performance battle. Chiang Kai-shek intends to sacrifice the lives of 800 heroes to play a political game to win international support. The people on the south bank were watching by the river, and the news agencies of various countries on the airship were watching from the sky. In today's words, the war was "live broadcast" by the whole world synchronously.
Because they were afraid that heavy artillery would ignite the gas tank and accidentally injure the south bank, the Japanese army used all means other than heavy artillery: tanks, infantry phalanxes, excavators, death squads, cold guns, and plane shootings... The insidious tactics continued. The national army is traps, rifles, grenades, human bombs, and finally even the housekeeping skills of the village tomb robbers.
To say it was tragic, the Eight Hundred Heroes in the Anti-Japanese War was not so tragic, and there were some battles where the casualties were even more horrific. Someone asked how many people sacrificed in the first half of the movie "Eight Hundred", how come there seem to be hundreds of troops when they finally crossed the bridge?
According to records, among the 800 warriors, not many died under the guns of the Japanese army, about a dozen. The casualties of the Japanese army have always been a mystery. The national army reported that one or two hundred people were killed, while the Japanese army claimed that only one soldier died.
So why did this battle become a model in the history books? The first is that Xie Jinyuan has a good command. It was originally thought that it would be good to hold on for a day, but the soldiers did not eat or sleep, and they endured four days and four nights abruptly;
The second and most important point is that this battle played a national integrity. All the soldiers wrote their suicide notes and were ready to die. They called the Sixing Warehouse "our tomb". Makes blood boil.
One of the most daring things was to raise the national flag sent by Girl Scout Yang Huimin at his death in the hail of bullets. The background of the film is explained through the perspective of Professor Zhang's telescope. At that time, there was no blue sky and white sun flag in Shanghai. It was all the rising sun flag of the Japanese army. This flag rising in the center of the battlefield greatly inspired people.
Dramatic, legendary, and historically reflective, this battle is immortalized. The deeds of the Eight Hundred Heroes were hailed by Chairman Mao as a "model of national revolution" and recognized by Chiang Kai-shek as "loyal to the sun". They were highly recognized by both parties, showing a simplicity that transcended parties, military affiliations, classes and groups. Patriotism , which is why we still affirm it today.
War films are a special kind of film, if not for ideological output and political propaganda, then history should be considered.
War movies since the founding of the People’s Republic of China are basically divided into two major themes, one is the victory of the war, the other is the heroic deeds, and the basic mission is the mission.
The Soviet Union has "Forty-first" and "Flying Wild Goose", and the United States has "Apocalypse Now" and "The Deer Hunter", which have turned to the direction of humanitarian complaints of war disasters. "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "General Patton" all express the author's attitude towards war by depicting flesh-and-blood characters rather than merely rendering war scenes.
When the domestic film reached "Assembly", a watershed began to appear. The first half of the movie still talks about war, but nearly half of the second half is used to talk about how Gu Zidi "discussed" for his dead comrades in arms.
The precious thing about "Eight Hundred" is that it restores the grand narrative to each specific, vivid, and not-so-perfect person, showing the real and complex human nature.
As a film of more than two hours, "Eight Hundred" rarely depicts so many characters and switches so many perspectives, covering soldiers and soldiers with different ideas, as well as all kinds of spectators on the other side representing the three religions and nine classes of society at that time. With so many characters, the movie tries to make every character, regardless of size, have a growth arc , such as—
Daozi refused to open the door at first, preventing Yang Huimin from entering the door to hide from the poisonous gas, but later he took the initiative to sign up to "race" with the bullet;
Sister Rong is the mother of a martyr. At first, she asked Daozi to "take care of your casino", and then she volunteered to donate the national flag and morphine;
Mrs. Zhang, played by Liang Jing, was still quarreling with the leaking water at the beginning of the Japanese army's attack, and urged her husband not to "watch the fun" on the balcony. Later, she acquiesced to her husband to take out a gun and shoot at the deceiving Japanese soldiers. ;
As soon as reporter Fang appeared on the stage, he looked like a traitor. Western reporters asked curiously, "This war doesn't seem to have anything to do with you." In the end, he also put on a military uniform and stayed with the soldiers until the end before withdrawing.
Jiang Wuyan's old iron has always been a "melon counselor", hiding in sacks as soon as he fought, and in the last scene, he sang "The first drum is played, and the rice is made; the second drum, the tight shirt; the third Drums, swords unsheathed; four-way drums, hand in soldiers", strutting toward the battlefield;
Xiaohubei witnessed his brothers leave one by one. At the age of 13, he became calm and calm, regarded death as home, drinking wine and saying "I'm not afraid", and finally gave up the chance to survive and firmly chose to stay with the death squad until the end;
So, what exactly did Guan Hu talk about through the group play of "Eight Hundred"? It's about "awakening".
The story of the Eight Hundred Heroes is an awakening legend. This is the core value of "Eight Hundred" as a war film, and it is a unique historical proposition in China. The Chinese have stood up in solidarity. If their own people don't fight in their own nests, no one can bully and bully them.
This proposition is still out of date.
Many historians believe that the Anti-Japanese War was the first time that China formed a sense of community that transcended regions and began to have the concept of a "nation-state" .
What does that mean? In the past, the common people did not have the feelings of family and country and the concept of "Chinese nation" - the city head changes the king's flag, whoever comes to power has nothing to do with me, and it has nothing to do with me in the northeast China; the devils entered the village, no one resisted and surrendered directly , after all, life is the most important thing, full of feudal peasant thinking. As a melon-eating crowd on the other side of the river said at the beginning of "Eight Hundreds", "It's good for us to do a little business all day long."
Xie Jinyuan says:
Some scholars have made statistics. By the end of 1919, the probability of the word "Chinese nation" appearing in the "Declaration" was less than 4 times a year on average; and in 1938 after the July 7th Incident, the word increased to 183 a year. , reached 372 in 1939.
Therefore, the transformation of a character in "Eight Hundred" and the crowd's shouting "Long Live the Chinese Nation!" after the national flag was raised are all condensed refinements of the emotions of the times.
The feat of Xie Jinyuan's regiment at least awakened the spectators on the South Bank and aroused the patriotic enthusiasm of the masses. In their retreat, they tried to retain part of the revolutionary fire, hoping to pass it on in the future. "Eight Hundred" depicts such a desperate but hopeful stage.
Unfortunately, what happened to the eight hundred warriors after crossing the bridge is another tragic story.
Historians believe that the violent acts of the Japanese army during the Anti-Japanese War had a huge catalytic effect on the growth and formation of the Chinese national spirit; the resistance efforts of the Chinese government, especially the CCP behind enemy lines, ultimately ensured its lasting existence and development. The spirit of the Eight Hundred Heroes was preserved.
As mentioned above, "Eight Hundred" has broken through the comfort zone of domestic war films in terms of theme and theme. In terms of production and techniques, "Eight Hundred" has also reached the first-class level of domestic commercial films, and has the basic hardware conditions for saving market blockbusters.
The crew dug a "Suzhou River" artificially, and built a building complex with a 1:1 real scene. The total investment in the film is at least 500 million yuan, which burns money visibly to the naked eye.
As the first film in Asia to be shot with ALEXA IMAX cameras, the picture has a lot of fine details and transparent depth, like stray bullets flying under the eyelids, and the back and hand-held lenses with a sense of record and presence are floating. The sky of cannon fodder debris...
Sometimes in one shot, the three groups of characters in the foreground, middle and background show different fates, which satisfies the needs of such an information-intensive film.
Many people have praised the photography of "Eight Hundred". In fact, the sound design of this film is also full and excellent. From the beginning, all film company logos were replaced with a unified background sound;
In the first half of the film, voiceovers are often used to express the collision of different positions. For example, there is a scene where soldiers risk their lives to build fortifications, the Japanese army uses loudspeakers to persuade surrender in Chinese, and the singing of the feasting on the other side is cut together. ; There are also some designs where the sound and picture are out of alignment, such as reporter Fang introducing the situation of the Sixing warehouse to the Japanese commander.
In terms of some detailed designs, the director is not stingy with the author's expression. For example, Guan Hu has always liked to use animal imagery to convey the theme. Like the ostrich running wild at the end of "Old Pao'er", the first scene of "Yao Bai" was filmed with mice and a group of "rats"; the security team arrived Shanghai, the first shot is the crow standing on the skull;
The white horse broke free several times, and was later dedicated to Xie Jinyuan by Xiaohubei. At the end of the battle, although the national army was defeated, the white horse, a symbol of national integrity, stood up from the ruins.
There is also an ingenious echo of the drama and the plot: in the process of the mass awakening of the South Bank, the one-act play of patriotic youths running on the streets to promote is "Put down your whip";
When the battle was deadlocked, the troupe no longer sang "Pick the Pulley", but sang "Changban Slope" with seven in and seven out;
Before the soldiers were determined to die, the Shandong soldier played by Li Chen drew a shadow puppet play curtain, and then sang the play while touching the Chinese territory with his eyes affectionately;
Jiang Wuyan's old iron sang the Huang Zhong aria of "Dingjun Mountain" before his death, expressing that although the veteran was old, he did not lose his feelings of serving the country. people".
Someone compared "Eight Hundred" with some text and video materials. In general, the film respects historical facts, such as the appearance of the Sixing warehouse and the occupied area, and the state of the soldiers, which are bundled with a few bamboo poles and grasses. The flagpole, the behavior of Yang Huimin and some other surrounding characters, etc., it can be seen that the main creator has done a lot of homework.
But if you have to be true to whether "Eight Hundred" has completely restored history, it is definitely not. Any film, feature film or even a documentary, will include the author's expressive intentions and traces of reprocessing of the material. So you can rate a movie as good or bad, but the movie and reality are never the same.
At the end of "Eight Hundred", the audience on the South Bank was enthusiastic, and they all rushed to the dividing line with a hula. The first person opened his palm, the second person clenched his fist, and the third person gave a thumbs up. This is obviously written by the director to enhance the atmosphere. paragraph. To be honest, this ending is a bit too deliberate, it is better to jump directly to the last panning shot of modern Shanghai.
Do you have any regrets in "Eight Hundred"? There are also.
Although Guan Hu's ability to portray group portraits is already good, there are still some parts. What happened to the old abacus in the end? Why did Xie Jinyuan only appear in the second half? There are too many characters in the show. If the audience is blinded again, several actors may be offline before they are recognized.
The most puzzling thing is that near the end, the last "death squad" resistance scene composed of Jiang Wu, Li Chen, Wang Qianyuan, Yu Ailei and others was completely deleted. In last year's old version, the scene where Jiang Wu was drinking and firing a cannon was shocking. I don't know because of the space or what, the ending of this group of people has been "held down".
Similarly, there are end credits introducing the prototype characters of the Eight Hundred Heroes. The duration is compressed and flashes quickly.
The scenes of receiving the flag and raising the flag have also been significantly cut, which has little effect on the plot content, but the change in emotional rendering is very subtle, and some lines are suspected to have been changed.
It's a pity that Ruan Jingtian's role was completely deleted. He plays a Japanese anti-war reporter. The mission of this role is different from the main line of "awakening", which can bring the depth, complexity and thinking of the whole story to a new level. Why just delete him? Whether the audience can accept the existence of such a character is also a matter worth pondering.
Huang Xiaoming said that he originally thought it was a cameo, but the director handed him four pages of lines. He joked that he was scared and almost backed out.
The role of Huang Xiaoming is very important. Guan Hu almost packed all his thoughts and opinions on the whole matter of the Eight Hundred Heroes into these four pages of lines. sublimation--
Behind the war is politics.
Some people think of you as heroes, and some people think of you as fools.
Right and wrong, all can only wait for future generations to comment.
In the ups and downs of 2020, in the turbulent moment, can "Eight Hundred" become a movie that will be recorded in history? What will it bring and what will it end? Can it save the market or wake up the world? Seen in the long river of time.
(He Xiaoqin/Text)
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