Romanticism: Shanghai's past buried by time

I have been looking forward to this movie for many days. It has been quietly lying in the bottom bar of my mobile cinema APP preview since half a year ago. Every time a new film is released and scheduled, the name will inadvertently stir up small ripples in my eyes. It is this tiny immortal light that has always been in my movie viewing plan, and after I recently gave up the new films of Xiaogang Feng and Zhang Yimou, I chose Cheng Er with great expectation-this film is neither famous nor harmonious.

Through the foggy winter in Beijing, I walked into the cinema in fear and trembling, sat down, shut out all the floating shadows of secular life at the moment when the lights dimmed, and sat quietly with my heart for 125 minutes. It's like an adventure and gambling. Judging by feeling or reason, you bet your time and sincerity, expecting an unexpected or unexpected surprise or waste.

Fortunately. Not bad. The film did not bring disappointment.

The cold tone, the restraint of silent characters' dialogue, and Uncle Ge sitting in that costume are an era, an old Shanghai gangster, Mr. Lu. The charm of old dramas even flows in the rivers and lakes, which are surrounded by dangerous strangeness and uneasiness. A pair of beautiful women's hands wearing jade bracelets, the remnants of which are solidified with dark blood, are quietly placed on the coffee table in exquisite brocade boxes, and Zhao Baosteel's eyes are presented. Buried alive and killed, the lesson about sex and women is really interesting. Even blood and death, lust and betrayal are not hoarse treatment and restraint, but a quiet, quiet and calm restraint from beginning to end. This style runs through the whole film from beginning to end, and the picture composition is extremely beautiful. Like reading a beautiful text, the tone and balance of Shanghai dialect are also carefully creating a delicate and distinctive style. But this is just the beginning. We don't know where the director will lead us.

Then it was chaotic, the story was chaotic, the narrative was chaotic, the characters in the play became fragments, and the viewer's thinking and emotions were also disrupted. The only constant is that the coldness and exquisiteness are still there. At this point, I realized that this is not a film with a normal narrative structure, and the director is not aiming at telling a complete story. The film divides the story into countless segments almost by flashback, interpolation, fragment interception, flashback, disrupting the timeline, multi-line parallelism, etc., and this cool style is the most attractive silk thread that attracts me (perhaps representing some literary minorities). It is necessary to understand the logic and correlation behind these fragments. A gangster war movie, made into a literary film! At this point, I understand why I just want to see such a movie, which is not interested in gangster disc war. It turns out that there is a secret code of literature and art behind it.

It took a little effort to re-study the plot and reconstruct the story, and finally figured out some threads, and saw the past events that floated from time to time in Shanghai. Those once vivid people, rivers and lakes, met with each other, loved and hated life and death, national hatred, family hatred, and the troubled times of the times were doomed to the fate that individuals could not escape. The story is simple, but I don't want to tell the director a complete story, because it will destroy the experience of watching movies and the feeling and understanding of life. Life and the world are complex, and there are many things that did not exist clearly and completely. It is complex, diverse, changeable and difficult to capture, so it will be more colorful, richer and more meaningful.

Zhang Ziyi, the social butterfly Xiaoliu, dresses up several heavyweight men with her glamorous and infatuated romantic love. Boss Dai can do anything in the Jianghu, but he has no choice but to betray his sixth grade. For the sake of fame, he had to leave the matter to Mr. Lu to solve. Teacher Lu always does the same thing, never keeps a straight face and kills people without blinking an eye, but his interest in life and fast knot are precisely the sixth grade that he never dared to think about but never put down, so he chose the most difficult and favorite way among all the simplest disposal methods: to complete her dream of becoming a movie star. However, I didn't expect Xiao Liu to get mixed up with the best actor again. In order to save a man's dignity, he had to send his Japanese brother-in-law to send Xiao Liuhe and the best actor out of Shanghai at the behest of Boss Dai. It was not until the brother-in-law was madly ravaged in the car that Liu's love world was a proud and willful self, and then he began to be imprisoned and used as a sex tool, and the romantic world completely collapsed. Turbulent troubled times, lost beauty, and Zhang Ziyi's superb acting skills show a woman's fate in an infinitely rich level.

Everyone has their own romance, and this word may be just a symbol here. The sense of hopelessness, disloyalty, affection and being used by film actors and couples even makes people don't know how to face it. It's a narrow escape and a small * * * after meeting * *, and that kind of infatuation with fiction even makes people see a pure light. The gloomy Japanese brother-in-law, Watanabe, his love for his wife and son, his black cat, his multiple identities of imperial mission, and his split personality are all interpreted in such nuances. Seemingly smart young people, Wang Ma to be reckoned with, mysterious coachman killer ... There are many famous and unknown people, and none of the existing fragments are idle. Come to think of it, it's just Leng Yan's enchanting, sad, multiple images and multiple possibilities. No one can fully see through the real core. The drift of an era and some fates, like the two beautiful English songs in the film, shocked people and hit them directly.

Gorgeous and beautiful death. I didn't even sigh. At the end of the play, I took off my hat and bowed my head. Looking back, I turned around and said goodbye to everything in the past.

Those abandoned times were lost in the world of mortals.

It is said that there are Du, Huang, Dai Li, Butterfly, Meng Xiaodong and others in this film. I think everyone can match the number, but what does it matter? The film hardly reproduces the street view of old Shanghai, but it shows such a strong Shanghai flavor when filmed in a studio set up in Beijing. The director not only disrupted the story line and timeline, but also confused time and space. This is the story of that era and the story of this era. They show us, and we show it to the future. Whose feelings have never been abandoned? Who can always walk on the right path? Who hasn't lost, forgotten, struggled, struggled, hoped, dreamed and died? What is wasted may not be unshakable, and what is cherished may not never be broken.

Just like the box office, just like a big shot, just like a score, just like the world, chaos will always exist, and only your inner feelings can be believed.

Fortunately, in today's chaotic, flashy and impetuous market, we can still see such a fashion film that is not popular with the public and has no intention to win the box office by means. The director is very dedicated and really loves movies. In the fog, there is always such a weak light to illuminate us.