"The Death of Romance" is an extremely difficult film to comment on. Like all directors with strong personal labels, such as Jiang Wen, they regard movies as something to play with, not to say no. Take it seriously, but express excessive desires, overflowing emotions and thoughts. This is also a double-edged sword. Too much private emotions are revealed, which may not be very friendly to the audience at times.
Even so, I still have to admit that this is an excellent film in many aspects. First, the story is completely divorced from politics and cleanly describes the gang's wartime survival. There are no constraints from external relationships, it is all internalized emotional dependence, which expresses the oppression of human nature and the inner struggle of each person with nowhere to escape in the context of that special era.
The second is the puzzle-style editing. After you know the ending of some people, and then go back to look at their past lives, it will be a different feeling to see both the true and the false, and the false and the true.
The third is the food processing, it’s so exciting! The whole film focuses on three kinds of food, one is Shanghai dim sum snacks, the other is Japanese cuisine, and the third is Chongqing cuisine. For Chinese people, having a meal and drinking tea is really a complicated matter. It contains many aspects and must not be taken lightly.
The six paragraphs about eating in the movie can be said to be better than the last. At the beginning, Ge You asked Zhao Baogang to have a snack before getting serious. The essence of eating snacks is that one after another, ordinary people The happiest thing is this, and this meal felt like a "death meal".
Tadanobu Asano showed the exquisite and complicated preparation process of a simple Japanese meal in his restaurant. The clothes worn when cooking, the knife skills, the presentation, and the eating posture were all extremely exquisite. He treated a The sharp contrast between the attitude of the visiting wildcat and the series of perverted behaviors in the later period is consistent with the role of Hitler's kindness to his cronies and subordinate typists in "Downfall".
During the round-table dinner, Zhang Ziyi happily told everyone about her first movie-making experience. The "family" sat together in a friendly manner on the surface. Since the paragraph was flashback, everyone knew what happened next. What happened, but I don’t know the whole truth. This meal has the meaning of "The Last Supper".
Then Yan Ni brought Yuan Quan’s favorite snacks to work as a lobbyist to propose marriage to Yuan Quan on behalf of the legendary Mr. Dai, but Yuan Quan fiddled with the box containing the snacks, but the snacks were not touched at all.
The most exciting part is here, Asano Tadanobu secretly hides Zhang Ziyi, there is a period of fast-cut cycle of eating all day long - "papapapa" - eating - "papapapa"... and the way it is handled is even a little bit Ghost beast. "Eat and drink men and women, and the great desires of man exist" - it is the ultimate expression of the two primitive desires of human beings, and it is an atonement for the release of guilt in the real world.
In the end, after Ge You and Yuan Quan arrived in Chongqing safely together, they had a meal together. After exchanging homemade meals, Yuan Quan confessed her attitude towards food, "I like Shanghai, so I like Shanghainese food. I don’t like Chongqing, so I hate Chongqing food. “Like a cuisine, often because you are attached to a city, and being attached to a city is probably because you have loved someone deeply in this city.
Only Yuan Quan eats to express his mood, not to satisfy his hunger, not to atone for sins, not to cover up by playing riddles, but the director was cruel and did not let the audience see the beautiful woman happily eating a hearty meal. It's really a pity.
Fourthly, the music does sound a bit nice, but the sound and picture fit is not very good, and it has a slightly MV visual feel. The song "Take Me to Shanghai" almost made me, a patient with a severe Shanghai complex, almost drunk.
As a top student who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy, Cheng Er has produced what was rated as the most awesome graduation film in the history of the academy. The academic atmosphere is so strong that it is hard to get rid of it. After watching one movie, his cinephile attitude is clear. To be honest, there are too many tribute parts, imitating the overall tone of "The Godfather", and skillfully using Quentin's violent aesthetics and Martin Scorsese's storyboards. As an advanced young director, this kind of formal reference It’s understandable, and it’s really enjoyable to watch. And one of my favorite tributes is when Ge You passed the security check at the end, raising his hands high above his head, as if it was a ceremony of surrender to the times, history, and the first half of his life. He accepted his fate. It also appeared at the end of Ang Lee's "The Wedding Banquet" In the same scene, Lang Xiong also raised his hands above his head when passing through the security check, giving a signal of "I give up." It can be seen that many powerful people have to submit to security checks!
Later, I was talking about this film with a friend, and asked what "romantic" meant. He said that 1913 was a watershed for Europe. Before World War I, Europe was extremely beautiful, which made people feel the prosperity and decline after World War I. All. The demise of "romantic" actually has a little meaning in it. It might be interesting if someone dealt with Shanghai before 1937 in this way.
Xiaoling’s rating: ★★★★