Focus: Xie Jin mode
Director Xie Jin has made 36 films in his life. Because of his rich mirror language, poetic pictures, exquisite composition, compact plot, philosophical thinking and modern consciousness in narrative scenes, he is called "Xie Jin mode" by film theorists. Take the Opium War (1996) as an example.
Get rid of typing. The difference between the positive characters represented by Lin Zexu and the negative characters represented by Qi Shan in language and posture is not that they can be judged at a glance, but that they are shaped by the interaction of their psychological motives (simply understood as the entanglement of desire and human nature) and externalization behavior (after all, bad people are often better at camouflage and more like good people than good people). Getting rid of typed characterization is not only more authentic in narrative scenes, but also conducive to creating suspense.
Subtext The subtext of the dialogue in this film is particularly wonderful, vivid and implicit, with words in it and sounds outside it, creating a picture effect with lingering sound. In some TV dramas, people like Qishan are often portrayed as useless. However, according to historical records, ancient officials, especially senior civil servants of the central government, were almost all full-time officials.
Qishan's eloquence shows his knowledge, and his servility shows his lack of cultivation. On the way to being demoted, Qishan felt that Lin Zexu was a "fairy" and he was also a "fairy". His subtext implies a sober judgment of himself, which really requires skill. No wonder there are four writers in this film.
Modern consciousness. Different from the pessimistic, nihilistic and absurd modern consciousness held by the stream of consciousness, Xie Jin's modern consciousness observes and deconstructs history from the perspective of modern people. For example, before the war, Lin Zexu felt that knives and forks were ever-changing without chopsticks; When Britain's guns were in full swing, he could not help feeling that people who ate with "weapons" should not be looked down upon. Through his two comments on tableware, he showed that Lin Zexu was the first person in China to "see the world with his eyes open".
The film adopts a linear narrative, taking the destruction of opium in Humen as the introduction, and taking the internal (the dispute between the main war faction and the main peace faction) and external (the Sino-British negotiation) as the framework, showing the cause and effect of the extension war in a panoramic way. Generally speaking, it is very traditional, but its rational analysis from a macro perspective, coupled with vivid subtext, presents profound ideological connotation.