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You and I are familiar with the word "hero".

But have you ever heard of the heroes on the hidden front in the context of that special era?

It's not about spies, it's about heroes who decrypt telegrams.

If you have never known about it, the movie "Decryption", which will be released on August 3, will show you a completely new aspect of history that you have never known before.

The special protagonist is only a small part of the highlight of this movie; its narrative style and film industry are also worth praising.

[The following content contains minor spoilers]

The story of the movie "Decryption" seems to be about how the mathematical genius Rong Jinzhen [played by Liu Haoran] evolved into a code-breaking expert, and how after becoming an expert, he single-handedly deciphered the enemy's codes time and time again and turned the tide invisibly.

But the best part is the presentation of the protagonist's fate and the inner world of a genius.

First of all, we have to talk about the protagonist Rong Jinzhen. Rong Jinzhen was regarded as an outlier in the family and no one cared about him since he was a child. He was only taken care of by a dream interpreter who was invited from outside to interpret the elders in the family who were troubled by nightmares. It was for this reason that he learned the art of dream interpretation.

In the process of dream interpretation, the protagonist developed his mathematical talent.

Although this talent enabled him to meet a "noble man" later on, the special background of the times and the twists and turns of fate allowed him to enter the secret code-breaking organization 701.

But such a childhood has set the tone for his life.

After watching the show, the audience will find that Rong Jinzhen’s life has always been "closed".

Whether in his childhood or after work, his relationships with people and the real society have always been isolated.

Being isolated since childhood made him sensitive and withdrawn. He also couldn't distinguish between dreams and reality, so he needed to turn on and off the lights to determine "where" he was.

After work, he still "locked" himself up in an already closed environment, combining abstract dreams with rational mathematics and using his dreams to decipher.

When dreams become a means for him to support reality, it becomes a question whether the protagonist will eventually be swallowed by the dream.

With such a character background, the film did not adopt a linear narrative method just because it is a character story. Instead, the director adopted a multi-line retrospective narrative.

The film does not focus much on the protagonist's real life, and it is almost always presented from a third-person perspective.

The advantage of telling the story from a third-person perspective is that it minimizes the damage done to the protagonist, because memory will correct and beautify itself. Telling the story from a third-person perspective + recollection is the greatest kindness to Rong Jinzhen.

From this perspective, the more magnificent Rong Jinzhen's dream is, the more it reflects his helplessness from one side.

Reality is cruel to him, but dreams and decryption are quite safe.

There is a sharp contrast between the genius' own world and the genius in the eyes of others.

This multi-line retrospective narrative not only highlights the characters' stories and images in a more three-dimensional way, but also allows the audience to feel the tense atmosphere of the times.

When the protagonist finally deciphers the most difficult "black secret" in the whole film, on the one hand, the audience can feel how the protagonist carries the responsibility and emotion of family and country with his own personal strength.

We can better feel the situation we were in at that time. It was a competition between the flesh and technology, and also a contest between backward technology and advanced technology.

An invisible force of interaction is formed between emotions. The more you can sense the tense emotions in the context of the times, the more you can understand the pressure and difficulties of the protagonist.

This narrative method not only allows the protagonist's emotions to be felt in a more three-dimensional way, but also allows the audience to feel Rong Jinzhen's fate from an objective perspective.

If the protagonist in the movie is deciphering the code, the audience in the cinema is actually deciphering his life.

But in order to achieve the latter effect, "details" become an indispensable key.

There is a scene in the movie where the teacher steals one of the protagonist's pawns, and in the end the teacher wins the chess game.

He told the protagonist at the time, "The act of observation itself changes the observer", and the protagonist kept emphasizing "This is illogical". If you think carefully about the game at that time, the two of them neither lost nor won.

This game of chess continued into their final game. The "black secret" designed by the teacher troubled the protagonist for many years, and he also stole one of the protagonist's "pawns" just like he did back then.

When the protagonist finally realized the truth, the answer was actually written in fate a long time ago. In this final game, the two of them still maintained the state of neither losing nor winning.

By the way, in order to ensure the details of the movie, the codes that appear in the movie are traceable. If you are interested, you can try to find them yourself.

In addition, the protagonist meets many people in his life, and their fate is actually hinted at in the details.

The chess madman said that Rong Jinzhen is "Mendeleev", and Mendeleev is actually the most representative person in the scientific community who found "clues" from dreams.

He originally extracted the periodic table from his dreams, and the protagonist cracked the codes from his dreams every time.

Such a detail is also a very crucial hint, that is, in order to understand the protagonist, you must first be able to understand his dream.

There are a total of ten dreams in this film. The one that left a deep impression on me was the protagonist’s first dream about a blonde girl. Behind the girl there was a Ferris wheel that seemed out of place.

The Ferris wheel is the key to the decryption, and the blonde is his distraction.

The blonde girl projected into reality is his unattainable American dream, his repressed "sex", and the temptation he faces. Once he peels away the layers, the truth is right before his eyes.

The element of "dream", as the most important part of this movie, is not only because of the details.

The way the film presents dreams also gives it a surreal quality, while also allowing people to see an industrialized spectacle in the domestic film market.

To paraphrase Wang Xifeng in A Dream of Red Mansions, if we sweep the cracks in the floor of the Lu family mansion and take out some money for buying groceries, it would be enough to cover the expenses of Fu Wenpei, Yiping and their daughter, and Adjutant Li's family for several months.

For this subject matter, in order to convey the characteristics of the story and the core of the film, the requirements for the picture can only be high, not low.

The first visual shock given by this film is the red beach in the film.

The feeling it gives people is so real!

This beach is a dream shared by the teacher and the protagonist. The red beach appears several times with different light and shadow changes. The red beach, coupled with the ebb and flow of the tide and the protagonist's footprints, makes it difficult to distinguish the boundary between dreams and reality.

For this scene, the crew built a beach of over 2,000 square meters in the studio, using 105 tons of dyed and solidified red sand, as well as early-wave simulated waves to restore the interaction details between the waves and sand that are difficult to achieve with visual effects.

Of course, in addition to the shock brought by the beach, there is also a series of visual effects shots made to present Rong Jinzhen’s dream.

You can carefully observe the facilities in the amusement park while watching the movie. Each facility has a specific meaning, and they are also the most beautiful part of Rong Jinzhen’s subconscious mind.

The role of these shots is not only to bring a strong visual impact, but more importantly, they are the key factors in revealing the inner world of the characters, and they cannot be too disconnected from the real world.

As visual effects director Wei Ming said: "Everything is sensitive and needs to be grasped accurately. What needs to be struggled is how to integrate emotions into the picture."

The entire post-production team put a lot of effort into the details. Take the Ferris wheel in the amusement park as an example. There are a lot of details on the Ferris wheel.

Tens of thousands of CG lights were arranged for rendering, plus the dynamic collapse of cloth was solved. The rendering time for just one frame was as long as 62 hours. The entire scene required 1,500 rendering nodes and 362 hours of rendering.

The scene at the beginning of the movie where Rong Jinzhen falls into the whirlpool and then transitions to the Rong family’s old house is also a difficult part of the film’s visual effects production.

Because it is necessary to process complex visual effects details such as special effects characters, cloth calculations, hair calculations, flowing bubbles, water texture, etc., the production cycle of a single 24-second shot is nearly two months.

It is precisely because of this focus on details that the movie "Decryption" has a texture that takes people into a dream world.

In addition to the visual effects, the real and illusory photography style of "Decryption" is also worth mentioning.

In fact, at the beginning of each dream, there is no difference between dreams and reality, but as the light changes, the feeling of the dream gradually emerges.

Cao Yu, the cinematographer of "The Decryption", is also my favorite Chinese-speaking cinematographer. His handling of images and use of light and shadow are undoubtedly the ceiling in the Chinese film industry market.

In the movie "Decryption", Mr. Cao fully demonstrated his use of color and light and shadow.

In addition, Mr. Cao also made adjustments in the camera movement. The camera movement of "The Decryption" appears to be more flexible and comfortable. Although there are a large number of follow-up shots and long shots in the film, it does not affect the texture of the picture and the rhythm of the film at all.

The fantastic images, coupled with a large number of close-up shots and fast editing, will completely bring the audience into the tense atmosphere and rhythm of the film in the cinema.

This is also the meaning of the existence of movies, allowing the audience to enter a whole new world the moment they walk into the theater and experience the sensory shock brought by fantasy stories and the film industry.

Having technical support is a kind of sincerity, but it is not enough. The costumes and props of this film can be said to have fully restored the sense of the era.

In order to restore the little-known confidential agency, the movie also invited the former director of the Security Bureau and people who actually lived and worked in 701 to participate in the guidance and real-life construction of 701. The equipment and machines in the movie were also real machines collected.

If the costumes and props restore the scenes at that time, the film actually invites historians to restore part of history.

Some viewers may not know that the assassination scenes in the movie are actually real events in history.

Before the first atomic bomb explosion in New China, there were many unknown undercurrents.

As for the protagonist of the movie, although this character is fictional, behind him is the epitome of many unsung heroes on the secret front. Among them, perhaps the most familiar to everyone are the "Three Decryption Heroes" during the Long March.

When a movie has impeccable production and story core, the test lies in the actors' interpretation.

The cast of "Decryption" is amazing.

Liu Haoran plays Rong Jinzhen, John Cusack plays Xi Yisi, Chen Daoming plays Zheng, Daniel Wu plays Xiao Lili, Yu Feihong plays Ye Xiaoning, Ren Luyao plays Xiaomei, Chen Yuxi plays Rong Biyu, Wang Yutian plays Vasily, Zhou You plays Yan Shi, and Zhu Zhu plays Mrs. Xi.

Chen Daoming's performance is brilliant and layered.

He has two smoking scenes when he meets Rong Jinzhen. One is when he needs help from someone, and he is stopped by the other party when he is about to light the cigarette, so he has to give up. The cigarette is extinguished, which is a loss for him.

Another time was when he took Rong Jinzhen to 701, he lit a cigarette next to Rong Jinzhen without any hesitation, as if he was feeling proud.

But the most surprising thing is Liu Haoran’s interpretation of this role. If Liu Haoran’s previous impression was that of a “white moonlight boy next door”.

This film completely opened up a new acting path for him, which is to play the role of a marginalized group that is lonely and a little bit perverted.

One of these changes was in his personal image. After learning about Rong Jinzhen's poor gastrointestinal physique and very thin body in the original work, he first lost weight to 117 kilograms to fit the role in terms of body shape.

The other is to fully understand the character. He carefully studied Rong Jinzhen's life and the information of various mathematicians in history, and began to imitate their appearance and feel their inner activities from the outside to the inside.

Rong Jinzhen in the film is a person with a strong sense of order. How did Liu Haoran achieve this when playing this role?

In the film, every time Rong Jinzhen wakes up, there is a fixed process. First, she touches her glasses, then her pen and notebook.

Such detailed design allows the audience to feel the character's nervousness, uncertainty and distrust of the outside world from the outside. Combined with his expression, the image of a neurotic genius mathematician is established.

It is precisely because of such delicate acting skills that the audience can be brought into Rong Jinzhen's life, feeling the echo between dreams and reality outside the play, and the care of the subconscious in life.

This is his destiny, and it is also the "destiny" that everyone may have.

While the protagonist is deciphering the mystery through dreams, he is actually also deciphering his life.

And for us, isn’t life also a process of decryption?

Design/Visual: Lvv