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The interviewee of this article is director @陈思诚. The content of the article is compiled based on the interview materials.

Has everyone seen "The Decryption", the surprise movie of the 2024 summer season?

The film tells the story of Rong Jinzhen, a man with a talent for mathematics but a lonely and fragile heart, who devotes all his efforts to the code-breaking cause of his motherland.

The film uses ten magnificent dreams to show Rong Jinzhen's legendary life. These strange dreams bring him inspiration to decipher the secrets, and also hint at his deep fear and the struggle of fate in the torrent of the times.

Among the current domestically produced cinema films, "The Decryption" "creates dreams again" in the dream world of the silver screen. It has a unique temperament and is not a single type of film.

From this we can also feel director Chen Sicheng’s new "ambition" - in addition to the success of commercial genre films, he also wants to make "a movie that truly goes into people's hearts."

This period【Experts tell】, just listen@Chen SichengThe director talks about the creative experience of "The Decryption" and reveals the dream-making stories on and off the screen.

Q1: I am interested in the relationship between individuals and the times.

Xiao Wan：Why did you initially want to film this story about Mr. Mai Jia?

Chen Sicheng: I think this may be a thematic choice, "Everyone is a unique code, and this life is the process of decryption."

Just as there are a hundred Hamlets in the hearts of a hundred readers, everyone will have different perceptions after reading a literary work.

After reading Mr. Mai Jia’s original novel “Decryption”, I felt particularly strongly the “abilities and inabilities” of individuals in the era, and the feeling of being pushed by the times and having no control over one’s own actions.

Just in 2020, I was moved by this story about the connection between individual destiny and the times and the inner spirit it conveyed, so I made this movie. The script was completed in 2020, but the filming did not start until 2023, and I did a lot of preparatory work in the early stage.

Xiao Wan：What is the biggest difficulty in adapting this film?

Chen Sicheng:The difficulty of adaptation is indeed very great, or I think "Decoding" is the most difficult novel to adapt among Mr. Mai Jia's novels. Its story is not as stereotyped as "The Counterfeiter" and "The Whisperer", and the dramatic conflicts are not that great. The biggest difficulty is how to present the confrontation between one person and another on the battlefield of intelligence.

There is a saying that goes "literary drama and martial arts filming". How do you show the intellectual confrontation, especially the intellectual confrontation between people in the air? How do you show the inner difficulties of a genius in decryption and mathematics? In the original work of Mr. Mai Jia, it is written that the male protagonist Rong Jinzhen was inspired by a dream, but Mr. Mai did not show the details and symbols of the dream in particular.

Dreams in Decryption

This gives us a lot of blank space and rich creative space. How do we construct these dreams? How do these dreams relate to his deciphering work, the subsequent results and his growth?

All of these require us to use scripts and images to perfect them.

Q2: The perfect blend of dreams and reality

Xiao Wan：How to achieve a balance between reality and dreams in images?

Chen Sicheng:In fact, our initial aesthetic setting did not want a strong sense of separation between dreams and reality, which is also a core theme of the creation of "Decryption". Including the final post-credits Easter egg, it also wants to tell everyone that we don't necessarily have to be very clear about the difference between dreams and reality.

The movie itself is also a dream, and perhaps even the world we exist in right now is also a dream.

The concept of dream can give the audience endless imagination, and to some extent it also determines the "ceiling" of the film's visuals. So from the beginning, we wanted to emphasize the need for dreams to be realistic in terms of aesthetics.

After determining the aesthetic tone, all the artists, including director of photography Cao Yu, art director Han Zhong, co-art director Ma Xiaofei, and the team from visual effects company MORE, came together to work together to realize this dream and contributed their aesthetic taste and passion.

Xiao Wan: The “Red Beach” scene is so stunning. How was it filmed?

Chen Sicheng:When I was writing the script, I knew I wanted to make Red Beach.

But what color does the sand appear in? We did a lot of testing. What kind of sand should we use? Landscape sand or real sand? Which kind of sand is better? We need to keep experimenting to confirm which kind of sand can be colored and what color it can be.

We used hundreds of types of sand for testing, and the art and props teams spent a month producing 105 tons of specially dyed and cured red sand to create the realistic-textured sand that you see now.

A wave machine was also used in the filming of the red beach, and repeated tests were conducted on the waves and red sand. For example, what color should the water of the wave machine be, and what color should the part that interacts with the red sand be?

The creative team of the movie "Decryption" indeed put in a lot of hard work to present the dream effects that the audience finally sees.

Q3: Two-way journey between creators and works

Xiao Wan: How do you understand the character of Rong Jinzhen?

Chen Sicheng:Rong Jinzhen was an orphan who was born in a failed family and was ignored by others. Before he met the university president Xiao Lili at the age of 11, he didn't know what home was. He had never even left the yard where he lived. His living space was very limited, so he would talk to himself through dreams.

Just like he said dreams are his freedom, dreams are his other real playground.

He was a child of a very poor family, but little Li Li discovered his talents and gave him the warmth of a family. His mathematics teacher, Xis, stimulated his talent and played a guiding role in "teaching and educating" him.

Another person, Zheng from the mysterious department 701, made him understand the meaning of "country" and made him understand that in that era, his talent could save lives and serve the country. He found his mission in 701 and completed the closed loop of his entire life.

Xiao Wan: "Decryption" is your new film after 10 years of collaboration with Liu Haoran. What are the similarities between Liu Haoran and the role of Jin Zhen this time?

Chen Sicheng:I think creators and their works are really a two-way street - not only are we creating works, but the works are also reshaping us.

I feel like after filming "The Decryption", I was also undergoing an iteration, and so was Haoran. After playing Rong Jinzhen, he also went through an iteration, and it was a very significant one.

It happened to be my 10th anniversary as a director and his 10th anniversary as an actor. We encountered this rare creative opportunity and an opportunity to break down and reshape ourselves together. I think he did a great job.

So everyone can see a completely different Liu Haoran in “The Decryption”.

I believe that whether it is his fans or ordinary audience friends, they will slowly forget that he is Liu Haoran when watching the movie. I think shaping a character is the most core task of an actor.

Xiao Wan: Which scene of Liu Haoran do you think is the most impressive?

Chen Sicheng:Haoran had two emotional scenes, and his acting really moved me, almost in one take.

At that moment, I realized that he was no longer acting, for example, the last scene where he was acting Rong Jinzhen's dying farewell.

When acting in that scene, Haoran had lost weight to less than 120 pounds. He had hardly eaten for almost three days, tried his best to sleep less, and was very close to being exhausted.

In the script, Rong Jinzhen is actually exhausted. He keeps burning himself and finally dies of exhaustion.

I'm sorry, but as an actor you need to get close to that state, physically and mentally, so even though I felt sorry for Haoran at that time, there was nothing I could do. Playing this role was a process of breaking down or reshaping Liu Haoran, and I had to make some "cruel" demands on him, but this role will stay forever, even longer than our own lives.

Xiao Wan: How does Liu Haoran manage to keep this hairstyle during filming?

Chen Sicheng:This is a trade secret. Hahahaha, he actually really relies on makeup every day, and it takes him nearly 3 hours to put on makeup every day.

Q4: Chen Sicheng: Decryption allowed me to try many things for the first time

Xiao Wan: What kind of thought did you put into the behind-the-scenes production of this time?

Chen Sicheng:The character Rong Jinzhen in the movie is fictional, but the deeds of the heroes behind him are definitely not fictional, nor are their promotion and even changes to major historical events. Without the silent contributions of these people, we would not be where we are today.

Previously, there have been relatively few literary and artistic works that showcase these unsung heroes on the hidden fronts, but precisely because of this, we cannot miss any details, as that would be too unfair to them.

So I was very strict with the details of art, props and even costumes this time. In principle, we tried our best to restore the original appearance. I think this matter cannot be sloppy. Some retired technical investigation experts who used to work in confidentiality came to the scene and thought the details were too real.

For example, in the scene where Wang Baoqiang returned to play the guest role of "A Bing", the monitoring device used was a device that was not updated until 2000 by experts in confidentiality work. This monitoring device has accompanied them for decades in their careers. When they visited the set, their eyes even became red when they saw it, as if they had returned to the working environment back then.

Xiao Wan: When filming “Decryption”, was there any scene that made you cry?

Chen Sicheng:In fact, I cried in several scenes. Although I wrote the script and I know all the stories very well, I was still moved by the actors' performances, including Jin Zhen's departure at the end, which made me cry.

Xiao Wan: "Decoded" is a new node in your ten-year directorial career. What do you think are the biggest changes and constants in yourself over the years?

Chen Sicheng:The biggest change is that my understanding of movies, the world and myself has become deeper and clearer.

Movies are the most important way for me to understand the world. The biggest change may be that I know how to make movies in the future. What remains unchanged is my love for movies along the way.

I have always had a view that if we do not iterate ourselves, break through ourselves, and always stay in our comfort zone, we will definitely be eliminated by movie audiences.

What is worrying now is that the scale of the film market is shrinking and the age of the core audience is rising. How can we keep the audience in the theater for a longer time and have more people go to the theater? I think we must make various breakthroughs in self-expression, including visual images.

The Set of "Decryption"

In fact, this time I want everyone to know that we Chinese can also make such a movie, and our audio-visual language and overall atmosphere can be no less than those of Hollywood movies.

Xiao Wan: Are there any differences between filming "Decryption" and your previous working conditions?

Chen Sicheng:Making this movie required more inner strength because it is somewhat different from my previous genre films.

This time, "The Decryptor" is a movie that truly reaches into people's hearts. At the same time, it presents such a difficult dream scene visual spectacle, and it gives people a sense of connection with the times. It is a period drama that pays great attention to details, and there are even some war scenes. For me, many of them are firsts.

I have been making movies for ten years, and everyone may have seen Chen Sicheng's movies to some extent, but I think this is a work that brings together all my creativity, ingenuity, and abilities over the past ten years. It is also the crystallization of the collective wisdom of me and the creative team. I believe that everyone will not regret going to the cinema.

I don’t know whether the audience is satisfied with the final result, but at least I think all the creators have tried their best.

Xiao Wan: After filming "Decryption", do you feel that you have found the code of your life?

Chen Sicheng:At thirty, one is established; at forty, one is free from doubts. I am already over forty, and I know what I can and cannot do. I know the limits of my abilities. I am just a filmmaker.

My life values ​​are: experience is the most important, and experience requires encountering new things and constantly challenging oneself. So I prefer to shoot different and fresh subjects, even those rarely seen in China, to enrich my own experience and that of the audience.

Movies are my belief. After I finish shooting a film, the audience walks into the theater. At the moment the lights go out, they all look up and see a story on the screen.

If I can bring some laughter, some warmth, a moment of touching, or even some reflection after leaving, I think it is a great honor for me as a creator.

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Note: Some of the pictures in this article are from Douban and the Internet. If there is any infringement, please contact us.

【Experts talk about previous articles】