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The summer season is already halfway through, and the topic popularity and box office are not as high as last year. In 2023, Chen Sicheng's "She Vanished" was released in the summer season and grossed 2.8 billion yuan at the box office. Chen Sicheng himself was therefore evaluated as a "product manager-style director". Since then, several films including "All or Nothing" have shown similar characteristics to "She Vanished": starting from hot topics, relying on thin paper characters to create opposing emotions. This phenomenon was put into the popular online sentence last year - "Question Chen Sicheng, understand Chen Sicheng, and become Chen Sicheng" has become a bitter joke and a worrying prophecy.

Unlike the last film Mozart from Outer Space (directed and written by Chen Sicheng in 2022), which had a fictional setting and a declining reputation, this year Chen Sicheng's new film Decryption is adapted from the novel of the same name by writer Mai Jia, and the story should have a solid literary foundation. However, judging from the current box office and reputation (three days after its release, the box office has just exceeded 200 million; Douban score is 6.6), the audience is not buying it this time. Behind Chen Sicheng's seemingly breakthrough and trying a new genre again, there are still many familiar features.

Today’s film review places “Decryption” in the genre of biographical films and “high intelligence” themes and compares it with similar works, analyzing why this film fails to attract audiences.

Written by Qiu

"Chen Sicheng" as a phenomenon

Chen Sicheng has established a huge reputation in the Chinese film market over the past decade. His film practice can be divided into two main paths: directing and producing. As a director, he became the first director in China to have a total box office of 10 billion RMB with the Detective Chinatown series. As a producer, he has produced some of the most talked-about and profitable films in recent years (The Accidental Detective and The Third Squadron, etc.). His works have a recognizable aesthetic temperament, content orientation, and even a certain way of looking at the world.

However, regardless of his changing status, Chen Sicheng's films always face a divided public opinion. The defenders of film art sneer at Chen Sicheng; filmmakers who are eager to take a shortcut to success regard him as an object to learn (copy), imitate and cling to. Chen Sicheng's film thinking is called a "product manager-style director."

Stills from the movie "She Vanished".

Chen Sicheng's movies can hardly be called good-looking, with stiff plots and unrestrained audiovisual language. A considerable number of viewers complain bitterly after watching a Chen Sicheng movie, but whenever Chen Sicheng releases a new movie, these viewers will go to the theater again. The reason for this phenomenon may be Chen Sicheng's complex and contradictory image.

Chen Sicheng may not be a competent director, but he is not an ordinary film businessman. In interviews, Chen Sicheng often claims that "movies are his belief" and "he even watches movies while exercising on the treadmill." Obviously, Chen Sicheng does not just regard movies as a livelihood, he sees himself as a dreamer, the "George Lucas" from the East.

By watching Chen Sicheng's movies, we will also realize that his "love for movies" is not entirely out of publicity and commercial calculations. Chen Sicheng is keen on trying different types of films; in his movies, there are occasional tributes and imitations of the best films in history, and there are also occasional exquisite scene arrangements. All of this makes the audience believe that he really has the potential to make good movies, even though he has been disappointed again and again.

Therefore, even if Chen Sicheng keeps producing bad films, when this creator who combines capital, desire for expression and "love of movies" comes up with a film like "Decryption" that combines genius, spy wars, main themes, history and other elements, and claims that this film is his "peak of creation so far", the audience will still be unable to suppress their curiosity.

Stills from the movie "Decryption".

The Book of Biopics:

The subtlety and complexity of human nature

The failure of "Decryption" is comprehensive. Since the release of the film, most of the criticism has focused on "unrestrained audio-visual bombardment", "thin and undeveloped characters", "confused film genres" and "empty thematic expression". These problems are fundamentally due to Chen Sicheng's arrogance towards the laws of film art. Among them, the misjudgment of "genre" is the most fatal problem. Although Chen Sicheng has never really achieved substantial artistic success in the fields of detective films, crime films, children's films, etc., he still turned to a completely new film style lazily and confidently like an invincible conqueror.

"Decoded" tells the story of Rong Jinzhen (Liu Haoran), a mathematical genius with a talent for interpreting dreams, who worked for the national secret agency Bureau 701 during the Cold War, and fought wits and courage with his American mentor in college, and finally cracked the US military code. This movie is a mixture of spy wars, main themes, fantasy, war and other narrative elements. If it must be positioned in terms of film genre, it can barely be regarded as a biopic.

Although "Decoded" is adapted from Mai Jia's novel of the same name and has no real character prototype, the chronological form throughout the film and the structural logic of framing the narrative in the entire life of a single character are consistent with the characteristics of a biographical film. Chen Sicheng's motivation for choosing to shoot a biographical film is quite interesting, which seems to hint at his ambition and layout.

Biopics have a long and glorious history. This film style often focuses on legendary figures, with grand and serious content, and is naturally close to "masters", "art" and "epic" in its genes. A scholar once calculated that "from 1927 to 2015, there were 87 works that won the Academy Award for Best Picture, of which 15 were biopics, accounting for more than 17%." There are countless masterpieces in film history that can be classified as biopics, from "Citizen Kane" and "Young Lincoln" in the past to "A Beautiful Mind", "The Imitation Game" and "Oppenheimer" in the recent past.

Still from the movie "Oppenheimer".

Successful biopics always place the exploration of complex and subtle human nature as the top priority. For example, Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, revolves around a reporter investigating the meaning of media tycoon Kane's last words, "Rosebud". As the investigation and interviews continue to deepen, the various statements made Kane's image more and more confusing. It was not until the film went back to Kane's childhood that we discovered that "Rosebud" actually represented Kane's lonely and broken childhood. From this, the film led to the questioning of the ultimate philosophical question of "loneliness in life"; Nolan's Oppenheimer takes the security hearing of Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb", as the starting point of the story, weaving Oppenheimer's complex life through multi-line narratives, and putting ethical issues such as "the correlation between knowledge and violence" and "the conflict between nationalism and personal morality" in front of the audience.

It can be said that the meticulous portrayal of human nature and the serious philosophical propositions are what distinguish biopics from other film styles. However, the in-depth exploration of "human nature" is precisely the most fatal shortcoming of Chen Sicheng, who is jokingly called a "product manager." If strong genre films such as the "Detective Chinatown" series may be able to cover up the absence of human nature exploration through high-density superimposed external dramatic conflicts, then a biopic like "Decoded" that should focus on personal history will make Chen Sicheng's shortcomings nowhere to hide.

"Everyone is a unique code, and this life is the process of decryption." This is the theme of the movie "Decryption" for the audience. However, throughout the film, whether it is the substantive life mystery of Rong Jinzhen or his struggles and contradictions when facing himself and the outside world, there is no trace in the movie.

Stills from the movie "Decryption".

The Decoded film adopts an interview structure similar to that of Citizen Kane - by interviewing Rong Jinzhen's close friends and relatives, it attempts to restore the life of a mysterious genius. However, unlike Citizen Kane, The Decoded film fails to effectively utilize the inherent advantages of the interview structure, and constructs Rong Jinzhen's complex, ambiguous and even contradictory character image through different perspectives and based on different aspects of life.

The "interviewees" in "Decryption" are cousin Rong Biyu, wife Xiaomei, and comrade Vasily, who should represent Rong Jinzhen's different stages of life (the Japanese invasion of China, the Chinese Civil War, and the Cold War), different emotional aspects (family, friendship, and patriotism), and different value orientations (self/altruism, idealism/materialism, and nation/individual). However, the film did not shape Rong Jinzhen's different characteristics from the perspective of the "interviewees". They are like the surveillance cameras set up by Chen Sicheng in the film, rather than the witnesses and participants of Rong Jinzhen's life. This structure with great plasticity and narrative potential is ultimately presented in the film in the most mediocre and boring appearance. The faces of the "interviewees" gradually blurred and became a single functional plug-in-a marker that divides natural paragraphs.

The protagonist Rong Jinzhen also cannot escape the fate of being a tool. A sense of paleness, emptiness and poverty always accompanies this character.

In terms of setting, Rong Jinzhen has a nearly mysterious "double-edged sword" talent - dream interpretation. Thanks to this extraordinary talent, he has become a world-renowned mathematical genius, but he is also backfired by this talent and suffers from the problem of "not being able to distinguish between dreams and reality". "Not being able to distinguish between dreams and reality" is the clue and suspense throughout the film, and it is also a topic field with great potential.

Stills from the movie "Decryption".

"Life is like a dream" is an ancient and long-standing philosophical case. It involves many philosophical issues such as "separation of subject and object" and "appearance and substance". However, as the film unfolds, this setting gradually becomes a dramatic appendage, a purely functional obstacle.

During the film, we kept guessing what kind of obstacles and impacts Rong Jinzhen's inner demons would bring to his life. But in the long two and a half hours, "dream disturbance" was never effectively utilized at the ideological level of the film, carrying any deep meaning beyond the dramatic functionality.

What exactly does Rong Jinzhen's "dream disturbance" represent? We have no way of knowing. It has nothing to do with Rong Jinzhen's original family dilemma, nor with the turbulent historical puzzle. It is just an obstacle for Rong Jinzhen to decipher the code, nothing more. In the end, this character clue was left unresolved with the movie's hasty ending.

In terms of the specific plot, "Decoding" is also reluctant to provide the audience with an opportunity to enter Rong Jinzhen's heart. At the beginning of the film, Xiao Lili was going to send the young Rong Jinzhen to an orphanage to fend for himself, but accidentally discovered his mathematical talent and adopted him instead. Xiao Lili's behavior was obviously not out of instinctive kindness, but mixed with utilitarian considerations. It seems that in Xiao Lili's eyes, Rong Jinzhen is not a poor child, but a rare and precious animal that cannot fall into the hands of others.

It is conceivable that this will be a knot in Rong Jinzhen's heart throughout his life. However, the movie did not continue to discuss this gray "utilitarian love". The description of Rong Jinzhen's family stopped at a wishful and harmonious atmosphere, and ended with Rong Jinzhen saving Mrs. Rong from distress.

The plot after Rong Jinzhen entered the 701 Bureau can also be summarized by the "frustration-success" mechanical drama creation method. As for how an idealist genius with a withdrawn personality, inner struggles, and suffering from delusional symptoms can adapt to this huge state machine, how to deal with the state of complete isolation, and how to strike a balance between reason and madness, these are not within the scope of the film.

Stills from the movie "Decryption".

"The Decoded" has an overly complicated narrative thread - "underground activities during the Anti-Japanese War", "the intellectual confrontation between Rong Jinzhen and his mentor Sheis", "political assassinations under the background of the Cold War", "spy suspicions within state organs", "Rong Jinzhen's struggle between himself and others", "the Anti-Rightist Movement in the 1950s" - however, these dazzling plot segments are always suspended in the void and fail to weave into a picture of Rong Jinzhen's life.

Like Chen Sicheng's previous films, "Decoding" outputs noisy spectacle without leaving any room, creating some ineffective stimulation and jokes, trying to stir up some cheap emotions from the void. We never see the organic connection between the plot and the characters. All the ambiguous and complex possibilities in "Decoding" are driven away by the standard "save the cat" creation method, and Rong Jinzhen has become a puppet of the play dynamics. Reason, desire, fear, and how to coordinate the relationship between these three, this should be the answer to deciphering Rong Jinzhen's life, but in the end it was all ignored by Chen Sicheng, because he has never been willing or able to explore the philosophical puzzle of life.

“Genius Narrative” and “Intellectual Spectacle”

In addition to the form of a biographical film, "Decoding" can also be classified as a sub-genre of "high IQ movies". This type of film built around "genius narrative" relies on the construction of "intellectual wonders" to achieve the presentation of its film aesthetics. However, "Decoding" completely failed to satisfy the "intellectual pleasure" promised and expected by this type of film from a narrative perspective.

"Decoding" involves a lot of knowledge in mathematics, logic, and linguistics. However, "Decoding" completely abandons the detailed description of the intellectual exploration process. You know, what attracts the audience is definitely not the result of Rong Jinzhen's successful decryption, because that is nothing more than a historical fact and an inevitable ending - just like when watching a heist movie, the pleasure generated by the moment when the combination lock jumps open is largely derived from the difficult process of overcoming many obstacles before; when watching a detective movie, the most talked-about part is not only the final murderer, but the previous logically rigorous reasoning work - what is really important is the "decoding" process itself, which is full of mystery and intellectuality.

Of course, we can attribute this popular Freudian deciphering method to the absent-mindedness of the original text, but Chen Sicheng still bears an unshirkable responsibility for this kind of viewing frustration - because he concretized the dreams in the text into a desperate appearance.

Stills from the movie "Decryption".

The ten dream scenes in Decryption contain the most vulgar image references: the red ocean corresponds to the spiritual world, the giant corresponds to the unknown and fear, the blonde beauty corresponds to sexual impulse, and artificial intelligence corresponds to conspiracy or agnosticism. This simple and crude image counterpoint is essentially no different from the millennial Internet legend that "type A blood is stable, type B blood is lively, and type O blood is mysterious", revealing a strong sense of storytelling. Most viewers accused these ten dreams of blatantly plagiarizing Nolan, but from the actual presentation effect, these accusations sound more like misunderstanding and slander of Nolan.

The publicity and publicity of "Decryption" repeatedly emphasized the high cost and technical threshold of shooting these ten dream scenes, crudely equating money/technology with artistry. But in fact, the most important criterion for evaluating a director is never the ability to squander the budget, but the ability to transform barriers.

Film is a kind of "visual vernacular" that transcends language and text. Its greatness lies in its ability to dissolve the cognitive barriers caused by language and education level, and transform the elusive and incomprehensible human or intellectual content into visual images that everyone can watch and understand. In the category of "high IQ movies", we can find such exemplary directorial skills in "The Social Network" or "Memento". Unfortunately, this kind of directorial technique does not exist in "The Decoded".

The failure of "Decryption" is not surprising. Although Chen Sicheng often gives people the impression of being shrewd and cunning, if we examine him from the perspective of film, he is more like a test-taker with an empty mind and indulges in self-admiration. He seems unwilling to delve into the texture and rules of film. He just mechanically transfers scenes from other movies, finds rhythms from drama reference books, creates some inferior excitement and pleasure, and firmly believes that he has glimpsed the secrets and methods of film art. Therefore, when Chen Sicheng truly steps into the field of serious film from noisy entertainment films, he may not be greeted by the smooth prospects he once had.

Author/Qiu

Editor/Lotus

Proofreading/Zhang Yanjun