"Decryption": Cast a ray of light to the genius who burned his life for his country
2024-08-14
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The movie "Decryption" contains many dream images such as red sand beach, silent giant, golden reeds, coded maze, mysterious walrus, entangled infusion tubes, collapsed Ferris wheel, etc.
Qi Qing
The film "Decoding" is adapted from the novel of the same name by Mao Dun Literature Prize winner Mai Jia. It tells the story of Rong Jinzhen, a mathematically gifted but lonely and fragile woman who devotes her life to the cause of code breaking. The film is a mixture of many genres, including a biographical film guided by the interviewee's narration, a suspense film that interweaves fantasy and reality, and a spy film whose plot is driven by specific events of the two hostile parties. It also has obvious psychological and political elements.
Due to its rich content, profound connotation, and good control of pictures and narrative rhythm, although the film is two and a half hours long, the psychological time of watching it does not feel long.
A realistic narrative of a legendary story
The film begins with Rong Jinzhen's early life experience: mysterious and unbearable life experience, lonely and claustrophobic environment when he was raised by others in his childhood, etc. It was the fosterer who cultivated his dream interpretation ability, and the long period of solitude also "unlocked" his mathematical talent. The complicated data and formulas on the wall, in the real and illusory explosion or imaginary fluctuations, promoted the birth of the hero.
Any legend is a soaring reality, and geniuses also have a background of growth. Rong Jinzhen's growth and the formation of his ideas began after he joined the principal's family. The principal treated him as his own child, shared the honor and disgrace of the family and the country, and had a special relationship with Xi Yisi. These plots are supported by specific details: in order not to hurt Jinzhen's self-esteem, the family changed their habit of pouring tea, and even made it a tacit understanding among relatives. This plot appeared twice in the film, and the camera movement was basically the same. The difference was the passage of time, and what lasted was the family affection and the implicitness of oriental culture.
When following Lao Zheng to the 701 Bureau and saying goodbye to his family, the taciturn Jin Zhen kneeled down affectionately, pushing the gratitude to the extreme. He could not repay the small family that raised him, so he could only choose the big family without hesitation, which was also the inevitable choice of the hero, but the film did not simply stay on this point, but arranged Rong Jin Zhen to save his family when the small family was in trouble. This paragraph aims to make the hero more humane and provide a humane space in the gap between principles.
The cornerstone of the story is reality. The special era and the real story background, the relationship between the characters and the logic of the narrative, especially the sense of déjà vu and documentary created by the use of biographical interviews, in addition to controlling the rhythm, can also express key plot content that is not easy to show in objective narration.
Of course, this method also has its limitations. It requires a good setting for the narrative content and should avoid becoming a dispensable formal decoration. Whether removing this form affects the integrity of the story and the fluency of the narrative is the criterion for judgment.
The film is interspersed with interviews with Rong Jinzhen's family, wife, and colleagues. The opening narration-style introduction increases the sense of character involvement, and the subsequent story development follows the conventional narrative logic: following the principal to witness and experience the plight of the people under the war, the various conditions of entering the university, the acquaintance with Schiess and the encounter with Lao Zheng, all of which became important turning points in Rong Jinzhen's life. Schiess further stimulated Rong Jinzhen's mathematical ability, and his family and Lao Zheng cultivated Rong Jinzhen's morality and responsibility. His original intention to embark on decryption work was because of a sentence he heard at the beginning - deciphering the code can save many lives.
When dreams become a method of deciphering or expressing emotions
In the movie, Rong Jinzhen is a hero who deciphers the enemy's codes on the hidden front. In addition to his strong mathematical reasoning ability, his dreams provide him with inspiration for deciphering the codes. His wife is even responsible for waking him up in time to record his dreams.
In the film, we see many dream images such as red sand, silent giants, golden reeds, coded mazes, mysterious walruses, tangled infusion tubes, collapsed Ferris wheels, etc. The red doors, lost roads, various digital symbols in the deep sea and other elements all reflect the imagination and creativity of the creators. There are real shots and digital visual effects production. These dreamlike, fantasy and imaginary scenes have reached a high level from technical realization to emotional presentation.
For example, when the stage turns from "Red Lantern" to rock music, the rock music scene is set behind a fence with symbolic meaning; Rong Jinzhen, as a lonely onlooker, reveals helplessness and confusion. This is not only related to the records mailed by Xi Yisi, but also contains many other information, such as the popularization and symbolization of revolutionary modern Peking Opera (701 Bureau is no exception), the conflict between red and blue civilizations, etc. The contrast of colors also appears in other dreams, and the contrast between the red beach and the blue ocean is more obvious. Of course, if the sound elements are moderately crossed in this design, such as letting the sound of "Red Lantern" penetrate into the rock picture or vice versa, it can better reflect a kind of chaos and disorder, and thus more reflect the difficulty of deciphering the code.
According to Freud's theory of "The Interpretation of Dreams" - which should also be the dream interpretation method that Rong Jinzhen learned in childhood, dreams are a real dialogue between a person and his inner self, and are subconscious activities under the waking consciousness of a person. Any dream contains both the manifest and the hidden. The manifest is the surface phenomenon of the dream, which refers to the content that people can remember and describe; the hidden refers to the essential content of the dream. The operation of the dream mainly hides the manifest of the dream through compression, displacement and other processes. Some dreams in the film can be understood in a counterpoint, such as the running of the female security guard in the wheat field, which is directly related to personal emotions. Through the organic combination of complex device construction, color and light, we see the manifest of the dream. Here, the dream is more reflected as an intuitive guidance; we also see the thrilling analysis of the dream by Rong Jinzhen, a genius, in the waking state. The film does not strictly distinguish between dreams and reality, and even deliberately blurs it, which makes the image more coherent, increasing the watchability from both the visual impact and the psychological situation.
It can be seen that dreams have become the norm in "Decryption", almost interspersed throughout the entire film. It is the difficulty of the film's creation and also reflects the level of the entire creative team of art, photography, visual effects, etc. Dreams represent Rong Jinzhen's character emotions and growth changes, especially in the second half of the film. It can be understood that the pressure during the decryption period leads to more dreams, making dreams a functional narrative method.
From the perspective of the mechanism of dreams or simply to make the film more heartwarming, the author really hopes that Rong Jinzhen's early memories (including the principal and family) will occasionally flash in his dreams. This will partially dispel the pure functionality of dreams and provide more simple help in decryption, just like the kite in the safe in "Inception".
Of course, geniuses have their own way of dreaming.
The lens language ensures the coherence and fluidity of the narrative
The narrative perspective and image content of "Decryption" are diverse, with the narrator's third-person narrative, and an objective perspective narrative after entering the situation. A large number of subjective perspective dreams are an important part of the film. The free conversion between reality and dreams, subjective and objective, and subjective and objective has created difficulties for the filming of the film and also created the film's photography style.
Photographer Cao Yu said that "Decryption" is a very rare film and therefore worth trying. Its story is very unique, and the way it is told is also very unique. It has many dreams, but it must also have a real texture. Balancing dreams and reality is a big challenge for photography.
In terms of shooting techniques, the film uses a lot of long shots and moving shots. Long shots ensure the coherence of the narrative, whether in reality or in dreams. Long shots in reality give people an objective and even documentary feeling, while long shots in dreams ensure the sense of fluidity of consciousness or subconsciousness. The information in the dream is dense and coherent, and the sense of fragmentation comes from forgetting after waking up. Therefore, Rong Jinzhen needs his wife to wake him up in time and quickly record the information in the dream. In addition to meeting the coherence of the action and the fluidity of the dream, the moving shot is also crucial to the control of the film's rhythm. The maze-like passages in the dream, the endless wheat waves, the deep and attractive whirlpool with a sense of swallowing, the movement inside and outside the train, and the vertical shots across the ruins in the backlight when looking for Rong Jinzhen, etc., are all organic combinations of coherence and movement. In particular, the same dream that Rong Jinzhen's wife often has (woven into love with a code, candlelight on both sides, and the lover waiting in front, even if it is just a back view) is presented in a real and illusory way, pushing the complex emotions and emotions to the extreme. Similarly, in a purely realistic environment, from the moment Jin Zhen follows the principal to rescue people during a bombing on the street to the moment he follows Lao Zheng into the underground workplace of Bureau 701, the moving and following long-lens shooting method was used.
In terms of viewpoint conversion, the scene in "Red Lantern" makes good use of it. The close-up of the red light in Rong Jinzhen's subjective lens is zoomed out into a large panoramic view, bringing out the lonely Rong Jinzhen in the audience. The camera then pans to the rock scene behind him, creating Rong Jinzhen's subjective psychological perspective in a dream. The same shot contains many interesting elements such as the characteristics of the times, the deciphering of puzzles, and psychological feelings.
There are two important props in the film: a notebook and a lamp. A notebook is different from a pawn on the chessboard. The pawn stolen by Xi Yisi during the game is just a small missing piece in a complete logical section at a certain moment, while the notebook records the details of Rong Jinzhen's dream and the idea of decryption. It is the intermediary between Rong Jinzhen's dream and reality, connecting the past and the present. It is her inseparable privacy and support. Its role is not just a tool for decryption. Xi Yisi sent someone to steal the notebook, which triggered Rong Jinzhen's frantic search for the notebook and the organization's strenuous search for Rong Jinzhen. In this regard, Xi Yisi is sinister. He only loves Rong Jinzhen's talent, which can be seen from the way he treated Rong Jinzhen in the first class. Rong Jinzhen always has good intentions towards Xi Yisi, who is also a teacher, friend and opponent. In order to protect Xi Yisi, he did not use his own name even after cracking the "black code". This is the highlight of the film's warmth and morality.
The light in the film plays a role similar to the spinning top in Inception, and the most meaningful treatment is in the Easter egg at the end of the film. It is no longer controlled by a switch and is always on, implying the hope of reaching a consensus with the audience that "in a dream". The movie is a dream. For the director Chen Sicheng, it means the meta-movie element about the movie; for Rong Jinzhen, who has experienced everything, I don’t know if he would rather stay in a dream or in reality; for me, I would rather Rong Jinzhen control the light that the director can’t turn off. The light is bright and dim, which means that this genius who burns himself for his country is still with us.
(The author is a professor at Shanghai Normal University and vice president of the Shanghai Film Critics Society)
(Source: Wenhui Daily)
