There are several layers of puzzles in "Decryption" (deep observation)
2024-08-15
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Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition
The pictures in this article are all stills from the movie "Decryption".
It has been more than half a month since "The Decoder" hit the big screen. This movie has caused a lot of discussion since its preview, and the audience can't stop watching it. The author of the novel, Mai Jia, said: "I have watched this movie three times, and I want to watch it a few more times." Netizens who were not satisfied with the movie even sorted out the "solution ideas" of "The Decoder": "10 terrifying details behind "The Decoder", do you understand them?"
Some people commented that this movie, which combines elements of spy war and suspense, is "Inception and Oppenheimer in Chinese style"; some people call it "Chinese version of A Beautiful Mind". However, these words seem to be unable to summarize the richness of "Decoding". There is a sentence in the movie that makes people think deeply. Director Chen Sicheng used it to reveal the theme of the film - "Everyone is a unique code, and this life is the process of decryption."
"Secret" is the matrix of literature. "Solution" is the answer to the mystery of the movie. Let's "solve" the mystery of "Secret".
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"The Decoded", together with "The Counterfeit" and "The Whistleblower", are collectively known as the "Spy War Trilogy", which has given Chinese literature a unique label of Mai Jia.
"Decoding" is Mai Jia's first novel and also "a sharpening stone in his life". The whole creation process took 11 years, from the beginning of writing in 1991 to the publication of the novel in 2002. During this period, he experienced many ups and downs. After the publication of "Decoding", it was translated into more than 30 languages and published in more than 100 countries and regions. During this period, the film and television copyright of this novel changed hands many times, but it has never been adapted.
Interestingly, in Mai Jia's creative career, although the latter two novels "debuted" the latest, they "became famous" the earliest. "The Secret Agent" and "The Whisper of the Wind" were adapted into 4 movies and 8 TV series, which repeatedly set off a wave of spy wars on the screens of China and the world. How to interpret the "code" of "The Decoding" was once a puzzle for Mai Jia and his literary screenwriters and film and television directors.
From the idea of the text in 1991 to the release of the film in 2024, it has been more than 33 years since the work was first published. Now, the writer Mai Jia and the director Chen Sicheng have finally "decoded" the film.
"Decryption" tells a legend on the hidden front. This is a story of "a mathematical genius growing up to be a master of decryption". Rong Jinzhen was originally a young student who was interested in mathematics and had talent. At first, he only sought the pleasure of intellectual competition, solving puzzles, and approaching the truth from mathematics. In the war era, when he saw with his own eyes the life-and-death moments of people fleeing in all directions and being hit by bullets under the flames of war, the questions of "what is the country" and "where should I go" gradually became clearer in his mind.
In his long and boring life, at the 701 base in the wild mountains, Rong Jinzhen calculated and reasoned almost day and night, observed reality in his dreams, solved puzzles in the rules, and successively deciphered the US military's advanced codes such as "Purple Code" and "Black Code", thereby saving countless lives, until he finally "decrypted" to the end of his life on the hidden front.
"Decryption" has certain reading and acceptance barriers, which is the ambiguity of "decryption". The code that Rong Jinzhen spent his life deciphering has a more complex meaning.
The first narrative of "Decoding" is actually a legendary story of a hidden front, which is also the spy story familiar to the audience. It is worth noting that the codes in "Decoding" are not in the form of code books commonly seen in previous spy dramas. The codes in the movie have evolved into a mathematical system, representing the application of the most advanced cryptographic technology and mathematical theory at the time. The mission of the 701 base is to decipher these codes and obtain enemy intelligence, which is directly related to the country's strategic decision-making and military operations.
In the first narrative, "decryption" is placed in the turbulent international political situation, which is the deciphering of the enemy's code. In the second meaning, "Decryption" conducts a "decryption" within the "decryption" of the genius Rong Jinzhen. He allows the audience to get closer to the extremely lonely inner world of a genius than ever before. Rong Jinzhen has a unique and profound way of thinking. He has a different perspective from ordinary people when understanding the world and solving problems. For example, he is highly sensitive and keen to numbers and dates, and he marks his experiences with specific days.
With the help of Rong Jinzhen, "Decryption" not only cracked the enemy's logical code, but also unlocked his own life code.
In the movie, Chen Sicheng amplified this meaning - "Purple Code" and "Black Code" are specific combat codes, and the deeper level is the puzzling code of the human heart. "The combination of mathematics and codes is not only abstract but also profound. The core of the story is not about how to decipher the mathematical code, but about deciphering the human heart." Mai Jia said.
Although Rong Jinzhen is a rare genius, he is not good at socializing, does not know how to adapt to society, and has weaknesses that normal people cannot understand or accept. For example, he is not good at socializing, does not understand emotions, cannot communicate, and often cannot distinguish the boundary between dreams and reality... Mai Jia describes his complex personality in great detail in the novel. However, it is a challenge for the film director to interpret the story of "a lonely genius learning the true meaning of life" on the big screen.
Because of this, the film portrays the special experience of Rong Jinzhen, a special character, in a special era. He has a fictional color, but also has the characteristics of a real historical figure. From him, we can see the ups and downs, wonderful and fatalistic life of an individual in the era. This also prompted Chen Sicheng to extract the sentence at the end of the film script: "Everyone is a unique code, and this life is the process of decryption."
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For Chen Sicheng, the biggest difficulty in filming this movie was that he and the entire crew knew nothing about the field of cryptography. For this reason, he specially invited cryptography experts to give classes to the crew, telling the creators what cryptography is, where it came from, what historical iterations it has gone through, and how important the entire history of cryptography is to mankind. "Through creation, I can have a new understanding of the unknown field. I think this is also one of the most meaningful aspects of creation." Chen Sicheng said.
Rong Jinzhen is lucky. His adoptive parents gave him endless patience and tolerance, and the constant letters and the crispy candies made by his adoptive mother taught him what family love is. His wife Xiaomei woke him up in the middle of the night every day to record his dreams and seek inspiration for deciphering them, and took care of his food, clothing, housing and transportation. These taught him what love is. His mentor, Hijs, unreservedly stimulated his mathematical talent, and used "chess pieces" and "notebooks" to inspire him on how not to be trapped by dreams and not to be bound by obsessions. These taught him how to defeat his opponents and how to defeat himself.
Rong Jinzhen is unfortunate. Rong Jinzhen has been troubled by the "black code" for several years and is on the verge of mental collapse. Code breaking is a hard job that "devours" people. Long-term high concentration and high-intensity work have "tortured" his body and mind. Rong Jinzhen not only has to fight against complex codes, but also has to fight against his inner fear, loneliness and self-doubt. Rong Jinzhen's pain comes from the decryption itself. In the words of the movie, decryption is the top game and fight between human elites. The game of genius must go deep into the psychological level of the opponent, trying to understand the opponent's motives, habits and weaknesses in order to formulate corresponding strategies.
The battle of spirits and the contest of souls are actually the cruelest. The film projects this war without gunpowder on Rong Jinzhen and Xi Yis, two people from different camps, or even a spiritual contest between two opposite sides. They are each other's most familiar opponents. The game between them is not only a technical contest, but also the use of psychological tactics. After the carefully constructed "Purple Code" was cracked by Rong Jinzhen, Xi Yis settled for several years and used Rong Jinzhen's psychological weaknesses to create a "black code". He also "killed people and destroyed their hearts" by sending records and stealing notebooks. The design of these plots increased the difficulty of narrative and interpretation, and also increased the quality and interest of the film.
In this sense, this is also a story about paying tribute to heroes. Rong Jinzhen's image is different from the traditional image of spy heroes. Rong Jinzhen is facing one of the most complex cryptographic systems in the world. It takes months or even years to immerse himself in complex data and logic, repeatedly testing and verifying different decryption schemes. Long periods of loneliness and painful thinking make it impossible for Rong Jinzhen to rest and relax. He is an unsung hero who works silently behind the scenes and protects national security with wisdom and tenacity. His battlefield is an invisible ocean of cryptographic codes. If talent is the sail, pressure and pain are his oars.
Many viewers saw the unsung heroes of the hidden front behind Rong Jinzhen, Lao Zheng and other characters in the movie. In the history of the revolution, the struggle on the hidden front was thrilling, although there was no smoke of gunpowder. It was a test of brain power, heart power and willpower. For example, the "Three Heroes of Longtan" Qian Zhuangfei, Li Kenong and Hu Di, lurked in the "heart" of the enemy and lived a life of "dancing on the edge of a knife" every day; for example, Song Zhaoyi in the Yan'an period, "one man guarding the pass" challenged the entire enemy front, deciphered thousands of intelligence in 10 years, and deciphered the enemy's code at a critical moment.
The universality of the theme, the scarcity of the subject matter and the uniqueness of the characters give this novel a "heterogeneous" brilliance. The copyright for the film adaptation has been transferred several times, from domestic to foreign, from famous directors to newcomers, no less than 6 directors want to bring "The Decryption" to the screen, but they have always "failed to do it" because of the difficulty of expression and performance. The game of high-IQ geniuses, the twists and turns of the story spanning a lifetime, and the subtle presentation of decryption through dreams are all considered difficult problems in the process of film and television adaptation.
When Rong Jinzhen was a child, Xiao Lili told him the definition of "country". After growing up, Rong Jinzhen, who was once naive, has a deeper understanding of the importance of his country - it is the territory under his feet that cannot be violated, and it is also the people around him who need to be protected.
In this way, the movie "Decoding" has opened up a new narrative space for domestic feature films. "We should remember the heroes behind this movie, that is, my former comrades-in-arms. Their wisdom can be turned into gold, and their charming talents and courage could have made them the darlings of the world of fame and fortune, but for the sake of national interests, their stories, their emotions, and their fates have become eternal secrets. "Decoding" is a tribute to them and also a tribute to our beloved motherland." Mai Jia said. These are his original intentions for writing.
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The uniqueness of literary creation lies in the expression of decryption skills and the relationship between decryption and dreams. Novels can construct imagination space for readers through metaphors. For example, when talking about Rong Jinzhen decrypting the "Purple Code", the novel can be likened to finding that unique door among 10,000 doors. The process of decrypting the code is to repeatedly polish the key to open the door. Rong Jinzhen's inspiration for decryption came from dreams.
However, these have become difficulties in image presentation.
In the film, Chen Sicheng skillfully uses various contradictory concrete images to express contradictory abstractions. For example, among the multiple relationships surrounding Rong Jinzhen, Rong Jinzhen and Schiess are the most important group. They are teachers and students, "enemies", opponents, but also friends and confidants. No one knows each other better than them. It is not only because of their common passion for mathematics and decryption, or their admiration and appreciation for the talents and abilities of their peers, but also because of the genius's deep understanding of their own pain - they so truly understand the torture that ordinary people experience in the pursuit of excellence, and they can empathize with each other's helpless fate in turbulent times. Pain makes them recognize each other again and again and approach each other. This resonance makes them emotionally connected, they cherish each other and redeem each other. This is the starting point of the story - Schiess cherishes Rong Jinzhen's talent, and it is also the end point - Rong Jinzhen chooses to protect Schiess after cracking the "black code". "Decryption" handles the relationship between the two in this way, which is a great tenderness and kindness.
The film also cleverly uses long sections of Rong Jinzhen's dreams to explain the language mystery that is difficult to express in images. The red beach, the silent giant, the golden reeds, the cipher maze, the mysterious walrus, the entangled infusion tubes, the collapsed Ferris wheel, the chase on the train, the room surrounded by Eniak, etc., they are all visual wonders, beautiful on the big screen. From the perspective of film aesthetics, these dreams reflect Chen Sicheng's artistic pursuit and fully reflect the "dream-making" attribute of the film.
In the visual style of "Decryption", the sense of reality of dreams echoes the sense of reality of dreams, achieving a fusion of reality and imagination, and a confrontation between rationality and sensibility. In his 10th year of directing, after making genre films to the extreme, Chen Sicheng completed a "decryption" of himself. He worked with top teams at home and abroad to connect the life of the genius boy Rong Jinzhen with "ten dreams", finding a balance between the pursuit of the sense of reality of dreams and the sense of dreams in real life, and completing an innovative expression of domestic blockbusters.
From the sci-fi film "The Wandering Earth" to the war film "Changjin Lake" to the mythological epic "Investiture of the Gods Part I: Chaoge Fengyun", in recent years, the expansion of each type of film has improved the ability of technology to realize artistic imagination and established a more complete and scientific industrial process, which embodies the achievements of the development of China's film industry. It took only two years for the film "Decryption" to be released from obtaining the copyright. The adaptation went from "thinking but not being able to do it" to "coming naturally". The film industry is the key to open the door of "Decryption".
In "Decryption", "dreams" overlap to construct a wild imagination space. The film uses 10 grand, magnificent, sometimes thrilling, frightening, and absurd dreams to show how Rong Jinzhen searches for the key to unlock the code day and night. In Mai Jia's view, 10 dreams are 10 levels. Each dream is a problem that the creator sets for himself, and it is also a test for the film industry. A slight mistake may lead to a thousand miles of difference. There is a dream about the red beach in the film, which took 90 days from production to shooting. The crew built a 5,000-square-meter greenhouse and paved a 2,000-square-meter artificial beach with 105 tons of sand. The huge array of lights creates a realistic atmosphere of sunset on the beach. The wave machine keeps making waves. Sand interacts with waves, light interacts with waves, and colors, light and shadow interweave to create a real and illusory film texture.
The most difficult part to achieve was the red beach that brought a strong visual impact. At the beginning, the crew tried to find a real scene, but after searching all the famous beaches around the world, the most similar one was only pink. In order to shoot the scene, the art and props team spent a month to produce 105 tons of specially dyed and cured red sand. In order to accurately achieve the changes in light and shadow on the red beach several times, the crew used 75 sets of LED lights to form a light array, which produced very uniform and strong light in the studio to simulate the real sun. The crew even programmed all the prop lights, so that the photographer could control each light individually and use the dimming console to switch between reality and dreams.
Finally, the afterglow sprinkled on the horizon, the sea and the sky merged into one color, and the only things left in the world were the red sand, the waves, the giant walrus on the beach, and the teacher and student who were concentrating on playing chess in the sunset, completing together this magnificent and eternal dream.
"Decoding" is by no means an "easy to write" book, nor is it an "easy to understand" movie. We have already seen this from the experience of the book's publication.
Once upon a time, Mai Jia used the characters in the book to shout loudly: "Haven't you fought enough? A cage is waiting for a bird." However, he and his characters have always been wandering back and forth in the real world, and their own era has been slow to come.
It is worth congratulating that "Decoding" finally waited for its belated glory. Standing under the fame and halo, Mai Jia still proudly guards his loneliness, fragility, and confusion. These sufferings and pains, sorrows and joys are the symbols of his literature and his literary manifesto.
How many layers of puzzles are there in "Decryption"? From individuals, relatives, and families to the country, the world, and the times, the answer is self-evident. (Li Fang)
People's Daily Overseas Edition (Page 07, August 14, 2024)
