How did the film Revolutionary achieve such rave reviews?

From Eight Hundred to King Kong River to this film, although the director is not a revolutionary, it can be clearly seen that the director is very proficient in the routines of commercial movies, including light and shadow, tone, and lens narration. They all have their own characteristics, and the completeness of the production also reflects the perfection and maturity of the film industry system.

However, these movies have always had the same old problem. The description of the Chinese revolution has not been implemented in reality. It is always chicken soup or even chicken blood that is superficial.

They can use superb lens language to capture the rascality of local gangsters, the indifference of common people, the brutality of warlords, and sometimes even extraordinary performances, such as Young and Dangerous. Politicians at higher levels of the territorial grab plotted intrigues, but they could not show the correctness of the Communist Party and could not explain why the Communist Party could win. 1. "Innovating" the narrative and confusing the content

Many years later, when Mr. Li Dazhao is waiting in prison to be hanged, he will think of that distant afternoon when the ship arrived in his motherland.

The movie actually adopts a roughly "One Hundred Years of Solitude"-style beginning, telling Li Dazhao's story from the last moments of his life

I have to say that although it is an imitation, it is still very clever. The advantage of this is that it avoids a straightforward narration of Li Dazhao's life

but instead brings out the important nodes of his life through direct or indirect interactions between others and him when he was in prison. . The second is to preset his ending, making people curious about how he got to this point.

But who would have thought that these important nodes in life would completely disrupt the chronological order? ! First, Li Dazhao returned to China in 1916, then jumped to the Kailuan coal miners' strike in 1922, and then back to 1917, when Li Dazhao led a march to protest against foreigners killing people (quoted from Zhang Xueliang's memory) , and then go back to 1916 when Li Dazhao took a bath with a beggar after resigning from "Morning Bell" (Qingzi's memory elicited), and then jump to Li Dazhao's visit to Sun Yat-sen in 1922, and his participation in the Kuomintang's "First Party Congress" in 1924. "Big" (cited by Chiang Kai-shek's memory), then Li Dazhao led the "March 18th" protest in 1926 (cited by Zhao Renlan's memory), and then returned to Li Dazhao joining "New Youth" in 1916 and sending Chen

The solo show in Beijing... 2. Exaggerating divinity and ignoring human nature

Historical biopics should try their best to eliminate the symbolic image of the subject in history or books. To restore his image as a vivid "person" is not to avoid those symbols, but only in this way can the symbols on him be more reasonable and credible. The portrayal of Li Dazhao in this film is completely a symbolic image of a saint, with three major characteristics: impassioned, caring for all living beings, and a disregard for death. Here

it is difficult for us to see his living conditions as an ordinary person (except for eating a few times). What we see is almost a kind of work that is full of blood

Status. In fact, there is nothing wrong with having these, but having only these is unnatural, and will make the characters look hollow, superficial, and frivolous.

Just give a few examples of life in other works. In "The Age of Awakening", because Li Dazhao couldn't afford to take his children out to eat, he could only lie to them that eating meat was harmful to health. In "Darkest Hour", when Churchill got into the tub and learned that he had to reply to the Lord Privy

Seal, he played a word game, which made people reply "I am sealed in Sealed in the privy.

Through these scenes, the audience can feel that, oh, these "big people" are actually similar to us.

However, these do not exist in "Revolutionaries". What we see is not a story, but a reappearance of Li Dazhao's scene in the book.

3. Enough montage is used without clarifying the doctrine

Actually, montage has nothing to do with the doctrine itself. I put them together just because I think it is ironic: this movie can use that

There are so many dazzling photography and editing techniques, but it is not clear what doctrine Li Dazhao upholds.

Let’s talk about montage first. Since the film has constant flashbacks, montage is essential.

But the amount of montage in this film is staggering. Not only did a lot of montage flashbacks be used around Li Dazhao, but also around Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen. For example

When the camera was shown to Chiang Kai-shek, a bunch of "412" shots were cut and inserted into it. This is understandable, after all, "April 12" has something to do with Li Dazhao's imprisonment. But sometimes, the use of montage is illogical. When the camera showed Sun Yat-sen, was it necessary to also cut the scene of Song Jiaoren's assassination? What's the logic behind cutting these two things together? Was it the assassination of Song Jiaoren in 1913 that led to Li Dazhao's visit to Sun Yat-sen in 1922?

Let’s talk about doctrine. Li Dazhao is a political theorist, and it is necessary to clearly explain the doctrine he upholds. In my impression, the only mention of Li Dazhao's political thought in the movie was when he explained his understanding of the Three People's Principles: "People's livelihood is the goal, and nation is the means."

Civil rights are the method.”

This statement is a bit strange. It seems to mean: people’s livelihood is the goal and the most important thing, and the nation and civil rights are to achieve this goal

means, methods. But the question is, aren’t means and methods synonymous here? Political declarations usually cut out the complex and keep it simple. Why do we need to split it into two different words to express the same meaning?

In addition, Li Dazhao, as a pioneer of Marxism in China, left many popular articles promoting Marxism in his life, such as "My View of Marxism" in 1919. . But the strange thing is that the movie does not show these ideas, but instead "digs deeply" into another of his ideas that has less influence (not yet understood). This is like introducing an economist, not introducing his

economics paper, but introducing his prose essays. What's the point? Could it be that Li Dazhao's Marxism has been talked about too much, so it is necessary to dig out some unpopular ones? Conclusion

I think Li Dazhao's refutation of Hu Shi also applies to these "main theme" movies. It's necessary to have fancy techniques, but it's also necessary to know exactly what you're talking about. You must know that the greatness of a period of history and a person does not necessarily lead to the greatness of a movie; the audience may be touched by this period of history and this person, but not necessarily by the movie.