Cao Baoping has maintained a consistent sharp style, with interlocking plots and relaxed rhythm. In photography, the distorted widescreen lens shows a sense of solemnity, while the natural light shows darkness, which is a metaphor for people's hearts; Xiamen's humid and cramped urban space echoes the inner depression of the characters. In short, the plot is very rich, and the art of photography is extremely particular.
The Burning Sun is adapted from the novel Sunspot. This story is complicated, and the original with more hidden information is difficult to adapt. In the end, the director chose to sacrifice the two lines between Chen Bijue and the landlord, and also weakened the emotional line with Wang. The landlord, who should have a story, became a prop and threw it away when he used it; Wang's role is puzzling because of the lack of plot support. Behind this complicated story, there are also some logical loopholes in The Scorching Sun, and the characters' behavior lacks powerful motives.
Generally speaking, The Scorching Sun is a work of sincerity and strength. In the depth of the plot, the cat-and-mouse war is based on human nature and no longer stays on the superficial rhythm and tension. Police and robbers have their own yin and yang sides. From the actor's point of view, the three major film emperors all gave painful performances, competing between accuracy and uncertainty; The most surprising thing is the breakthrough of film censorship standards. Romance plays almost run through the whole film, and death penalty plays are also vividly displayed.
Depth: the cat-and-mouse war between police and robbers based on human nature
It was raining cats and dogs at the gate of the stone house, and several people looked up at the sky in unison. The title appeared in the scorching sun, and the contrast was wonderful. A movie with the words scorching sun, but there is no bright sunshine from beginning to end. Wet and dark cities, crowded streets and lanes, continuous rain, and old shutters miserly cast rays of light on the faces of characters. The whole film uses dark tones to reflect the inner depression of the characters. The film is under the banner of gangster films, but under the skin of genre films, what really burns in the scorching sun is the human heart, and the film is actually about human nature.
From God's point of view, the film is a murder with known results from the beginning, and who is the murderer is no longer a suspense point in the film. Such a beginning has given the characters a moral judgment: the murderers Xin Xiaofeng, Yang Zidao and Chen Bijue are all evil. However, the evil side often does good deeds. Xin Xiaofeng spared no effort to save people, and Yang Zidao was brave. Three people held up the little girl's tail together. In this way, they realized their inner salvation, but never found peace. The contradiction between yin and yang of human nature, the confrontation between good and evil, repentance and redemption afterwards, even made the moral balance in the audience at a loss for a while.
To some extent, this is an anti-genre film. Breaking the binary opposition between police and robbers is not a simple story of the two sides wrestling with each other. The advancement of the plot does not simply rely on the constant overlap of discovery and cover-up. There is not only logic but also human feelings in the story. Murderers have a positive human nature, and the police are no longer judges hiding under professional masks. Stripping off the cloak of identity, the superior-subordinate relationship between Yi and Xin Xiaofeng, the experience of risking their lives together, and the complicated emotional interaction and confrontation have brought more results-oriented to this cat-and-mouse war between them. On the one hand, Yi is chasing the truth, on the other hand, he appreciates Xiaofeng from his bones and vaguely wants to escape the result that slowly surfaced. Xin Xiaofeng struggled in self-redemption, and his instinct for survival and the principle of friendship and justice were pulling him.
The film reserved enough space for Xin Xiaofeng and Yi, and the characters were impartial, which made the audience swing between the police and the robbers and was completely brought into the rhythm and tension of the film. In police films, this tension can be achieved through big scenes, gun battles and racing cars, but compared with this surface tension, it is undoubtedly better to take the complexity of human nature as the basis and core of the plot.
The ultimate human nature of Burning Heart in the Hot Sun is affection, that is, the love of three fathers for their adopted daughters' tails, which is also the driving force supporting the whole story. But the handling here is also a big failure of the film. First of all, there is too little interaction between the three dads and the tail. The so-called father and daughter are just talking, which makes the ending of the last three fathers dying for the tail look pale or even melodramatic; Secondly, from the extreme evil of participating in murder to the holiness and kindness of preferring to die for adopted daughters, it is not in line with what ordinary people do. What's the motive? Maybe we need a better way to prove it. Of course, this is also an unsolved problem in the novel itself.
Accuracy: Give full play to accuracy and fuzziness.
A film gave birth to three film emperors, which fully embodies the director's Excellence in cultivating actors. The fierce style of the film is also closely related to the ruthless and steady performance of the actors.
Deng Chao, Guo Tao and Gao Hu all showed great pain. Deng Chao used to pinch cigarette butts to grind handprints, Guo Tao used wine to wash his chest and sew his own needles, and Gao Hu was blinded by branches. Half is self-abuse, half is hidden, and through these details, the character's character is slowly revealed.
Deng Chao is undoubtedly the biggest surprise. In recent years, he ran more and more happily on the road of ridicule, and the identity of the actor was almost forgotten by the audience. Under the scorching sun, Deng Chao chose to forget himself. He didn't sleep much during that time, because Xin Xiaofeng couldn't sleep either and was sensitive to everything. He often plays ball and exercises, because Xin Xiaofeng needs to keep a tight state all the time; He only brought a suit to Xiamen and usually wears police clothes. In the end, he really became a low-level nobody, with dim eyes, stubble, dark circles and bags under his eyes, which showed the mental pain of the characters. Deng Chao really walked into Xin Xiaofeng and found his meridians and one of the most accurate presentation methods. Deng Chao has been more extroverted in the past two years. Two years ago, this "burning sun" was put in and released, and the strength was just right.
Duan Long is looking for an uncertainty in his performance, and he wants a vague way. Sometimes it emphasizes the professionalism of the police and hides the sensibility of ordinary people; Sometimes it is a combination of professionalism and humanity; Sometimes it's Duan Long himself and Yi Gu Chun. This vague expression also creates the complexity and mystery of Yi Gu Chun, which provides the possibility for various interpretations. When I pushed the door, I bumped into Xiaofeng's gay eyes, which was meaningful and could be a sequel.
Between precision and vagueness, Deng Chao and Duan Long can be described as diamond cut diamond, who are equally matched and who can't match. The most wonderful scene is that Yi and Xin Xiaofeng drive to get the little goldfish. After inadvertently talking about the massacre, Xiaofeng dodged and Iraq tried to defend and attack. In the closed carriage, how to schedule the scene becomes a difficult problem, and how to convey emotions with expressions, limbs, eyes and tone has extremely high requirements for actors. In fact, neither the director nor the actor has a bottom. Duan Long once revealed that this scene was imagined by three people after a night of polishing. The night before shooting, Duan Long chatted with Deng Chao and the director until three o'clock in the morning, imagined a space in the car, moved the sofa and sat there. Thanks to this process, playing in this closed space is not only boring, but also can increase your knowledge.
Scale: both base and execution have been tried.
Why do they all say "the scorching sun burns the heart"? In addition to the interlocking plot and the excellent performance of the actors, the scale of "Burning Heart in the Hot Sun" has also made many filmmakers see the new possibilities of domestic film censorship.
This is almost a film based on basic feelings. The game between Duan Long and Deng Chao basically revolves around whether the murderer is gay or not and whether Xiaofeng is gay or not. Iguchi Chun's basic logic is that homosexuality cannot rape a girl. If Xiaofeng is gay, he is not a murderer. In the novel, Xiaofeng met people from Taiwan Province Province in a gay bar, and Yi, by chance, dispelled her doubts about Xiaofeng. In the film, Xiaofeng is arranged to get to know the people of Taiwan Province Province during the execution, which is really more in line with the narrative mode of the film. However, it is not clever to arrange Xiaofeng to deliberately cover himself up by pretending to be gay. Regardless of the possibility of bisexuality, the organizational plot of the film with pretending to be gay as the core event is still not strong enough.
In the movie, Deng Chao and Jackie Lui's basic feelings are under the light, and they contribute a large-scale kiss. This is a breakthrough of the actor's own psychological scale, and also an improvement of the censorship scale. As a policeman, Duan Long expressed his understanding of Deng Chao's homosexual behavior, which surprised many friends.
In the process of arresting and anti-arresting, there is an inexplicable feeling between Yi and Xin Xiaofeng, control and destruction, the struggle between emotion and reason, awkward expression and meaningful eyes. The interaction between them produces a wonderful chemical reaction, which may be a kind of same-sex love or a sense of attachment after life and death. Deng Chao said: When we were acting with him, I felt that we were all immersed in real feelings. It's too subtle. We often hug each other. You're great. That hug. Duan Long also said that there must be love with Deng Chao. Although it is not necessarily a man-to-man relationship, there is still room for this interpretation. At this level of filming, the love in the play will inevitably overflow.
In the sharp and dark tone of the whole film, gay dramas will inevitably attract a few laughs. The execution scene that also broke through the censorship standards made the audience hold their breath. Almost all the film uses natural light, but the execution scene is unusually bright, soft and white, deliberately creating a surreal sense of light, trying to eliminate the sense of terror and objectively show the process of this death. From Xin Xiaofeng being tied to the operating table, to cold intravenous injection, to panic and despair, facial spasm and twitching, revealing a smile, a 7-minute long shot, the complete execution process is shocking. Deng Chao himself is in a state of fear collapse in this scene. His eyes are almost closed, and he can't control the twitching of his muscles. The real experience of the actor himself is super infectious. Duan Long attending the meeting should exercise maximum restraint and find a balance between emotional Duan Long and professional Iguchi Chun.
In fact, it is not unreasonable for the film to come to an abrupt end on the execution platform, which will be a more heavy and extreme expression. However, the director finally set up a plot reversal, and the murder case was committed by a fourth person, which is also a major adaptation of the original. In this way, the audience's acceptance of the three dads is higher, but it virtually shows that this is a misjudgment and a breakthrough in the censorship system.
As for the Tiantai drama, which is highly praised by the audience, there are actually bugs. In the face of two wanted criminals, Iraq actually only brought the police and staged a rooftop chase without equipment and protection. Knowing that there was danger and reinforcements were coming, he ordered his subordinates to hunt down the fugitive, which led to his tragic death. In Hong Kong gangster movies, this situation may even summon the Flying Tigers. Although the high-altitude fighting is dazzling, it can also set off a small climax of the plot. I still have to lament that Iguchi's decision is stupid!
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