...This movie has been banned for a long time——at least, last year in August, when I first marked on Douban that I wanted to watch it, the resource had been out of reach. But yesterday a good friend of mine provided me with a place to find this movie, and thus I was lucky enough to watch it as a relaxation after final tests.
But the movie didn’t make me relaxed. Actually, I found myself tossing and turning in bed, ruminating on its plot, its theme, and its end.
Perhaps you’ve already known the story. Six students——young, bold and naive——planned to assassinate Mr. Yi(易), the spy leader of the puppet government of Wang Jingwei(汪精衛). Unfortunately, at the particular juncture when the heroine Wang Jiazhi(王佳芝) was in Mr. Yi’s good graces and there were good chances to kill him, Mr. Yi moved back to Shanghai.
After that Wang Jiazhi lived in Shanghai and unexpectedly met again with Kuang Yumin(邝裕民), leader of their assassination plan. This time, they had become trained spies and Wang Jiazhi was appointed to use her beauty to get close to Mr. Yi. Mr. Yi had really fallen in love with her, and she had also found herself growing attached to him. The plan went on well, but when Mr. Yi gave her a precious ring as a token of love, she told him to go and thus exposed her true identity.
In the end, Mr.Yi painfully ordered his men to execute Wang Jiazhi and her associates, but he himself was also tormented by the fact that the woman he loved was a spy. Yet what’s more afflicting is that he must have realized she loved him too, but they couldn’t be together due to political standpoint.
Why this movie has to be prohibited? On the one hand, of course, it contains too much sex in a rather naked way(though I have found it beautiful rather than vulgar). On the other hand, the theme is rather anti-ideological. A story that the heroine lost her heart to a traitor and even sacrificed her own life to save his is more than likely to be called unpatriotic, not to say treacherous.
Actually the above reasons are also what make the movie famous—reflections on love, sex and real human nature.
We shouldn’t blame Wang Jiazhi’s falling in love with Mr. Yi, because it’s so real, and white is not always white nor black always totally black. This kind of arrangement also fits her personality as a young, bold and innocent student. I think she never had a strong feeling for patriotism(she frowned when the movie theatre propagandized the ideology to resist against Japan), but did all these for love. Once she took part in the assassination plan because she had a crush on Kuang Yumin, and then she ruined the plan because she loved Mr. Yi.
Yet we also cannot blame her for not loving her country that much, because this is again very real. We can notice that, in real life, one would be more likely to “die for one’s country” out of a romantic feeling and a spirit of adventure rather than patriotism. Patriotism is abstract, but life is concrete. Even for Kuang Yumin, preparing this assassination plan might only be an innocent impulse in his young blood and a guilty feeling of not doing anything for his brother’s sacrifice. Neither did them know what being a spy and killing people really mean. This can be proved in the scene that these youngsters tried to kill Lao Cao(老曹), another traitor for the country, but no one dared to shoot and they could only cravenly use a little knife to stab him. After murdering a person, they were extremely fearful and even broke down.
Man’s strife and conflict within one’s own heart is so complicated. As a spy Wang Jiazhi had to be loyal to her country, but as a human she developed an affection for her enemy. I remember the scene when she and Kuang Yumin were in a movie theatre, she begged “Could you please make them faster? After the thing is done, can we both leave this place?”She was afraid that she would be bogged down in this and gradually lose ground.
She also had to choose between love and death, and though she chose the former, she was still afraid of the latter. Or, perhaps it was not a “choice”, but just an impulse to save her lover, an instinct without rational considerations. What’s worse, she had to decide to whom her heart belong, Kuang Yumin or Mr. Yi? Perhaps she could not help feeling guilty to put off Kuang Yumin.
In the end of the movie, Mr. Yi’s behavior was deeply impressive——We can imagine the feelings of anger, desperation, affliction and shock finding their way of mixing up in his heart. When his subordinate told him that Wang was in the interrogation room, he just asked “She’s downstairs?”, and then, corking up all his emotions, he ordered to execute them all before 10 p.m. After getting home, he sat on the bed where she had slept and caressed the sheet where her fragrance lingered. When the clock struck ten, he had known that he would never see her again in the world, and walked in melancholy out of the room. In the doorway, he turned back, his shadow falling on her bed. We can visualize his last look at her bed, long, affectionate and sorrowful.
(However, his subordinate’s choice was confusing——though suspecting Wang Jiazhi’s true identity, he didn’t tell Mr. Yi because of Wang and Yi’s relationship. But, since Mr. Yi loved her deeply, it’s all more reasonable for him to tell the truth.)
But what makes me bewildered is the end of Wang Jiazhi. Though it’s hard to see this kind of end in mainstream movies, the end still makes me wonder if it can be better. I understand her struggles, and I understand why at that moment she told Mr. Yi to go in spite of her own safety and regardless of all her comrades. But personally I prefer her to take the capsule to commit suicide, rather than being taken away by Wang government and being executed. If she didn’t take the capsule, it means she had to face her associates and Mr. Yi, but how could she possibly do this without a shameful feeling? Though she might be afraid of taking the capsule, she should have known that she was doomed to die. By taking the capsule, she could pretend that she had been discovered and in order not to disclose confidential information she chose to sacrifice for her group. This is also less cruel for Kuang Yumin, because thus he wouldn’t have known her true heart.
However, taking the capsule might be seen as a way to escape. Bearing Kuang Yumin’s meaningful gaze and being put to death can be understood as the punishment for Wang Jiazhi. She was rather selfish and had never grown mature, never been fully aware of the meaning of being a spy. She had to pay the price for this. Mr. Yi’s choosing not to interrogate her was a mercy for both of them, and being sentenced to death with her comrades was her final commitment to her own responsibility and atonement for her sins.
I find it a reserved but powerful way to convey feelings and emotions in eye contacts and movements rather than lines. For example, the ambiguous relationship between Wang and Kuang was shown when Kuang silently approached Wang and said “thank you” on the bus after their performance won a big success.
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