Qi Zhiwen typed the first sentence in front of the computer. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

"If you want to ask what is the hottest movie in China now, there is no doubt that it is Infernal Affairs.

Director Han Qiu directly fought in the film industry after "Tuner" and "Mao Liar", and launched two films of Infernal Affairs. The film sprung up in the case of a blockbuster with a big production and top-notch special effects like Dream Love, and the box office exceeded 50 million Hong Kong dollars in two weeks after its release, and finally topped the crowd with a box office of 120 million in Hong Kong and 850 million in the mainland!

It is undeniable that Infernal Affairs has not excavated the elements of commercial films, and it can even be said that to a large extent, those commercial elements are indispensable success factors. The film invites the four actors of the Hong Kong Film Awards, Liang Chaowei, Lau Dehua, Huang Qiusheng, and Zeng Zhiwei, to play on the same stage, which is very meaningful to the continuous downturn of Hong Kong films.

Although there are inevitable commercial elements, the film has an extremely serious ideological core. Judging from the title of the film, the so-called "Infernal Affairs" is actually about the fate of the characters and the dislocation of life. The word "infernal hell" means "infernal hell" in Buddhism.

"Infernal Hell" is one of the eight hells in the Buddhist scriptures, meaning that the punishment will never stop, and it is the most bitter of the eight hells. The film revolves around Chen Yongren and Liu Jianming, two identities that should not belong to them, and are undercover police and gangsters for each other, and many characters appear one by one, presenting a tragic epic of "Infernal Hell" in front of the audience.

Now, this article will analyze the true meaning of this film one by one through several tragedies of Infernal.

1. The Infinite Time -- The Tragedy of the Times.

Director Han Banxian once said: "Only in an environment like Hong Kong can "Infernal Affairs" shoot an obscure despair. "From the cession to the return of the Xiangjiang River, the vicissitudes of life for a hundred years are like a political and cultural "exile", existing in an intermediate state, neither completely integrated with the new environment, nor completely separated from the old environment, but in the predicament of being separated from the old environment.

Therefore, when interpreting the "Infernal Affairs" series of movies, "time" has always been a key word. The story runs from 1991 to 2002 for ten years.

If the first step of the film can only be said to be a sketch, then the second Han Banxian's ambition is directed to the epic: "The film magnificently narrates the decline of the Ni family and the rise of Han Chen's power. To some extent, the decline of the Ni family symbolizes the end of Xiangjiang's humiliating colonial history, while the rise of Han Chen's power as an emerging power symbolizes the prelude to a new history and mythology of Xiangjiang after the return of Xiangjiang politics.

At the end of the second part, Officer Huang replaced the photo of Ni Yongxiao on the wall with Han Chen's new bandit leader, and the background of this clip is the handover ceremony of Sino-British sovereignty. These two seemingly unrelated things were combined by Han Banxian and seemed to be meaningful. This adds a sense of historical weight to the film, which instantly improves its bearing, and its political allegory is self-evident.

Moreover, there are the two protagonists Chen Yongren and Liu Jianming. We can see that each of these two roles is played by two people, one as a young man and one as a middle-aged person. And the moral here is still time!

Han Banxian played the song "Forgotten Time" repeatedly, trying to remind the audience of the existence of time through this mournful music of "sweet treble, accurate mid-pitch, and thick bass", "This is the best era", which is also "the worst era".

Liu Jianming and Chen Yongren, who did not know each other, met for the first time in a video store, and the two men, who were about to draw knives against each other, sat together and enjoyed the music. But in the end, what is the fate of the two people here?

Time is constantly evolving, and the truth behind it is gradually becoming apparent, and it is often very different from what is seen on the surface. The director uses two different actors to imply the "cruelty" of time, and time destroys everything that once had meaning and value, including the face of people, beyond recognition, which is the tragedy of the passage of time and the changes of the times.

2. Inseparable - the tragedy of the characters.

"Infernal Affairs" series of movies, if you want to talk about the real protagonist, it should be "fate", this is a movie about fate and fatalism. In this series of films, the main characters are relatively even, which is an epic narrative method. It is impossible for us to analyze many characters one by one, but only to single out a few representative figures to talk about.

1, Liu Jianming.

Liu Jianming is the most complex character in Infernal Affairs: he joined the gang because he was infatuated with Han Chen's woman, Sister Mary, and was later instructed by Han Chen to enter the police academy as an undercover agent.

For Liu Jianming, Mary is a unique existence. It could be said that it was Mary who pulled him into the Infernal Hell. In the second part, Liu Jianming showed his love to Mary, but was ruthlessly rejected. Born of love and hatred, he directly revealed her information to the Ni family, and took the hands of others to kill Mary.

But what kind of person is Liu Jianming? In the second part, he can kill Ni Kun neatly, and he can kill Mary mercilessly, which can be described as a bad person. But in the first part, he wanted to be a good guy again.

Conscience found?

Maybe it is, or maybe it isn't.

Let's look at the whole theme in turn - Infernal Affairs. Why did you choose this title, and what does it mean? In fact, what is often overlooked is actually the essence.

Han Banxian elaborated at the beginning and end of the two parts.

That's right, it's those few Buddhist scriptures.

The Infernal Hell is the most terrifying hell in Buddhism, and it is almost eternal and cannot be reborn. And Liu Jianming was born in the underworld, in order to provide intelligence to the underworld, but went to be a policeman, during the period of being a policeman, his career and love were on the rise, but due to the death of Officer Huang, his conscience discovered, so that he had the desire to be a good person.

But in the end, he still can't get rid of the essence of his true identity in the underworld, between the desires of good people and the evil past, Liu Jianming fell into infernal hell.

At the end of the first part of the film, Liu Jianming's salute in front of Chen Yongren's tombstone is meaningful, and the sentence "I want to exchange with him" is even more interesting. This shows that he and Chen Yongren are essentially sympathetic to each other. He was not born evil, he just made an inappropriate choice under the personality of a good person and a bad person, which is a deeper level of Liu Jianming's tragedy.

If there is a third part of Infernal Affairs, Liu Jianming's future ending must be tragic.

Those who suffer from the Infernal Body will never die, and longevity is a catastrophe in the Infernal Hell!

Under the alternation of the two personalities, you can't find your true identity. Liu Jianming's spirit was like being punished by the Infernal Hell, until he collapsed.

2, Chen Yongren.

Chen Yongren, who was originally an outstanding cadet of the police academy, was expelled from the police academy for concealing his identity as the illegitimate son of the underworld boss, and in fact he was secretly assigned an undercover assignment by Officer Huang.

But with the unexpected death of his boss, Officer Huang, a new problem arises in front of him, and that is to find his identity.

Both Chen Yongren and Liu Jianming are faced with such a problem: their existence is misplaced, they try to find their original identity, but they go further and further on the road of infernal affairs, and finally Chen Yongren dies under the gun, while Liu Jianming is in danger, but life is worse than death, according to the "those who suffer from the infernals will never die, and longevity is the catastrophe in the infernal hell." Liu Jianming's "longevity" is the highest form of infernal suffering.

In the film "Infernal Affairs", Chen Yongren has a relationship similar to that of father and son with Officer Huang and Han Chen, but it was Officer Huang who killed his brother Ni Yongxiao, and the eldest brother Han Chen repeatedly designed to test Chen Yongren, so that Chen Yongren almost died in Huangquan several times.

Chen's long-standing two-sided allegiance has kept him in a "gray area", that is, "Infernal Hell". After Liu Jianming's colleagues shot Chen Yongren to death, Chen Yongren's body was stuck at the elevator entrance, and the elevator doors kept opening and closing, symbolizing Chen Yongren's tragic fate.

3. Life and Death - The Tragedy of Fate.

The movie "Infernal Affairs" is full of passwords, symbols, secret buttons, and fate. The meaning of "fate" in the movie refers to the fact that everything has been predestined for a long time, and can also be broadly understood as "fate", that is, "fate". The song "Forgotten Time", which runs through the movie, is filled with the theme of melody like sadness and beauty, as if it is the existence of some kind of transcendent time and space, and it also transcends right and wrong, life and death.

1, Han Chen: One will succeed and ten thousand bones will wither!

In the movie, Han Chen has been saying one sentence repeatedly, that is, "One will make ten thousand bones dry." ”

In the first episode of the movie, Han Chen said this sentence at the beginning, but then he also stated that he didn't believe this sentence, because it was "said by a fortune teller", Han Chen had reached the status of a big brother in charge at that time, and naturally thought that he could laugh at fate, and rely on his "free choice" to achieve the transcendence of fate. But Han Chen did not escape his fate in the end, he was accidentally killed by Liu Jianming, who wanted to clear his bottom and be a good man.

And after Liu Jianming killed Han Chen, he said "You picked it". As a mockery of Han Chen's sentence "One will succeed and ten thousand bones will wither, how to go, you choose by yourself", this is also the ridicule of fate for Han Chen: no matter how strong the strong is, there are times when they are "withered", either they let others "wither", or others let themselves "wither", no one can control this fateful process, because that is actually the law of existence of the underworld.

2. Chen Yongren: I'm sorry, I'm a policeman!

Compared with Liu Jianming's anguish of being immersed in an uncertain future, Chen Yongren is obviously much luckier.

If we look back at Chen Yongren's background, we can find that in fact, Chen Yongren has unique conditions to be an undercover agent.

He excelled at the Police Academy and had a strong observational memory.

He has gangster blood, and for him to study at the police academy, being an undercover agent is almost a fateful thing. But his status as a police officer has always controlled him, pitting him against the natural blood ties of the underworld and causing him to escape into "Infernal Hell".

The phrase "I am a policeman" expresses the meaning and destiny of Chen Yongren's life. He has to sacrifice his evil background for this identity, and he also has to pay with his own life to find this identity.

3. Liu Jianming: I want to be a good person!

Liu Jianming is a character who is completely in a desperate situation.

In fact, if Chen Yongren's choice to find the inner ghost of the police and then restore his identity as a police officer has a realistic possibility, Liu Jianming has no choice. If he chooses to turn himself in, he will inevitably face prison, and if he chooses to kill Han Chen and others to "clear his name", then he will have to pay the price for the people he killed. No matter from which point of view, Liu Jianming is the soul who can never be transcended who is really struggling in the "Infernal Hell".

From the moment he promised to be Han Chen's pawn, all this was doomed!

4, Ni Yongxiao: Come out and mix, sooner or later you will have to pay it back!

As is conventionally in the film industry, the second episode of a movie will not be better than the first. However, the sequel to "Infernal Affairs" did not disappoint the audience, and the filming level of the sequel was actually improved and deepened to the extent of the first episode.

Ni Yongxiao has a mantra: "Dad said that if you come out to mix, you will have to pay it back sooner or later." ”

On the one hand, it can be seen that he has deep belief and respect for his father, and on the other hand, it can also be seen that Ni Yongxiao agrees with the sense of fatalism revealed in this sentence. That is, Ni Yongxiao knows that sooner or later the road of gangsters will make people fall into unforeseen circumstances and cannot turn back, but Ni Yongxiao, as an important member of the family, cannot refuse the family's business, which is his fate.

His tragedy lies in his ending: he was killed because of Han Chen, who escaped death, his family was all killed by Han Chen, and his career was transferred to Han Chen. At this point, all the valuable things he had worked so hard to maintain were destroyed. This is Ni Yongxiao's fate as a member of the underworld family.

..........

The entire "Infernal Affairs" movie, with Liu Jianming and Chen Yongren, the two characters with inverted identities as the main line, presents an epic story for the audience, which makes its own unique understanding of the simple brotherhood and simple confrontation between good and evil in Xiangjiang's previous gangster movies.

"Infernal Affairs" also saves Hong Kong films from the flood of hot gunfights and superficial thematic expressions, giving the film a deeper connotation and tragic awareness. In short, it is not an exaggeration to regard it as "the first classic of Xiangjiang movies in the 21st century".

The above are just some of my personal humble opinions, just for your reference.

Thank you Han Banxian again for bringing us this epic spiritual baptism!