Author | l
Title picture "The Tip of the Knife" stills.
The ending part of "The Tip of the Knife" was written by the writer Mai Jia in his father's funeral hall. In a talk show, Mai Jia shared this experience. When the manuscript was about to be delivered, his father died suddenly, and the literary journal was about to be published, so the Mai family had to complete the last 3,000 words while keeping a vigil.
Jin Shenshui and Lin Yingying in the story have their own endings. But for the writer, it was a rather painful memory. After finishing the draft, the Mai family wept bitterly, and he deeply realized that literature had given him some kind of mockery and harm. Walking out of the mourning hall, he posted a Weibo, saying that he would no longer write so-called spy war literature in the future. He still lives by this principle to this day.
At the end of November 2023, the movie "The Tip of the Knife" will finally be released after five years of preparation. When participating in the roadshow with the main creative staff, the Mai family seemed to be a little relieved than earlier. At the screening at Peking University, he joked that he was a "brain leader", and he designed these characters who wandered on the tip of a knife alone. As the creator whose works have been adapted into film and television works the most, Mai Jia also tries to look at the textual differences between film and television and literature from a more diverse perspective.
"Alive" in troubled times
At the post-screening sharing meeting at Peking University, Gao Qunshu, the director of "The Tip of the Knife", talked about the origin of this work. His encounter with the original book "The Tip of the Knife" was at an airport. At that time, he was on a business trip, and in order to pass the time, he went to the bookstore for a walk. The author of the book on the counter has the words "Mai Family" written on the cover. Gao Qunshu was full of expectations for his old friend's new work, so he decisively bought "The Edge of the Knife" and took it on the plane. 
Mai Jia's work "The Tip of the Knife".
Gao Qunshu's journey also returned to Nanjing in 1940 with the narrative in Mai's book. **Jin Shenshui has been mediating between the forces of the Japanese military, Wang Puppet** and the military commander. During the mission, he met Lin Yingying. Jin Shenshui found that Lin Yingying was the same as herself, with national hatred and family hatred hidden in her heart, but behind her, there seemed to be a larger and more powerful organization supporting her, so that she could be more comfortable in dealing with crises. The two fought side by side, tearing apart the open and secret battles under that period of history again and again. At the same time, Jin Shenshui is constantly updating his self-awareness, and his life trajectory has gradually changed. In the book, the Mai family tells this story from a dual perspective, the first half is the "yang side", and the second half is the "yin side", and the narration of the male and female protagonists makes Gao Qunshu very obsessed. After getting off the plane, he gave the Mai family a **, without too many greetings, and directly expressed his idea of wanting to shoot "The Edge of the Knife". The Mai family readily agreed. In this way, the characters in "The Tip of the Knife" jump out of the book and transform into those vivid images on the screen. Both in the book and in the film, the details involved are extremely impressive. Different from the previous ** shaping, the underground workers in "The Tip of the Knife" are often not so rich in legends, but more in the dark tide of daily life to play with the enemy. 
(Photo: Visual China).
Lies and truths, death and survival, indiscriminately mixed in troubled times. This also affects their fate to some extent. In an interview, Mai Jia said: "The protagonists of "The Tip of the Knife", Jin Shenshui and Lin Yingying, are such people, every day, every night, they are only separated from death by a thin ......An inopportune sneeze can hit your head. At the post-screening sharing meeting of the film, Gao Qunshu also expressed a similar view. In his opinion, the core of the film is "how to live", this group of people no matter what side they are on, whether they are friends or foes, want to live their lives. This is the goal of some of our ancestors, and at the same time it is a true portrayal of a particular history. It is written about spy warfare, but it is not confined to spy warfare.
At first glance, fans or readers will unconsciously associate this work with "The Wind". It's a huge challenge for creators. How to make new expressions within the existing narrative framework, and how to keep the story free from the stereotypes of a certain type of work, these are the problems they face. In this regard, Gao Qunshu's answer is to "use the fate of a group of people to present an epic". The design of many scenes in the film is like this, one second, a core character may still be beautiful, and the next second he becomes the target of the enemy's hunting. In this way, a fact is placed in front of people: in times of crisis, it is obviously an extravagant hope to live in peace, and only by constantly making choices that are beneficial to oneself and the organization can it be possible. In Gao Qunshu's eyes, spy warfare and secret rooms are not the core of the film, and its real meaning is "conducive to concealing identities to sabotage". 
Stills from the movie "The Tip of the Knife". The film is adapted from the writer Mai Jia of the same name**.
As the author of the original work, the Mai family also has a set of answers in mind. People usually call the Mai family the "father of spy warfare", but he believes that his past works are not strictly spy warfare, and such a reputation often makes him feel at a loss. But such feelings will not be brought into the work by the writer, so when writing "The Edge of the Knife", he still contains a lot of his own expressions in it. First of all, each character's personality is full and multifaceted. Just like Lin Yingying, her husband Gao Kuan was killed to save her, but the "love brain" never belongs to the "Queen of Spy War", even in the face of life and death, in the face of the person she loves the most, for the final victory of the revolution, reason and courage will still prevail. As for Jin Shenshui, in the book, he has to face the cruelty of the old man to the party comrades, Lin Yingying's repeated persuasion, and the ...... Liu Xiaoying and Qin Huaihe were both killedThe superposition of multiple layers of factors has made Jin Shenshui's heart endure countless tortures and vibrations. In the end, the "Southern Anhui Incident" that ignited Jin Shenshui's anger made him "tear up the newspaper fiercely, and I knew very well that what I tore up was my own past." "It was from this moment that I decided to be Lin Yingying's comrade. Finally, Jin Shenshui shattered the old faith and established a new faith - to join the Chinese Communist Party. When an author explores human nature by deeply portraying the behavior of characters, he is actually touching the real texture of literature. 
Stills from "The Tip of the Knife").
In addition, the restoration of history is also something that the Mai family has always insisted on. As a ** family, fiction is the first skill. But this is based on digesting a lot of real history. Mai Jia said in an interview that if you can add some philosophy to **, then it will be more advanced;If not, then add a sense of family and country to show the bleakness of history - this will also be another option. "The Point of the Knife" falls into the latter category. The Mai family once told about their grandmother's experience of being injured in the lower leg by a poison gas bomb from the Japanese army - that is the injury left by the war to ordinary people. For a nation, there are countless people in that history who have endured pain and suffering. As a writer, putting this history into ** is naturally a way for people to remember it. As the banner hung at the screening venue of Peking University reads: "Our ancestors walked on the tip of the knife, and our generation remembered it in our hearts." "When you take off the label of spy warfare and shatter this filter, people will find that the content of "The Tip of the Knife" is much more than what it seems. At the end of the post-screening sharing session at Peking University, Gao Qunshu said that he wanted to donate hundreds of copies of "The Tip of the Knife" to the Peking University Library. This also means that more and more people, whether through movies or books, will experience the complexity of people's hearts through "The Tip of the Knife", and at the same time, they will also go deep into history and look back at the ups and downs of that generation. Original title: The movie "The Tip of the Knife" sharpens a sword in five years: outside the spy war, it penetrates human nature.