Absurdity and Reality: The Black Humor Narration and Social Criticism in the Film "Let the Bullets Fly"

"Let the Bullets Fly" (2010) is a classic Chinese-language film directed by Jiang Wen. The film encapsulates profound social metaphors within an absurdist comedy format, exploring its narrative structure, symbolic metaphors, and social criticism. This paper primarily analyzes Zhang Muzhi as an atypical hero figure who embodies both chivalrous and bandit-like qualities, discussing his connections to traditional chivalrous spirit and revolutionary narratives. By decoding the director's narrative strategies through plot, dialogue, and camera language, this paper analyzes the metaphors of "bullets," "horses pulling trains," and other imagery. "Let the Bullets Fly" constructs a fable field of power struggle through highly symbolic narration. The film employs black humor to reflect the closed nature of the "Goose City" space, the capitalist violence symbols of "money" and "guns," as well as the mirror-image confrontation between "Zhang Mazi" and "Huang Silang." The study finds that the film deconstructs traditional revolutionary narratives through absurd plots, revealing the inevitability of the cycle of violence in power transitions, while the passivity of the masses as the "silent majority" reflects the dilemma of public subjectivity in China's modernization process. This study provides a new perspective for understanding how films define social power relations.