Handguns and bullet details in
"Blood Maze" "Blood Simple." (1984)
Basic information
Screenplay: Ethan Coen,
Director of Joel Coen (Ethan Coen / Joel Coen) : Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (Ethan Coen / Joel Coen)
Photography: Barry Sonnenfeld (Barry Sonnenfeld t)
Genre: Drama/Crime/Thriller
Country/Region: United States
Length: 99 minutes
Dialogue Language: English
Color: Color
Awards: In 1986, he won the Best Director Award of the Independent Spirit Award, nominated for Best Photography, Best Feature Film, and Best Screenplay. In 1985, he won the Sundance Drama category jury award.
Director profile
in the industry, they are called the "two-headed director." On the set, the whispers between them may only be understood by them. They always have the same opinion on the film, and there are even rumors that the actors can ask them questions separately and get the same answers. They are the Coen brothers, who are known as the "signatures of independent films". They wrote, directed, and produced their films. Although it has been more recently that the younger brother Joel Cohen named the director and the older brother Ethan Cohen named the production, it is difficult to make such a clear distinction in real work. There is a big difference between the Coen brothers' films and mainstream Hollywood movies. At first glance, you may not see what the film wants to say. The stories of their films are weird, the characters in the play are not common in life, their ideas are outstanding, and they even have a taste of metaphorical political history. Their magical black style and exaggerated and deformed characters and plot make their films in Hollywood and independent films. Section rubbed out.
Video overview
In 1984, the Coen brothers wrote and directed the film "Blood Labyrinth". This is their first collaboration after shooting many industry short films and music TV. The story takes place in Texas, USA. It tells the story of a down-and-out bar owner who hired a private investigator to kill his wife and lover. Many elements of this film have more or less shaped the direction of the future directors of the Coen Brothers: their own movie genres (noir, thriller genre movies) related to the murder of moral chaos; the clever plot handling in simple stories; belongs to them. Their black, creative, distorted sense of humor; and their grasp of the atmosphere of the film. "Blood Labyrinth" fully embodies the above four points, the last of which is particularly prominent. The film tells a very simple story. The boss hired a killer to kill his wife and lover. The audience can foresee the possible ending: the wife and lover are dead; the killer is killed by mistake; the boss is killed when he sets himself on fire. Although the story is simple and the result is simple, the Coen brothers succeeded in creating four rich and full characters, making each of them have ghosts, and the simple cause of the story through the complex and bizarre plot to impress unpredictable results, and this has been established before. The most sensible and humane motives and reactions in the role. The famous film critic Robert Eber said that the film presents three nightmares for the audience: no matter how you clean it, blood is always everywhere and it can’t be cleaned; you know you killed someone, but you don’t know why or how. Killed; you know that one of the small links went wrong, and this link will definitely lead to serious consequences in the end. These three nightmares make the film resonate strongly with the audience-of course, this resonance is not based on the audience's criminal experience, but more or less based on the audience reading and watching a large number of crime-related artworks. Experience. The main factor that makes "Blood Labyrinth" exciting is the
detailed analysis
of the details, that is, the revolver and three bullets that people talk about. Pistols and bullets do not have special meanings, but the characters related to him use them to make them have the meaning to promote the plot.
As early as the beginning of the film, the pistol appeared sideways through the dialogue between the wife and the lover. The wife said that the pistol was given to her by the boss as a birthday present, and she also said something cruel at this time: I hope I don’t use this gun to kill the boss before I leave. These two sentences gave a basis for the existence of the pistol, and also showed the character of one of the two characters, the boss and his wife: the boss gave a pistol as a birthday gift, which shows that he is also a person full of evil thoughts; the wife said to the lover If this is the case, it can be seen that the wife has become intolerable to the boss and wants to run away with her relatives.
The official appearance of the bullets and pistols was when the wife and lover returned to the boss's house to pack their things and prepare to leave. The director arranged two close-ups to highlight the only three bullets and the pistol, and the bag with the pistol also gave an emphasis on the performance. In this passage, the decoration and furnishings of the wife and the boss’s home are also shown through the perspective of the lover, showing a emotionally broken and cold relationship between the two. The strange music in this scene indicates that the two will embark on a journey of life and death.
After the boss found his wife and lover eloped to their lover's house, he sneaked into their house early in the morning and hijacked his wife. In the panic, the wife wanted to take out the pistol to save herself, but only dropped the pistol to the ground. The boss also found the pistol at this time, but he hijacked his wife outside and said to solve it outside (the original English line says: in a more natural way). The audience here can see that the boss’s anger towards his wife’s derailment is not so angry that he wants to shoot his wife, and he still has compassion for his wife, hoping to solve this emotional problem in a “natural way”. However, when outside, the wife kicked the boss and the lover came out, and the boss fled in panic. The handling of the gun in this paragraph is quite clever, and its appearance alone caused changes in the character's actions and reactions. This lies in the potential meaning of a fully utilized gun: killing to death and ending life. It reflects the boss's tolerance towards his wife, and it also reflects the wife's subconscious killing intent towards the boss.
The boss let go of his wife, but got a fatal kick, was laughed at by his lover, and his murderous intent was aroused. He hired a private detective to kill his wife and lover. However, when the private detective sneaked into the lover's house, he looked cautiously and was extremely nervous. Obviously, private investigators also have reservations about the murder. Especially when he found the revolver and the three bullets inside, he was filled with anxiety. Can three bullets put two people to death? What made the audience more convinced that the detective did not want to kill is that he did not bring a weapon at all! The detective in the film is indeed greedy for money, but not to kill people like hell. He is still human.
The detective thinks that killing two people will get a sum of money. It is better to kill the boss who gave the money. Killing one person will get more people. It is more than enough to kill one person with three bullets. The degree of difficulty is relatively low. , He himself is more certain. So he successfully lied to the boss and shot him, kicking the gun to the side. This is where the first bullet went. However, he dropped his lighter in a panic.
The lover returned to the bar and wanted to go to the meeting where the boss owed him two months of wages, but found that the boss was not breathing, accidentally stepped on the gun on the ground and went off. This is where the second bullet went. The lover looked at the gun belonging to his wife, thinking that he understood everything: it was the wife who secretly killed the boss, but the corpse was left unhandled. The lover put the pistol in the boss's clothes.
When it was time to deal with the "corpse", the lover found that the boss was not dead, and took out the pistol in his pocket and pointed it at him, and fired two shots, but there were no bullets. The mood of the audience here is like a roller coaster, and they are very nervous when they see the muzzle of the lover, and can't shoot the bullet, they breathe a sigh of relief. Here is the use of the physical characteristics of the pistol: the revolver can hold six bullets in total, and now there is only one bullet left, so the bullet has not entered the barrel. The lover was saved by luck alone, and tremblingly took the pistol from the boss and buried the boss alive.
After finally disposing of the corpse, the lover returned to the rental room where he and his wife had moved in. The wife's inexplicable reaction made the lover angry and funny. After leaving the pistol, he left.
Then the wife and lover thought that they had gradually become clear about the truth of the matter, the lover believed that the killer was someone else, and the wife always believed that the boss was not dead. Then the lover has died tragically under the sniper gun of a private detective. In order to kill and regain his own lighter, private detectives approached his wife step by step. The wife always thought it was the boss who wanted to control herself to death. During the confrontation between the wife and the private detective, the two never met, and the wife has been kept in the dark. Until the wife retrieved her pistol and shot the last bullet in the pistol, she still thought she had killed the boss. The story ends with the death of the boss, relatives, private detective, and the sudden realization of his wife.
Summary
1. Pistols and bullets are the details throughout, and their psychological and physical characteristics have been fully used, making the actions and reactions of the characters have been changed.
2. The interaction of the two elements of detail and plot, coupled with the director's creativity and accurate grasp of the character's personality, makes the film exciting and fascinating.
View more about Blood Simple reviews
