I watched the film trance when I was in my second year of high school, and I revisited it one night a few years later. In fact, it is like some hidden emotions that are difficult to find in my mind. After a long period of tempering and development, it can finally burst out on a certain day and night. New emotions are like signs of rebirth.
1: Redeem the chaotic life
. One day you get up, brush your teeth and wash your face, put on the clothes you got back from the dry cleaner, and arrive at the office before going to work. If this happens every day, can you still discover the beauty of life? The protagonist, DAN, is a history teacher in a middle school. He does not follow the fixed teaching outline given by the school, trying to impart knowledge to the students in his own way. On the other hand, he is a drug addict who is afraid of life and avoids himself. My girlfriend uses escape as a defense against this life. While Dery’s brother was in jail for a friend, and his mother was busy with work. At the age of 13, he began to take care of his life alone. By chance, DERY saw the picture of DAN taking drugs. The original relationship pattern between the two has not changed, and the distance between the two is also the same. It was fixed, but because of this incident, the relationship between the two of them changed quietly.
Like all thoughts taken for granted, life is nothing more than the most important matrix of creation. The things contained in it are too large to understand clearly or accurately judge right from wrong. If salvation is talked about in this context, is it right? What should be opposed: it belongs to the mutual understanding of the spiritual level, and the retelling of the underlying emotions under the ideological discourse of life is completely and easily changeable. It is precisely because DERY has spied the secrets of DAN that DAN is allowed The perspective on her began to change. We all understood the meaning of meeting each other, and we also knew that the affection generated at the critical moment was extremely important. DERY and his brother’s friends were too close to make Dan panic. From his point of view, he tried to help rescue the girl in his own way, but Dan did not understand that this behavior itself was extremely powerless. Yancai is really a character that needs to be redeemed, and the character's own positioning has problems from the beginning.
The protagonist's life is extremely bad, facing his own redemption powerless, so he began to compromise. What is interesting is that the real reason for DAN to give up is not other factors, but DERY's drug trafficking behavior. The black man in the film once said to DERY. A word of remark: Addicts themselves have no friends. The meaning of the emergence of DERY is that a person who is about to be destroyed finds that the person he considers important is about to be on the verge of destruction. This makes the person who is about to be destroyed realize that the light of redemption itself is not in the individual, but in multiple individuals. The role played together.
2: The current mentality The current mentality
I summarized is about dealing with life and facing all the compromises that are manifested, such as the increasing gap between people, or the deteriorating world, and it depends on people’s individual factors. In other words, we seem to have become accustomed to wrapping ourselves under a thick coat, using masks and sunglasses to draw a deep line between ourselves and reality. In the film, DERY has almost no expression. He treats everything as familiar and calm as the old friends of yesterday. This mentality is also reminiscent of numbness and loneliness. Isn't that the case for DAN, the messy room, the ashtray full of cigarette butts on the table, the books of the leftist, and the different aspects shown by the predecessors and the posters, all try to connect with the "opposition" in the film.
In terms of conventional thoughts, what the film praises is to bury oneself deep in vain soil, and realize that all this is suspicious, because it seems to be based on the inherent feelings in this cultural system. system. Sometimes we try to expand the boundaries to deny ourselves and the world, just like the subconsciousness of people will be in a state of avoidance in the face of all hardships. The intersection of the lives of two people itself is very small, and the inexplicable opportunity allows two people to know each other deeply, thereby breaking the gap between people, just like a teacher and a student, who are originally two opposing individuals, the contradiction in this Obviously. As far as DAN is concerned, he himself does have lofty expectations for his ideals, and he evades, evades his girlfriend, and evades the life he should face, until finally his girlfriend is far away from him. Fortunately, the character himself still follows the trajectory of life.
In fact, the problem is not that simple. We often rely on many of our own established judgment systems, as if those judgment systems make us use a universal form of inertia, for example, we have become accustomed to being silent in the crowd, and treating things with indifference. In the morning after the one-night stand between DAN and his colleagues, the indifference shown by DAN is actually another convenient way. It may not be a way of self-defense and protection. For the inexplicable confusion in the future, these subtle emotions are often transformed into other things. The way to vent in DAN's life.
Therefore, the reality mentality itself is an attitude of avoidance and numbness in life. In fact, the abandonment of the binary opposition, to some extent, the distance between the two people themselves has been much closer. In the general environment of life, these oppositions make the two people know each other at a critical moment and sublimate.
3: Independence and mechanism.
On the topic, most of the descriptions of drug addicts are similar, and the focus is mostly on the obsessiveness of the behavior itself. Throughout most of these low-cost independent films, it is necessary to explore the topic itself. It's much more in-depth than the plot itself.
In class discussions, DAN once mentioned such a proposition: machines. After the machine itself loses its physical meaning, it is actually discussing a system, and such a system exists in every corner. For prisoners, prisons are machines, and for students, schools are machines. This also includes white and ethnic issues. On the other hand, the machine itself is a device with the meaning of domination. Under this premise, people actually live under the tolerance of the machine. This tolerance is the motivation and meaning of maintaining the rule and being ruled.
Before that, let’s discuss the background first. In the United States, all children of the same age must enjoy the right to education. There are two types of education. One is private education. Most public education is funded by the state or state agencies, and it faces ordinary families, such as immigrants and people of color. In the context of this film, DAN’s job is precisely such a school. The school’s facilities are outdated, and most of the classrooms are black or other people of color. Posters of this kind of fighting hero Manila are posted on the walls of the classrooms. It is also a setting that the director can deliberately do.
The contradiction in the background is obvious, so under such a machine system, the problem means that it will be more obvious to be exposed. Self-defense and protection in this environment, the only gain that people will contend with is to have such a relationship that is self-ridiculous and completely based and is overthrown. Fortunately, I met DERY at a critical moment. The expressionless, she was also given the mission of redeeming DAN by the director. On the other hand, she was also redeemed by DAN just before she was lost, and in a trivial and messy life. , The two people also began to rely on each other and redeem each other.
There is something very interesting in the film. DAN’s mother chatted with DAN at a family gathering and asked DAN if he was happy. DAN said he had a very happy life. My mother said that you are happy and I am happy. Then my mother said: I tried to change the world when I was young. It can be inferred from this that when Dan’s parents were young, they were in the hippie movement. All young people pursued freedom and hated the system, trying to change this situation through sports. This kind of plot arrangement has a strong metaphorical meaning. First of all, DAN is an ideal person at work, hoping to teach in a way that deviates from the traditional model, and his method has been resisted by the system, and all of this Extend it to your own life and turn it into a quagmire.
In the film, a large number of historical events about genocide and suppression are interspersed, and the way of presentation is to adopt a method similar to a pseudo-documentary, with students narrating the historical event, and then record it with historical materials. This plot arrangement, In addition to the most primitive details of the film, on the other hand, it is also the ideology that the director, starring an individual like DAN, expresses the basic ideology of the tongue. Whether or not to criticize and insinuate racial issues, I think everyone's development is different.
Fortunately, the film did not take this approach to the struggle between individual ideals and institutional violence. If so, it seems to have entered a dead end. The light of individual ideals has not faded, so the film focuses more on digging the characters’ inner emotions, and the system Violence is the basis for constructing the image of the character.
4: Style The
entire film tries to embody the minimalism advocated by independent films. The shot is simple and the editing is soothing. With this, it progresses more slowly under the premise of blurring the plot. Due to the lack of exquisite plot, this film Going into the "shaking" stream of consciousness, to reveal the theme that life is greater than art.
When shooting, the film is dark and dark, with a cool tone. What is coexisting with the lens is that the front and back focus is out of alignment. The weird focus is confusing. I think it is to deliberately enhance the rendering of the theme atmosphere-clutter. Such kind of thoughts and feelings show the position, behavior, and people with unpredictable and unique behaviors. Only this kind of shooting can satisfy our scheduling of scenes in a small format.
Regarding the dull topic, the first half of the film did show that, until the outbreak of more than 80 minutes, the background music reminded of slowcore music, accompanied by psychedelic sounds, dense drums, and timely electronics. The whole film has its ups and downs. , Full of tension, in the end the emotions were vented, and then stopped, and the collection was just right.
In addition, a large number of subjective shots, as well as close-ups and close-up shots when creating characters, as the plot develops, the deep and depressive slowness has become the criticism of most people for this film. I think it is reasonable. The film matrix itself In the eyes of most people, value already wants to break this shackle.
The problem is that these group loneliness allows individuals to connect with each other, and with them is to live well in accordance with the trajectory. Even if it is seeking or salvation. Distinguishing each other's characteristics does not lie in the part, but in this carrier, so the formulation of these highly differentiated and independent individuals is itself contrary to tradition.
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