The effect of respecting reality is to achieve surrealism

Guillermo 2022-10-30 20:34:29

If you think back to the fragments of this day before going to bed every night, there are countless details that have been forgotten or are being forgotten, or a sudden sorrow of sorrow after recalling, the helpless sadness of being dull and uninteresting in your depraved life, it means that from some kind of To a certain extent, we can experience the embarrassing and confusing psychology of the protagonist Ed. Maybe our life is not peaceful, maybe when we realize our insignificance, we have surpassed the true face of reality. But as for the Coen brothers, the impulse in the life of such a small person can be dismantled so fascinating in their hands.


After looking forward to it for a long time, I finally found this D9 in a dusty corner, unprocessed into a color version like the expected black and white film. That is, when I was thinking about the whole night and couldn't create my own value, the slow voice-over and story played before my eyes, which made me unable to extricate myself. The content of the film is very simple, but when I wanted to tell the story, I found it was very complicated, and there was a kind of profoundness that I could not control and ponder.

This film was translated as "The Absent Man" until the end of the film. I didn't realize that this translation became a kind of creator's faint compassion for certain reality and details that we never remembered. There are always people in life who are in it but don’t know the truth. They sit on the sidelines but complain and complain. In some ordinary people, they are always in a state of absence. They will not appear as they should be creating memories and fun for us. Location, never.

The protagonist’s continuous cigarettes separate his heart from the face of the walking dead. We have to admit what such a silent man can bring to our lives. Maybe more silence, maybe more. absurd.

The idea of ​​the film is very big, the starting point is very small, and the philosophical significance of existentialism is constantly revolving in the life of the protagonist. The director also expressed his attitude towards the balanced relationship between people and things with a kind of uncertainty, that is, the harder you look, the more you can’t see clearly; the more you change something, the easier it is for us to change you. After the process of constant exploration, contradiction, entanglement, anger, and relief, a new balance has been reached, and this kind of thing is a flow of uncertainty.

In real life, everyone does not actually have the true value given to certain names, but just a certain role or position. It’s not that Ed is a barber and he has the actual value of a barber. He can also be a reticent husband, a murderer of last resort, or an uncle who has a good affection for Loli, but we give For his role, it's not that he got such value. In the real world, we also play all kinds of roles that we should expect every day, but some of the roles are wonderful, and some are just unheard of.

When Ed faced the plausible UFO, he had actually realized the truth he was facing from the role of a hairdresser. Facing the death was just a ritual, and the growth of his hair had already affected him. Those unwilling lonely passions sucked dry, the vitality of the body reflected the demise of the soul, and the bizarre and unexpected storyline made him understand this absurd reality, with irresistible power.

In a world of ordinary, small, and almost negligible people, they operate regularly. When this tiny individual moves slightly larger and makes people aware, it appears so reckless and unreal, when he admits himself. No one believed what he said during his crimes, and only after an incorrect but seemingly real thing happened, would everyone rearrange those supposedly and reach a reasonable conclusion. In Cohen's eyes, reality is so surreal, and accidents are so reasonable.

Cohen's genre films are a stubborn rose among Hollywood creators. Their genre has a unique style. The fusion of comedy and tragedy, the combination of suspense and fantasy, the combination of reality and surrealism, are mixed in Hollywood genre films, but Give us a new level of fluency, perhaps Cohen’s expression is closer to the beauty of the essence of the movie, restoring the plots in our hearts that are ambiguous and uncontrollable. What Cohn understands is that the image of respecting reality is itself a surreal creation. Our lives always find certain Cohen-type plots or emotions in all kinds of suspicion, manipulation, betrayal, and relief, so as to settle down and reflect on ourselves.

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Extended Reading

The Man Who Wasn't There quotes

  • Costanza: He's a barber right? It's a good trade. So why you got no kids, huh?

  • Ed Crane: Life has dealt me some bum cards. Or maybe I just haven't played 'em right, I don't know.