"Mr. Loveday's Short Outing" tells the story of an aristocratic lady Angela who went to a mental hospital to visit his father, and accidentally met a polite, helpful and versatile old man, Mr. Loveday. Loveday is the caregiver and secretary of Angela's father. He is the central figure in the mental hospital and a mental patient. He was admitted to the mental hospital 35 years ago for killing a woman riding a bicycle. Mr. Loveday has a secret wish buried in his heart, hoping to leave the mental hospital for a short time. Angela, who is grateful and sympathetic, uses her noble status and free time to run in many ways and finally allows him to go out for a short time. Loveday returned within two hours after leaving. Because half a mile away from the mental hospital, he was lucky enough to meet a woman riding a bicycle.
The story core of "Stoke" is almost the same as Mr. Loveday's experience. In the same story, Evelyn Waugh used only a few thousand words, and he spoke it coldly and restrained from the perspective of a third party. The screenwriter Wentworth Miller added extra features from another perspective and retelled it as an exploration of the psychology of personal growth. horror film. There is no good or bad story, style is everything. Compared with the simplicity of the former, the environment, characters, and motivations added by the latter are like screenwriters' daily tasks, especially the vulgar orientation of seeking motivation for the murder of the hero and heroine, which makes the story not only redundant, but also weakens the intensity of the horror. The reason why fear is terrifying comes from the uncertainty in the murderer's heart. In order to infinitely improve the horror of the story, the suspense must be delayed continuously. An open ending is the best choice. A good screenwriter/director must understand to fight the audience's desire to reveal and interpret, and at the same time contain the possibility of self-expression.
"Stoke" succumbed to its inner impulse. Although it tries to obscure the desire of the narrative, it still can't restrain the habit of rectifying the murderer's name. It provides the audience with two hints: madness in the blood, or lack of love-or both. Blood represents tradition and inheritance, and also echoes the motif of growth; the latter means sex and desire, exploring the possibilities of human nature. Both are Freudian interpretations, favorites in Hollywood. The mediocre, delayed, and excessive motives corrupt a story that explores multi-dimensional human nature into a genre film.
But for Park Chan-wook, a genre film director who was new to Hollywood, this script is appropriate. Anyway, the type is a basket, and everything is inside. The story is easy to tell, the film is easy to sell, and the audience is easy to watch. The background of the genre film is either a routine (V-type dystopian film of the vendetta type) or fuzzy time and space (such as this film or a martial arts film). Loyal fans buy it. Relying on a series of revenge films represented by "Old Boy", Park Chan-wook has laid a certain audience base around the world, and he has not managed to control "Stoke".
Throughout the whole film of "Stoke," Park Chan-wook still has a distance from the so-called "masters" in certain populations, and his performance is not lost. He tried his best to restore and present the beauty of murder, creating a realistic atmosphere of horror. There are several shots worthy of praise, such as Charlie slowly pulling out the belt in front of the phone booth, the focus of the audience's eyes gradually accelerating following the end of the triangular belt, and the throat is mentioned in surprise; another example is Charlie and Idia's four combined playing and talking about the piano. With her hands, tight feet, and gradually flushing expressions, a set of beautiful montages are extremely sexy. The feet that constantly appear in the film are Park Chan-wook's most important and most freely used imagery. Some shots undoubtedly pay tribute to the famous Italian sculptor Bernini's famous work "The Addiction of Santa Teresa".
The inherent shortcomings of the script limit the depth of the film's exploration. As an Eastern director, Park Chan-wook's lack of detail and breadth of Western stories is also the innate condition that determines the mediocre performance of "Stoke". In order to make up for the shortcomings in content, Park Chan-wook tried to make some breakthroughs in form. In order to make up for the monotony of the flat and straightforward linear narrative in the full text, he used the inverted method of the first echo; repeatedly repeated some simple and commonly used compositions and images, such as stairs, doors, feet, confined spaces, such as the use of spiders to refer to the awakening of desire , A tribute to the "Twin Peaks" corpse shots and so on, stuffed the film for a hundred minutes.
Possibly because he realized his mediocrity and shortcomings, Park has made some innovations in audiovisual language-neither failure nor success. Slowing down time hundreds of times creates the visual wonder of "bullet time". Perhaps based on the same principle, "Stoke" attempts to amplify first-person hearing. The beginning of the film said: "I can hear something that I can't hear", and it turns out that this is actually just exaggeration—not so much that it is a sound that is inaudible to others, but it is a first-person hearing. Of (psychological) magnification. I applaud the director for extracting and amplifying the first-person hearing from the third-person almighty vision, successfully creating a gloomy, detached, fresh narcissistic sense of alienation and loneliness. But his technique is obviously not as proficient as other images. In the scene at the key dinner table, the fast editing of omniscient and omnipotent is not in harmony with Idia's first-person hearing, and even deviates from it.
The performance in the film is wonderful, but it is a pity that Nicole Kidman's role is played. This character setting is almost thinner than the housekeeper's wife who has only appeared for less than three minutes. Nicole's acting skills are wasted all his life. Matthew and Mia gave us a few wonderful sexy shots, except for mediocrity. Yes, Park Chan-yu is not great, but if you don't expect too much, you won't be disappointed.
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