I personally love and fear Uncle Park’s drama stories. I can try to adapt to the discomfort of certain types of paper, transformed into images, but in overly sensitive and cruel shots, the distortion and blood on the screen will still scare my sensory cells that are not humorous enough. For example, I can calmly read Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother and finally acupuncture his eyes, but I always instinctively retreat and hesitate for such video stories. Tangled, and finally captured by curiosity, let's see what happened. And this kind of ambivalence is found in Uncle Park’s movies, and the other is Lars von Trier.
Before watching "Stoke", my friend helped me explore the way. There was no spoiler, and only said, "Red syrup is not used much. I used a few belts. I don’t know who sponsored Stoke’s vintage shoes. "In this way, I have a bottom in my heart, no matter how violent it is, I can see it. After reading it, I think back again, my friend did reveal the essence of visual horror. In addition, the focus is on the relationship between the characters. He still jokingly talks about ethics, and is his old and simple specialty—carrying out killings among close relatives, and wandering in the dark room with ambiguity and chaos. It’s just the ingredients from other places that determine the Western style of cooking, which somewhat weakens Uncle Park’s directing skills. It seems that I am eating Korean kimchi marinated with "cabbage". At least compared to his classic "Old Boy", I still feel that it lacks a bit of flavor.
In particular, while striving for a complex narrative method for spectators to think about, in the chaotic editing to make the relationship between the characters and the development of the event have the fluency, the most common failure is "to care for the other and lose the other." The problems of "Stoke" are not obvious, but there are many, puzzles about the plot, and although there are answers later, they are all points and points, not the tightness of points, lines and surfaces. This reduces the thickness of the plot and limits it. With the breadth of understanding, I can only give a feeling in the end, "It's not bad, in fact, it can be better." Because it wants too much, it wants the aesthetic and rot of the picture, the cursed retro mood, and it has to take it all. The sentiments of the imperial sister, Xiaoqing, and the strange scorpion must be deeply explored in ethics, philosophy, and mental illness. It is so prosperous that it is not targeted and concentrated, and it is naturally difficult to detect what is missing.
To summarize this movie simply: out of love or desire, an old mentally ill patient wanted to save a little mentally ill child. In the process, he killed four people. As a result, the little mental illness killed the old mentally ill, and one person went on the road. In a word, this is the story of a family of mental illnesses killing each other. The whole tragedy was cleansed by an "unknowable fate", and the gradually disappearing traces became clues for the audience to pursue, leading to the "behavior genes" they wanted to explore. I feel that whether it is violence, crime or schizophrenia, the inevitable and accidental manipulation of genetic analysis makes "Stoke" seem mysterious and unpredictable. From this play, we can also understand that Miller is really an all-talent artist, and the skill of the screenwriter shows his literary skills and cultural heritage.
Going back to the movie plot, if it goes smoothly, the story to be told in "Stoke" is easy to understand. The story broke out from the monologue of "Miss Stoke" in the opening scene-what is this kid like? She was wearing her mother's shirt, her father's belt, and her uncle's shoes. A weird spiritual bond appeared. "Uncle" once lay on the sand and flew like a butterfly. She also did the same on the bed. The inheritance of the form reveals the hidden genetic gene, this is her, this family has shaped her, and there is some bad blood flowing in her body, and she chooses to kill in order to avoid a worse situation. In short, there are traces of grotesqueness, coldness, and division. And from Miss Indian Stocker, everyone in the Stoker family is sick.
In addition to genetic analysis, on the other hand, the relationship between the growth environment and the split personality can be explored. From the perspective of the murderer "Second Uncle", it can be understood that when he was young, he dug a hole to bury his toddler, and the first time he killed was to regain the attention and love of his elder brother. He said that Richard was fascinated by his younger brother. Living. As a result, he was completely expelled from the family and lived in a mental hospital donated by the Stoke family for 20 years. Think about it, it’s impossible for such a human nature to be in a “cage” with a confused soul from a young age. Later, as an adult, he came back to kill his eldest brother, and then playfully killed three outsiders who upset him, which is also reasonable.
The display of the evil love between the second uncle, the older sister-in-law, and the niece seems to be less obvious than what Uncle Park explained, perhaps because it is in line with the scientific nature of psychopathology. This is a mental patient, there is no license. What’s interesting is that when Miller constructed this plot, he continued the story by "using a mental patient to seduce himself to travel everywhere, just after a trip to Europe". I don’t know if I was inspired by Jordan Scott’s "Crack." There is a momentary sense of deja vu.
From the standpoint of "Father Richard", the heroine Indian father, the family tragedies in the past will inevitably affect his later life. His indifferent, authoritarian, and aggressive distorted character buried the joy of the family, and his wife became hungry and thirsty. A grudge of love and sex, his daughter has become a cold-blooded animal that suppresses emotions. He takes her daughter to hunt and kill animals to make specimens, adapting to the hurt and pain experienced by death and killing, so that he is numb and insensitive to bloody habits. The wife has accumulated the fearlessness and courage to seek freedom in the perverted mood of caring for the animal specimens, but she is unable to resist the temptation of danger and strays into the passion of incest.
As for Indian, she is the carrier of the triad of father, mother and uncle. From her, she can see the characteristics of all characters. She is the implementer of "conspiracy", the victim, the fugitive, and even more the victory. In order to arrange this, I am by no means assigning specific labels to the three adults. In fact, there should be no clear boundaries between the various forms of desire-driven splits. Perhaps, what I'm talking about are just appearances, because the mental focus is not bottomed out. But watching movies, the problem that lies with Indians, it focuses on the desire for growth. The North American "Black Widow", known as the most poisonous spider in the world, does not exist randomly in the movie. Revenge, desire, darkness, religion, biology, folklore, etc. can find explanations that fit the heroine's Indian personality.
In addition, what I especially noticed is the special use of the "yellow color" in the whole show. Tie the yellow ribbon, egg yolks, yellow pencils, yellow umbrellas, yellow flags on the sand sculptures, yellow lines on the asphalt, yellow diamonds on the inside of the vases, yellow telephones, yellow lights, etc., to emphasize this element repeatedly. Help the spectators analyze the character's character. In the Western world, the negative symbolic meaning of yellow is "danger", "uneasy" and "attention". Various religions treat yellow with special treatment. Islam believes that yellow means death and hate. Christianity does not like yellow. There are some sects in Tibetan Buddhism. Ordinary people cannot wear yellow clothes for fear or other reasons. In this way, the culture is penetrated into the movie story, and it has a special charm. Moreover, it is more than just a gimmick to think that this talented painter has been poisoned by pornography through his crazy behavior and suicidal tragedy. It is more than just a gimmick.
I always feel that Uncle Park has a keen and sensitive understanding of art that is unique to Koreans. He just doesn't like to talk about a gentle relationship procrastinated, so his movies are all core and cold, and the subtle emotional entanglements are dealt with. But there is a surging undercurrent without any surprises. I am particularly in love with that period. "Sister-in-law" flirts with "Second Uncle", with the classic old song "summer wine" to warm the color, and then covered with murderous black, this set of sharp interspersed contrasts. Uncle Park also played with Quentin's good skills, and the effect was still very good.
The attention to detail is also commendable. The second uncle who loved to dig pits when he was young, after twenty years, his hobbies will remain the same. At the beginning, the big iron ball that the Indians could not move, and finally took its place as a tombstone. When the reaction came back, it was a little trivial. Of course, although Uncle Park showed his darkness restrainedly, it is not weak, such as the ice corpse specimens of the housekeeper in the refrigerator, and when the second uncle dealt with the housekeeper and Aunt Gin, he operated the camera like that, highlighting the second uncle’s unbelt. The picture, that inspires people to imagine even more evil. In short, in the process of writing so much, my favor with this movie has picked up. Okay, it's better to see for yourself, and then make the final decision.
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