by Jiang Xiaoyu
2014-01-14
"All is lost here, except the soul and the body."
" All is lost here, except the soul and the body."
"Everything Is Lost" is a film that cherishes words like gold, and it is indeed "no need to say more". In the film, life is beaten back to its original form-a flesh, a broken boat, a rubber dinghy and a vast ocean. In such an isolated setting, language is the weakest resistance and the most cumbersome addition. These monologues that flowed slowly at the beginning of the film became almost the only language exchange the protagonist tried to have with us, and also became a threshold for entering the narrative space of the film. It is precisely because of the exquisite language and text in the film that they will be more elaborate in conveying their intentions; after all, wasting lines in a film like "All Is Lost" is unaffordable for the creators. luxury.
The film is as it says, except for body and soul, all information about the protagonist has been lost. We don’t know who the old man’s last name is, how he drove this small boat to the middle of the sea, let alone the purpose of his trip. All we know is that he still has a body that can cope with difficulties and a soul that is willing to cope with difficulties. The lack of information and the protagonist's aphasia make him not only a flesh and blood, but also an abstract person—because he is no one, he can become anyone. He can be you in a difficult situation, or me who feels a long way to go-as written on the character list, he is "our man" and our spokesperson.
The character setting of "All Is Lost" has a touch of modern fable. The lonely person drifting alone in the ocean is not a young man, but an old man; in contrast to the hope, strength and vitality represented by the young man, the old man often represents backwardness, fragility and even death. In the film, we can also see that the old man is not very good at using all kinds of technology in the rubber dinghy, and the generation gap between him and these life-saving tools has once become the distance between him and survival. Such an old man was placed in harsh natural conditions, allowing him to survive or destroy by his own ability. The power of the environment is always hugely destructive, and it fluctuates according to its own rhythm; this sea may be as quiet as still water, or violent storms — naturally following its own breathing rate, so that it will not care about this life The life and death of the body. Marine life continues to erode the lone rubber raft, and sharks jumped out of the water to snatch the sea fish that were hooked by the old man; but who said that this is a natural selection that can only happen in the sea-like walking on thin ice, the strong are wanton, this is not true Is it the daily life of each of us?
The old man is not only facing threats from pure nature, he also faces the indifference of bulk cargo ships. Whether day or night, the appearance of two large cargo ships always ignites the hope of salvation first. However, when they gradually approached and finally passed by the rubber boat, the joy of hope gave way to a great horror. The huge, neatly arranged containers seem to be a kind of power and existence higher than human beings. They quietly used, ignored or even laughed at the plight of the lost old man. The strangest thing was probably that the three distress signals were ignored, and no one was seen on the two cargo ships. This kind of horror reminds me of the image of the "ghost ship" created by Coleridge in "A Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The "death" on the ship and the "life in the dead" together wrote a huge nightmare. On the cargo ship of "All Is Lost", all human elements have been lost. These dead or life-in-the-death goods and commodities seem to dominate the cargo ship to the destination, and at the same time outline the desperate situation of the lonely old man on the rubber raft. Lost in wealth, abandoned in material-this is not a portrayal of each of us. All the ancient qualities are lost, leaving only a living body and a soul to survive.
At the end of the film, the desperate old man tried to use flames to attract the attention of distant ships, but accidentally set fire to the last protective shell of his life-the rubber raft was instantly swallowed by the fire and became an ironic halo above the sea. Just as the old man gave up hope and was slowly being swallowed by the sea, the distant ship arrived in time, and a solid arm became a real life force and hope. This ending has caused a lot of discussion, because it is very cleverly framed between the virtual and the real. Perhaps the old man is indeed saved, but perhaps it is just a psychological projection of the desperate person. But if you look at it from another angle, the end of the film can be understood as another form of returning to the basics. The temptation of commodities and goods is lost, and the most authentic interaction between people is left; in this tribulation on the sea, people’s illusions about commodities and materials are finally broken, and they return to their demands for life and humanity. call. After all, the film tells us from the very beginning that everything is lost except for body and soul.
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