The Medium is the Message
In 1964, McLuhan proposed: the medium is the message. But for 2019 viewers, textuality still trumps everything else. From "Billy Lynn's Midfield War", which debuted with 120-frame technology, to "Gemini Man" three years later, the comments are nothing more than clichés such as "the script is too bad" and "technology is greater than content". Some people even say Li An really missed this time, and he can't tell the story well. I don't know if you have ever thought, this time, maybe the technology is the content? Maybe Ang Lee is not "telling" a story, but trying to "show" a story to people?
In the eyes of the public, text always precedes vision, and vision has become a "communication" in many fields. For example, the big ideas in the traditional advertising industry often come from creative teams dominated by copywriting, and designers are just translators who “communicate” the ideas into visual images after they are produced. Can vision actively "express"? Visual artists can. A Van Gogh painting, even if art critics follow thousands of words, the visual presentation of the painting still has the right to interpret it over the text. So, if we are all willing to admit that film is a visual art, can we also try to lower the text and devote ourselves to the vision itself? In this sense, Gemini Man invites viewers to give priority to the medium itself through new technology. In Ang Lee's own words: "What you couldn't see in the past, you can see now. A 24-frame movie has no sense of presence. It creates space in a plane. You can't see people's expressions and thoughts, so you must use flash jumps to create them. Excitement." From 24 to 120, is reality accelerated? No, it's the eyes of the movie that keep up with the speed of the real world. The classic Hollywood car chase section no longer relies on partial close-up jumps to stimulate the adrenal glands, and the explosion scene is no longer blurred, only the fire is flying, and the scattered glass fragments are clearly visible like slow motion. I even think that Ang Lee chose this script because it is "Hollywood mode" enough to try out his unique ambition to bottle old wine in new bottles. Like Monet's painting of the Seine, hasn't it been outlined countless times by painters of all dynasties? The river is still the same river, the way of expression has changed, and the content of the presentation will naturally change.
Having said that, I think Ang Lee is not open enough to the script, and he wants to take into account the text of the story, which leads to obvious weaknesses in the script. Let’s just take a more old-fashioned and more straightforward story as a story, and set the tone of the film first, because the form is greater than the content, and the audience may be more likely to pay for it. Of course, as a theatrical film that burns money for technology, it naturally cannot follow the experimental route of independent films. It has to rely on box office guarantees like Will Smith and some views such as "Clone", "Self" and "Father Killing". Seemingly high-level but actually a commonplace topic to sell, this is probably a realistic consideration.
At the beginning of the film, the protagonist of the sharpshooter aimed at a high-speed train, and several sets of shots took the audience into a new visual experience of 4k120 frames. Also driving from the right side to the left side of the screen, isn't this shot of Ang Lee a tribute to the first cross-era movie "A Train Arrives" and announcing his ambition to open a new era of film vision?
(to be continued)
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