"Hidden Camera" is the work of the director in 2005 and won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival. It is very similar to the "Love" that won the Palme d'Or in Cannes many years later: in form, both films use minimalist and restrained shots, cold and dark tones, and even the climax is suppressed, and at the same time, it is completely useless. The soundtrack seems to make this sense of coldness to the extreme; in terms of content, the two films are also about people's hearts, but the difference is that "Love" uses such a cold way to express the grandeur below the cold. Love and warmth, and "Hidden Camera" depicts the hearts of people who are colder than film footage.
The film opens with a long stop-motion shot. The camera is "hidden" in a remote corner and "peeps" at what is happening in front of the protagonist's house, all the pedestrians passing by their door, the time the protagonists enter and leave the house, and all the movements are happening. under the control of the camera. There are many such panoramic long stop-motion shots in the movie, except for the beginning and the end. When the audience is watching such a scene, it seems to be hiding in a distant corner to observe furtively, which not only makes the audience feel a sense of pleasure, but also makes the audience feel uncomfortable. why? Probably because everyone has a desire to voyeurize, but they don't want to be peeped. After all, everyone has something that they can't tell.
Later we learned that the opening scene of the film was shot by an unknown person who engraved what the camera recorded into a videotape and placed it in front of the protagonist's house in a piece of paper with the head of a child vomiting blood. . The protagonist and his wife have received such videotapes and paintings many times, but they do not know whether it is a prank or intimidation by others, but obviously, their lives have been disrupted. In this case, the dark side of the hero George's humanity also emerged in front of the audience:
George he doesn't trust everyone, not even his mother, wife and son. He even suspected it was a prank by his son after receiving the videotape, until his son also received a postcard with the content on the paper. He didn't trust his mother, and even though she had seen what was going on, he still acted stupid, which made her disappointed and weeping. He also doesn't trust his wife in the same bed, even if his wife has been arguing with him, he remains silent. So he naturally wouldn't believe Magee who he had hurt before, he insisted that he did it, even though he seemed so sincere and even cried, George still didn't waver until he forced Magee To suicide...he doesn't trust anyone but himself.
In addition to being suspicious, George is also good at deception. When he was a child, he could create rumours to keep Magee from being adopted by his parents, and it was a matter of course for him to lie, he could deceive his mother that everything was fine, he could deceive his wife about the room in the videotape No one, too, can deceive the audience with editing in the post-production of the show.
In the final analysis, he is too selfish. The director used Magee's words to say that "people will protect their own interests first", and George's behavior interprets this sentence vividly. He only cares about himself, and doesn't care about driving Magee away. Will it ruin his life? Even after Magee committed suicide, he didn't call the police, but chose to go to the theater to watch a movie to calm down his mood, and he didn't understand that Magee's son came to him after he lost his father. On the contrary, he said some ugly words... The further the movie developed, the more hateful his image became. In Magee's words, even without knowing who he is, seeing his face makes him feel sick.
At the end of the film, there is still no account of who sent the tape, which I expected about 20 minutes before the end of the film. Because it doesn't matter who is the black hand behind it, the important thing is that through the hidden camera he installed, we can see the invisible side of human nature. The lens of the camera is icy cold and has no temperature, but the human heart is colder than it is.
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