The guest of exchange at this screening is Zhang Yeqi, a doctor of drama and film and television from Nanjing University and a teacher of the Department of Film and Television of Northwestern University. The author participates in the screening and exchange activities as an audience, and organizes the content of the exchange based on memory, which is different from what the teacher said. If there is a problem, it is the author's fault.
1. Berlin in prison
In the second half of the 19th century, the nation of Germany quickly surged its ambition to dominate, and the Germans fell into a frenzy and carnival. The two major camps of the anti-fascist alliance are the Western capitalist camp led by Britain, France and the United States and the socialist camp led by the Soviet Union. In the Cold War pattern, in 1960, Stalin ordered the construction of the Berlin Wall, and Berlin underwent tremendous changes overnight. It is not only the physical separation and confinement of space, but also the irreversible cracks and wounds in people's hearts due to the Berlin Wall. People in East Berlin and West Berlin are trying to break down the wall that separates human freedom and urban civilization, and under the pressure of the soldiers stationed, no one can cross that wall. Only with wings can we surpass everything; everyone hopes to have wings to achieve the life they want in their hearts. Angels are the connection to the outside world that the West Berliners surrounded by red long for.
2. Wings of the Wanderer: Benjamin's Discovery of Baudelaire
In Benjamin's unfinished but unparalleled book Baudelaire: The Lyric Poet of Advanced Capitalism, the idea of the "urban wanderer" was a major development in the representation of modernity in literature. Those familiar with Baudelaire's poetry will know that Baudelaire travels through cities, records and thinks about cities as a "wanderer". "In Baudelaire, for the first time, Paris became the subject of lyric poetry. Those poems were not local ballads, and the allegorist looked at Paris with the gaze of an alien. It was the gaze of an urban wanderer." The so-called urban Rover refers to a group of people who walk in the city as bystanders after the modernization of the city, are deeply attracted by the city, but are out of tune with the city. They do not belong to the city, but they understand the city and have a deep relationship with the city. They wander aimlessly through the city's festivities with idle eyes, meeting people in the story, without friends, without a place to live, without a substantial connection to the city. They just describe what they see countless times, and the city is no longer endowed with cultural and historical connotations, but exists as a unique landscape. The wanderer is "driven by visual exploration", immersed in the city and detached from the city.
It is in this sense of identity duality and reflexivity that Wenders' Angel succeeds Benjamin's Wanderer. In the film, we can intuitively feel the attitude of the angel roaming the city, but unlike Baudelaire, the roamer no longer walks in the streets of the city, but has wings and is completely out of the city . Why are rovers with wings? In Wenders' films, angels of modernity roam the postmodern city. Modernity refers to the destruction of the original order, the destruction of traditional values, and people trying to find new values and meanings; postmodernity means that everything in the world has no value, and the world has no rules to follow. , there is no order. The "street" itself exists as a logical order, and there is no order in postmodern society, so the angels have wings, and the wanderers are separated from the order itself. Berlin is a victim of the Cold War. After the Berlin Wall was built overnight, the real Berlin city was fragmented.
3. Sports field shots: pendulum panning, blending and switching of perspectives, screen activation
Hou Hsiao-hsien's sports long shot reproduces Taiwan's history and time and space. The long shot makes time and space mix and travel freely. The medium and long shots of "City of Sadness" are the fate of being colonized that Taipei has faced countless times, and the medium and long shots of "The Man from the Wind Cabinet" are the exploration of modernity. Angelopoulos' long shot is a gaze at the Balkans, ancient Greece. Wenders' long takes are on-camera monologues.
In the film, we can see a large number of pendulum-type Pingyao. The pendulum-type Pingyao makes half of the picture obscured during the flow, and when the camera looks back, there are new things in the obscured picture. occur. The pendulum-type Pingyao has the charm of replicating time and space, because the fixed axis and the constantly changing left and right space centered on the axis constitute "unchanged" and "change", which makes us see this situation countless times in the same space. occur. It can be said that this is the unique space-time effect and psychological experience brought by the pendulum-type Pingyao.
In the basic montage narrative, the objective perspective and the subjective perspective are clear and clear, and the audience can always distinguish the change of viewpoint so as to spontaneously restore and receive the whole story. Even in long-lens staring, the subjective and objective viewpoints are clearly distinguishable. In Wenders' long-shot narrative, perspectives are constantly blending, and viewpoints are constantly switching. And it's amazing how this point of view shift in one shot can feel quite smooth and without any discomfort. In addition to the magical narrative about angels in the film itself, which makes the audience tolerate this unconventional lens language, it is also due to Wenders' extremely deep control of long shots and scene scheduling, and the difference between the picture and the monologue, although the "sound" "Painting Contrast" but very fitting audio-visual effects.
Such detached vision and hearing constitute an unusually harmonious audio-visual ensemble. In the process of narrating in the language of the lens, Wenderson tried his best to maintain the smoothness of the picture. We will call this unique and thoughtfully designed audio-visual technique for now. for "screen activation".
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