Author: Fang Hanjun
There are many movies about human ghosts. We have seen "The Ghosts of Humans", and we have also watched terrifying Hong Kong films like "Painted Skin".
But Ghosts (2017), written and directed by former screenwriter David Lowe, has its own unique perspective. I was thinking what it was trying to tell us. Obviously, it is not only the ghost's obsession and indulgence in the past, but more likely to use its experimental images to see how people live and face the chaos of reality through the other eyes on the side.
Rooney Mara has been around since "Carol" (2015), and she has filmed "The Lion", "Oona" and "Secret Manuscript" in this year alone. Obviously, in "Ghostbusters", M, played by her, is like a one-man show, because G, played by Casey Affleck, is basically a ghost in a white sheet, unable to see his expression, only walking, Standing still and limited behavior. In the film, what impressed me the most is that M likes to sit on the floor to eat, or listen to C's songs recorded before his death, and his stagnant eyes make people sad.
What touched people's hearts was that C died unexpectedly 12 minutes later, and M accompanied him alone in the hospital mortuary, and then left reluctantly. 15 minutes later, the white sheet covering the deceased even swayed, and then got up and walked out of the hospital wearing the white sheet, walking across the street, and came to the home where they lived. From then on, C's ghost stayed inside. He saw M's frustration, her unease, and her dazedness. In short, C is generally at ease about her being alone, and there is no abnormal behavior.
It was only when she had a boyfriend and the two of them kissed me, that C was really angry, he turned off the lights at will, and the inexplicable sound made M a little scared. After she repainted the house, she left. Before leaving, she left a note in the crack of the wall.
But before he could pull it out, the new tenant moved in. This is a single mother with a pair of six or seven year old children. Not seeing his beloved M, C was angry, he broke photo frames, cups and dishes, so people were scared away. C only waits alone.
The meaning of the film is that when he stopped, there was also a ghost in a white sheet on the opposite side, waiting for the previous owner like him. Before C died, there was a similar ghost in their house. That night, when they were sleeping together, they heard noises in the living room, and the ghost was standing beside the TV. Ghosts can see people, but people can't see ghosts. The film always uses a fixed lens, borrowing a long lens, aiming at the still life-like ghost to conduct a mysterious examination, but this cannot be seen.
Just when C was about to cut out the note from the crack in the wall, the house was torn down by the roaring bulldozer. The house is gone, and all traces of life are gone. C, who was a ghost, became a real lonely ghost, wandering around, from the building under construction to the newly completed office building, and even saw the place where M worked, but C seemed unable to stay. He fell from the roof into the abyss. He came to the wilderness. Back in time a hundred years ago, it was the home of western pioneers. A family who was about to build a new house was shot and killed by Indians.
C has gone through a hundred years of history and witnessed the endless world of life and death. The film seems so absurd, but it surpasses the previous ghost films, and it is no longer the absurd game of "Moonlight Panic", which is used to scare large living people. "Ghost and Ghost" reminds the world to cherish the good times at the moment, no matter how bleak the reality is, because once you lose your life, you can only become a powerless spectator like C. Spectators are only onlookers, and can never participate in reality, and cannot communicate and live in real life.
There are also many merits in the form of the film. There are more than 3 minutes of fixed long shots, and the long-range and close-up shots are interactive. The film does not play too much horror, but quietly let a ghost be a bystander. It doesn't fall into the stereotype of C and M ghosts. It condenses its sight on C's bizarre walk, looking at the changes in the world. M is not obsessed with nostalgia for C either. The film provides the possibility of viewing the world from another perspective, making us forget the empty imaginations of truth and falsehood.
When C saw the starlight in the late night through the window, the fog was long, and he seemed lost. The film allows us to see the purest part of life, as well as the obscurity in human nature. When we hear it say "I don't think he's coming back". Isn't this life that everyone experiences. In the film, C strays into the crowd at a party, and the man who talks freely is telling the secrets of man and the universe. What he didn't know was that there was a god who raised his head three feet up. When he was talking, there was an alternative listener.
Since human beings on this planet have lived and died, I don’t know how many generations have passed, how many generations have passed, and how many ghosts are floating around. Those skeletons among the jagged rocks, those fireflies by the secluded rivers, those mass graves in the wilderness and grass, wherever people have visited, there will be relics of life and stories of people who have passed away with the wind. But reality always makes people unable to imagine how their ancestors lived. On the contrary, people will gradually fall into the boundless illusion of seemingly reasonable busyness in reality. In this way, the interpretation of the film also has a variety of possibilities.
2017, 10, 7
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