In 2017, the Cannes International Film Festival in France ushered in the 70th anniversary celebration, and Swedish director Ruben Ostrund won the first prize with "Square" and won the "Diamond-studded Palme d'Or". At the Pingyao International Film Festival just past, Fan Bingbing showed her love publicly to "Freedom Square". The Swedish genius Ruben Ostrund deserves to be one of the most talked-about young filmmakers in the contemporary world.
1. Introduction to the film
"Square" is Ruben Ostrund's fourth work in Cannes following his "Involuntarily", "Children's Play" and "The Tourist". , the pursuit of authorship and artistry aesthetic tendencies, and secondly, Ruben's dream of being an author has been fulfilled, allowing Ruben to truly enter the international "art film" circle of fans.
The film starts with the work and life of the museum curator Christian, and the two lines cross side by side, telling Christian's "work anxiety" and "real life confusion". At the beginning of the film, Christian, who was asleep, was woken up by his assistant to accept the work visit of Annie, an American reporter who had a one-night stand with him. During the interview, he was nervous and anxious, and made an "escaping style" to Annie's question. ” replied, while the disorderly state of uniformed staff walking back and forth in the background seems to set the stage for the satire and criticism later in the film. Immediately, Christian encountered a series of embarrassing events in his life, such as "helping against theft", "threatening letter revenge", "anxious one-night stand", "father-daughter relationship", and he was also facing the wall at work and was powerless. At the end of the film, Christian's unfinished "awakening redemption" is only confronted with the bitter reality of "a slip of a step becomes an eternal hatred, and then it is a century to look back".
2. Themes and cultural values
"The square" originally means square, square, and in the play "square" is a rectangular area surrounded by four light bands, which means "is a holy place of trust and concern. In it, we Sharing equal rights and obligations." This contemporary art installation was originally an exhibition created by director Ruben himself in 2015, which was intended to explore the "bystander effect"/"responsibility dispersion effect" in sociology, so as to examine people's perception of The level of trust of strangers.
In the film, "Square" is attributed to an artist and sociologist. The square that Christian passes through to go to work every day seems to be a huge "square", Christian's office area seems to be a huge "square", and the bed seems to be a "square"... In these "squares", white people, Black people; healthy people, sick people; men, women; middle class, lower class... Do they play the role of "client" or "bystander"? And in what form will "trust" connect individual individuals with the collective?
With a witty tone and a sarcastic gesture, Ruben outlines the blind and disorderly life status of the middle class in his detailed description of the seemingly glamorous work and life of Christian, a middle-class successful man. The "rules" form a sharp contrast, showing the sanctimoniousness and cold hypocrisy of European capitalist upper class society, and also making a vague metaphor of "political correctness".
3. Artistic Features
Throughout the whole film, "fixed shot", "long shot" and "expressionist style" are undoubtedly the biggest features of "Square" at the formal level, while contemporary art has become the narrative element of the film's plot, structure and theme. This also continues the absurd and realistic style of Ruben's "Involuntarily", "Bank Affair" and "Tourist". In the past, Ruben mainly used fixed camera positions, deep focal length photography, and the mirror language system of constructing montages inside the lens. It can still be seen in "Square", while the previous panoramic long shots, unconventional composition, and non-coherent editing in "Square" are "expressionist style" of conventional composition and coherent editing, returning to the mainstream narrative. obscure trend.
In terms of plot, in the scene where Christian is interviewed by Annie at the beginning of the whole film, from Christian's anxious escape to the questions asked by reporter Annie, Annie's ignorance of Christian's plausible answers and pretending to understand, the background of the interview is deep work. The random entry and exit of personnel, this set of "panoramic long shot" + "medium shot long shot" + "front and back" combination shots, deeply vividly contrast and highlight the hypocrisy and cunning of the middle class represented by intellectuals, while casual A series of scenes, such as the staff in and out of the mirror, the boss who was coaxing children and having a meeting, and the innocent blasphemy of the host by a white patient with Tourette's disease in another interview, implicitly express that the middle-class order seems to be peaceful, but in fact Old and sick Chen Wei; "class conflict", "racial conflict" and "political security" also form a subtle isomorphic relationship with the plot in a certain sense.
In terms of characterization, the curator Christian, played by Claes Bang, uses his long lines, triumphant smile, anxious expression, and tense body language to describe the selfishness, arrogance, hypocrisy, and selfishness of a middle-class intellectual. Arrogance, anxiety, numbness and other temperaments are vividly interpreted. As the plot unfolded, his psychological process also changed. He began to doubt the system to which he belonged, the society he belonged to, the country he belonged to, and his value identity began to reshape along with his self-doubt and introspection. The appearance of the child involved in his revenge letter gradually awakened Christian, and awakened the "id" that had been covered up by the "superego" for a long time; as the Lacanian mirror theory pointed out, Christian began to re-examine his relationship with him. Mirror relationship of company, society/"individual" and "collective". And the contemporary performance artist Oleg played by Terry Notari plays the "gorilla", a double-layered character setting, the director Ruben's satire of Christian and the "gorilla" played by Oleg. The exaggerated display also seems to be aimed at exploring the ontological value of human nature: as a high-level social animal, how does human beings balance the animality and sociality in the ontological attributes?
In terms of photography, there are two shots that really impressed me: one is a shot of Christian walking across the plaza to work with a briefcase, and this is a long pan and follow shot. The plaza in the frame has only three scattered stops. Passers-by chatting, Christian with a briefcase passed through the empty square. The contrasting tones of the highly expressive highlights are particularly dazzling. The people standing on the square are as tall as their shadows, and Christian's appearance is even more dramatic. The shadows slowly come out first, followed by Christian's true nature. This shot seems to be a good metaphor. The empty and sad soundtrack forms a parallel narrative relationship with the picture, which seems to indicate the emptiness and nothingness of the middle class represented by Christian.
Another shot is when Christian wakes up and takes his two daughters up the stairs to the little boy's house to apologize. A rotating and pulling camera follows the father and daughter through the spiral climbing process. The sad and heavy background music forms an opposite relationship with the picture. From the negative metaphor, Christian's road to awakening and redemption is about to set off, and whether the road ahead is smooth or not can only be known after walking. This shot undoubtedly adds a touch of life and texture to Christian's road to redemption.
4. Regret
Although the film won the "Palm d'Or - Best Film" at the 70th Cannes International Film Festival; "Best Film" and "Best Comedy" at the 30th European Film Awards; "Best Foreign Language Film" at the Toronto Film Critics Association Award and the Boston Film Critics Association Award for "Best Foreign Language Film" and many other international awards, and has also captured the hearts of many international film critics and even expert reviewers, but there are still some cracks in the narrative that need to be bridged. The "Achilles' heel" of art film is also very obvious!
First of all, the film is very simple in terms of plot. As a feature-length film, the 151min volume only tells about a curator's dull work and life, no fascinating suspense, no ups and downs, no twists and turns. ...For the audience, there are neither the spectacle events they want to see, nor some eye-catching "fist" and "pillow" scenes; it does not talk about some warm and emotional emotions, nor does it clearly point out the avenue of life... From the cognitive point of view of audience psychology, the spectacle of voyeurism has not been satisfied, and there is nowhere to find a sense of tender substitution...
Secondly, the whole film is dominated by long shots to support the entire narrative mirror language system, and the use of scenes is generally limited to panoramic and medium shots. From the perspective of audience psychology, such a picture can easily cause the audience to form visual fatigue and be distracted.
Furthermore, the narrative rhythm of the whole movie is very slow, even a little procrastinated. The setting of the scene "no dialogue scenes" and "long paragraphs of lines" have some dualistic meanings, either it is so quiet that there is no line at all, or it is nonsense. There is no end to it. Although the director intends to discuss some social and philosophical issues, such a rhythm will probably make the vast majority of ordinary audiences daunted and snorted.
In the end, the entire film contains an astonishing amount of information in terms of sociology, philosophy, politics, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, etc. The amount of information all mixed together will make the audience confused . In addition, the director's metaphor is more subtle and restrained, which makes it easy for many "non-intellectual" audiences to be confused.
All in all, this is still a very good art film, a "spring and snow", if it can integrate some "Xia Liba"-style civilian experience and bridge the expression gap caused by "suspension", then it will not only be able to be used in the film. It won the first prize in the festival awards, and it can also shine at the commercial box office!
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