Author: csh
This article was first published on "Curtain Taste"
While we're still amazed by the gritty realism of the 2015 and 2016 Palme d'Or winners (Dipin the Wandering, I Am Blake) (after all, the Palme d'Or prides itself on the crown of art cinema) , "Square" can be described as a small turning point. It swept away the rustic style of the Palme d'Or of the previous two years, and once again recalled our memories of those modernist art filmmakers. From the footage of the actor Christian looking up at the "Gorilla" video, we seem to see Bergman's "Masquerade"; when Christian went to the reporter's lover's home and saw the chimpanzee painting, there seemed to be a few Funny taste of Noel.
The full frame, the exquisite movement of the mirror, and the meaningful scheduling all declare the return of "form", however, this return is presented in a self-deprecating manner. Among the formal features of this work, the most striking is the square (square) that can be seen everywhere from the title to every corner of the film.
This multi-layered work shows us a world composed of blocks that deform, dissolve, and collide. To understand this film, one has to understand the word "square". So, what are the characteristics of a square? It is two-dimensional, flat; it attempts to delineate an area, isolate a small place from the rest of the infinite of possibilities, and then try to define it; unlike a circle, it is angular and has aggressive...
So, how does the director use the characteristics of the square to carry out his dense irony?
The Human Square: Self-discipline
As Christian stared at the "Gorilla" footage on the screen, the actor was trapped in the square of the screen like a beast. And when he came to real life, it seemed that everything was broken. He lost control and became a real beast. The square seems to be the boundary that separates human and animal nature. However, if only a simple division is made, it seems that the boundary is more like a "straight line" than a square.
Therefore, in the chimpanzee of the female reporter's house, the director made a more subtle treatment. We can see the chimpanzee engaging in intellectual painting while he's engaged in a not-so-engaged piston exercise with the female reporter.
These two different "gorillas" occupy the polarities of irrationality and rationality. In the former example, humans are afraid of the beast, but insist on it because it is part of "art"; in the latter example, humans are more "beast" than the gorilla, but cannot fully enjoy it animal pleasures...
Beasts are thorough, while humans are incomplete and "moderate". Humans do not have the courage to divide themselves from other animals with a straight line. They can only encircle themselves in their own squares and keep their manners and etiquette.
The Square of Class: Selfishness
When Christian discovered the location of his belongings, he had already framed the building where the thief was located with a square in his mind. Within this square, he sent threatening leaflets to every resident—everyone was identified. His selfishness on the subject is an ironic contrast to the selflessness promoted by his exhibits.
When he and his subordinates drove to the building, they began to shirk each other's responsibility for their actions, because the building did not appear to be "upper class." We can find that whether Christian came to the front of the building for the first time, or when he was "forced" to come to apologize later, the director never gave outside shots, only inside shots. The compartment of the luxury car was his class, and prejudice and fear cut him off from the "inferior people" outside the car.
I think we all have a hard time forgetting those few shots of indoor aerial shots of stairs, which are layer upon layer, square one on top of the other. In the building where Christian lives, the camera is cold and dark, sometimes damp, and always static, as if his rigid mind framed him in the smallest, farthest square on the bottom floor. And at the end of the film, when he wanted to apologize to the boy, the dazzling long shot when he went upstairs—the square kaleidoscope formed by the overhead shot of the stairs revolved, constantly disintegrating and reorganizing... What he cannot understand is the world outside his class.
Perhaps because of poverty, they kept moving, so after asking the residents, he learned that the boy had moved away, just like the deformed box, spun to other places.
The Square of Contemporary Art: Talking About Itself
How does art become art? Since Duchamp's Fountain, this question has become increasingly difficult to answer.
At the beginning of the film, Christian apparently can't understand the question posed by the female reporter, so he perfunctory with the question of "Is everyone an artist" - a cliché that the director has made a biting sarcasm from the beginning. Apart from the "square", the most common "contemporary art" in this work is the neatly arranged mounds. After a few hilarious still shots from time to time, it was swept away by cleaners.
If the powerlessness of these artworks in terms of connotation interpretation and practical concept only reflects the self-talk of contemporary art, then the ridiculous new media propaganda crisis shows that contemporary art is just talking.
The propaganda team chosen was entirely driven by profit; the reason we saw that the video used Goldilocks and Christian left after the incident was entirely due to political correctness. Contemporary art, which should be the most free, is tightly framed by the square of economics and politics.
The Square of the Screen: Self-deprecating Selfies
Of course, we must not forget that the screen itself is also a bright square. Of course, those neatly composed and delicately arranged images can only exist inside the square screen, mocking the reality that the audience is seated in an estranged manner. Just like the human space, class space, and art space mentioned above, the video space also creates a unique interactive relationship. It is we who have created such a square world in which enchanting images turn their heads and laugh at ourselves.
After Dipin the Wandering and I Am Blake, The Square takes care of reality in a more distant and restrained way. It is through the fusion and superimposition of these different levels of shapes that the charm of this film is revealed.
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