The protagonist Thomas is a prestigious photographer whose artistic creation and life are closely linked. For him, the relationship between art and life is naturally the core issue. This abstract question has a relatively concrete presentation between him and his subjects. In the first scene where he shot a female model, it was not so much that the two were filming, but rather that they were copulating. The camera, as Thomas' sexual organ, gave him a kind of objectifying power. Sacrifice more of the self out of the skin, this self-presentation is absolutely dominated by Thomas, the self-projection of female models based on Thomas, Thomas is just extracting what he wants from this power relationship Submissive "soul". In the second shot of a group of female models in fashion, the power of objectification is further deepened, almost to the point of objectification. This deepening is permeable. At first, he called the group of female models "birds", which corresponds to the blurred and rigid silhouettes of the female models in the frosted glass on the second floor, like birds in a cage. Then he rebuked the models at will, fiddling with their bodies, and finally told them to close their eyes and not allow them to open, and then left by himself. The female models never said a word, and cooperated obediently. There is panic, and the physical state is similar to the model model in the window where Thomas passes by in the latter part of the film. From this point of view, they have become subjects, not people, and their bodies have been overhead as the symbols of models on the production line. It is worth noting that this power relationship is not determined by Thomas, he is simply placed in another position that is in tension with the status of the model, and there is a greater power outside his and the model's power field that systematically makes it all , it can be said that Thomas was aware of this and felt restless.
Thomas's attitude and reaction to this state became clearer when he and his partner Ron talked about his upcoming album. He used "violent" to describe most of his works, but when talking about the hugs and pulls he accidentally photographed in the park, he used "very peaceful" and "still" to describe it. "Violent" is not only shown directly in the filming process that has been talked about, but also when he sneaks into the factory to film the workers on the ground floor. At the beginning of the film, he walks out of the factory with other off-duty workers in tattered clothes, carrying a paper-wrapped thing in his arms, and in the next shot he drives his convertible Rolls-Royce, like a hippie scurrying in the street. The person(?) stopped asking for money. Judging from his behavior of sneaking into the factory, it can be said that he has the intention to explore the bottom life and to understand his life beyond his own vision, but for him, this kind of sneaking and exploration inevitably becomes a kind of Cosplay-style fun, and judging by the footage of him talking to Ron, he's probably putting factory photos of scrawny old men dressing into his new album. Even though it may not have been his intentions, his actions uncontrollably strayed from his intentions and slid into a somewhat absurd direction, but for the outcome (i.e. the presentation of his reactions in the film), the intention itself and the The staggered distance doesn't matter anymore, even if it's role-playing and profiting from it, the whole operation is done. In Violence, Thomas is just an uncontrollable and only involved object. Contrasted with his pictures in the park, that moment captured by chance is very light, he doesn't have to cut into life roughly to seek what cannot be found, or become an object of power, beauty and what he thinks is more essential being Float from the heavy violence of life, still and peaceful.
Thomas' obsession with the group of photos taken in the park may be indicative of his awareness of the rampant life and his desire to take further action against it. In a previous conversation between Thomas and his painter friend Bill, Bill's words hinted at the hope of finding "clues" in this life:
"I created it with no thought at all, just a mess, and then I found something I was holding on to, like this leg, and it manifested itself and made sense, it's like finding it in a detective novel The clues are the same."
At this time, Thomas more or less believed that there were "clues" that could be firmly grasped, and that art could also reach life through this "clue" instead of being helpless. The picture of the park may have been such a breakthrough for him—a moment in which his world briefly reached harmony. He kept looking at those photos, found suspicious things in them, and kept zooming in, as if he hoped to dig out the mysterious "clue" by going into the part infinitely. He saw a man with a gun hiding in the bushes and saw the body of the man who was shot in the back photo. For the largest partial photo, Bill's girlfriend said:
"Looks like Bill's painting."
This evaluation is rather bizarre. It has drawn a subtle distance from photography and painting as art forms, and re-established a connection. Perhaps from a certain perspective, the photographic image is a form that sits between the spectrum of reality and painting. Photography is closer to flying close to reality. When the photo is magnified to the maximum extent, the particles of reality seem to penetrate the creator's subjective intention and are more nakedly displayed, but the physical limitations of the camera translate this kind of The "real" obtained by zooming in. This display and translation seems to convey the possibility of a connection between reality and art, and photography as a form of mediation or interpretation, but this connection is purely subjective (a posteriori) and not causal A priori that results. This unreliable epiphany is partly in line with Thomas's thinking, at least affirming that art is compatible with life, and that art can reveal the truth of life.
Then Thomas experienced a double setback. He was disturbed by the emotion of discovering some kind of truth and wanted to do something to share this amazing discovery. At this time, in his consciousness, his identity as a photographer was not only limited to art, but also pointed to life, art and life can be confluence. So he went to find his partner Ron. On the way to find Ron, he passed a live house. The band on stage was immersed in his own music world, but the audience was as neat and sturdy as a model model. Then the guitarist smashed the guitar, It was thrown at the crowd, and the crowd collapsed at once, like a materialistic and ecstatic predator who smelled blood, Thomas automatically fell into this sudden frenzy in the center of the crowd, grabbed a piano rod, and ran out of the live house before Suddenly woke up and threw the piano rod aside. Only then did he enter the fashion party, where delicate, indifferent men and women smoked marijuana, sipped champagne, passed by, or looked obsessed. He finds Ron, says he wants Ron to see the body, they have to take a picture of "it", Ron gives a neat answer that he's not the photographer, and then he asks what's wrong with the man? what happened in the park? Thomas bowed his head and said nothing. Finally Ron turned around and motioned for Thomas to join the party. Ron's response seemed to dash Thomas' fantasy of the truth all at once, and Thomas didn't know what was going on in the park, even though he was there. "Truth" is more like a metaphor represented by a corpse, it is whitewashed by rhetoric, and does not have the inherent power to provide a grasp of Thomas' life and artistic creation. It can't help Thomas understand the ins and outs of the surging life. When he tries to project the part onto life itself through the inertia of metaphor, what he gets can only be a phantom that cannot be grasped. After the juncture of life and art loses its magic, Thomas has to deal with the separation of the two, as Ron suggests in his sentence that he is not a photographer. And the outside world doesn't care about Thomas's efforts to solve the relationship between art and life, or to find clues in life. This kind of indifference is more thoroughly demonstrated in the live house. People and art are isolated, people cannot perceive art, and art itself is in crisis. The only thing that causes resonance is sensual catharsis. In the midst of this great frustration, Ron invites Thomas to join the party as everyone else joins in the spree of life, for an instant anaesthetic of forgetfulness in the paradoxical pain of seeking the unattainable.
What I really like about this movie is that the protagonist doesn't stop there, the next day he wakes up from his bed in the party place and again, he decides to shoot the corpse. Even though he has felt the blows and setbacks of this life, but he is not willing to do so, he must face the real collision. However, the body he found when he returned to the park for the first time was gone, and the "truth" even lost its metaphorical shell. After the idea's sojourn disappeared, he had to face the problem of "truth" itself and look directly at the shell. Empty after disappearance. When he jumped out of the local area (switching from close-up to medium-range), he re-understood this fluctuating reality, and finally realized that before the problem of the relationship between art and life, the circulation of life itself had already surpassed his control and understanding. Trying to find something to hold tightly, but in the end, my fingers are empty and nothing. Then he walks in a direction that looks like a park exit and encounters a car of hippies (?) dressed like magicians at the beginning of the film, two of them walk to the tennis court and start to play tennis, but there is no real thing, the others are watching . Thomas first stared at the tennis player, and then his eyes began to move back and forth from one side of the court to the other, and then the "ball" seemed to be hit off the court and landed in Thomas's direction. Thomas went to pick it up and put the "ball". "Throw it back, and then there is the sound of the "ball" being hit back and forth. After experiencing this double setback, Thomas has entered a new realm on the court. He can only rely on himself. Whether the "ball" does not exist or is invisible is only up to him. The key is that the round of life is still To continue. The last shot is even better. Thomas appears very small in the panoramic top-down shot, and at the same time he is looking down at the objective world that surrounds him, which can also hint at his own perception of this state. In a life where only you can depend on yourself, you still have to face the world. He finally picked up the camera on the lawn, experienced constant setbacks and overcoming, life and art were able to return together in the picked up action.
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