"The Cry" has attracted much attention since Cannes, and the comments were polarized after the screening. Now, as soon as "The Cry" is released in Chinese resources, there has been a huge movement in various film critics or media circles. The reason is, first of all, because the director has made a subversive "ghost movie" after honing his sword for six years after "Yellow Sea", and secondly and most importantly, this movie is too brain-burning and can't see the truth. In the fog, various speculations and interpretations of the truth also made the film itself from the side.
Low- yield, high-quality Luo Hongzhen
Luo Hongzhen can be said to be a famous director in South Korea in recent years. Starting from "The Chaser", he has created an absolute weight in the Korean film market. The type of crime movie textbook template, "Yellow Sea" also achieved great commercial and artistic success in almost the same way. But Luo Hongzhen is not a prolific director. With such a blockbuster aura and the blessing of Cannes, the expectation even surpasses Park Chan-wook's "Miss", the third feature film "The Cry", which took 6 years to languish. arrival. In this film, Luo Hongzhen changed the original routine of the crime theme, played with American horror elements, coupled with the unique ghosts and gods of the Orientals, forming a bloody, thriller, mysterious, religious, and suspenseful as one. Consciousness" horror film.
Fragmented clues, fragmented stories.
The story setting of "The Crying" itself is the background of a classic thriller film. The closed village is surrounded by layers of deep mountains and dense forests. Coupled with the constant thunderstorm weather, it constitutes an environment that is separated from the real society and survives alone, which is mysterious enough in itself. The village, with the arrival of a stranger, broke the original peace. Beginning with a series of bizarre deaths, villagers will go crazy and murder one after another, so rumors spread throughout the village, and all of this is directed at the only stranger in the village - the Japanese.
Luo Hongzhen's story seems to be a complete closed-loop narrative, but in fact, in the 156-minute film, at least 140 minutes are spent creating a puzzle, designing the audience, every clue, and every line of dialogue. Carefully manage the tension of suspense, whether it is the gossip in the village, the appearance of the mysterious female ghost, the nightmare that seems to be witnessed, the withered grass on the beam, or the strange altar in the Japanese home, it seems to imply the truth, It also succeeded in substituting the audience into guessing the details of the clues. The director is very attentive to fill these fragmented clues throughout the film, but also because of too many complex branch lines, the overall narrative cannot be connected with each stage in a single line sequence, resulting in the film unable to put these clues together in the end, the overall film. It is also because of these fragments that it is broken into a 156-minute fragmented story.
What is the truth?
When you start to speculate on the truth after watching the film, and look back at various clues to try to find good and evil, then you have already bit the director's hook. In "The Cry", Luo Hongzhen uses religion as a carrier to discuss the theme of "doubt" and "belief", that is to say: the moment you doubt, you have begun to believe. In order to highlight "doubt" and religious beliefs, Luo Hongzhen did not hesitate to sacrifice the rationality of the story itself, throwing out various detailed clues, and even setting up layers to mislead the audience into the mystery. In terms of religion, he used a vivid exorcism ceremony to express Korean shamanism and Japanese Shintoism, and at the end of the film, when the Japanese turned into "devils", he embodied Catholicism, and this exorcism ceremony also became the film. The most exciting part (many people called Shamanism to the World Heritage after reading it.). From another perspective, "The Cry" is a movie with a very strong sense of substitution. The director successfully implanted the audience's perspective on Zhong Jiu (the policeman in the play) through detailed settings, so whenever Zhong Jiu had doubts, The audience will subconsciously follow his thoughts to examine and judge, generate various assumptions, step into the trap step by step, and finally be completely confused and lost. But in fact, this is the director's careful arrangement, and it is also the most unsuccessful part of this film. It enters the game like a trap, controls the audience's judgment, and becomes a deliberate inducement by Luo Hongzhen for the characterization of the theme. It is too obvious, so that the audience is in a "must" look and feel from beginning to end, and they have to guess and doubt. The constantly appearing pictures and dialogues about the bait in the play mean that Zhong Jiu and the villagers are big fish in the play, and the audience outside the play becomes the big fish in Luo Hongzhen's bait.
As for the ending of the story, all we know is that the tragedy happened as scheduled, Zhong Jiu could not distinguish between good and evil, and the audience was also confused. Maybe Luo Hongzhen originally thought of using such an open ending to give the audience their own guesses and doubts However, the direction of the foreshadowing actually affects the judgment of the audience who should be the eyes of God.
Therefore, the so-called truth is actually just "doubt" itself, and there is no answer to good and evil in the film, as the wizard said to Zhong Jiu, echoing the opening dialogue of the film: "That guy is just baiting a fish. If you throw it away, anyone can bite the bait."
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