Literary Artifice: Expressionist Composition and Sphinx Complex
——A three-dimensional review of "Only God Can Forgive"
Text/empty words
When I first watched this movie, I saw the impulsive boxing and black market trading scenes. I thought it was a masculine or passionate movie. Then came the fragility of the characters in the movie and the weakness of the plot. I thought it was feminine or cold-blooded. However, as the watch unfolded, the attitude of this film appeared gloomy and distorted, coupled with the boring plot and boring way of telling, made me very disgusted with this movie. After seeing it for the first time, I felt that this film was neither masculine nor feminine, but shemale, abnormally perverted. No wonder it puts the background of the story in Thailand. Although the color and composition of the film are very meticulous, this is a film, not a photography exhibition. The boring and dull story makes this film negative. However, if the disagreement eases, different opinions can be drawn about the film.
[Art is pretend]
The film "Only God Can Forgive" has been divided into two evaluations. One critical attitude thinks that the film is artificial (commonly known as pretending) and boring, and it is a big bad film; the other admiring attitude thinks the meaning of the film is profound. , The pictures are tasteful and can be called master-class film and television works. Although these two evaluations are quite different, they lead to a common conclusion: literature and art. The success or failure of this film stems from its literary art. For those viewers who do not appreciate literature and art and think that literature and art are often quite artificial, this film is boring because of its literature and art, which makes people disgusting; for those who are willing to appreciate literature and art and are willing to get meaning from literary and artistic works, this The film is loved. This differentiated evaluation is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored when looking at this film. It makes the viewing experience of this film appear three-dimensional. Even if you think that "literary art is contrived", then the views on this film may not be unilateral.
Critics of this film believe that the shortcomings of "Only God Can Forgive" are weak storytelling and slow pace. But for the admirers of this film, these two points are precisely the advantages: the story is weak, so it strengthens the emotional expression of the film; the slow pace allows the audience to get a more detailed experience of the characters in the film. If the audience just wants to watch the clear plot, then this film is very unsatisfactory, and those exquisite film pictures become secondary. But for those literature and art that find meaning through contrived art, the picture is also part of the language. Generally, any language expresses profoundness through superficiality. When profoundness is realized, superficiality is ignored. For this film, the picture becomes an indispensable element of expression. The color composition and composition of this film have the characteristics of expressionism: expressing the emotions, fantasy, desire and sense of time of the characters.
Artifice or art cannot be the fundamental reason for the rejection of the film. Because at least from the beginning of people becoming thinking animals, literature and art have become necessary. In those days when narration and expression were still lacking, people had enriched their ideas through literary and artistic contrivance. The development of writing is quite artificial. Generally speaking, the necessity of literature and art is also the necessity of contrivance, and the reason for this may be because the world is almost meaningless, and people need meaning, and this can only be established through contrivance. The pretentiousness in thought connects things, and the realization of literary pretentiousness is based on imagination or association as a prerequisite. From this, people can claim if they want to see, the meaning is there.
[Screen: Expressionism and Metaphor]
For an artificial literary film like "Only God Can Forgive", if you don't analyze or ignore the compositional performance, it is equivalent to ignoring at least half of the meaning. The picture is perceptual, and perceptual is often ambiguous, which is chosen by abstraction and association. In this film, most of the characters are almost expressionless for most of the time, which hides the emotions and consciousness of the characters. The emotions and consciousness of these characters are often expressed through composition. Composition as a way of organizing the picture, participates in the emotional expression of the film, which has the characteristics of expressionism. In the film "Only God Can Forgive", the expressionist picture generally adopts a dark tone, in which the color and composition convey emotions and metaphors in different perceptual ways.
[Color and Symmetrical Composition]
In "Only God Can Forgiveness", the dark tone uses very few colors. Of course, the most used color is black. The colors that match black are mainly blue, yellow, and red. Among them, the combination of red and black appears the most. Probably, black expresses mystery, unknown and emptiness, etc.; blue expresses calmness or satisfaction; yellow expresses anxiety or fear; red expresses vitality, release and desire, etc. In the binary color composition of red and black, they appear as a combination of opposites: dynamic and static, vitality and sluggishness, desire and emptiness... In such a binary composition, red shows a state of expansion, and black is the same. Ratio is in a state of contraction. The strong contrast between red and black deepens the emotional contradiction.
For example, when [00:41:55] the protagonist took a woman into a restaurant to meet his mother, in a dark room, one wall was crossed with red and yellow lights, which appeared hollow. In the atmosphere, uneasy and released emotions are mixed.
From the perspective of the form of composition, the film uses more symmetrical composition. In addition to the aesthetics of the form, the symmetrical composition puts the opposites equally in a picture, which helps to emphasize the key points of the picture, and at the same time, it can also emphasize the differences in the picture. For the expression of emotion, perhaps more important is that if the symmetrical composition is closed, then it also means a dilemma.
For example, in the film, [01:08:15] When Julian's mother asks Julian for help, the symmetrical graphics behind her express her dilemma, and the yellow color means uneasy emotions.
[Metaphoric performance]
In addition to color and composition, the film also shows some metaphorical images, which not only express the emotions of the characters, but also have something to do with the plot of the film. The most important metaphor in "Only God Can Forgive" is the metaphor of the hand, the hand is the medium of participation, and the main metaphor of the hand is desire. The bondage of the hand means that the desire is bound, and the cut of the hand means that the desire is cut off [17:00].
When Julian was washing his hands [25:25], we can see from the screen of the film that the original clear water and clean hands slowly washed out black. This should be a metaphor for Julian's realization that his desire is dirty.
The door is a metaphor for the unknown or fear to be opened; the passage or corridor is a metaphor for the depression or anxiety experienced.
[26:25] In the clip where Julian meets his mother, Julian is in a dark corridor with mixed black and red, looking at the closed door at the other end of the corridor. The door is a metaphor for his premonition of fear. The camera The close-up view of the door slowly pulled away through the corridor, which showed his anxiety. The scene after that was his mother sitting in the open door. In this way, after the anxiety, he finally opened his fear, that is, he Mother.
[31:48] There is also a dark corridor in the film. At the end of the corridor is a woman standing in a dim light. This should also be a metaphor for the fear of women. This fear can be linked to Sphinx.
[Complex: Oedipus and Sphinx]
[Story of Oedipus]
In the film "Only God Can Forgive", the reminder of "father-killing" and the dark relationship between the protagonist's brother and his mother can make people think of Oedipus's story and the "Oedipus complex" or "Oedipus complex", although the main story of this film is not a description of "Oedipus complex". In the story of Oedipus, Oedipus is the royal family of the Greek city-state of Thebes, and Thebes is said to be one of the Greek city-states with the most homosexuality. Oedipus' father, Raios, offended God because of his homosexual behavior, and God cast a curse on him, saying: Raios would be killed by his son. In order to avoid God's curse from coming true, Raios abandoned his son, Oedipus, and let him wait to die. But Oedipus was rescued and became the adopted son of King Corinth. After Oedipus grew up, he learned of God’s curse, but he didn’t know that his biological father was the King of Thebes, not the King of Corinth, so he left Corinth to avoid God’s curse from coming true. . In order to punish Thebes, God not only cast down a curse, but also sent a sphinx representing the punishment of the gods. Sphinx wanted to pass by passers-by to ask questions: what animal, walk on four legs in the morning, walk on two legs at noon and night Walk on three legs? Those who cannot answer the Sphinx question will be killed. In order to save his kingdom, King Raios of Thebes went to find the oracle to break the sphinx, but he encountered Oedipus on the road. There was a dispute between the two sides, and the result was Oedipus. The group of people who killed his biological father, although he did not know that he killed his biological father. Thebes, who had lost the king, declared that whoever can get rid of the Sphinx will become the new king of Thebes and marry the widow of the ancestor, who is the mother of Oedipus. Without knowing his own background, Oedipus solved the sphinx mystery, and the answer was "people". So Oedipus became the king of Thebes and married the widow of the former king, who was his own mother. Later, Oedipus learned the truth and learned that he had realized the curse of God without knowing it, so he went mad and ran away.
[The tragedy of philosophy]
Psychologist Freud referred to the "Oedipus complex" as the "Oedipus complex", which is quite contrived. Because in Oedipus’s story, he did not spontaneously go to Oedipus by his psychology. In fact, in Oedipus’s story, there is no Freud's so-called "Oedipus complex" at all, and it is not dominant either. factor. The Oedipus complex referred to by Freud is a staged phenomenon of growth psychology, which has almost nothing to do with Oedipus' experience. This practice of Freud once again shows the influence of contrived culture. For the sake of cultural significance, people always like to connect with tradition in a contrived way. This kind of literary and artistic contrivance is sometimes conducive to discovering meaning, and sometimes it is easy to confuse the meaning of things. For the story of Oedipus, what we need to see are the elements that really work. In Oedipus’ story, there are indeed ethical taboos and the presence of God (or God’s intervention). Ethical taboos are the direct basis for Oedipus' tragedy to shock people's hearts, and the presence of God is the foundation of Oedipus' story. The presence of God mainly lies in two aspects, one is the curse of God, and the other is the sphinx. Because of the curse cast by God, Oedipus's real life experience was concealed from him, and he was abandoned and voluntarily left. As a result, he became an ignorant of his actual origin. Oedipus’s father, who was ignorant of this issue, would go to his own death because God gave out the sphinx mystery, and Oedipus fulfilled the curse of God by solving the sphinx mystery, and walked towards Has lost its own tragedy.
The mystery of the Sphinx is a metaphor for philosophy. Sphinx symbolizes (mysterious) wisdom, or in other words, the sphinx symbolizes the boundaries set by God for human knowledge, which is the incarnation of God's wisdom. The content of the sphinx mystery is the change of man himself. To master the sphinx mystery is to have the knowledge of man himself, or to say this is to achieve philosophy. But the content of the Mystery of Sphinx is only abstract knowledge, it does not contain all the specific knowledge about people. This nature of the Sphinx puzzle also corresponds to the nature of philosophy. If you confuse the abstract with the concrete or even invert it, and mistakenly think that you have the abstract knowledge and you have the concrete knowledge, it will lead to the tragedy of philosophy.
The tragedy encountered by Oedipus is also a philosophical tragedy in the conceptual sense. The reason for the tragedy of Oedipus is that he has solved the mystery of the Sphinx, which means that he has an abstract knowledge of himself, but he does not know his actual life experience, that is, he does not have a specific knowledge of himself. . If Oedipus can resist the temptation of the Mystery of Sphinx, that is, manipulate the specific temptation by abstraction, then he will probably not go to tragedy. But even so, his desire may still prompt him to face the Sphinx, or the desire of man makes him have to face the Sphinx. This is the inevitable part of tragedy. When Oedipus thought that he had solved the sphinx mystery, what he didn't know was that there was a more difficult and bigger sphinx mystery covering him, silently waiting for the answer. The more difficult and bigger sphinx mystery is the concrete life itself. It is impossible for people of desire to inevitably solve this real sphinx mystery, so the world of desire is the inevitable place of tragedy. In addition, the curse of God, in the sense that it has an effect on the trajectory of life, is also an abstract knowledge of oneself. Hearing the curse of God and trying to avoid it is to treat abstract knowledge as concrete knowledge. Therefore, its tragic nature is the confusion or misplacement between abstract and concrete.
Although the tragedy of philosophy is related to the characteristics of philosophy, it is not caused by philosophy. It is caused by human desires beyond limits. Philosophy does not teach people to go beyond the abstract to suppress the concrete, or to allow finite individuals to go beyond their limits to suppress others. On the contrary, philosophy often teaches people to be restrained and conform to the limits of nature. Sphinx means wisdom, and it also means the limit of God or the limit of nature. Her image (the Sphinx) is a combination of charm and fear. The tragedy of philosophy is not the negative side of philosophy, but that philosophy is kidnapped by human desire. In other words, the tragedy of philosophy is that it loses its freedom and is used by mobs who desire it. The tragedy in the world is not the result of philosophical participation, but the result of desire.
[Is God present? 】
After clarifying the story of Oedipus and its meaning, and then looking at the film "Only God Can Forgive", it can be considered that this film is not the so-called Oedipus complex or Oedipus complex in the past through the protagonist Julian. , Even if they may cause similar associations. The rational theme of this film is the human world who desires to participate, and there may be tragedies, and such tragedies have an atmosphere of ethical insecurity. The protagonist Julian is in some kind of Oedipus incident, he is not an Oedipus character, he just participates like a bystander. He had to participate in that kind of family and that kind of society, and at the same time he showed abstinence, watching the ethically disorganized atmosphere or the sinful world with a certain idealistic posture.
The male protagonist Julian behaves like a monk in the film, his face is always like a stone, almost expressionless, without emotional changes. But this does not mean that he does not have emotional changes. The film expresses his emotions and attitudes through his actions and the composition of the picture. The film expresses his abstinence with a series of metaphorical images of hands being tied up, hands stretched out and hands cut off. This abstinence seems to be related to his fragility of objectification. Before he saw his mother, the film conveyed his fear through his reaction to the closed door in the dark passage. Not only that, the film also implicitly showed his fear of women. After his mother was killed, this kind of fear showed what seemed to be a release of fear through his strange behavior. Such fear of females is subordinate to the image of Sphinx, and behind the female's accusation hides the possibility of devouring people. As for his failure to kill the daughter of the Thai policeman, this seems to show an idealistic ethics. Of course, this is a fragile idealism.
Although the complex of the film belongs to some kind of grand sphinx mystery, "Only God Can Forgive" is not a mythical story, and there is no god in it. A difficult film name seems to throw a riddle to the audience, and the audience goes to the plot of the film to find the answer. The name "Only God Can Forgive" seems to imply that God is present in the film. Some people think that the Thai policeman holding a machete to make a ruling represents God. This kind of thinking is really trivial! The story of "Only God Can Forgive" is not really to invite the gods to forgive the sins in the world, it just shows a lonely and frantic world, thus presenting the world itself as a problem. What we should expect is not gambling and waiting for God's forgiveness, but expecting to understand ourselves. God is the will beyond understanding, and the sphinx is a way for God to be present through desire. When people encounter Sphinx on the road of understanding, it is a combination of hope and despair. It is the limit of human beings, and it is also the source of tragedy in the world.
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