Although the director used the original playwright "August Wilson is American Shakespeare, you can't adapt Shakespeare", many dialogue plots that could have been visualized and expanded the film's narrative were retained by the director intact. The adaptation that led to the director and protagonist Denzel Washington did not reflect much of the consideration of transforming the stage play into the characteristics of the film art medium.
However, in terms of the strong background of the original drama and some of the highlights of the film, the film "Fences" still uses the narrative space to show that the role of the father in the American society in the 1950s and 1960s gradually became the dominant role in the family. Collapsed, and then proceeded with the process of reconstruction.
● Flowing backyard space and unstable family order ●
For such a movie with a strong theatrical style, the narrative venue of the movie as part of the drama setting can show what the movie itself wants to reveal to us. information.
The backyard, as an extension of the family house’s external space, is inherently private-it belongs to the space behind the house and is not directly watched by outsiders; it also contains the characteristics of outward expansion and connection-it connects with a part of the public Space symbolizes the connection between the inside of the family and the outside world. This semi-closed and semi-open space is inherently unstable, and it also gives the film a room for extension.
From the audience's point of view, in this semi-closed and semi-open scene, the director tried to use to guide us to peek. While satisfying the desire for voyeurism, we will also be watching how the family that seems to be very intact at the beginning of the film, step by step, is on the verge of collapse.
Most of the narrative conflict in "Fence" revolves around the backyard of the protagonist Troy Maxson's family. The backyard in the movie has an interesting and unique design. The director puts some hidden and profound details in the backyard, using some insignificant at first glance, but trying to guide the audience’s attention to the scenes to show the hidden anxiety and conflict in the narrative space. And reconciliation.
The duration of the film is more than two hours, and the non-feature part at the beginning and the end is removed, and the duration of the script is almost the same as the duration of a standard Hollywood script. This means that the movie also has a classic three-stage structure, and there are exactly two similar shots in the movie inserted near the two key time nodes of the movie.
When these two shots appear at the two key moments of the ending point of the first act and the ending point of the second act respectively, they must respond to the environmental hints of the changes in this family conflict. The first time was when Troy was in the backyard talking with his wife Rose about the baseball training of his youngest son Kerry, and the film first showed footage of the dilapidated attic window next door.
This shot hints at an important detail. The protagonist’s house is next to an uninhabited abandoned house. When this abandoned building appears in the picture with the background as an element from time to time, it is like an elephant in this space, seemingly unattended, but it has already been brought into the unstable narrative space of the backyard as a narrative element.
The film gradually shows the contradiction between Troy as a father and the whole family in the backyard space: the eldest son only cares about music and has no intention of working. He ridiculed and refused mercilessly; his younger brother was unable to take care of himself due to the trauma of the war and caused mental problems, so he had to take the responsibility of taking care of him. The abandoned house stands next to the protagonist’s backyard, which ultimately implies that it is hidden in the protagonist’s family and no one has discovered it, but it has become the most important family crisis.
And Troy's betrayal of family and marriage has become the most important fuse leading to this father's status crisis. It seems to be sudden, but in fact it has already foreshadowed. Through the mouth of Bono, the film implies that he is tired of life without passion and responsibility. Long before the conflict broke out, we could understand from the conversation between Troy and Noble on the way home: Troy not only bought wine for other women, but was also found wandering near the house in Alberta. After that, this woman became Troy’s mistress. .
When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares at you. Therefore, when Troy looked at the abandoned house next door for the first time, the hole in the attic room was like the eyes of the abyss. Through the ruins of houses that symbolize the abyss, Troy foresaw the potential crisis of family disintegration and loss of patriarchy. When the movie shows that Troy persistently builds a barrier in his backyard, it is actually telling us that the establishment of the barrier is for Troy to try to block the external factors of the family's disintegration and maintain his family status.
When Troy had a physical conflict with his youngest son Kerry for the last time, the frustrated father who was rejected by the whole family chanted "I can't taste nothing" while looking at the abandoned house next door again. The movie once again showed a Similar but slightly different lens: attic windows almost out of focus.
This undoubtedly symbolizes that the entire patriarchy finally loses its place in the family. The ruins and Troy are at the same time as one, becoming an unstable factor in the backyard space, bringing a crisis to the backyard, the flowing narrative space. What's interesting is that the reincarnation-like Oedipus-style resistance of the younger son directly confirms the fate of the patriarchal demon after the disintegration of its power from the perspective of the drama conflict-the demon from the abyss will eventually return to the abyss.
● The disintegration and reconstruction of the patriarchal demon ●
Looking back at a story that Troy made up when his eldest son borrowed money for the first time, he said that he traded with the devil in exchange for furniture in three rooms, and the price was each $10 must be mailed per month. This seemingly absurd story is intriguing. When the younger son accused his father of taking the compensation money from his uncle in exchange for the house, the demon in the story actually refers to Troy himself.
From the perspective of Troy himself, he is indeed a certain selfish representative of the traditional father. He holds the power of control like the representative of traditional patriarchy in all families and cannot be resisted. When Troy's younger brother Gary appeared on the stage, he said in a crazy manner that his brother was listed in the trial book of St. Peter, and the director used his crazy words to tell the essence of Troy-the patriarchal demon.
His domination of his youngest son's future path and his choice of derailment are just another announcement, which is the inevitable result of paternal power proving his authority. However, we also need to understand that when Troy himself tells the story of his childhood and resists under his father's lewdness, Troy himself is also a victim of the continuation of patriarchy, which undoubtedly adds complexity to this role.
Due to the existence of Troy, contradictions abound in the narrative space of the backyard. Ironically, when the audience sees that the barrier is finally established, it is at Troy's own funeral. The space in the backyard is finally closed, and the conflict of stories is stabilized. Troy, who was thinking of barriers, became a lost existence in the family protected by the barriers. In other words, as an old-style patriarch, Troy was exiled by the new spatial order created by the establishment of the barriers.
Taking advantage of the fluidity of the backyard space to focus on a wider space, we noticed that at the funeral of his father, the photos of Troy and Kendini were juxtaposed. As far as the United States in the 1960s is concerned, the assassination of Kennedy marked the collapse of the "Building of American Spiritual Conviction". The chain reaction that followed put the entire United States in a series of harsh social realities. Various civil rights movements and the prevailing "Freud" thoughts also disintegrated the whole society's belief in the patriarchal other. In the semi-open flowing space of the backyard, the contradictions of the Troy family are like a mirror, reflecting the turmoil of the entire society.
At the end of the film, the characters in the film have forgotten Troy, including the youngest son singing a song on behalf of his father in mourning. When the old-fashioned patriarchy in the family dies, the remaining people will always seek a bigger other to fill the lost space of patriarchy. The last scene of the film became the most magical moment of the film. When Gary sounded the trumpet, he summoned Saint Peter to open the door of heaven, and a brilliant golden light appeared in the sky. At this time, the void left by the collapse of the patriarchy in the film was imaginatively patched into the larger Other, and as a result, the traditional patriarchy was reconstructed.
"Fence" is not just a simple family drama. In the narrative space set by the film, the semi-enclosed and semi-open fluidity of the backyard brings the possibility of narrative conflict, and the patriarchy collapses in this unstable space; the backyard After the establishment of the barrier, the establishment of a new spatial order was completed, thereby reconstructing the old-style patriarchy.
·END·
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