Twenty years after the filming of Sex, Lies and Videotape, Steven Soderbergh once again lamented at the Sundance Film Festival:
When you make a movie that resonates with all audiences, that means it's not going away, it's not going to be forgotten for quite some time.
As soon as I saw this movie, I decided it was the best movie I've seen this year. I'm fascinated by its slow narrative, and like so many traditional American dramas from the 90s, Sex, Lies, and Videotape's story is absolutely dramatic, and we may never find such instances in our lives. Just like sex, lies and videotape in the title, they are the three threads of the story that connect Laura, Graham, Ann, and Peter. Like a writer writing a novel, Soderbergh uses the stories of small people to convey three big things. theme.
Three different views of sex are presented in the film. The sex symbolized by Laura and Peter is about infidelity and infidelity, while Ann is a sexual conservative. At the beginning of the film, Soderbergh depicts Ann visiting a psychiatrist. , gave Ann's persistent facial close-up, so I saw a shy, puzzled face, for her, admitting sex seemed like an embarrassing thing, and conservative family habits continued in her. Laura and Ann, the sisters in the story, have bipolar personalities, which undoubtedly deepens the contrast between the two concepts. What attracts me most is Graham, a kind of sexuality that borders on self-punishment, called "impotence" in the film, Graham hates his past self, and the word guilt seems to be insufficient to describe such a degree that He would endure a long asexual life for his former lover.
Graham is Soderbergh's genius, and the highlight of the whole movie. When Ann storms into Graham's house at the end to try to make a videotape, she can't help but accuse Graham of being the culprit of the destruction and the debunker of lies. When I read some reviews, I liked what an audience called Graham - "the boy's man", I hope it's not just a sigh of James Spader 's appearance, in my opinion, Graham's view of sex It's pure, but clear, as if it was a love in our teenage years. We were infatuated with a classmate, but we are not perfect. No matter in terms of appearance or social status, we are being driven by the same imperfections. After a reason to say no, we fall into autism, which means that for a while, we don't want to open up, hate love, or even hate men or women, but eventually we'll come out. And the extreme in the film is Graham, in whose world this autism is prolonged until Ann comes.
It's obviously an unusual character, and we've had a chance to see a lot more about the thematic content possibilities and how they collide. That's why I like to think of it as a genius. The "lie" and "videotape" in the film are also quite broad themes.
It's been a wild weekend, and after tirelessly watching 4 films, Soderbergh seems keen to explore big, world-wide topics like poverty in "Never Compromise," the drug problem in "Drug Network," etc. . These films all have clever endings, and it’s not an absolute, we can’t see the happy ending or the dust settle, Soderbergh skillfully draws a blurry line between world and self, individual and public, Tragedy and drama separate. Like in the last scene of Sex, Lies, and Videotape, after everything, we see Graham and Ann sitting together, but that's about it.
In this work, every character is riddled with lies, deceived to his wife, sister, and himself, to quote Elena Ferrante's latest novel "The Lie Life of Adults" in a paragraph, " Praying is the same as lying, Can bring me the same comfort", here, can be changed to "Lying is the same as praying". They seek solace in escaping the consequences they will face. But in this film, Lie does not seem to play the leading role. He, like the "video tape", has become the lead for the film to explore "sex".
The discussion above is more about the script, which is undoubtedly a success, with Sex, Lies, and Videotape being nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 62nd Academy Awards .
I'm well aware that the script is only part of it, and what attracts me is the artistry of the film, and the director who can bring it all out visually is even more important. I have to mention that the film also won the Palme d'Or at the 42nd Cannes Film Festival in 1989 , when Steven Soderbergh was only 26 years old.
"My goal is to make a film that is both artistic and commercial", this is Soderbergh's claim to himself, while "Sex, Lies and Videotape" is an uncompromising independent film, In many viewpoints, it also has many characteristics of "meta-film" - the process of questioning the performance of the film itself, and it is always reflective.
I'd love to spend time researching Soderbergh's film style, I'm so greedy before the weekend viewing, I'm hoping to find some common ground in these films, wanting to gain the The same satisfaction after that, and then give a result that contains all the conclusions as if you were giving a conclusion to a paper. But that's not the case. These films have a huge span in terms of subject matter and script. The first one I watched was "Drug Network", which featured detailed depictions of group characters, distinct scenes with distinct tones, and a huge network intertwined like spider webs. , Soderbergh fully demonstrated his powerful multi-line narrative ability, which won him the best director of the Oscar in one fell swoop.
Still, I don't think it's any better than 1989's Sex, Lies, and Videotape, including the later "Never Compromise" (for which Julia Roberts won the Best Actress Oscar), both of which The film seems to have given the plot the upper hand. After watching a lot of analysis videos about Soderbergh, it seems that people are more willing to praise him as a broad-based and capable, he can join the ranks of best directors at a young age, or he can go through 10 years after "Drug Network". Years of pouting.
Looking back at these films, these artistic expressions are in the director's blood.
I started by praising the slow narrative of Sex, Lies, and Videotape, but that slowness was rhythmic. Leaving out monotonous dialogues and quiet transitional scenes, Soderbergh is willing to use a method of "hearing the voice before seeing the person", that is, the sound of a scene arrives before the image , which is tantamount to speeding up the process. The rhythm of the film makes it unfold more smoothly. For example, at the beginning of "Sex, Lies and Videotape", Ann's voice appears in the picture of Peter and Laura, which makes us realize the problem of this marriage from the beginning.
There are many simple and joking lines in the film , Graham's language is concise and calm, we can quickly guess what he means, so the same picture will not appear in the camera for a long time, waiting for a new one. Scenes. Lines paired with background music sometimes create quick scene transitions, which is why Soderbergh is keen to use upbeat electronic music in his films . Then there are frequent jump cuts , which are often used in order to speed up the rhythm. "Sex, Lies and Videotape" has a fast counter shot. In "Never Compromise", Erin is still in the restaurant one second, and the next second cuts back to The scene of eating canned food in the kitchen, this jump cut intuitively tells us that Erin is lying, but also shows the courage to face life.
In Soderbergh's films, there are many persistent facial close-ups similar to Ann's. Unlike the usual close-ups, he is more interested in capturing subtle facial movements when the mood is stable. There is no need for other pictures, the psychological activities of the characters can be guessed only by the expressions. When Ann found Laura's earrings under the bed, from thinking to awareness, all we saw was a face, but what could be more Undoubtedly? Immediately after, Ann's anger is depicted through the close-up profile of the earring being hammered.
Almost right at the beginning of the film, I'd unknowingly get caught up in watching "Never Compromise", "Drug Web" and "Eleven Arhats," Erin's ill-fated interview, Javier's strange dreams , the details will draw your attention to the character in front of the screen, and you want to hear his story. Soderbergh is very good at focusing on the characters , and not just with the help of frontal shots, we will find some shots from a bystander's point of view , quietly peeping on the side, in "Sex, Lies and Videotape", reflected in some In the wide-angle lens following the movement of the characters, we can see Graham driving over the bridge across the sea from the back of the car, and we can also see the black suspenders in the corner of the road. Ann in jeans bows his head towards Graham's house. The spectator's perspective brings us a kind of pleasure, the pleasure of voyeurism.
So far, we can always find some commonalities, they either complement each other in a certain movie, or they shine alone. But perhaps "Sex, Lies and Videotape" is just such a work, it contains everything and cannot be surpassed.
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