Let’s talk about it from two angles, one is Jia Muxu’s view on movies and the other is his view on poetry.
If you regard "Patterson" as a poem, then the whole film can be regarded as the director's tribute to his favorite poet William Carlos Williams. The reasons are as follows: 1. William Carlos. The relationship between Williams and Patterson is just like the relationship between the hero and Patterson in the film. Jamusch named the film title, the name of the actor and the city he lives in Patterson. This intertextual relationship fits well with William Carlos Williams. In reality, the poet was also born in Sri Lanka. , Grew up in Si, and wrote a long poem of the same name for him, which is also his masterpiece. 2. The film not only directly mentions the name of William Carlos Williams (the bus driver said that his favorite poet is him), but the plot also directly places a link where the husband reads poems for his wife. That poem is The poet’s masterpiece "Notes", the whole poem is as follows: I ate it/put it in/in the refrigerator/plums/they/probably you/keep it/for breakfast/forgive me/they are too delicious/so sweet/and so cold. 3. The poems written by the protagonist in the film all come from the real American writer Ron Pat. As a member of the New York School of Poets, Ron Pat and William Carlos Williams are naturally not related. shallow.
An important poetic proposition of William Carlos Williams is "you want things, not concepts". In general, his creative features include: insisting on using spoken language, treating poetry as speech, using loose and short sentences, concise and clear image description, opposing complicated and complicated terms, and resisting obscure symbolic systems. It is precisely because of Jia Dao's admiration of poets that this poetic film will inevitably be contaminated with similar temperaments, such as a high degree of attention to daily life, a cold-eyed and self-satisfied posture.
What's interesting is that I found that many people mentioned the film and used "ordinary bus drivers, writing ordinary and even crappy poems" to summarize the plot. Where did such discrepancies come from? In addition to what people say, there are two other factors that I think are worthy of fun: one is the concept, that is, the problem of understanding "what is poetry". If the audience does not approve of William Carlos Williams’ poetry, it is probably difficult to resonate with Ron Pat’s poems, which is natural. For example, the "Note" mentioned above should be a good touchstone. The second reason is related to translation, which is what the Japanese poet said in the movie: "The translation of a poem looks like a bath in clothes." This is of course easy to understand. Because of the differences in the language itself, the translation of the original works is actually equivalent to the second creation. Because of the format and aesthetic pursuit of the poetry, the requirements for the text are especially particular, and the translation of the poetry will naturally test the translator even more. Level, Feng Tang’s translation of "Flying Bird Collection" aroused public outrage is proof. Furthermore, we can compare so-called poetry films such as "Roadside Picnic" and "Yangtze River Picture". Bi Gan's poems are typical translation styles. Influenced by various foreign poetry genres, these foreign poems and classics flowed to China mostly through translators who changed their faces, that is, the translation style, which almost constituted the source of modern Chinese poetry. Unfortunately, this upside-down aesthetic standard is still prevailing among many poetry readers, so in the final analysis, the problem of translation is ultimately a problem of ideas.
Let's talk about the movie view. Jia Muxu once confessed that he liked movies that were completely "non-dramatic" like Ozu and Bresson, and on the podium in Cannes he even shouted "Thank you Hou Xiaoxian, I am your student". From this comparison, "Patterson" is indeed a plain and simple movie. Of course, the indifferent, alienated and self-interested style is almost the continuation of its consistent style, the camouflage feelings and the twin setting, and even the Japanese poets. The finger with the tape can be regarded as its personalized image tag. But I have to say that compared to the independent avant-garde poetry, Jia Muxu's image concept this time is still a little more modest.
Where is the specific problem? The film opens chapters in a weekly cycle. It is a setting similar to "The Horse of Turin". From Monday to Sunday and finally back to Monday, it is like "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring". This structure is undoubtedly very strong. Generality, expressing life and refining life, but its neat and orderly sense of form inevitably conflicts with the casual and flexible concept of poetry, especially when the time comes to Saturday, creating the biggest contradiction in the film: the puppy After Marvin shredded the book of poems of the bus driver, Sunday’s conflict resolution became necessary and focused. Of course, "Aha" could be regarded as a light and subtle solution, but unfortunately, for this lightness. , Its foreshadowing is too deliberate and the traces are obvious, and the emphasis of one chant and three sighs has forced this unspeakable "aftertaste" to generate the "hard truth" that must be so. This can be compared with Hou Xiaoxian. Why are the soundtracks at the end of "Love in the Wind", "A Sad City", "Dream of Life" and "Assassin Nie Yinniang" so attractive? In addition to the excellent music itself, it should also be related to Hou Dao's lyrical strategy of restraining and forbearing: the emotional outlet is always blocked, and the soundtrack will not let go. In other words, without the catalysis of the content of the film, those tunes are just nice tunes.
Based on this, I came to the conclusion that Jia Muxu wrote poems, painted pictures, formed bands, and made movies, all of which he did not so much as a maverick, but also because of his literary and youthful temperament, and he seemed to be free and rebellious here. Behind him, there is still an old-school soul of Mensao. It can be said that all of his creative sources are deeply rooted in this, and as of now, there is still no detachment from this.
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