This article was first published from the WeChat public account to take cocoons from virtual acupoints (ID: cocoonics)
Spirit as the carrier, taste as the packaging philosophy as the core
Although the film is called A Ghost Story, "A Ghost Story" will disappoint viewers who are ready to be scared. Unlike "Personal Shopper," which also escapes the limitations of "horror" genre films, this film does not go to Olivier Assayas (Olivier Assayas), which makes people a cloud of cutting-edge innovations route. It is a literary romance film in ghost skin, mixing and matching a bit of nihilistic philosophical talk under the boundless starry sky, exploring the meaning of time and existence with you. At least, at the last moment, everyone who looks inside will resonate a little bit.
Unexpectedly, a ghost with a blank expression wearing a bed sheet could interpret loneliness to the heart. C and M are very affectionate lovers. Suddenly, C died in a car accident, leaving M alone in the old house in despair. But C did not really leave, but turned into a ghost and watched M's life silently. Distraught, M decided to move out of the old house. But C couldn't leave, and the star shifted. Trapped in endless time, he spent the centuries reincarnation and returned to the original place of the chaos of the world to wait. Waiting from the end of the world to the other end of the world, even watching myself become a ghost again. What has always supported C is a note that M once left in the crack in the wall
Casey Affleck (Casey Affleck), who plays the actor C, has set out in the direction of no more mourning but the most mourning after winning the Oscar for Best Actor for "Manchester by the Sea" (Manchester by the Sea) . The heroine M is the familiar "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "Carol" (Carol) heroine Rooney Mara (Rooney Mara). With Cassie only showing his face for 10% of the length of the movie, the love chemistry between the two is still profound and moving.
Director David Lowery has collaborated with the two protagonists in "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" (Ain't Them Bodies Saints). The film was well received after its premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Since Sundance came to the fore, David directed the Disney blockbuster "Pete's Dragon" last year. Although the reputation is not good, as the French film master Claude Chabrol once said Like that:
"In general, we can say that there are two types of directors: narrators and poets"
The director is the one who freely switches between these two identities. This year, he set out to make an independent film again. This "ghost film", which was shot at an ultra-low cost of only 100,000 US dollars, has unexpectedly fine texture and rich insets. It is definitely worth spending more than an hour alone in silence. taste.
The director mentioned in the interview that the story comes from a conversation between himself and his wife before the last move. David and the ghost have a strong emotional connection to the physical space inexplicably, and that dialogue has developed into a dialogue between lovers throughout the film. For the obsession with the house and the philosophical issues that the director himself wishes to discuss, it is most appropriate to use the soul theme as the carrier. Because of its nature beyond time and space, it is very appropriate to pursue philosophical questions such as "who am I" and other existential meanings.
Although it should be classified as a "literary drama", it has all the horror and cuteness that the audience should expect. Only in an instant, the tide of sorrow and pain will be lost again. The director is a horror movie lover. It gives you a touch of what a horror movie should have, like everything a family that moved in has experienced. From the perspective of a living person, it is "Conjuring 2" (Conjuring 2). In the plot. What's interesting and innovative is that we rarely see all this from the perspective of ghosts. But after the fun, the mood fell into a trough again. The ghost looked at everything he had messed up because of his temper, and looked at the family who was cleaning up the mess with apologetics. Once again, he was enveloped in loneliness.
It is also worth mentioning that there is a love festival where you can talk to another ghost. Two ghosts in bed sheets communicate through the window, making people laugh. But the only dialogue dragged us into the swamp of memories again quickly:
"I am waiting for someone." "Who?" "I don't remember"
It is revealed that the ghost with a little lace and flower bed sheet is actually the director himself. This is more concealed than Hitchcock's cameo in his movie.
Spend 5 minutes eating pie and don’t cry up close to you
There is very little dialogue in the film, and the scene that has always been praised is that M, who has just received the news of C’s death, sits on the kitchen floor, stuffs chocolate pie in his mouth without saying a word, eats while crying, and finally rushes to the toilet to throw up. Fixed long lens of 5 minutes. And C's ghost watched everything silently from behind, desperately distressing. However, COSCO's paintings show extreme restraint in emotions. The first half of the film has always been based on fixed long shots, which is quite Apichatpong.
For example, on the night of kissing each other, the looking down long camera actually aroused the viewer's anxiety, but they had to be forced to open their eyes to observe every movement of the actors. This is in line with the nature of horror movies. The audience understands that staring at the characters in the non-switching shots for a long time makes subtle movements, which makes people expect and fear what will happen, just like every one in Shining. Long shots of you exerting mental pressure.
More interesting is the long shot of the morgue witnessing the resurrection. The camera hides behind the two-story door and keeps a certain distance, just like it did from beginning to end. This is not Yang Dechang’s sense of distance, Cai Mingliang’s lens length NS? There are many fixed shots of empty mirrors in the home, and there is indeed a sense of Chantal Akerman's "No Home Movie" (No Home Movie) mentioned in the director's interview.
The film itself also took a lot of moving scenes of ghosts, but in the end it was decided to cut it out and deal with it so that each fixed scene stood still. In the vast universe, there is a corner of an independent spirit that has been forgotten by time.
The number of frames corresponds to the time relative to each other
In the scene where the ghost moves, different frames are used for M and C. Shoot M with a frame rate of 24 frames per second and C with a frame rate of 33 frames per second, and then combine them. Therefore, in the same frame, two people move at different speeds. In fact, this technical problem can even be understood as a discussion of "time is relative". The so-called speed of time is nothing more than the difference in the magnitude of the change. If there is a change but we are not aware of it, we will not think that time has passed. For the ghost of C, the moment the pointer of time turned into a spirit, it never moved.
In the long river of time, Ren M's life trajectory continues to flow forward, making new boyfriends, and then making the decision to move out of the old house. But obviously in the opening dialogue
When C asked M, "Why did you leave all those houses?" M's answer was "'Cause I didn't have a choice" (because I had no choice)
However, the one who really cannot choose is C who cannot leave the house.
C's obsession with the world was stuffed into a piece of paper in a crack in the wall before M left. The content on the note is no longer important anymore, as if the two protagonists have no real names from beginning to end, the name is just a code name. And the paper strip, as presented in the opening dialogue, is "part of M" for C.
Although some people occasionally raised the question that "notes can be dug out when the occupants are not paying attention, why have to stop", but such a voice may be a prickly approach. The physical emotional connection makes C guard the house, but the greater existence of this house is nothing more than the people who have left history here. No matter who lives in this house again, this house should not belong to others, and he has to make sure of this. Because for C, the house only exists between the two.
What kind of talent will choose to stay in the world after the body dies? Strong obsession binds C's heart, regrets about unfinished things, and paranoia for the one he loves. After a long time, the meaning of staying for this is even beyond the original intention itself. Like a ghost wearing a flowered bed sheet, the phrase "I forgot who I am waiting for" is like, in an endless ruin, the meaning dies, and there is no greater grief than giving up waiting.
A living person can still escape from the past with the creation of time, but a soul without feet, time cannot leave a trace on him, he is trapped in place by himself, and can only contend with the world by loneliness.
Nihilist party
Everyone knows that a movie that tells a story with a lens rather than a line is considered smart. The only party in the film where a large number of monologues appeared. Although somewhat deliberate, the central idea of nihilism was still through the party Will Oldham (Will Oldham, who had a collaboration with David in the short film Pioneer) ) The mouth accurately conveyed to the audience.
No matter how the world collapses into a novelty, no matter how the big bang presses the reset button for the world, what will remain in the end? Everything is meaningless, Nietzsche has long told us that immortality is nothing but an illusion. At the beginning of the film, the boundless stars were shot, which reminded me of Li Yinhe’s discussion of nihilism: "The sea of people is menacing, the sun and the moon are in a hurry, and I don’t know what people are pursuing."
But C dismissed the nihilism of existentialism and gave meaning to his own existence. In the second half of the film, the rhythm of the expression of time suddenly accelerates. For example, after the death of a little girl, three fights back and forth, C raises his head again, his body has turned into decay, but he doesn't move at all. Under my gaze, it turned into a desperate reincarnation like "Triangle". Does that mean that M will be trapped in this cycle forever.
After all, as a soul, it is still a screw in the operation of the universe, irresistibly involved in the vortex of time and space, born again and again, died again and again, disappeared again and again, and repeated again and again.
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