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If you have been hit by the most private black hole in your heart by "MODERN LOVE?" last year, don't miss this new drama "TALES FROM THE LOOP?" also produced by Amazon.
Many people refer to the show as "Stranger Things" + "Black Mirror", probably because it sets the story in a secluded town like "Stranger Things" and is the same episode as "Black Mirror" Tell a complete science fiction story.
After watching the whole film, I can't agree with this statement, I prefer to call it a sci-fi version of "modern love", especially its kind of charm between Ted Chiang and Philip K. Dick, and The deep and unique oriental Zen lingering at the bottom.
Its style is neither Cthulhu, nor steampunk, nor cyberpunk, more like a dystopian dream mixed with psychedelic retro utopia or a surreal prose poem, if you can I would call it "nostalgic punk".
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The biggest difference between it and "The Strange" is that it has neither strong dramatic conflict nor close character relationships, nor even clear protagonists and supporting roles, let alone decent and villainous, and even the time when the most important story takes place. no longer exists.
The biggest difference between it and "Black Mirror" is that "Black Mirror" is a cautionary prophecy, dedicated to criticizing the out of control inspired by technology, while "Ring" is a fable, dedicated to reflecting on the weaknesses of human nature.
To go further, the technological gadgets in "Black Mirror" are irreplaceable, while the robots, shuttles, and magic stones in "Ring" can be replaced by many things, it just chooses sci-fi elements as metaphors body.
"Loop Story" has 8 episodes, namely: "Loop", "Transpose", "Stasis", "Echo Sphere", "Control", "Parallel", "Enemies", "Home" home.
These titles may seem simple, but they may refer to an object or prop in the plot, or the theme or event in the story. It is recommended to remember the title when watching the movie, and pay attention to when the plot is titled and what details are there. The point of view will be very different.
It will revolve around 1-2 characters in each episode, the protagonist of each episode is the supporting role of another episode, and the supporting role of each episode will become the protagonist of a certain episode, just like the name of the show, forming a ring You have me, and I have your Mobius ring.
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The rhythm of "The Ring Story" is so slow that it doesn't look like an American drama. There are a lot of empty shots, long shots, still and slow motion shots. The main theme of Beethoven's "Moonlight" variation is performed with a piano and double bass. In combination, it exudes poetry.
In terms of tone, it also abandons the bright and high saturation of the usual American dramas, and uses low-saturation blue, black, yellow and gray as the main tones, and deliberately increases the gray level, commonly known as the cold tone, so that the overall picture presents the retro film of the 1970s. Nostalgic texture.
The extremely concise lines in both quantity and expression, the almost restrained performance, the large number of picture-in-picture compositions, the use of cinematic panoramas and long-term perspectives, and the non-character-centered camera positions all make the whole drama reveal a kind of excessive calmness. of alienation.
The most interesting thing is the sense of dislocation specially created in the whole play. The architectural appearance, interior design, furniture display, clothing and hairstyle in the play all have obvious characteristics of the 1980s and 1990s.
But there have been time-travelling stones, soul displacers, time-pause instruments, boxing robots, super artificial intelligence, etc., these "high-tech" products that we know could not exist in that era.
The most abnormal is the attitude of all the characters in the play, from the elderly to the children, they are used to these things that are beyond the times, just as we don't care about a smartphone or a microwave oven.
If this drama was filmed in the 1980s and 1990s, there is no need for such a setting, because no matter how advanced the concept is visualized, it cannot completely escape the aesthetics of the times.
But this drama was filmed in the present, and such a dislocation setting is worth thinking about. Why is it in the 1980s and 1990s? Why are the people in the play so unsettled?
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In fact, the original title of ' TALES FROM THE LOOP' has revealed a mystery. ' TALES' originally meant ancient stories with myths and imaginary colors, such as the most famous 'Tales from the Thousand and One Nights' ("One Thousand and One Pages' "), "Ring Story" is a sci-fi version of "One Thousand and One Nights".
The reason why I chose the 1980s and 1990s as the background of the story, I guess: First, because the inspiration for the whole series comes from the concept draft of the Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, whose original painting is full of strong Nordic style, which is the legendary The perfect fusion of the German Bauhaus and the former Soviet Union's cold war style.
The second is because the 1980s and 1990s were a dream period for the American economy and culture. Neoliberalism pushed the United States out of the political turmoil and economic haze of the 1970s, and firmly held the position of global hegemony. The third industrial revolution formed by information and communication technology, after Apo After Luo's moon landing, the dimension of human thought has been brought to an unprecedented height.
The American dream has never been more accessible, and the current economic and cultural downturn has made people want to escape reality and hide in the glory days of the past, which is why "Stranger Things", "Wonder Woman 1984" and "American Horror" The reason why a number of film and television dramas such as Story 1984 began to be "nostalgic" one after another.
In the glittering 80s and 90s, driving a speeding car in "Blade Runner" into 2019, pulling out a lightsaber and singing "Return of the Jedi" in "Star Wars", and flying with NIKI AIR MAG in "Back to the Future" To 2015, ride a bicycle across the moon in "ET", and drive an off-road vehicle to reverse the future in "Terminator".
NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE, so why should they be surprised about everything in "The Ring" in the 80s and 90s?
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So this wonderful sense of dislocation creates a parallel world in a vacuum, making "Ring Story" a wonderland outside the rabbit hole. Every story looks like an incredible dream on the surface, but deep inside is the real world. The worldly dilemma that everyone encounters.
Each episode ends in a semi-open style, which is a simulation and tribute to reality, because reality never has a real finale, some are just an infinite loop of time, which is also a core around which the whole episode revolves - time loopback.
In this small town where time seems to be static, time is depicting a unique Kafka-esque metamorphosis for everyone in a way that you can't notice.
The LOOP in everyone's mouth, the mysterious thing hidden deep in the ground, the thing that everyone serves, like Kafka's castle, Beckett's Godot, can also be seen as a metaphor for morphological time.
The first episode "Loop", which seems to be a time-travel story where childhood and adult self meet, is actually a comfort to the shadow of childhood when the mother ran away from home. The mother's unannounced farewell was turned into a punishment for stealing the LOOP's magnet, and it shattered into the remnants of time against gravity and drifted to another world with the wind.
"Let go of the past" is what the adult self needs to point out to the childhood self. Your mother will never come back, and you should never look for it again. Otherwise, the pain will be like an eternal loop, you will hold on to the past and cannot let go. It will also make history repeat itself and become another mother of you.
So has the so-called "childhood self" really returned to the future? Does the so-called "adult self" really exist? Is the dialogue between you and yourself an imagination in the future, or an epiphany in the past? This is the beauty and romance of Ring Story, seemingly simple but full of tension.
The fifth episode "Enemies" re-interprets Frankenstein's story from another angle. The boy was thrown by his friends on the legendary monster island in the town. He believed that the rumors of monsters in the town killed him and fought with him, wounding him. His arm, when he came back, he found that he had also lost his arm due to injury, and he has lived on a robotic arm since then.
Because of his father's warning and his own shame, he was afraid that the boy buried his memory. It was not until after his father's death that he revisited the past with his mother and learned that the so-called monster was an artificial intelligence made by his father. The child" keeps away from the bullying of others and sends him to an island isolated from the world.
The so-called enemy is sometimes just a monster in your heart that you pieced together with the words of others. Is it the enemy who finally made you lose your arm? So at the end of the story, the boy returned to Monster Island again, tore off his robotic arm and handed it to the "monster".
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But is the story really just what it appears on the surface? Is it possible that the so-called "monster", the so-called "island", and the so-called "robot arm" are just a metaphor for self-deficiency, because other people's eyes exile the "ugly side" of the self and never dare to face it?
Similarly, reflect on envy and greed in "Transpose", explore loneliness and lust in "Stasis", face death and loss in "Echo Sphere", confront control and violence in "Control", and face up to "Parallel" in "Parallel". Striking obscenity and reality, reshape companionship and growth in "Home".
Watching "The Ring Story" will feel like watching Tim Burton's "Big Fish". It tries to concretize and simplify those particularly abstract perceptions, emotions, philosophy, and concepts through short science fiction stories. But instead of being vulgar or naive, it uses a very visual poetic text to disentangle the deeper meaning of its story.
The superficial simplicity is to try to give the audience more thinking space. It tries its best to abandon the speed, entertainment and consumption, so it will be very unfriendly to those who watch the series as a pastime, and even some. Tricky.
Just as not everyone who sees this atomic joke in the show will smile knowingly or even laugh out loud, just as you have to feel the passage of time second by second, frame by frame. You need to feel it "seriously" with emotion and brain, because the camera really speaks.
For example, in the last episode of "Home", the boy who unknowingly crossed the river of time, came home again and found that decades have passed, his mother has grayed his temples, his father has passed away, his brother has started a family, and he as young as when he left.
In the face of such a right and wrong, the boy's reaction is calm and deep, and his emotions are not gushing out like "Interstellar", but tearing open the emotional cracks through two psychological dramas, drop by drop, let you drink and watch The spirits, which are as pale as white water, inadvertently choke your head back to the soul.
In one scene, a panning shot was inserted suddenly, allowing the grown boy to see a pair of brothers who were similar to his childhood at the door of the old house; in the other scene, the boy took pictures of his old mother, and the moment he looked at the camera, he was old 's mother instantly becomes a girl in her child's heart and camera.
So the so-called "blink of an eye" was performed unparalleled in a few seconds. It was as gorgeous as yesterday's fireworks. We were broken and disappointed, our bodies were incomplete, and we had mixed feelings.
This is "Ring Story", its ultimate romance, like the dark loneliness at the end of the universe, is the beauty that you will not care about when you are a teenager, and you will be speechless when you are an adult.
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