The little uncle is 45 years old this year. In the past three years, this ordinary middle-aged man has suffered from depression. The decadence, frenzy, and self-destruction he experienced in the middle are indescribable.
This year, he has gradually recovered, calm and calm.
Chat with him and talk about yourself.
He said: "I don't know what my ego is.
I said: tell a story.
1.
15-year-old Lara finally had the opportunity to study ballet at the best dance academy in the country. She was older than everyone else, so she kept practicing.
On top of that, the more difficult problem came from the fact that her feet were not suitable for ballet shoes.
Because she has a male body.
Although, she firmly believes that she is a girl.
"Girl", the debut of young director Luckas Dhont, won the Golden Cinematography Award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
From the perspective of shooting techniques, storytelling, editing and visual language, it already has the director's aesthetic style. It cannot be said to be perfect, but it is quite sharp. The performance of the actor Victor Polster who plays the protagonist complements the director, which can be said to be a mutual complement.
As a Transgender, Lara has a supportive father, a friendly community, and a professional medical team, and the entire film focuses almost exclusively on Lara's struggles with her identity.
This battle with myself is also a battle with God.
Lara's daily life is very simple, the hospital, home, dance classroom, the whole story is constantly switched in these scenes, showing the real life problems faced by this girl.
She used tape to stick up organs that shouldn't belong to her. She didn't want to use that body to fall in love. She kept jumping, spinning, and resting in the dance studio, going to the bathroom to treat her bloody toes, and using cold water to calm herself... …
Back at home, she is still the eldest daughter of a single-parent family and the eldest sister of her six-year-old brother.
For first-time directors and screenwriters, and even many novel writers, seniors will keep saying one word:
conflict.
Without conflict, there is no story.
But for the audience, for the readers, for the people who want to see these stories, are we really looking at conflict?
Or through conflict, we hope to realize something else.
Conflict is a bridge, a means, a tool, but not an end.
A clever storyteller should not create conflicts out of thin air, but seek out the essential contradictions that exist in the depths of human nature, purify them, and give them shape and outline again through their own perspective.
2.
Many people are talking about finding the self and returning to the self, but what is the "self" in this?
Carson refers to "the shape and color of the soul" in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
I like to add one more "texture".
Can you describe the shape, color, and texture of your soul?
Jung, the master of psychology, believed that everyone has some kind of hero archetype, which is hidden in our inner subconscious and can be regarded as something essential. In my own understanding, this essential thing is the texture of the soul, and as this essential thing continues to connect with the conscious self, the complete individuated self emerges.
From a certain level, colors and shapes are constantly changing and clear in the process of connection. We need to throw away some things that do not belong to us, so that the essence of the soul is constantly highlighted.
Foucault believes that "the ego is a relationship to oneself, not a reality, and has no internal structure, and is not something given to man from the beginning. The ego is a relationship to a set of relationships."
And this relationship is changing, constantly extracting and purifying.
These two statements are not contradictory and will eventually become one sentence:
By searching and fighting, you reach your destination, where your purest self is waiting.
In the story, Lara never accepts her body, and the intention of the mirror keeps appearing. She always stands in front of the mirror and looks at herself, while the audience looks at the Lara who is watching herself through the mirror.
What kind of person is that?
Is that someone who can be defined by labels and symbols?
What kind of struggle and pain is that person going through?
Because there is no external pressure, all struggles take place in that body.
The second half of the film is extremely powerful.
Lara kept spinning, circle, circle, circle, spinning hard, the sound of breathing, the sound of footsteps landing, all so heavy.
When she went into the bathroom to quiet herself with cold water, she opened the window to get some air.
At the last rehearsal, she fell and failed to get on the stage. She sat in the audience and watched quietly.
She came home and prepared a New Year's dinner for everyone. Everyone celebrated the New Year. She smiled.
She called an ambulance for herself, went into the room, and picked up the scissors.
3.
In fact, when I saw the movie halfway through, I was a little skeptical, and the truth in it could not be made up.
Sure enough, it's a true story.
The real protagonist is called Nora, which is very similar to the protagonist in the story. And another little trick hidden in the name is that when Lara was a boy in the story, she was called Victor, which is the name of the main character.
In 2008, director Lukas read the story of Nora in the newspaper, a transgender who wanted to become a ballet dancer. Lukas spent ten years thinking about how to tell the story.
Purely as a cinematic point of view, he could choose a more dramatic way, using various cinematic techniques to present the story, tearing and stinging the audience.
So what "Girl" ultimately presents is not the experience of all transgenders, but the struggle, pain, anger, despair, and effort and battle experienced by everyone who wants to gain self-identity and self-acceptance.
From this, we can also see the director's self.
When discussing the role of Lara, Nora told Lukas that she needed him to show that struggle, that struggle, to show that Lara's biggest enemy was herself.
She accepts her soul but rejects her body.
However, the stretching of the soul must be accomplished through the body.
Every time she stretched her body during a dance, she knew that the body was wrong.
This is the most essential contradiction.
The creative process is incredibly honest, and Nora refuses to whitewash her experiences or hide her dark thoughts. At the end of the movie, Lara achieved the transformation of her body from a male to a female in a tragic way. This did not happen in the real world, but it lingers in Nora's head every day.
This is a very special friendship, one person spends ten years thinking about how to tell another person's story, because he believes that this story should be heard, should be seen, should go where it can reach .
There is no lie, no dodging, no hiding, it is true, there is such a person, who has traveled such a road.
Now Nora has become a very professional dancer. The words she uses to describe herself are:
The only one who is brave and strong knows who he really is and what he wants.
【Finish】
Note: This article is also published on the author's own NetEase account "Who Movie"
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