sequence
If you were given a chance to go back in time, which era would you choose?
In Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris", the writer Jill wonderfully travels back to the "Golden Age" that haunts him, which was in Paris in the 1930s and 1940s, when Hemingway was still alive. During the confused period of their own creation, they used wine to drown their sorrows all day long. The Fitzgeralds are at the peak of their creation, and their love is sweet. Luis Buñuel is planning his surreal masterpiece "An Andalusian Dog", Picasso and Dali are also burning their creative passions, and this is a wonderful utopia for all artists to express their individuality and self-expression.
Jill was fascinated by this wonderful era, but his muse, Adrienne, was always fascinated by the "Belle Epoque" in the early 20th century in France. Jill didn't understand why Anna was not satisfied with the perfection of her age, but when he realized that he was not satisfied with the era in which she lived, he suddenly realized that everyone always regarded the past as a beautiful fantasy, but never really experienced the present life. .
At this year's French Film César Awards, the organizing committee's award to Roman Polanski seems to be the focus of everyone's attention to this César Awards. But everyone may also ignore the excellent works that have won awards this year. For example, this film called "Belle Epoque", which discussed the past with "Midnight in Paris", won this year's Caesar Awards, including Three awards, including Best Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay and Art Direction, have received quite high praise.
The concept setting of this film is quite similar to the "Party A and Party B" that opened the Chinese New Year movie. In the film, the members of the Good Dream Day Tour headed by Yao Yuan, after the employer made a wish, they built scenes and arranged The plot and live-action performances meet the wishes of employers and give them the most realistic panoramic experience.
In "Belle Epoque", there is also a company that combines drama and historical restoration. The employer proposes the era they want to go back to and the historical character they want to play, and the company customizes a complete set for the client. This kind of setting is actually similar to the "immersive drama" that is gradually prospering at the moment, but the plot of the immersive drama is the same for every audience, and the fictional story in the film is specially designed. belong to the customer.
Different from "Party A and B", this film does not focus on how the company operates and receives different customers, but focuses on a painter Victor who is over his old age. Unwilling to accept new things, the relationship with his wife is also increasingly estranged, and his creation is completely stagnant. It is such a stubborn old urchin, what kind of era does he want to return to?
What are the good times?
Everyone’s definition of beauty is different. Although Victor was kicked out of the house by his wife in reality, and he was reluctant to accept the drawing job offered by his son because of his face, Victor still loved his wife and his own life in his heart. As a painter, the ruthless years have flattened the relationship between him and his wife, and almost extinguished the enthusiasm for his creation. But Victor still has a "good nostalgia for the past" in his heart, so when someone from Baker, an employee of the immersive theater service, asked which era Victor wanted to go back to, Victor chose 1974. Lyon in 2009, not because he was crazy about which artist or a certain literary trend, but because that was the time when he and his wife met.
In the film, the director skillfully combines the fictional 1974 Lyon with the real world in which Victor lives, and as Victor begins his own "A Day in a Good Dream" experience, he returns to his own" The Belle Époque," began to re-examine his own past, but also to reflect on his own reality. The company restored the streets of Lyon that year, the hotel where he temporarily stayed, the cafe where he met his wife, and the bar where he partyed, etc.
It can be seen that Victor began to disbelieve the reality of this fictional world from the beginning to the body and spirit. The waiter called him a young man, because Victor was only in his twenties at the time. Victor asked the customers of the cafe at that time. The name of the official, the other party has to react for a while before they can say the answer through the ear-returning prompt. All these made Victor very dismissive. Even when Margot, a young actress who played his wife, first appeared, he constantly corrected the lines spoken by the other party, and his behavior was different from the wife in his memory. .
But when the memory overlaps with the fictional scenes more and more, Victor finds himself completely indulging in this fictional "Belle Epoque". Charming and sexy, the young and beautiful Margot not only reminds Victor of his younger self, but also reawakens his creative passion. Each picture is not only a true portrayal of Victor's past memories, but also a new interpretation after his re-experience. At this point, Victor's spirit has completely returned to Lyon in 1974, and he has increasingly blurred the boundary between reality and fiction, and even once thought that he fell in love with Margot who played his wife.
In reality, after driving away her husband, Victor's wife thought she had regained her freedom, but in fact she became more and more lonely. She found that what she really hated was not Victor, but the traces left on her body by the years. . She didn't want to admit that she was getting old, and she didn't want to admit defeat to time, but when Victor discovered the truth about his wife's affair with Victor's friend, she found that Victor didn't seem to care at that moment, and even the whole person became radiant. Glow, and then seeing Victor's drawings of their past in his work, the wife finally realizes that her focus has always been wrong.
Everyone will experience birth, old age, sickness and death, and everyone cannot lift the curse of time. When Victor came to the familiar Lyon cafe again, when his wife sat opposite her, the two began to really recall their past. For a moment, reality and fiction completely coincide. At this time, for the two of them, it is the real good times, it has nothing to do with the years, only about each other who love each other deeply. This is a hymn about love, and it becomes a magic for the irresistible time. When the wife deliberately left the scarf again, will Victor who smothered the cigarette get up again to pick up the scarf and return it to his wife? Yes, because only in this way can they truly start a sweet love, and only in this way can they continue to create a beautiful era that belongs to them in the years to come.
a movie about a movie
If you look at the relationship between the characters in the film and the production process of a film, Victor is actually an investor, and he is responsible for paying for the crew. At the same time, Victor is the writer and actor involved, because he provides all the story that happens in the set, and it all revolves around him. Baker is the director. He is responsible for coordinating the overall situation. From setting up the scene to casting, from organizing rehearsal to on-site command, he does everything possible to realize one dream after another for investors. Margot is, naturally, an actress who projects the image of the muse in every male customer's mind, while also being inextricably linked to Baker.
The director intentionally created an alienation effect between reality and reality through the crew members such as Baker who watched and directed the actors' performances behind the scenes. Baker and others are not only the producers of the show, but also the audience, who share the good old days of their customers and satisfy a "voyeuristic" desire by observing their actions. Although the story structure is different, Baker's role always reminds me of the director in "The Truman World", who also directs all the crew except Truman. He controls the world that Truman feels, and also consumes about his life.
When a person has the right to decide the fate of another person, he seems to think of himself as a "God"-like existence. Just like in this film, when Victor starts to confuse reality and fiction, thinking that he is in love with Margot, Baker immediately decides to let Margot play a married woman in the reality he created, while also playing the role of a married woman. have children. But Victor doesn't know all this. Through such a play, Baker hopes that Victor can wake up from his dream and give up on Margot at the same time.
Through such a setting in the film, the director actually intends to discuss the film shooting itself. Baker is the core of leadership in every story he creates, but in reality the world does not revolve around him. The director set the reason for Baker & Margot's off-screen romance. Baker always suspects that Margot has an affair with his client, and at the same time is very harsh to Margot, and Margot, as an actor with a strong personality, will naturally not completely surrender to Baker, and the most taboo thing in love is "Distrust", which also keeps the two in a split and combined relationship. The flaming fire of desire has created an irreconcilable contradiction between the relationship of control and obedience between directors and actors. On the one hand, they are in harmony, but the other side always has to obey and obey the other, even if they say the right thing. It's not right, but the party being criticized will always feel targeted.
A scene that impressed me a lot was when Victor and Margot met for the first time in the cafe. The wall behind Victor was transparent, and Baker was sitting on the other side of the wall, which meant that he was sitting in Margot. In Gert's position, she saw two people, Victor in front of him, and Baker behind the wall. It is evident here that the director intends to reinforce the contradiction between reality and fiction through the overlap between Margot's actor identity and reality's identity. Several times Margot's words were ostensibly what Margot's "Victor's wife" said to Victor, but in fact Margot was talking directly to Baker as his girlfriend.
This dramatic way of handling not only has the humor of superficial contradictions and conflicts, but also takes care of the reality in which people live. Which space is real, and what kind of world do we live in? The diversity of individual identities makes people’s subjective cognition of themselves more and more blurred. Which self should we identify with and how should we live? The discussion of "The Matrix" did not refer to a deeper place, but the questions left are worth thinking about, just like the red and blue pills in "The Matrix", if it were you, what choice would you make?
Of course, if you purely discuss the complexity of the text and the intertextual relationship between the virtual and the real, the film is actually relatively simple. As far as its main story is concerned, in fact, all the memories and fictional stories about the past are for the purpose of Awakening Victor's love for his wife, and the energy he once had. Compared with Polanski's "Venus in Furs" and Almodovar's presentation of the play within the play in "Pain and Glory", these two works may place more emphasis on the fit between reality and reality. The former uses the director to create SM novels to satirize and reflect on the artist's hypocrisy and in-depth discussion of love relationships, while the latter directly connects the drama with the director's personal trauma. The filming process is the director's self-healing and reconciliation with the past.
From this point of view, this film is indeed a bit simplistic in the depiction of Victor's past scenes. Everything is to satisfy Victor's beautiful fantasy, but there is not a clear level, and to reproduce the scene and the reality of Victor The relationship between many emotions and life status, if the connection in this area is closer, it may make the structure of the play within the play more meaningful.
The era with you is the most beautiful era
It is about time, more about memory, and the longing for "beauty" itself, which carries everyone's memories and private emotions. Love may be a very abstract word, but when we meet someone in our life, the word will become more and more specific, until the two people fill and expand the meaning of the word with everything they have created.
The era of people who love is perhaps the most beautiful era, and the film, to some extent, carries the mission of creating this beautiful era. It reminds us of the people we loved in the past, or the people we are loving, and also Or the people we will meet in the future. In the light and shadow, we recall the past and look forward to the future. Maybe, love is not that complicated, but we need to find and discover.
That era with you is a beautiful era.
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