The seaside scenery, Sarah. I stared at Sarah, and Sarah stared at the sea.
The above sentence popped into my mind while watching the film The French Lieutenant's Woman. There's a lot to like about this movie, whether it's the structure of the play, the theme of the play, or the handling of the audiovisual language. But what moved me the most was the heroine Sarah.
This female character pinned the author's views on love and thinking on freedom.
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The film is adapted from the representative work of the British writer John Fowles, "The French Lieutenant's Woman". The original work is an important literary work in the history of modern literature. The novel tells the story of a wealthy boy, Charles, who fell in love with Sarah, a woman from the upper class in the Victorian era.
The story itself is nothing new, but the narrative structure adopted by the story is very novel. The ending of the original novel is open-ended, and there are three endings in the novel.
When the film adapted the original work, it made a bold adaptation of the original play structure and form, changed the three open endings in the original story into a closed ending, and then added a modern story axis. Although this story axis is modern, the director has grasped the core of the original work, that is, thinking about love and freedom. So it still reflects the original theme.
The two theme lines developed on this basis each have their own love themes. In the past, the love theme of time and space was that two people who loved each other in their souls ended up together. Now, the theme of love is two people who don’t pay attention to feelings but only have a physical relationship. Feel the pain of the relationship, not being together.
The concept of love shown by the two story lines here is different.
In the story line of the present time and space, Sarah still exists, through the contrast with Anna, and at the end of the film when Anna looks in the mirror, Anna sees Sarah through the mirror, which is her own soul, and finally she decides to leave Mike. It can be said that in addition to using various methods to shape Sarah in the past time and space, the director still shapes Sarah from the side in the present time and space, which not only makes the two themes intertwined and contrasted, but also produces a third film because of the interweaving and contrast. The theme, that is, the deep theme, allows us to think about how to deal with the relationship between the sexes in life and in love.
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And the "Scenery by the Sea" Sara, which I am most interested in, becomes more and more exciting with the use of film language.
The difference between film and other arts lies in its language, audio-visual language, which is also the charm of film. And the film "The French Lieutenant's Woman" has an excellent use of film language, especially the use of film language to shape the heroine.
This movie can analyze the heroine from the scenery, light and shadow, color and music.
From the perspective of the scenery, at the beginning of the film there is a scene where Sarah walks on the high seawall and walks towards the vast sea at the end of the seawall. This scene of the sea appeared for the first time, and then Sarah was asked when she was about to move. When asked for anything, Sarah's answer was "Can you see the sea?", where "sea" was spoken from Sarah's mouth as a language symbol.
Then Charles met Sarah for the first time. Sarah was standing on the seaside embankment with rough waves. Charles walked to Sarah, Sarah turned back, and Charles was fascinated by Sarah. At that time, behind Sarah was a vast mystery. of the sea. At the end of the film, there is a lake in which Sarah and Charles go boating.
From this, we can see that from the beginning to the end of the film, the heroine Sarah changed from the previous relationship with the sea to the last relationship with the lake.
It can be said that when Charles met Sarah for the first time, the sea was the charm of Sarah. The sea was turbulent and the sea was foggy. Sarah stood firmly on the shore. The moment she looked back, she reflected the beauty that was different from the world. , mysterious, beautiful, distant, refined. And at the end, Sarah was already with Charles, and he found the other half of his soul, which became quiet and peaceful.
The charm of the sea and lake here can be said to be the embodiment of Sarah's charm, and it also vividly expresses Sarah's inner transformation.
From the point of view of light and shadow, the lighting of the film is obviously weakened every time Sara appears, and such a low lighting scheme is closely related to the environment in which Sara appears each time. Sara often appears on cloudy and rainy days.
And also by contrasting with the bright lights when Charles' fiancee in the same time and space and Anna in the present time and space appear, it shows that Sarah is different from them and reflects Sarah's mysterious image.
From the color of the film, Sarah is wrapped in black, black clothes, black hat, black shoes, which is different from Anna's color and the pink of Charles' fiancee. Black is mysterious and depressing just like Sarah 's heart.
Finally, about the music, every time Sara appears, there will be a piece of music that sounds melancholy, mysterious and charming. For example, in the beginning of the movie, when Anna dressed as Sara slowly walks towards the seawall on the set, that piece of music will Gradually, the noise around the studio gradually disappeared.
Here is Sara coming on stage. The music not only shows Sara's appearance, but also reflects Sara's inner soul.
These are some of my thoughts after watching the movie "The French Lieutenant's Woman".
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