This is the famous Steven Soderbergh.
Shooting with an iPhone7 plus, using a software called FiLMiC Pro, and then adding various special effects, coupled with the heroine Claire Foy of the hit American drama "The Crown", so this thriller mystery film, "Heartbreak" "(Unsane) was born.
Steven Soderbergh has long been a prominent figure in Hollywood. When he was only 26 years old, he shot the masterpiece "Sex, Lies, Videotape", with which he won the 42nd Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or.
In 2000, he won the Best Picture Oscars with the two films "Never Compromise" and "Drug Network". With the latter, he won the Oscar for Best Director, which is among the previous Oscars. It's unique.
Steven Soderbergh is able to balance the artistic and commercial attributes of the film very well. He used the all-star lineup to shoot the "Eleven Arhats" series for the first time, and developed a brand new accounting model for commercial films.
Later, "Twelve Arhats" and "Thirteen Arhats" both got good box office revenue. Steven Soderbergh’s films are full of varied styles and serious reflections on reality. The role setting in the film is very unique, and he often pays attention to the living conditions of disadvantaged and marginalized groups.
"Heartless" is undoubtedly a brand new challenge for himself by Steven Soderbergh. The film tells the horrible experience of a female white-collar worker Sawyer who is working hard in a different place.
The film established a very good suspenseful atmosphere in the first act. Sawyer was squeezed in work and life, causing her to be often anxious and panic all day long. She originally hoped to get psychological treatment, but was imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital.
The doctor ignored her explanation, and her mental state of collapse made her violent. The degree of detention continues to escalate, and the duration of detention continues to extend. So that the audience couldn't tell whether Sawyer was really schizophrenic or framed by others. Especially when the psychiatric caregiver David showed up.
Sawyer swears frantically that David is a pervert who has been following her. Sawyer, who is unbearable in his hometown, chooses to leave his friends and family, and escape from David's stalker and harassment. However, the hospital did not find out David's personal problems, thinking that it was just Sawyer's arrogance that he wanted to be discharged from the hospital to escape treatment.
Gradually, the audience and Sawyer are caught in a dangerous quagmire that is losing their judgment. Is all this real, or Sawyer's own conjecture because of his lack of security?
The first half of "Heartless" has been laying suspense, causing confusion and stretching the tension of the plot.
A weak woman was imprisoned in a mental hospital, isolated and helpless, unable to escape; what was even more frightening was that later, even the audience had doubts about her mental state. That kind of distrust is the most terrifying aspect of the film. The first half of "Heartless" was extremely catchy. Steven Soderbergh used the iPhone to experiment with various shooting angles and a lot of irregular framing.
Medium shots and close-up shots take up a lot of space,
The fixed camera position is the kind of "recording" hidden camera perspective, and the mobile camera position is similar to the "stabilizer" type follow-up of the corridor scene in "The Shining".
The most amazing thing in the film is the tearing effect, double shadow, blur, and highly saturated picture after Sawyer accidentally took a large amount of hallucinogens, which produced strong audiovisual stimulation to the audience.
It's driving the audience crazy!
All shooting angles are chosen to create anxiety in a closed space, whether it is a corridor with the ceiling deliberately lowered, a small nursing room, an office, or a solitary confinement room in the final scene, all are in a "high angle, small depth of field" It looks depressing and terrifying in the viewfinder.
The third act of "Heartlessness" is debatable. The protagonist and the protagonist have a large amount of dialogue in the confinement room, suddenly reducing the rhythm in front, and the suspense is gradually revealed, and the plot seems to have entered a flat period. Here, Steven Soderberg violently took the film into another genre. The confrontation between men and women, the confrontation between the two sides turned into language offensive and defensive, psychological entanglement.
The sudden change in genre brought discomfort, but it also expanded the breadth and depth of the film. At the end of the film, although Sawyer got rid of the nightmare, he is always vigilant in normal life. The hallucinations that haunt her will still disturb her life. She hurriedly fled the restaurant, and her panic when she looked back became the last frame of the film.
"Heartless" is a psychological thriller focusing on social women. It uses a highly refined and slightly surprising story to show the harassment that ordinary white-collar women are prone to in life and work.
The “hidden rules” of the company’s boss, the hospital’s male nurses have no respect, and David’s stalker is everywhere. Even most of the female characters in the film are negative. From the medical staff to the management, those women seem to have no respect. There is no differentiated treatment for Sawyer, who is also a woman.
In addition, the police system that was supposed to protect Sawyer has also become perfunctory in the film. The team of lawyers can’t give any energy to this kind of case, but it is revealed in the film that this kind of mental hospital deliberately defrauded insurance. It is shocking to say that the "patching case" of delaying treatment of normal people in the hospital in order to earn treatment fees is shocking.
"Heartbreaking" has a social context, realistic muscles and bones, plus a bit of suspense inside, with Steven Soderberg's playful shooting, it is indeed very interesting. In fact, just aiming at Steven Soderberg's golden sign can be assured of entering the pit.
After all, he is Steven Soderbergh.
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