Before watching David Lowe’s new film, I reminded myself to avoid over-interpretation. After watching "The Old Man and the Gun", I guess this was also David Lowe's reminder to himself when shooting this film. He told himself to avoid over-creation.
This is his first step to embrace Hollywood. He began to work hard to portray the characters. All the reversal of the machine, the proverbs, the charming character setting, the mysterious character history and the mysterious dialogue description, all show that he is launching an impact on the awards season. Determination.
David Lowe probably has deeper considerations. Perhaps he is deliberately adjusting his overcorrection and trying to gain mainstream recognition. Perhaps he has begun to pervert and waver from his previously convinced self, but only in the context of "The Old Man and the Gun" , This is undoubtedly a template movie that cannot be more mediocre.
David Lowe is good at emotional capture. He sneaks into the hearts of characters like a deep well, and has repeatedly squeezed out emotional tension in the narrative blanks and surreal situation construction of blockbuster films. Therefore, the rhythm of his film is variable, sometimes slow and melancholy, sometimes swiftly jumping. The audience seems to be sitting passively on a roller coaster, waiting to be lifted up high, or fall heavily.
Unlike "The Old Man and the Gun", in order to maintain a complete drama framework, the director had to choose a uniform expression. He needs to decompose and interpret the events in great detail, indispensable for the initiation, inheritance and transformation, but obviously he still cannot complete the natural brewing and flow of emotions through the traction of drama.
There are two questions that the film tries to answer (or the director tries to make the audience think he will answer it, so as to arouse the audience's desire to visit downward): 1. How does the old man commit the crime? 2. Why did the elderly commit crimes?
For the former, the director kept emphasizing the mysterious smile of the old man, and used a lot of sofa music to create the anti-type effect of chill & lazy; for the latter, the film avoided the whole process, only using the cowboy galloping on the Westfall to describe everything. Pointing to the romantic illusion of nothingness, the brisk and lazy jazz bar background sound once again sounded when the old man was being chased, which instantly made people feel a sense of speechlessness that was uninteresting and unable to lose their temper.
It can be seen that all the anti-type elements of the film are aimed at the end of a narrow pattern, and are only displayed as a glamorous window display, and they refuse to analyze this in more depth. Based on this romantic theatrical core, David Lowe's image style has also changed from a prism-like smooth and sharp to a sunset-like emotional tone wrapped in soft light.
The original sin of drama is greasy, because it must follow the narrative law, so the perfect narrative must wrap the most universal daily life, and point to the weak to dark human nature. But David Lowe was unable to point the light far away. He only retained a layer of hot oil floating on the surface, and when he scooped up a spoonful, he found a bowl of cold soup inside.
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