Today, Hollywood sci-fi movies are dazzling and boring. Whether it’s Star Wars or Alien Monsters, as long as they are willing to spend money on special effects, there are no big scenes and exciting shapes that can’t be shot. In other words, there seems to be nothing in this genre that can surprise the audience. Does that mean that this subject matter is difficult to break through and shoot fresh? I believe this low-cost directorial debut "The Vast Night" will give you an unexpected answer.
The little-known director Andrew Patterson (Andrew Patterson) completed the filming of this debut in 17 days at a very low cost. The story is very simple. It is about a story that happened in one night: a southern United States. A basketball game was held in a small town. A female operator and a young DJ male on a private radio station accidentally discovered a strange frequency, which then involved a strange and mysterious incident of alien visits. This kind of plot outline seems familiar. Fans who have seen science fiction classics such as "X-Files", "Third Kind of Contact", "Yin Yang Devil" and other science fiction classics may sneer at this story, but no one can deny that the film's retro taste is very well done. , The nostalgic texture is like a direct ride from the 21st century on a time shuttle back to the radio era of the 1950s and 1960s. The depiction of the era backgrounds such as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the space arms race, and the black people’s discrimination is handy without any sense of deliberateness. The core of the story is still the curiosity and longing for the unknown of the young people in this small town, and the hazy love and ending of the whole process. The appearance of aliens closely revolves around this theme.
However, the charm of this story lies not only in the old-school retro texture, but also in the charming atmosphere of the director with a unique technique. First, the opening of the film shows the introduction to the "Paradox Theater" on an undetermined TV screen, and then the screen is changed from a fuzzy black and white TV image to a normal color screen. This kind of alienated opening is like David ·The weird style of Lynch's style. The story begins with a series of long shots of the characters being photographed, following the heroes and heroines from the stadium to the parking lot, and then silently walking through the dark and deserted streets until they return to the heroine's home. The camera is far behind the characters, without a frontal close-up shot, deliberately making the audience blind to the characters' faces and keeping a sense of distance from them. At the same time, the two were talking while walking, and the speed of speech was very fast. The director seemed to have deliberately prevented the audience from hearing the content of the conversation between the two, thus establishing an indifferent and strange narrative point of view, as if an inhuman gaze was following them. , And thus create a gradually pervading mysterious atmosphere.
This experimental long-lens photography style established the film's mysterious and weird tone. After that, there was a difficult long shot that took several minutes from the heroine’s home, traveled through the entire town in the dark to reach the gymnasium, and then transferred to the actor’s private radio station. The shots taken are enough to challenge Bi Gan's bold attempts in "The Last Night on Earth". Another staggering 10-minute long shot depicts the heroine in front of a huge telephone exchange, methodically and repeatedly operating multiple telephone connections. The highly reductive motion details successfully capture the lifelike sense of the times. , But also let the audience fall into the carefully fabricated script. The content of the next two listeners’ phone calls pushed this suspenseful and mysterious atmosphere to the culmination. Whether it was a retired black officer who had never shown up or a neurotic old woman, the secrets conveyed from their mouths and expressions made this science fiction story. The appeal continues to rise.
The ending of the film is also intriguing. The protagonist and heroine have seen the UFO as they wished but disappeared without a trace. There is not much explanation for this abrupt ending, but the camera scans some clues that everyone found when they left the stadium after the basketball game. , And then the picture returns to the "paradox theater" of the TV screen. It seems that this kind of science fiction ending treatment is not uncommon, but the amazing long-shot experiment and the whole process of strange and mysterious atmosphere, I believe this is a low-cost science fiction movie that even David Lynch would like.
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