When the adapted script given by the Hollywood studio is trying to destroy the entire movie, how does an author fight the adapted script and the studio from the image. Others such as The Prisoner, Blade Runner 2049 and others are the most mediocre under the Hollywood system. This is Villeneuve's only masterpiece.
Reading notes:
1. Villeneuve is not a screenwriter
2. Why should "respect the original"?
The following is the original article.
Original name:
The prescription of human symptoms under the domination of news media
About why "Arrival" is a meta-movie and its greatness. If you think the front is too long-winded, you can skip to the back and talk about the "view mode".
The subject of "Arrival" is how a new language affects the thinking mode of its users. As people usually say nowadays, a film itself is about "telling" something.
More than three years since the release of the film, has been repeated criticism on the text could not be repeated: not limited to the so-called "plot flawed", a movie the performance of the acquisition of language and thought process of transformation through the shunt on the surface of the text of the question and indeed Existence, which is why many people think that the original works are not suitable for imaging. On the other hand, the praises about director Dennis Villeneuve's accomplishments in audio-visual language have been repeated too much.
When we face a film whose strengths and weaknesses seem to be completely divided into two different fields, and we can easily give it a seemingly comprehensive conclusion, under the effect of the disconnection between the two, the subject of the main discussion of the film will become a steal . Not easy to detect. For example, is the theme of the film really about "language affects cognition"?
At the story level, undoubtedly it is. But at the image level, the "frames" and "screens in the screen" presented in a large number of films, the opposition and connection between reality and video media, the establishment and subversion of the viewer's viewing mode, and the film's reflexive effect on the news media What is the purpose of presenting?
In the author's opinion, the theme "presented" (different from the "narration" above) in "Arrival" has never been about language, but about images.
The video medium in the film has two main presentation forms: one is news, a human electronic screen; the other is a display screen of heptapod text.
"News" is mainly divided into two categories, one is news facing the general public, and the other is real-time video communication by the military. We can regard the former as a relatively lagging, incomplete, and selected news, while the latter is relatively real-time and complete news. News, as a text relayed by material reality through video media, people learn from it is lagging, incomplete, and even value-oriented reality information, which is selectively sorted out to have special "meaning" after actual events occur. The macro narrative.
People's panic, or more accurately, information anxiety , mostly comes from this lag in understanding of reality. So when people can go to the scene and directly witness the reality, can they alleviate this anxiety? Not necessarily, the rebellious soldier is the best proof. No matter whether Louis and Ian walked to the screen or tore off the protective clothing, the camera always took the trouble to give this panicked soldier close-up shots one after another, even if the environment in the cabin had been adjusted by the heptapod to the most suitable conditions for human survival. Even though the exchanges between the two sides are always peaceful and friendly, even if he witnessed all this, he still chose to listen to the external news media affected by various subjective factors through layers of reports , thinking that the heptapod was a threat that needed to be resolved.
People not only constantly ingest new news information in order to eliminate panic, but also try to obtain guidance from their own destiny-not only panic "lags", but also panic about the unknown future. So people decided to take action, which is what people often call "changing fate."
In the experience of this rebel soldier, we can get a glimpse of the cognitive model of all human beings under the rule of electronic screens: the material reality itself before being relayed by the news and video media is placed in the position of the object, but the news after being relayed Being regarded as an authority is a natural endorsement of material reality. Thus, on the surface, soldiers attacked the heptapod barrel because humans’ panic about the unknown prompted them to try to destroy it in order to protect themselves. In fact, it was the will of the news media’s spokesperson who personally experienced another brand-new and unknown video medium. After the shock, he intends to eliminate dissidents in order to ensure the monopoly of the news media over real information.
However, the heroine Louis has acquired the ability to understand the future because of the acquisition of alien languages--or, she successfully withdrew from the cognitive shackles of the news media and learned a new video medium--and thus acquired the ability to understand the future. She has learned of her life. , And "no more panic" itself is already a great gift to her, she no longer needs to try to ingest lagging information or "change the future".
Let's return to the beginning of the film for the time being, and briefly sort out the history of Louis being pulled and constrained between reality and the two video media.
At the beginning of the film's narrative, a traversal who follows Louis through the school uses a shallow focus to isolate her from the news screen and the crowd of students who are watching, but she does not care too much.
After entering the classroom, there were few students. She tried to declare her dominance in the space. The camera also placed her in the center of the shallow focus with great face, blurring the students who caused a small commotion. However, information bells from the outside repeatedly invaded the space she was in. At this time, the camera moved slightly to the right, causing her to deviate from the center and focus of the screen and no longer dominate. External news successfully invaded in the form of information symbols.
She turned on the TV reluctantly, but unconsciously walked from the right side of the screen to the center: from passive display to active capture. The picture at this time does not directly present the content of the news, but presents a perspective from the electronic screen to the audience : Louis and the students outline the front and rear space, and the subsequent shot is based on the same perspective. Passing directly over Louis and shooting at the students behind her, the camera position seemed to have completed a leap from screen space to real space .
Immediately afterwards, the alarm bell rang. The scene ended with a panoramic view from the back of the classroom. People and many electronic screens representing external news were placed in the same depth of field: after continuous spying and warnings, the electronic screens The news of "Finally" was finally successfully applied to the real space with its material existence.
Then, another deep-focus panorama showed the situation where Louis, who was obviously not particularly aware of the reality, was almost unconsciously being carried forward by the crowd.
And then there was a usual shallow focus focusing on Louis. The dark environment and the noisy car whistle reflected her confusion and anxiety. Several fighter planes passed by the horizon, she walked through the crowded traffic, returned to the car, and turned on the radio.
But it was obvious that voice alone could not effectively alleviate the overload of information anxiety, so she returned home and turned on the TV.
She eagerly ingested the lagging and incomplete news images, and the TV broadcasted tirelessly all night. The next day, she went to class as usual, and the empty school made her realize once again that her awareness of reality was still lagging behind others, so she returned to the office and continued to chew on meaningless video trash.
Hegel distinguished three kinds of time: natural time, animal time and human time. Natural time is the ever-changing present, the point that keeps moving forward on the linear time axis. It is helpless and solidified time; animal time is the time of biological instinct. Although it cannot escape the shackles of natural time, it can contain Past moments; both of the above are subject to the present, only human time can open the cage of natural time, face the future, and create new things .
But it is not possible to experience human time as a human being. Trapped in the panic of the lag in the reception of real information, Louis, like the others in the film, actually lives in his own natural time, trapped in the moment of inability to break through, and at the very edge of animal time relying on constant intake is meaningless. The image information of the placebo is lingering. So we see that in the contemporary human picture shown in the film, the above classification has been distorted into: natural time, news time, and audience time. The latter two are just headless flies that blindly follow natural time in tandem, and are incomplete copies of natural time that has been lagging repeatedly. In both, the past moments and future moments are unconsciously abandoned . Just like us in reality, we frequently flick on our mobile phones day after day with few intangible, forgettable, and fleeting information. Humans-Information Anxiety Syndrome in the Age of Electronic Screens.
So is there a role in human time in the film? Like General Shang? Like the soldier who rebelled? The former is too little to analyze. The latter’s behavior is as ridiculous as mentioned above. When all the people who are in the audience time except the heptapod spacecraft are struggling to keep up with the progress of news time, he acts as a direct experience. People in natural time actively degrade themselves as a member of the "audience", trying to break the natural cage to experience human time with the identity and cognition of "audience", but in fact what he opens is not natural time, but audience time. At best, his behavior proves that he is an "audience" with the ability to participate in reality.
Does Louis, who has acquired alien languages, experience human time? Yes, it is not.
When the colonel walked into her office, together with the recording pen that directly transcribes the material reality-it seemed to transmit the undercurrent sound under the ice that cannot be pierced by mortal artifacts, which is even more natural for Louis. The tempting bait that time threw at her, she decided to directly put forward the ultimate request, even if it was possible to lose this opportunity, she would not give in the slightest.
At night, I still watch the news and see that I fall asleep. Then, without knowing it, both the audience and Louis witnessed a "coming" that was initially quite frightening and then proved to be a bluff .
The spot of light that appeared silently in the night quickly approached in a weird ultra-smooth motion, and until the light illuminates the room like daytime, the audience and Louis can recognize from the sound of the regular propeller rotation that this is the military’s. "Arrival", not the "advent" of aliens. This seems to be an innocent joke made by the director. The heptapod spacecraft, which has not revealed its true appearance in the film, guarantees the smooth progress of this joke. That is to say, the director consciously synchronizes the audience with Louis’s cognition: both are bound. In its own audience time.
After arriving at the military base, as an "audience", Louis witnessed a spectacle that could not be seen in daily reality on an electronic screen: connecting real-time news from all over the world.
When entering the interior of the heptapod spacecraft, Louis experienced a "vertigo" in which the gravity field was reversed. This "vertigo" acted on the electronic screens carried by people earlier.
Entering the cabin, after two weird sliding zoom lenses, the camera began to use large wide-angle and deep-focus lenses extensively to distinguish it from the usual shallow focus. This change reminds the "audience" on and off the screen that they are about to welcome a new video medium, so that it is necessary to re-establish a different viewing mode from the past.
At this point, the first half-hour of the film is used to fully show how Louis lags behind the "audience", to try to keep up with the "audience", to trying to gain personal experience of the news, and finally to the "news scene". , And then subvert and reconstruct the old viewing mode in just a few minutes. In the weird atmosphere and roaring music, we and Louis witnessed the "coming" of a new video medium.
And for the full eighty minutes after the film, Louis never took the initiative to watch the news tailored for human information anxiety.
The node of this back and forth transition is where Louis first entered the spacecraft. It doesn't even need a heptagram to write with ink, just witnessing the screen carrying the new image medium is enough to subvert the viewing mode. Does the viewing mode matter? Vital. The fall of the actor Ian when he was stunned by the gravity field, and the protective clothing that he took off halfway when he introduced himself to the heptapod barrel, all indicate the gap between him and this new image medium, indicating that it is impossible for him to fully appreciate it. The viewing mode, as expected, the film later presented a bridge segment of Ian watching news on the electronic screen.
Furthermore, in order to remind us that Ian's viewing mode has not been updated, Villeneuve also arranged him as a narration for a montage of almost PPT-style advancing the plot. This fragment, which is incompatible with the atmosphere and narrative rhythm of the entire film, has almost become a recognized film "failure". But when the whole film uses Louis as the first narrative point of view, why use Ian as the narration of the omniscient point of view in this critical, fast-moving plot segment?
Because the editing and images of this paragraph are actually obviously imitating the narrative tone of electronic screen news . The film has not hesitated to cover the entire screen with news images belonging to the electronic screen more than once, trying to tell the source of the imitation of the narrative tone of this segment.
And for such a "news" segment that is very different from the whole film , Ian, who is still in the news viewing mode, is used as a narration, which is just perfect . Even to some extent, if the audience feels that this passage is a "failure" of the film, then Villeneuve succeeded: it is the excellent audio-visual atmosphere in front of the film and the stable narrative that enable the audience to build a stable film by themselves. Viewing mode, the sloppy and frivolity of the news viewing mode of this segment is only felt stressfully.
So far, the binary opposition required for the main expression of the film is no longer "human language" and "alien language", but news viewing mode and movie viewing mode .
Louis finally was able to open the natural time, relying on the acquisition of the viewing mode of this new video medium, Weapon opens time ! What she finally enters is the most ultimate human time, the time when the current cage is completely broken, the time when the future is completely open, the time of "Superman", or, we can call it- movie time .
Her life is solidified like a movie into a foregone conclusion that can be read at will . Just like the movie "Arrival", the beginning and end, the past and the future are completely juxtaposed.
Villeneuve succeeded in turning the "language-thinking" in the original text into the "media-viewing model" in the film . This is precisely the most "movie" adaptation!
In the third act of the film, Louis used this viewing mode to turn the tide-as if he had reached a conspiracy with the movie itself-the method used is precisely the method of "movie": a "last minute rescue" crossover. Montage .
"Montage disrupts the flow of time, interrupts it, and at the same time gives it a certain new quality. The distortion of time can be a rhythmic expression of it. Sculpting time!" ("Sculpting Time" Andre · Tarkovsky)
When the turmoil finally subsided, the news media, which had just regarded the arrival of the new video medium as a catastrophe, experienced an imaginary crisis, and finally slowly emerged from the darkness one by one, converging on the screen, as if a catastrophe. The rest of his life.
Ironically, the crisis itself was not directly triggered by the advent of new video media, but was caused by the breaking of the chain of trust between the manipulating forces of news media in various countries. The news images of each of these different countries are the metaphors of the various kinds of languages of mankind.
The human beings living in the Tower of Babel speak different languages, watch different news screens, experience the same information anxiety, and kill the same audience time. Suddenly one day, a brand-new video medium descends from the sky and is open to A common learning platform for mankind gives mankind a unified cognitive paradigm (viewing mode) and a channel to eliminate information anxiety, but this has aroused fear and hostility among faithful supporters of the news viewing mode, so the news media of various countries have been in the After the imaginary crisis was lifted, they gathered together on the same screen and reached verbal cooperation and group warmth. Section Chief of Drama: It's not that the viewing mode brought by this new video medium is too dangerous, but the old news media viewing mode is too fragile.
The symbolic meaning of this picture is that this is actually just a clumsy imitation of the new video medium, but only on a "movie screen" can different news scenes temporarily let go of suspicion and gather together. The electronic screen leads to a split, and the screen facilitates collaboration. Heptagram text display screen = movie screen.
The heptapod spacecraft finally escaped into the clouds and passed away with the wind, just as they descended without warning. They seem to have come out of thin air, and then disappeared out of thin air. There is no sign of material reality that they existed before, only the collective memory of human beings who have experienced it all. Just like a movie that falls and then ends in a closed and dark theater, people leave the theater with only a memory.
And Louis is not so much a person who dares to face the known future, it is better to say that she is a conscious film role/actor . Her identity transformation process in the whole film is like this: news audience→news role/actor→movie role/actor. In other words, before becoming a movie role/actor, she needs to break through another identity that is imposed on herself-news role/actor.
The military sitting behind the monitor is obviously the "director" of this "news", disciplined the words and deeds of the actors in the "news set", constraining the actors in breathless role attire. With this layer of attire, I can detect the strange and strange atmosphere, just like the heptapod barrel text display screen viewed by the camera through the protective clothing mask from a subjective point of view: fuzzy and distorted; and after Louis took off this layer of attire , The film has significantly relieved the atmosphere in the heptapod cabin.
Just like the first word that Louis taught to the heptapod under the military's "direction" is "human", the second word is his own name-a person who emerged from the weight of the collection and manifested himself The process of "news actor" is also a process in which the "news actor" breaks free from his role attire and becomes the movie character itself.
"They need to see ME ." This is an individual's appeal, and it is also a nearly monologue appeal of a movie actor/character. She took off her “news” attire and took the stage with her true self in the body of a movie role, playing the true self with the body of the movie role, and becoming the role itself.
Having realized that she is no more than a movie character, and destined to be sealed in the time stream of the sculpted image, she still chooses to continue to play her role, just like the heptapod who knows the future but accepts death calmly. Abbott. Because they know that in addition to the video medium they are in, a group of people who speak different languages are learning the same viewing mode of the same video medium through a frame. This frame is called the screen, and this video medium is called a movie.
The film ends, and the display screen of the heptapod barrel text coincides with the movie screen.
With his keen insight into the characteristics of the video media, Villeneuve pierced the pores of the text cage with the needle in the cotton and delivered it to the film as a free-breathing medium, which completely poured the conceptual transformation of the original theme, its author's style and the commercial appeals of major studios. In one.
Regarding how humans in the Tower of Babel reached a non-zero-sum game, regarding how the shackles of human cognition under the rule of the news media found a way to break through, and regarding how people trapped in endless information anxiety seek guidance and confession, Villeneuve used "Arrival" to give us a prescription: go to the movies.
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