I am obsessed with the connection of different art forms. The original exploration of Mahler, Thomas Mann and Visconti proves it. This is why I was fascinated by the way in which Escher, Bach, and Borges were connected to discuss Nolan in the In-Screen Tour Guide, which is also part of the source of my thoughts in this review.
"The Art of Fugue" (BWV 1080) is the last work of Bach in his life and the unfinished posthumous work of the musician. When the artist is about to die, he will try to summarize himself and his field. For example, Einstein (the ultimate scientist is art) is still trying to unify the four interactions at the end of his life. In "The Art of Fugue", Bach tried to construct the full climate of Baroque polyphonic music with the fewest notes. It is not difficult to imagine that this simple solemnity is also the most important characteristic of Bach's music.
There are many passages in this piece that show Bach's amazing mathematical talent. Let me change to a more specific way of expressing it. Suppose you are Neil, the villain on Bach’s notes. When you jump along the twelfth section of the sheet music to the end, chuckle, you reversed the direction and moved along. Walk back along the way you came, and continue to interpret the thirteenth chapter. Of course, if the scores of the twelfth and thirteenth sections can be dyed red and blue respectively, it may be more suitable for the discussion on the "creed", but after a while, let us look at one more thing.
When I watched "Creed" for the first time, I believe that many friends can think of many movies, and I will not enumerate them. I really want to know if anyone, like me, thinks of Buster Keaton who is jumping on the train. Since the birth of film art, narration has always been one of its core issues. And there is a narrative structure that has dominated the structural organization of most feature films from 1910 to the present, which we call the "classical paradigm" (classical paradigm) [1]. One of the best examples is Buster Keaton's "The General".
To save time, I directly posted the outline of the plot from "Knowing the Movie" on it. It can be seen that the movie started when Keaton encountered difficulties. He drove the General to the North Barracks area to rescue his girlfriend, then drove back the same way, and finally the crisis was resolved. If someone says that this model is too old (after all, "The General" is a movie nearly 100 years ago), then please recall the most successful commercial film in the past ten years, "Mad Max 4", does it apply exactly the same What about the structure?
In order to transition to the discussion of "Creed" more naturally, I arbitrarily advocated drawing two doors in red and blue in the above plot outline, and the frightening thing is that Nolan directly set these two doors for you in the movie. Why is it terrible? Film creators are extremely shrewd in narrative, and no one wants the audience to see the template of the story structure. So when we watched "The General", the whole story progressed one by one with the smooth plot and wonderful performances. It was almost impossible for the audience to notice that it was a completely symmetrical structure. The same was true for "Mad Max 4". And the most important thing Nolan did in "Creed" was to use his high-concept as packaging, and directly point out the red and blue doors of the narrative structure. I know that many people are discussing how anti-film the editing, sound effects, and character emotions of "Creed" are, but before these things, the narrative structure of the entire film is a resistance to the classical model, or more accurately deconstruction. It’s very interesting that last year there was also a director who wanted to deconstruct the classic Griffith parallel editing. That was Spike Lee, who shot "Black Party", and shared a male lead with "Creed". This is possible. It is the mission of John Washington.
Speaking of Nolan, Nolan is not satisfied after the deconstruction, he still wants to subvert. The method is very simple, directly break the timeline of the classical mode that advances sequentially, and squeeze the two lines in the outline above into one. In the words of Neil in the movie, you can no longer look at this problem in straight lines. Someone here might say that non-linear narrative has long been a stale concept, and Gerich, Quentin, and Nolan's own "Fragment of Memory" are all doing this. This statement is certainly true, but it is also not true. Nolan’s work in "The Creed" is more like what Bach did in "The Art of Fugue", neatly establishing a grand story frame, and then using Fugue delayed but similar themes to repeat him randomly. The artistic expression of [2]. Think about the scene in the third act. If you want to keep up with Nolan and the editor, you have to keep reminding yourself to follow the camera and change your viewpoint. Every time you change a voice like a fugue, until everything becomes Converge, or destroy.
Of course, to complete the narrative of a story, a key thing is needed, the law of causality. If Villeneuve’s "Arrival" is a black box, that is, if he understands the language of the heptapod, he understands the causal connection, but he avoids talking about the process and logic of understanding the cause and effect (not to blame Villeneuve) , The original book, Ritter De Jiang did not talk about this), then what Nolan did is to visualize the inner workings of this black box for you. More specifically, it's like pressing your head in front of the words on the heptapod barrel, and telling you stroke by stroke why the way of thinking corresponding to this word is the cause and effect.
Frankly speaking, this is completely unnecessary. If you ask Wu Enda to explain the black box of deep learning, he will think you are insane. So the perception of the third act must be extremely bad. The reason is very simple. We humans think in a straight line. How can we understand this way of editing with random viewpoints? But I still want to say that "The Creed" is different from science-based science fiction films in the general sense. The high concept that Nolan sets here is itself anti-scientific. The second law of thermodynamics in our high school is the most basic physical principle. , How can there be a world with reduced entropy? But this lunatic wanted to use movies to imagine the world, and I think he did it, in a way that is extremely anti-movie and even anti-human.
I also want to remind you that if anyone still wants to re-write the "Creed", I suggest that you take Pattinson's perspective and look at this pincer action in the very chaotic third act. You will find that this character is in the whole scene. This is why I am sure that Nolan chose the current editor ("Francis Ha" and "Marriage Story") to replace the story-driven logic in his traditional commercial films with character driving.
At the end of the comment, in order to pay tribute to Nolan's usual vulgar melodrama story, I also want to have something emotional. After I was shocked last night, I defended my doubts about the spectacle display of "Creed" in this way:
What is a spectacle? Is it true that only magnificent visual scenes (folding cities similar to Inception) can be counted as spectacles?
When the first trailer of "Creed" came out, I was questioning how Nolan would present the wonders. After all, the concept of reversing time is not new at all. But I was stupid after watching the finished film, and Nuohe was in tears. What are you doing in the next half an hour? This part of the editing is beyond the scope of my knowledge (may explain why I did not find an editor with experience in commercial blockbusters). At the same time, the pincer-shaped time concept expressed in the film has been instilled into the audience's mind, so macroscopically, we do know what Nolan is doing.
So back to the question at the beginning, I think that something that we know but don't know what we are doing, visualized on the screen by almost impossible means, is the greatest spectacle. The best analogy is the 2001 Ambilight.
Now I feel that this argument is unnecessary. Everyone has different perceptions and their subjective definitions of spectacle are also different. If I have to translate what is a wonder, I can only tell you that the wonder is my second brush to the end. The entire theater and the whole world are expressing silent accusations against this anti-cinematic film, and the one sitting in the corner But I broke down and cried because I could no longer control my emotions.
So, criticize Nolan to your heart's content, but don't forget to praise this madman who is trying to make a change after you finish.
Reference materials:
[1] Luis Gianetti, Gianetti, Jiao Xiongping. Knowing the Movie: Illustrated 11th Edition [M]. World Book Publishing Company Beijing Office, 2007.
[2] A small chat with the No.1 Music Critic of Magic City [J]. WeChat Chat, 2020.
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