As Jim Jamush’s first feature film "The Shadow of Paradise", he used a minimalist style to film the lonely journey of this young man. The original 30-minute road film story was expanded into a three-part feature film, but it seems that the director did not add more dramatic plots, but instead focused more on their boring life scenes: eating. , Watching movies, falling in love, driving, traveling, hanging out... Looking at it, isn't this the portrait of every young individual?
The rough image texture adds to the alienation of the characters. The dry black and white images and the rough images automatically add a hazy texture. In the modern pursuit of the ultimate image, he does the opposite, seeking a gradual distance between people and the screen. feel. You can't see the slight changes in the facial expressions of the characters, and the posters on the walls can't satisfy the verification of the textualism. The few poor characters, the men and women who live in the same room like a cold sex, these have become the lyrical way of the film. , It seems to fit the real life without modification. It is not a portrayal of real life, but an expression of real emotions. When Ava strode on an unmanned street with a "brick" tape recorder with rock music playing in the tape recorder, this woman with her own soundtrack revealed a sense of coldness and indifference. The streets that the camera moves across show an extreme sense of loneliness and loneliness. This simplification of the exterior scenes further shows the individual's inner loneliness. At this moment, the outer world is the inner emotion.
The story described in the film is floating between two men and a woman. The setting of this kind of characters has similarities in Truffaut's "Ancestors and Occupations" and later "Dreams of Paris". They use a triangular relationship to describe this kind of struggle and confusion. But in the film of Jamusch, the triangle relationship seems to gradually loosen, and finally collapses into a parallel orbital distance. Ava, a cousin who came to the United States from Hungary, came to live with her cousin for ten days. She thought it would trigger some kind of hormonal conflict, which everyone knows became sexually cold.
The intrusion of a female didn’t seem to bring any change to Willie’s life. They were still having indifferent conversations and eating "TV dinner". He was more concerned about how to win the horse betting with his long friend Eddie. . There is almost no need to maintain dialogue between men and women. Sleeping, eating, and watching TV constitute the guarantee of life. There are no extra words, no need to talk, leisurely and at ease, and there is no even the slightest embarrassment when looking at each other. This is almost a portrayal of the second and second youths in the late period, without the need for any emotional life, because what they experience is a stray in the barrier of self, seemingly free individuals, but also the most vulnerable souls. A canned food and "TV dinner" brought by Ava easily shocked Willie's heart, and even a year later, he and his friends would embark on a road trip to find Ava. But in Ava's view, her indifference has not changed. When Willie presented her beautiful dress to Ava in front of her friends, Ava took off the dress awkwardly on the street corner and discarded it in the trash can. These plots that are not known by the protagonist are caught by the audience one by one. This is another kind of alienation, built on and off the screen, and the individual is always unable to reconcile with others and coexist.
This image of loneliness always exists in movies. The scene and the lens are almost one-to-one. Use one lens to shoot the next scene, and then use a black screen for a few seconds to switch the scene. A fixed or slow-moving camera, a dialogue or a paragraph composed of standing silently, the character walks away from the camera quietly, it (the camera) drifts among the three isolated individuals, stopping intermittently , And started again and again. The plot of each scene is insignificant. It is more concerned with the construction of emotional scenes, the laziness and languidness in the apartment, the freedom on the road, a little confusion on the beach, and the anxiety and conflict in the hotel. Emotions act on these scenes and are expressed through emotions that the characters do not want to face directly. The existence of this kind of emotion seems to be the reflection of this group of young people. The emptiness in their hearts and the emptiness in reality make it difficult for them to get close anyway. A large number of fixed shots are defamiliarized performances between characters. It is more accurate to say that it opens the distance between the movie and the audience. The loneliness and hollow atmosphere that the movie exudes from the inside out seems to be directly applicable. In the hearts of the audience, we tried to find the refuge of the inner emotions of several protagonists, but they always seemed to hide and escape. We are all lonely and empty individuals, unable to find a way to go in the crowd.
The movie brought great stamina. In the hour I watched "Crazy Stone", my face was stiff and expressionless, and I seemed to be immersed in the lonely atmosphere created by Jamusch. Several characters in "Paradise Shadows" almost overlap with modern people. He lost his great ideals while following his boring life at this moment. "Working in the factory" is an unbearable burden in young people's lives; facing all kinds of grandeur Narrative and future choices, escape to the island of self; they protect themselves all the time, and this self-protection is actually to close the self; indifference becomes constancy, aphasia replaces communication, the duration of burning passion and instant disappointment are equal. Perhaps the nightmares that bothered the director also occurred in his works. Not only were they a spiritual portrayal of him alone, but the confusion about that group of people could still be seen in his images: what should you and me do?
——(2018, 10, 18)
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