Counting the outstanding young directors, Xavier Dolan is a name that cannot be avoided. This Canadian teenager started from the first feature film "I Killed My Mother" and started to surprise four people with adolescent boys to their mothers The ambivalence of Dolan’s Virgo has some private goods but the effect is very sincere from the perspective of his son. The slow motion and front and back of the film began to look somewhat like Wong Kar-wai, but it can be seen that his composition, transitions and expressiveness of musical style are exploring his own style. After the release of "Lawrence on Both Sides", Dolan once said in an interview: "In terms of rhythm and narrative ambition, I intend to follow Cameron and his "Titanic"." This may be the norm for fledgling young directors. Imitate and pay tribute, but it is undeniable that when the follower lays the foundation of the director's career and is unbreakable, his own independent understanding of the high-rise buildings will be just around the corner.
"Just the End of the World", in Dolan's words, is his "first step to bid farewell to his young self" . This adaptation of the drama of the same name by French contemporary playwright Jean Luc Lagarced jumped out of the single-character relationship that Dolan had been focusing on, and began to try to integrate all the characters into the whole, and examine a collective-family from the perspective of the protagonist.
Go to the stage and film
"This happened on a Sunday, but it seemed to last a whole year," Lagarced wrote at the beginning of the play of the same name, so you can see the tone of the play. Lagarced was just 34 years old when he wrote "Just the End of the World". AIDS has been detected, the master of the play, Gonglu Yi, seems to be his shadow. In the movie, it has never been revealed what disease Louis has, but we can know from the opening monologue of Louis that no matter what kind of disease, his life is about to end. For films dedicated to depicting family relationships, the description of hidden pathology is not new, but Dolan’s ideas are also very straightforward. There is no structural game, and the background is wiped out at the beginning, terminal illness, 12 years of departure, and he personally told them, " The voice-over of "Home Is Where It Hurts" seems to echo the opening paragraph of the original secretly. This 12-year reunion will be a disaster.
The trouble with adapting this kind of drama that is full of verbal confrontation is how to show the effect of the movie. Although "Perfect Stranger" is not a dramatic adaptation, it can't get rid of the shackles of dramatic effects and language, regardless of whether it is adapted from the Italian version or the international version. The position, the position, and the reaction of the characters prop up everything and also put the environment, viewpoint, and author's schedule on fire. How does a film director influence this kind of film? If you want to face the audience directly and erase the symbolic and stylized things with a relatively intuitive effect, there is nothing wrong with the stage play. However, when the authorial director faces this subject, his own thinking , In addition to the personal perspective of the text and the influence of the language of the film on the expression of the theme, the film will be different from the others.
Dolan's understanding is special. Louis's face is accompanied by shadow while sitting on the plane, and his eyes are covered by a pair of children's hands in the back seat. This is also the content of the movie poster. But in this period, Louis is often accompanied by a smile, his inner monologue is full of expectations, his emotions are in contrast with the environment, the protagonist's ideas are placed with expectations, but the director's scheduling has gone in the opposite direction. The interaction between the film environment and the characters continues in such a seemingly awkward contrast and unity.
As Louis’s family came into view, his mother, elder brother, younger sister, and sister-in-law who had never met, followed by women’s warmth and elder brother’s cold-eyed observation, a large number of dialogues filled with the plot began, even though they have not been seen in 12 years. But the blood relationship makes closeness as it should be. Except for the elder brother, the mother and the sister have no reservations, and the sister-in-law and Louis respect each other and maintain their dignity. At this time, Dolan did not make language the key to understanding the entire movie. On the contrary, language became the least refined part. It was ordinary, simple and even felt monotonous, and many Lan did not consider the lines, maybe This is how the communication of family life is, always expressing oneself and giving others the most straightforward and undisguised nakedness. So when it came to Dolan, when he needed to build his sensibility, he chose complex facial expressions.
Each set of dialogue is accompanied by a close-up of the face that occupies the primary position on the screen, which is clearly different from the composition of "I Killed My Mom". Previously, Dolan’s facial close-ups were always embedded in the composition that strives for relative beauty. The relationship between the face and the white space became the primary factor affecting the picture; when it came to "Just the End of the World", the close-ups of facial expressions almost covered the picture, and it was out of focus. The distant view is even weaker to exert influence on the facial expressions in the vicinity. From this, we can clearly see the blurred eyes, the upward smile at the corners of the mouth, and the helplessness of talking and stopping. The completion of the interpretation of these expressions undoubtedly puts a lot of effort on the actors. The request, Gaspard Ulliel, Natalie Bay, Vincent Casso, Léa Seydoux, Marion Cotillard, everyone coexists in position and strength. In the film, They also contributed their acting skills as expected. With the guarantee of the powerful faction, to some extent, the actor's expression makes the language "not exquisite" not so prominent.
Reverse "Non-stop"
Going to stage and filming, Dolan's articles on facial expressions have reasonably shifted the focus from language to other places. The lines are still so "simplistic", while expressions replace the role of language, and words are a kind of straightforward expression. Expression represents the willingness to communicate. The expression is the inner sensibility and the exposure is the emotional resonance pursued by the image, just like being in a relatively familiar environment, no matter how high-profile words are just repeating one's will and creating contradictions, only emotional fluctuations Only in a quiet face can be felt more attentively by the viewer.
Xavier Dolan thinks so, because his movies are always full of rants and anger that cannot be solved with words. In the end, only in loneliness can we sort out the helplessness of no way forward. The family relationship in this context inevitably casts a shadow in Dolan's lens. The mother-child relationship in "I Killed My Mom" was helpless, while in "Mommy" this situation was upgraded. The deviation of the will of the two people in a single relationship caused irreconcilability and was bad enough. The collective relationship of "Just the End of the World" is so okay. The foreseeable will not start.
Family harmony has always been more or less the opposite of free will. The cognition of past people and the imagination of people who prepared for the past seem to be unable to fit in 100%. The harmony of eastern families is closely related to sacrifice and hierarchy. Going back to the family, returning to parents, becoming parents, home is a belief, allowing self-sacrifice to redeem, Asian family outlook has spawned a calm and tender family movie, even the impossible interpretation of "The Thief Family" is an impossible interpretation of the blood relationship. There is a sweet and moderate warmth, but another movie by Hirokazu Edema, "Non-stop", the Hengshan family returns from a grave sweeping, and a yellow butterfly flies into the house. When the father instructs the younger son to drive it out, he sees The mother of the butterfly resting on the pure portrait of the eldest son who died unexpectedly, involuntarily whispered: "Be lighter, lighter..." In this way, the sadness hanging over the family turned into an invisible faintness, giving poetic meaning.
In the West, where freedom and democracy are pursued, everything seems to be based on the individual, and the family is kneaded on this basis. Children tend to realize their self-worth. Parents sometimes have to respect their children’s wishes. On the contrary, it is like being sent to a boarding school. Hubert ("I Killed My Mother") felt deeply betrayed. The backgrounds of "Just the End of the World" and "Non-stop" are essentially similar. Louis, who has not been in the house for 12 years, and many who rarely visit his parents have stepped into the house. The difference is that Louis needs to complete his own story. , And many have no intentional purpose. "Non-stop" finally focused on the passage of time. The sun, the breeze, and the paths taken by the parents always reminded the parents of the old age, the children come and go in a hurry, time keeps walking, and family emotions finally return to the natural nature of time. Motif, but also relieved.
The core of "Just the End of the World" is not time, or time is only used to describe this struggle experience. The clock appears more than once, without disguising, suggesting the difficult moment. On the other hand, when there is only blood ties left in the family, the unrepressive self makes it impossible for many people to grind into the whole. It is just a fetter of dying and increasing troubles. When the mother and sister almost establish a trusting relationship with Louis, the brother will not hesitate to be about to come. The line of reconnection is torn apart; Louis and his sister-in-law Catherine contributed the most to the rival drama. They are just strangers who met for the first time, but they can slowly build a relationship of mutual understanding with respect.
The homecoming journey of "Just the End of the World" heralds failure from the beginning of the film. The dim light, the shadow of the profile, and the joy of voice-over are more like blind optimism without seeing the future; when the overall situation is settled, the window is bright. The light of the house made the dim reflections in the house extremely clear, the warm sunset light and the hysteria of the characters once again formed a contrast, the light outside the door, and the light is the way out.
Through the emotions of "Just the End of the World", we also seem to be able to understand Louis’s powerlessness. As a result of this movie, Dolan still discusses the continuation of the broken family relationship, but for the first time he expanded his vision from a single relationship to a collective relationship. Maybe Dolan will continue to expand and even invest in society after this. At least this year's Cannes Film Festival shortlisted "Matthias and Maxim" from the posters released has such potential.
Perhaps many years later, when we evaluate Xavier Dolan's work, we will say that Dolan's work started from "Just the End of the World" and moved on to another path, opening another stage of his creation.
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