Friday Words: "Friday Literature and Art" once made a recommendation for "language movies" (click for details: Can you support a movie by speaking? 10+2 classic language movies recommendation ), these movies have common characteristics : Their lines (as opposed to actions) take up most of the movie's length, with dialogues appearing in large sections and single scenes. However, the absence of action and frequent changes in the scene does not mean that there is no tension in the story and drama. If we can enter the context of these movies, we will find that most of them are in the same line as the genre, and they all have a structure of construction, conflict, climax, and ending. They are also used in common storytelling techniques. Therefore, studying language films is also an important and indispensable part of studying feature films.
The "Malcolm and Mary" that we are going to talk about today is a purely language film. It has only two actors for 106 minutes, and the setting is just a villa. As for the scenes, almost the whole play is a dialogue between two people... In such a movie, how does the director use a single element to make up the length of a big movie, and what is it to attract the audience? Moreover, this kind of movie What is the internal logic and rhythm of the game? This article will take this video to talk about these issues.
1. The driving force of the movie: About the privacy dialogue between "husband and wife"
To be precise, it should be a "married couple" private conversation. In the play, it is not clear whether the man and woman are married or not, but at least they live under the same roof, use the same toilet, and talk to each other without any scruples. What we saw happened to be what happened behind the scenes after they removed their makeup and returned home.
In addition, the crux of the problem lies in how the couple love each other (at least in the movie, both men and women have said I Love You's lines).
The reason for emphasizing the above points is to tell everyone: couples usually quarrel at the head of the bed, and they usually forget their hatred and anger in less than three minutes, just as they can quarrel again at any time. This is also the driving force behind the film's ability to continue playing it for 100 minutes, and it is also the "husband and wife's bedside context" for the dialogue between the two.
In other words, if the two of them quarrel and one of them rolls away in a blanket, then this "talking in the house" scene will not be able to go on; furthermore, if the two are not arguing over trivial matters, It's like talking about business and acting in court dramas every time, so that the audience loses the pleasure of "peying into the private lives of others" and reduces the appeal of the movie.
Therefore, to find pleasure in watching this movie, you must first enter the "context" set by the director, and this context is the private life, bedside conversation, and behind-the-scenes scenes of the husband and wife.
2. The core of the story: the "torsion war" triggered by a movie
Just satisfying a "peeping psychology" will definitely not retain the audience, nor can it deceive the audience for too long. Therefore, the conversation between the couple must have a "story". Naturally, this story has to be carefully designed by the director and screenwriter, and it is hoped that random quarrels between husband and wife will not come out.
The story of "Malcolm and Mary" is very simple and clear, generally speaking: the "torsion war" triggered by a movie.
To be more specific: Maxim is a cutting-edge director. After the premiere of her movie, she returned home with excitement, while her girlfriend was unhappy.
The reason turned out to be that the big director Jing didn't even thank his girlfriend at the movie conference. The two then quarreled, and the drama began.
Through the dispute between the two, we further learned that the original inspiration for this movie was related to Maxim's girlfriend, and the original story behind the movie in the play was not that simple. We continued to follow the quarrel between the two and learned that our girlfriend Mary had a history of drug abuse and detoxification in the past, and there had been a lot of ups and downs between the couple.
These ups and downs were used by Maxim in the movie, so we found that the reason for Mary's unhappiness was more than just a thank you. She wanted more. Furthermore, the conflict between the two continued to deepen, and the quarrel became more intense. , More about the woman’s character and family background...
Can you see this? This seemingly experimental and artistic film, in fact, uses the "genre film" skills in storytelling-from building the story frame to setting up suspense and shaking up the baggage. Less, the rhythm of the emotional development of the plot also strictly follows the path of the commercial film to the climax and even the ending.
With an understanding of the routines of this commercial genre, let's take a closer look at how the director and screenwriter constructs the contradictions and tensions of the roles, so as to capture the audience's attention.
3. Dramatic tension: evenly matched from the confrontation between men and women
Imagine that if the dialogue in the movie happened to a tigress and a puffed bag, it is estimated that the two quarrels would be washed away. If it happened between a good wife, a loving mother, and a model husband, then it is estimated that the film would be as boring as "Red Desert", and the public would have fallen asleep. But this "Malcolm and Mary" is just the opposite. There are two characters in the play, one is full of thorns, the other is full of thunder, one initiates an offense, and the other will counterattack when he is relieved. No one is good!
What's more, the two people are still evenly matched in strength. Note that this evenly matched includes three aspects: knowledge structure, energy and physical strength, and knowing oneself and knowing each other .
Let’s look at the storyline of the movie:
As soon as the two returned home, the woman began to face the man, using silence as a sharp sword. The man showed no weakness in this, and counterattacked by breaking the casserole to the end;
When the woman hit the man’s pain point directly and said that the other party was “mediocre”, the other party went out and took a sigh of relief, and immediately turned around to expose the woman’s jealous weakness. It can be said that the attacks on both sides were all about killing the other side.
That's right, the two of them finished the movie in this repeated struggle of the enemy advancing and retreating, and the enemy retreating and advancing.
In this way, arguing is interesting, it is almost no different from the "Huashan Lunjian" approach. The director also uses this to strengthen the tension of the drama.
4. Blindness: the performance of two actors (acting skills)
With the above-mentioned film context, storytelling and dramatic tension, the film also possesses the elements of traditional commercial films: beginning (building), confrontation, climax, and ending. In this regard, can you still say that this film is obscure, ugly, like a "literary and artistic film"? It's a little taken for granted.
However, most people still think this film is very artistic and very experimental. This probably stems from the life of a middle-class artist that is performed by the couple. In my opinion, it is just a blindfold created by acting. It creates an illusion of authenticity in the movie.
But this blindfold actually reflects only the basic skills of actors in mastering roles, controlling lines, and adapting to the camera. For example, an actor would play the lines set by the director in advance while eating, would inadvertently scratch his hair and rub his eyes while speaking, would shed a tear between large lines, and would cater to the camera in seemingly inadvertent wanderings. Sports scheduling...
You must know that these things are not experimental, it is fundamentally different from Andy Warhol's experimental films.
5. Summary: Black and White, Skin Color, Film Philosophy
I think the use of black-and-white images in movies has weakened the concept of "skin color" to some extent, thus shifting the focus to the content of the conversation between the two.
And the theme of the movie is of course not simply about a husband and wife relationship and family ethics, but also not only about the trivial sense of being a director but not grateful to their girlfriends, whether they love each other or not. It also deeply explored the problems of film theory and film philosophy. For example, in the middle of the film, the two had quarreled and debated on whether the film’s real part impresses the audience or the interpretation part impresses the audience——
The woman believes that truth is the decisive factor in the popularity of a movie, and those who contribute real material to the movie are the real vitality of the movie. She told her director boyfriend: I know that we have experienced these things together. The difference is that you can transform ugly things into beautiful things (referring to movies) and move others, but I can't get rid of those ugly things.
The man said: Reality is not important at all, and reproducing reality will not add interest to the (film). The key lies in (the director's) interpretation of reality. Just presenting the truth and transcribing the dialogue with the camera is no different from YouTube (Internet media).
I think this controversy brought the movie to a climax, and it also revealed the theme the creator wanted to express: motivation.
This motivation induces us to think about certain film theories and film philosophy, rather than ideological things.
This is probably something that everyone who works in or likes movies needs to think about.
Picture from the Internet
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