Seeing that the director of "Mysterious Train" is Jia Muxu, I have a lot of expectations. His film narrative method is quite unique. The narrative with an "X"-shaped structure, from the very beginning to the intersection in the middle, there is always One point connects one story after another. Then it stretched out like two infinitely extending lines.
"Mystery Train" tells three plain stories, three styles, a romance film, a fantasy film and a thriller that happened on the same day and in the same city. Although the movie is flat and without climax, it is intriguing.
Story One "MYSTERY TRAIN":
At the beginning of the film, I saw a couple face to face, seated at both ends of the train seat. The girl was innocent and lively, and the boy looked cold, as if nothing was interesting. They arrived at the terminal by train, Memphis, Tennessee, the hometown of Elvis Presley. When they came here, the girl looked novel, but the boy disapproved. They wandered everywhere, entering the Sun Company where Elvis went for the first time, and then continued to wander around. They didn't have an obvious purpose, but wanted to leave their footprints in this hometown of Elvis. Until the evening, I found a hotel to stay, and fell asleep with Elvis’ "Blue Moon". The next morning, I heard a gunshot again. After going to the former residence of Graceland Elvis, the two boarded the train and left. Memphis.
In the film, I can’t feel the tight rhythm. Instead, I get closer to life step by step. There are many details intriguing. When I first arrived in Memphis, an old man asked them about matches. The girl was very pleased to call boys because she understood English. Taking out the lighter, the boy coldly took out the lighter and lit it. Instead of moving forward, the old man bent down and approached the flame. Afterwards, the old man’s Japanese "thank you" and gestures amused the expressionless boy. These details portray the character level of the character more vividly, with the original appearance cool to the amusement of the back, this is a flesh-and-blood character image.
When the two came to the hotel, the girl saw that the boy had been stern and wanted to make him laugh, but how hard he tried, the boy was always expressionless and said, "I am actually happy, but I was born like this." After having sex in the room, there was a contradiction because of the hairstyle and beard. Before leaving, the boy had to take away the towels from the hotel, and the girl had to put on several T-shirts in the suitcase to make room for the towels.
These trivial and seemingly meaningless things on the screen are not exactly the trivial things we experience in real life. In the story, we, as observers, may feel extremely boring when watching their stories, but as the protagonists, they enjoy it. One’s own way of life, in the real society, how can there be so many joys and sorrows, separation of life and death, some just get along with each other, enjoying love and being loved in the ordinary life, what the film shows is exactly that, the least use is Eye-catching trivia to show life, intriguing.
Story two:
The Italian woman Tilly has just become a widow and has to spend a day in the strange city of Memphis because of the flight delay. She walked aimlessly in the city, was persuaded by the clever-talking newsstand owner, passively bought a stack of newspapers and magazines, and was told by a liar about the Elvis Presley story and paid him ten dollars. When I arrived at the same hotel as a couple, I happened to meet Didi, a woman who could share a room with her. The two heard a gunshot when they got up early the next morning (that's what the couple heard in the first story).
This story runs through the "Elvis Presley" incident, to the effect that when someone drove back to the city one day, the last person who got in the car asked to get off the car at Graceland, the former residence of Elvis, and the driver found this person after he got off the car. It is the resurrection of Elvis himself. Legend has it that Elvis still left the driver with something to pass on to the people who listened to this story. At the same time, the driver can ask for a tip from the listener. Using this as the story line indexed Tilly's soul out of the body in the middle of the night, and had a brief exchange with the deceased Elvis.
In this story, Tilly and Didi have some similarities, and the two people who would not have met in the past meet. They all have the same experience, losing their partner, but have a different life.
Story Three:
The gunshots heard in the first two stories are related to the third story. Johnny, who looks like "Elvis" because of breaking up with his girlfriend Didi and being unemployed, pulls in friends for a drink. After drinking too much, he pulls out and takes it with him. Playing with his pistol, like a drunk who hopes to be awesome, the entourage called and asked his friend Will (black) and his girlfriend Didi’s brother Charlie to drive to take him home. The three of them got off the car and went to drink. When buying wine in the gallery, the owner of the bar spoke rudely to Will (racism). Johnny drunk drunk and wounded the boss. The three drove away in a panic, drank alcohol in the car, and finally came exhausted. At the same hotel, Johnny attempted to shoot himself at dawn. Charlie blocked the pistol and wounded Charlie’s leg. This gunshot was the same as the gunshot heard by the people in the previous two stories. So far , The three had to drive out of the hotel in embarrassment. Gunshots were heard in the three stories, but no one cared, each was immersed in their own affairs.
Jia Muxu once said: "When I wrote "Mystery Train", I was not thinking about a movie style, but thinking about some literary techniques. Small stories can become grand. I want to write something that happens at the same time. Story, even if I’m thinking of an Italian-style romantic comedy, there will be stories of traditional Japanese ghost films appearing alone. But I like this format very much, I like to make these stories happen at the same time, let these characters in the same place, but No interaction, just connected by some small clues, such as the waiter and the night manager of the hotel, the shooting, in fact, they are in a hotel, you can see them walking on the same street. This is more like a movie technique It's a literary technique."
In this movie, you will find a lot of small treatments. Steve Buscemi runs through the whole movie. From the first scene, you can see the couple walking by him, and then enter the first scene. The two stories finally became the main character. The film has a unique narrative technique, using a multi-dimensional perspective to show three different but interconnected stories.
The overall tone of the movie is dull, and the protagonists in the last three stories have all taken different paths. Although they are connected in some things, they still parted ways. In life, each of us is a passerby of other people. We will be contacted by certain things at the time. It may be family, love, friendship, etc., but in the end we have a path of our own. To accompany or separate, face it calmly.
Compared with many commercial films, the film has no plots of ups and downs, but it is intertwined, showing the real real society through plain story lines, bringing the characters' personalities close to reality and arousing resonance.
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