Text/Edit: Flying on a barrel
Official account: put aside the book
Introduction: Jia Zhangke said that you can only truly understand your hometown after you leave your hometown. Then, Aki Kaurismaki might say that you can only truly know yourself when you truly forget the past.
"A Man Without a Past" is a warm and affectionate film about the life experience of the bottom. In this film, Aki presents us with a tragic and exciting wanderer's song.
The protagonist of the film, Mr. M, lost his memory in an unforgettable encounter, wandering in the suburbs of Helsinki, just like Bloom wandering on the streets of Dublin. In Helsinki, M met a group of people who were in the same low life but were kind-hearted. With the help of these people, this man without a past started a new life of his own.
The Shanghai Art Film Union will have an Aki Kaurismaki film retrospective from November 13th to 27th. There is no shortage of Kaurismaki's "Lonely Shadow in Paradise", "Launch Voucher" and "A Man Without Past" in the retrospective. "Such masterpieces are worth looking forward to.
1. The comedic expression of tragedy
Professor Dai Jinhua once talked about a topic in his "Gender and Gaze" course, that is, at the turn of the 20th century to the 21st century, why many successful films can only adopt this type-can only be presented in the form of comedy and Touching tragic themes, why tragic events can no longer be presented in a tragic manner.
Judging from today's background, some commentators will talk about the impact of the development of short videos on the form of tragedy when discussing this topic. In the traditional sense, tragedies often take a long period of time to unfold. The fragmented form of short videos is pulling people's patience in the face of tragedies to an unprecedented low point at a rate of destruction.
From another perspective, a pessimistic fact facing modern people is that with the development of society and the advancement of science and technology, social wealth is actually concentrated in a few people. So, the majority of the people who have a very broad base, at the bottom of the pyramid, and whose future is not clear, their living conditions are actually in a state of instability and insecurity .
In this case, the audience has already resisted the acceptance of the tragedy. However, as Dylan Matt commented on Shakespeare, “Although pure tragedy is no longer possible, tragic things are always possible. We can take tragic factors from comedy and treat them as terrible The factor of this issue is presented as an abyss that opens on its own."
Aki’s film philosophy is similar to this one. In an interview, Kaurismaki explained his film style in this way, “I believe that the more pessimistic I feel about the situation in this world, the more optimistic my film should be. Anyway, I think so, life itself There are too many sad things to endure, and there is no hope for anyone. So now, let us drink as much as we want and welcome a happy end, at least let us die in laughter."
Aki, who has a lot of experience at the bottom, knows those things that linger between the city and the edge of the corner. Before entering his own film creation, Kaurismaki worked as a dishwasher, postman, and coolie worker.
His rich social experience makes him feel deeply at the bottom, and he often pays attention to tragic social issues such as refugees, poverty and unemployment . The feelings of compassion make him more inclined to set up a number of warmth and kindness in the film, express the tragedy in a comic way , and deal with his film style in a concise and clear way. Therefore, his films are often filled with warmth, a kind of "Aki" humor (this kind of humor can only be felt in the film in person).
In addition, the "Man Without a Past in" violent tragedy and non-Hollywood-style glamor in a way presented . The violence presented by Aki here is an evil of realism, an indescribable kind, or perhaps the “evil” that reflects the reality of Finnish society at that time.
Faced with the evil consequences of such violence, the homeless wandering of the protagonist M is not important, nor does it matter if there is no memory of the past. Is life just a past that can be stated? Nietzsche said , "If you don't want to cry, and you don't want to cry about your purple melancholy, then you have to sing." This is simply an excellent explanation of the protagonist M's optimism when facing the tragic status quo. I am homeless, I have no memories to go back to. Well, I still love people, music and life, still smoke my cigarettes, drink my wine, and grow my potatoes.
2. Aki's minimalism
In addition to his optimistic temperament, Aki's most influential part lies in the minimalist style of his films.
At the age of 19, Kaurismaki made a special trip from Finland to London, just to watch Ozu Yasujiro's "Tokyo Story". Later, in some interviews, he bluntly stated Ozu's influence on his entry into the film industry. From Ozu (and perhaps with Bresson's influence), Aki has injected a kind of simplicity and restraint into his film-the sense of order of the characters' actions and the refined restraint of dialogue .
This sense of order in action makes the actions and speech of the characters in Aki's films appear solemn and slow, with a strong sense of form . This gives the audience the feeling that despite being in a pessimistic environment, the characters still seem to have an unquestionable control and gentlemanship over their lives and behaviors.
And Aki's restraint in dialogue makes the characters in the film often form an intermittent pause when communicating, and this pause is sometimes unreasonable. Perhaps from our Chinese experience, we will use words such as white space to explain this pause. But I am more inclined to another French romantic saying- "When there is silence between two people, there is an angel flying by."
From another point of view, Aki’s simplicity makes his works often not like European masters in the traditional sense, which can take several hours at every turn, which is daunting. Aki is good at injecting charm, warmth and vitality into the unfortunate people in one and a half hours, and no more than two hours at most, to give a voice to the silent majority.
3. Imagination about romance and reality
In terms of the color of the film, Aki’s good friend Jamusch likes to use black and white tones to express the dilemma of alienation and characters. In Kaurismaki's movies, you will find richer colors and lighting in a relatively sense.
Aki tends to add some cold, blue tones to his films , but this is not the flamboyant blue of Takeshi Kitano with a large sky and sea as the background, but a blue full of melancholy and loneliness.
In contrast to this cold and concise film tone, Aki has specially set some warm and romantic things in the film. For example, the table where the characters talk is often blank and clean, but Aki will place a bunch of flowers in a bottle . In the poverty-stricken suburban container houses, Aki will also use a few pots of flowers as a symbol of daily warming at the bottom .
Aki never cares about beautiful gestures in the general sense when he chooses actors, but pays more attention to expressing people's real life state.
In this movie, Aki successfully sketched several vivid and impressive faces. Especially the cross-cutting face of the band director, as Mike Domond said when describing the wrinkles on his face, "This is a map, a road map of my life, including all the above. Wrinkles. If you change it, you will lose your original route.” Needless to say, this face is full of stories.
Individuals will have despair when facing society, and there will be insoluble conflicts when facing crowds. Some movies will focus on these issues, so some of Aki's movies are responses to people's situation. His answer to the audience is that even if you are in the dark, there will still be a faint light there.
The Shanghai Art Film Union will have an Aki Kaurismaki film retrospective from November 13th to 27th. The film list is as follows, friendly promotion~
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