Love and morality, Rohmer and Antonioni

In the last days of the undergraduate, I was "nervously" preparing for GRE, while watching Rohmer's "Six Moral Stories". Rohmer is not making preaching ethics films, he is interested in people's struggles and ways out in different moral dilemmas, and his observations are surprisingly delicate. In Rohmer’s film world, the relationship between men and women is often complicated and confusing. "Love" is hidden behind a certain harmonious and pleasant mental communication. It never becomes a bright theme. However, no one would doubt that these six stories are all about Of love. Rohmer rarely expresses naked desires, and the protagonists in his works seldom face the struggle between desire and reason. In other words, the manifestation of moral themes in the emotional world is not written by traditional disputes between reason and desire. But in the interweaving of platonic relationships between men and women, confusing moral issues still exist, revealing the hesitation and struggle of the characters in a more delicate way and a more calm tone. Rohmer likes to express the emotions of intellectuals. This is the world he is familiar with. Therefore, the film is often full of literary dialogues, especially the famous "One Night at Mudd's House" in the history of film. Rohmer makes the three ethical concepts different Intellectuals discussed Pascal all night, topics involving religion and science, full of obscure terminology and circuitous logic, inevitably making ordinary audiences feel boring. However, by properly grasping the language of the film, using the color of the light, the angle of the mirror, the organization of the cut, and the meaning of the expressions and actions of the characters, Rohmer successfully put the text that seemed unsuitable for imaging on the screen. .

However, compared with Antonioni, Rohmer is still more delicate and not profound. In fact, it was because I recently watched Antonioni's love trilogy that I remembered the moral stories of Rohmer, and came up with the idea of ​​recollecting it through brief comments. Like Roma, Antonioni pays attention to the emotional world of the middle class, and also likes to use intellectuals as the protagonists of movies. But the difference between the two is extremely clear. Anton seldom lets his main characters speak. Most of the movies are silent, but where there is dialogue, every word is like gold. Rohmer likes to arrange rich dialogues carefully, but often people can't grasp the point. Anton insists on a realism that requires the patience of the audience. He seldom uses film language outside the lens to express it, and there is almost no background music. Although Rohmer does not emphasize the meaning of form like the mainstream New Wave directors, but with the natural decorating talent of French artists, he always makes the audience impeccable in taking mirrors and composition. It can be said that even if you glance at a few shots, the difference between Italian realism and French New Wave is very clear. However, the more important difference is always the content. Under the title of a moral story, Rohmer expressed nothing more than a complicated and delicate emotional entanglement between middle-class men and women. The tension of the characters' moral situation is blurred in the ambiguous emotional game. Although Anton’s three masterpieces in the 1960s are collectively called the love trilogy, these three stories based on love incidents actually reveal profound moral conflicts. Anton’s description of desire is threefold, and he uses a deeply hidden and solemn symbolism to unearth the secrets of human nature. Beautiful and moving, with some neurotic Monica Vetti, Anton’s love trilogy acted as the heroine from the beginning to the end, and also as the female symbol from the beginning to the end, symbolizing the pure pursuit of love. And guardian. The men in the trilogy all symbolize the deeper and more powerful desire and possession of human nature. The final scene of the trilogy, from the slightly warm and tolerant in "Adventure", to the helplessness at the end of love in "Night", to the darkness of the sky in "Eclipse", an increasingly profound interpretation of human nature. More desperate situation. For Antonioni, love stories are only the background for moral inquiry, but moral inquiry is not judged on the scale of daily good and evil, but fully demonstrates the black nature of human nature and the eternal human emotional world based on this black nature. sad. This depressive black runs through the love trilogy, diffuses in the depths of the shadows of every black and white lens, and finally swallows all the sunlight with the image of a solar eclipse.

Of course, it is unfair to compare the merits of these two directors with the depth of the theme. Rohmer's relaxed style has its own delicate and delicate style worthy of play, especially the sculpting of film language, which is a masterpiece of the new wave. On the other hand, Antonioni’s realism is boring and straightforward. Rohmer’s films are suitable for repeated appreciation, but Antonioni’s works are difficult to rewatch. In the end of this comparison, I just want to express my sincere respect to these two directors. Perhaps for the audience, the two are indispensable. Love stories and moral stories are truly staged in our lives every day. Only when ease and depth coexist, beauty and heaviness coexist, life can be tolerated and even worthy of love.

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