As far as I know, director Roy Anderson is from the advertising industry, and he was good at shooting some weird short commercials before starting the film. Unlike David Fincher, Stamshin, and Ning Hao, who are directors in advertising, Roy Anderson's films rarely show those exquisite pictures with strong fashion elements, overwhelming visual effects, and popular commercials in his films. The sexual element is very low, replaced by its strong "author" demeanor. His film output is extremely low, and he has only shot four feature films since more than 30 years of filming: "Swedish Love Story" in 1970, "Journey in Love" in 1975, "Song from the Second Floor" in 2000, 2007 "You are still alive" in 2015. With extremely low output, he strives for perfection in the film. Only "Singing from the Second Floor" was filmed for 5 years. There was a serious break in his creative process. After the two films in the 1970s, he was silent for nearly 30 years. Finally, in the millennium, he took out his masterpiece "Singing from the Second Floor".
"Singing from the Second Floor" is Roy Anderson's standard masterpiece of returning to the film world after 2000. After 30 years of baptism and precipitation, his film finally shows the current one that is impossible to learn from, and he himself cannot surpass. The ultimate existence of the movie form (2007's "You Are Alive" is too similar to "Singing from the Second Floor", even the same movie). His thoughts on human civilization have all turned into his unique image style. There are two perspectives in his image style that are worth noting. One is the use of long shots and the other is a collage of short stories.
There are two kinds of use of long shots under normal circumstances. The first is to ensure a complete record of the drama relationship in the scene through reasonable scene scheduling, or to guide suspense, which is the long shot theory proposed by Bazin, like Orson Wilson and Hitchcock are in this category. The second is to extend the processing of Bazin theory and develop into a more complex situation, usually a manifestation of the relationship between man and the environment. In the East, it is Hou Xiaoxian and his like, using a fixed-length lens to show the integration of man and the environment. An emotional precipitation; in the West, it may be Tarkovsky and his like, using a moving long lens to reveal the mystery of the operation of the entire world. But no matter what it is, the relationship between the subject in the picture and the surrounding environment (mostly the natural environment) is usually based on realism, and long shots that are out of the relationship between reality are theoretically untenable. And Roy Anderson's long shots are completely different from the use of other famous long-shot genres. His long shots are somewhat out of touch with reality to a certain extent. The scenes displayed by the lens are not strictly based on the real relationship, but simplified and processed, symbolizing the strong deformation: such as the internal environment of those companies, such as the embarkation registry of Noah's Ark in 2012, such as At the end, the wilderness of the alternating yin and yang world. The construction of these scenes is more like that used in stage plays, but the difference is that Roy Anderson’s pictures have rich and deep relationships. When watching the film, the audience should not only pay attention to the dramatic relationship between the foreground characters and the background scene. Collocation and extension are also an integral part of his picture ideology. Sometimes, the content in the depths is the key to decrypting the picture, such as the self-flagelling parade, the big traffic jam outside the window and so on. The whole film is almost composed of a fixed wide-angle long lens (only one moving lens), and the choice of lens is mostly panoramic, so as to cover all the elements in the picture as much as possible, so that the perspective is more like the audience watching a drama in a theater The angle of view, coupled with its unique scene processing, the film's stage drama taste is very strong. The performance and position of the actors are also very compatible with this effect: there are always various characters scattered in the corners of the screen, except for the protagonist in the foreground which shows an obvious dramatic relationship. , Other characters mostly stand around, as a symbol of existence, to match the dramatic relationship that takes place in the foreground. Looking at it this way, Roy Anderson’s long-shot intention is very obvious. This is to implant the way of watching absurd drama into the audio-visual elements of the film, and on this basis, through the actual light and shadow, the audience’s perspective is deeply improved. This alienation experience.
Short-form collages are not uncommon in movies. If they are presented in the works of other directors, it is likely that multiple clues go hand in hand, or each part may be a separate chapter and form a whole. How to lay out a lot depends on the characteristics of the story text. In "Song from the Second Floor", based on the use of long shots, a shot is a scene, and a shot is a scene. However, in the film, the relationship between the characters and the drama is not fully displayed in a space like a stage play. It is usually straightforward, directly entering a certain situation, and cutting off before the drama relationship unfolds, leaving some introductions and intentions. clue. There are about 4 or 5 clues in the film. These clues are arranged in a staggered arrangement and scattered in the film. You can't see the connection between them. Roy Anderson deliberately blocked the logical relationship that may appear in these breakout clips. Even if there is, it is very cautious and imperceptible. In addition to these clues, there are more similar to girl sacrifices, and the emergence of ghosts is an independent fragment that has nothing to do with other clues. At this time, the chaotic short story collage is not the way we often guide vertically around a certain motif, but a horizontal, picture-scrolling social picture. In this somewhat surrealistic social picture, people from all walks of life, all kinds of ghosts, ghosts and snakes gather together, presenting a terrible and irrational doomsday scene under the chaotic chaos.
Nordic countries like Sweden usually lack communication between people. Apathy is the main characteristic there, and this characteristic also subtly penetrates into some Nordic countries’ movies. Roy Anderson is such a typical example. He thought deeply about human civilization and developed a serious pessimism about its future development: In our era of loss of love and faith, material interests increasingly replace the spiritual world. Under the environment, people will gradually become the walking corpses with empty bodies in the film. In the film, scenes that are as cold as a cemetery are everywhere, and the continuous appearance of ghosts adds a lingering gloomy chill, so that the darkness and depression are often felt in the process of watching the film. Roy Anderson has a grotesque imagination. He spread these imaginations through absurd drama and became a doomsday warning he issued to the world at the dawn of the millennium, with such a picture full of doomsday The surrealistic picture scroll of the picture reminds this world that lacks love, lack of faith, and lack of spirit. The title of "Singing from the Second Floor" may mean this: the only brother in the film who has a sense of love but who has become aphasia in a cold society is imprisoned in a mental hospital, and it is vaguely transmitted from his ward. "The singing from the second floor" became Roy Anderson's call for beauty in this pessimistic and desperate human society.
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