Early on the weekend morning, a successful middle-aged couple drove on a sparsely populated road. A hiking college guy got on their car, and the three of them headed for the small sailboat by the sea...
This movie is very simple, all the actors are Three. The scenes only include cars on country roads and small sailboats on the sea. The props are even rarer. Even the knife in the movie title does not run through the whole story. The film's photography is also simple medium and close shots, without fancy montages, let alone taking a few long shots. Today, compared with the "micro movies" made by some college students, they all lack technical content. But people who have actually watched this movie don't think it is the work of a "fledgling" newcomer. After reading film reviews, some people even think that the pinnacle of the master who later won the Oscar for Best Director with "The Pianist" was this low-cost "Sword in the Water". They felt that Polanski would never do anything about humanity. Did not reach such a height.
Time has imprinted this movie with a "classic" mark, but for viewers like me who are used to watching "episodic dramas", naturally they still can't appreciate its full value, let alone just watch it plainly. Just again. To put it simply, in terms of plot, a movie like "Knife in the Water" is like the "iceberg principle" in the creation of American writer Hemingway. It does not seek to tell you a wonderful and moving story, nor does it allow the audience to find it in the movie. The sustenance of feelings", but hope that you think about the story in the story yourself. Then, the film adopts a modernist symbolic perspective: the arrangement of each scene, character, and the setting of details are given a certain meaning consciously or unconsciously. Of course, the interpretation of the film varies from person to person. The “things” seen by an audience who grew up under the background of Polish socialism will certainly not be the same as those of the American youth who watched this movie with McDonald’s in the 21st century, but a great work. (The same goes for literature and art) Not only must there be the power to penetrate time and space, but also the spiritual "positive energy" can be delivered to the recipient no matter when and where. A movie that you can watch and think, if you leave it aside, the aesthetic experience and ultimate enjoyment it brings to people is like reading a novel by a writer like Dostoyevsky.
The movie talks about three people: a middle-aged sports journalist with a successful career and a beautiful young wife, a pair of middle-class people who seem to be a good match, but they seem to be separated. In the noisy radio on the car, the two people did not talk. The man seemed to unintentionally "grab" the steering wheel to drive for the woman. From the very beginning, the director created the "patriarchy" in a middle-aged marriage from a few simple details. "relation. The man’s strong desire to control, the woman’s indefatigable anger, with the car can barely drive forward...Hitchhiking in the middle of the road, the vigorous college students not only broke this balance, but also made the two of them have With a chance to "vent" his personality again, men can show "maturity" in front of women, and women can quietly find "suspension" outside men. For college students, don’t they also have the original impulse for “power” and “beauty”? And even more amazing, the contradiction is arranged on the endless sea, with only three people "resident" in a small boat. The confined space has countless possibilities that are unimaginable in the normal world. Stripped of worldly scruples, all living beings can become the protagonist at this moment, and every move will be amplified (just like the atmosphere of horror can only be escaped in a secret room or a castle. It will be more terrible if it doesn't come out). When all these contradictions are intertwined here, everything becomes interesting.
The three of them all want to achieve their goals, but because of the traditional constraints, they must try their best to suppress their ideas and get what they want through transfer. For example, men constantly give orders as "captains", women secretly send off by changing clothes and singing, while college students are a little childish holding a knife and playing tricks... It seems that they are talking and laughing on the surface, but the contradiction is so closed. The time and space are non-stop, and finally reached the culmination after the storm (the whole movie is not difficult to see that the director is also using the old routine of weather symbolism).
The knife fell into the water, the two fought, the college students fell into the water and disappeared, the couple quarreled fiercely, the man left with guilt, and the woman hoarse. After this bit of ups and downs, the story seems to end with a kind of educational meaning that people with "have a ghost in their hearts" cannot die well. But as soon as the master camera turned, the college student floated for a while and climbed up again, and the woman who drove her husband away can also be unscrupulous, and the two kissed under the falling canvas...
It seems that the women have won all the victory, and the unlucky college students have also won half of the victory. Actually? Don’t forget, the boat will eventually dock. In the real world they cannot escape after all. The three returning people will not wear the "personality mask" as Jung called them, and will undoubtedly suffer from the traditional values of their hearts. . As for the audience outside the screen, isn't it also the discomfort of a transition between illusion and reality? Isn't our life constantly changing like this, how many people can find themselves? The answer is like the end of the movie. The couple's car is parked at a fork in the road. They don't know what to say, but the camera is getting farther and farther.
After all, which one is the true self?
Polanski completed a deep projection and philosophical exploration of the world with a simple story. It seems that people are born with differences. Some people are born to make movies.
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