Note: The following content is written purely based on one-time viewing memory, or there may be omissions.
In the tiresome desert, there is an oasis of terror. ——Charles Pierre Baudelaire
Dance can be curvaceous to beautiful nails, or twisted to abnormal hair.
People often dance. We can often appreciate the former dance on the stage, but often see the latter under the stage.
On February 3, 2019 local time, "Monkey" won the Sundance Jury Special Award. Today, more than two months later, I saw this work at the Beijing Film Festival. It booked the top spot of my annual movie list in just 102 minutes.
This is a story with a strong Latin American style. It is about the civil war in a country, about a group of young Colombian guerrillas, about an American prisoner, about a couple who died violently at home because of kindness, and about three orphans who had nowhere to escape after the tragic death of their parents.
Some critics say that this is a story like "Lord of the Flies", which implies that people will degenerate from civilization back to barbarism under extreme circumstances and display animal-like violence. However, such a view is obviously too naive for the Latin American people living on the continent of magical realism, and even pitifully naive.
Violence has never left them. In Latin America, violence does not need an island as its place of activity. It lives on every breath of everyone. From a certain perspective, violence has never left us. As a view of the world, one can even claim that violence is the core of life.
Man is a monkey from beginning to end. Millions of years of evolution have not had time to transform us into another species. As Dou Wei said, human beings are just a kind of "advanced animals." The instinct of animals is survival, and the basis of survival is violence.
This may not be accurate enough. Because the instinct of a plant is also to survive, and in order to survive, a plant can also strangle the root system of another plant to "suffocate" it alive. So, perhaps it should be said that the instinct of living beings is survival, and the basis of survival is violence. Therefore, violence qualifies as a theory to explain the operation of things.
In the casino of high-end animals, Latin America is the most popular or the most prominent place for this theory. The movie "Monkey" recorded it in the strongest language.
But "Monkey" is actually not as bloody as imagined. Only 5 people, 1 cow and 1 pig died in the whole film. Life here is not as cheap as in Quentin's movies. The scene is very restrained in depicting death. In many scenes, the audience can't even see blood.
At the same time, "Monkey" is not stingy about death. The couple who were watching the boring German candy advertisement the night before, could also fall at their door with two simple shots the next morning. In Latin America, death is the same as an unexpected nightmare, and there is a chance that someone will be patronized someday.
However, the beginning of "Monkey" has nothing to do with death, it is about birth.
An isolated mountain
This is a cloud-filled mountain. The convoluted cloud is like oil on the painting, with a touch of blue. They surrounded the mountain, isolated it, and created a paradise that didn't exist.
The young people were blindfolded, standing in front of two huge stones like sacred monuments, as if waiting for the enlightenment.
This reminds people of the mysterious black stele in "2001: A Space Odyssey." In the opening ten minutes, majestic and magnificent scenes like this abound, making people suspect that Salgado was standing behind the camera while shooting "Genesis".
These young people are like the first human beings in the world, at a loss for what to do with the vast world that has not yet been opened.
They finally waited for God's instructions. However, it was not God, Buddha, or Allah that revealed them. They are waiting for their chief. The officer brought a cow and an American captive to defend the image of the anti-government army to the monkey (this is the team name of the youth guerrilla), and at the same time allowed the "marriage" of the captain, the wolf and the member of the beauty.
The wolf is like Adam, and the beauty is like Eve. When the marriage of the two is allowed, celebration is naturally indispensable.
The evening is a dreamlike campfire party. Drumming soundtrack, swaying fire, crazy people. The effect of this game is really good. The combination of sound, picture and actors intertwined the heat and death.
To live hot, and then die hot, is almost the life that most Latin Americans have to choose.
Latin Americans are very strange. Among them, the connection between literature and politics, art and life is extremely close-many famous Latin American writers are even participants in subverting the government. In the case of unwillingness to ask, art has naturally become their outlet, and death has naturally become a necessary component of their works.
In this bonfire party, death has not yet cast its shadow. But the deafening music that appears from time to time, layer upon layer, is like a deep thunder in a cloudy sky, always hinting to the audience, maybe in the next second, something will happen.
In the "Bible", Adam and Eve incurred a bad fate after stealing the forbidden fruit. I don't know if the author of "Monkey" has this meaning, but on the second day when the wolf and the beauty slept, something bad did happen.
The team members who did not wake up from the carnival last night swept around with machine guns and killed the cows that the chief had told him that they had to protect them. The captain, the wolf, worried about punishment and committed suicide by drinking a gun in the hazy morning mist.
The rhythm of the story is on the right track here. Death, deceit, and betrayal are like a black butterfly, falling on the shoulders of these young people who have just received the "spiritual". They no longer seemed to be innocent when they were blindfolded, but wrapped in the skins of high-class animals.
They told the officer on the radio that the wild wolf committed suicide after killing the cow by mistake.
Under the holy stele, the monkeys danced a dirty dance.
A hot forest
The government army discovered the lone mountain hidden by the young people and launched an attack to recapture the captured American Doctora. But the young people, with the support of the rebel army companion team, won the war.
The blessed mountain was exposed. So the young people walked into the mortal world and hid in a hot jungle. In the jungle, they "evolved" more like a group of monkeys. They were naked, climbing up and down the tree, and even babbling their hands with monkey-like "chirping" sounds-this is their contact code.
There is a very interesting detail. In the "Holy Mountain", the wolf, the beauty and Rambo once sat and chatted under a rock. The wolf and Rambo each made a flute with their hands, and blew out the bird calls. The beauty wants to learn, but the wolf can't teach her how.
Now, the wolf that could squeaked is dead, and only Rambo was left. And the beauty who can't learn how to call birds can only be a monkey. The beauty who once said, "Never forget that the wolf is not the one who killed the cow" slept with the captain who took over in the jungle with big feet.
Rambo was puzzled time and time again. This confusion reached its peak when he chained Doctora who was trying to escape. Every time Doctora reads the news to the simple DV, he has to wipe her body clean. He didn't understand why such a woman who was chained like a dog could maintain the legal image of the anti-government army. He felt sorry for her, so after putting the chain on, he squatted aside, howling.
The officer still found out that Doctora had attempted to escape. So, he took the captain with his big feet to accept a military trial. On the rushing river, when the chief peeed with his back to him, his big foot shot him.
The young people who had lost their chiefs evolved once again, and they turned from anti-government forces into complete bandits. They painted their skin blue like an avatar, and made a monkey-like cry with their hands.
They went from innocence to deception to treacherous. They have become more and more civilized, but they have become more and more like monkeys.
This series of scenes is a perfect combination of music and visual effects. With the high rhythm, the green rain forest, and the close-up of the face that fills the screen, the production team of "Monkey" made the audience have another intracranial climax.
Rambo escaped.
A modern helicopter
He drifted on the river and found a boat hovering in the middle of the river. The owner is a kind-hearted uncle, and he took him back to his home.
There are three children in this family. In the summer afternoon, their family sat on the sofa outside to enjoy the cool, watching boring TV shows. The soft light hit their faces, and the time in the cabin seemed to flow so unaltered. Mother took the two sleeping children back to the house to sleep, and in the end only Rambo was left alone. He looked at the surroundings, curled up in the chair, his tight nerves finally relaxed.
But a monkey jumped on the railing next to it.
Early the next morning, Rambo woke up and he saw the three children outside the window playing with balloons, just like they were in the "Holy Mountain". The red fan blew hot air, and he happily got caught in the quilt again.
However, the next picture is a close-up of two "monkeys". They grinned and made harsh noises. The old couple picked up the gun and looked out warily at the door of their home. With two gunshots, they fell in a pool of blood.
The beauty stepped into the room and led to a long 360-degree rotating lens. All the decorations in the room have not changed, and time still flows like that. But the camera finally caught the fallen couple and the three children hiding under the table. The audience knew that everything was different. The original timeline stopped here, and the small house where the sound of TV would be heard every summer night could only exist in another time and space forever.
The three children under the table did not have a trace of panic. The older brother held a wooden stick and stood firmly in front of the two younger sisters. If they didn't die in the end, they might also have been "enlightened" today.
Rambo ran wildly. He jumped into the rushing river.
Doctora realized that there was a gap in the bandit's den. She killed the last team member guarding her with a chain around her neck, smashed the steel with a rock, and escaped to death.
A government helicopter passed by from high altitude and found Rambo who had fainted on the river beach.
The shots here are also very interesting. From the aerial view of the bird's eye view, two rivers are ingested-one is clear and the other is turbid. These two different rivers merged together and became a unified color. Clear and turbid, and finally all fall into turbidity.
On the muddy beach, Rambo lay face down, like the Syrian child drowning on the coast.
The government forces took Rambo to the helicopter. The camera swept across modern towns in the distance from the helicopter, making it extremely abrupt. After the baptism of a whole film "Holy Mountain" and "Jungle", facing such a pile of square adobe, people can't help but feel curious.
The camera continued to pan, and the audience saw Rambo. It was a pair of crying eyes. It just stared at the camera and asked silently.
Why did Rambo become like this? Why does the world become like this? The director raised a question, but did not give an answer.
Rambo, who knows how to call birds, finally flew into the sky like a bird, but he was crying. Was his fate saved as a result? The movie did not give an exact answer. The soldiers of the government army asked the chief over the radio what to do with Rambo, but everything stopped abruptly in this silent gaze.
"Monkey" is undoubtedly an excellent movie. Although in order to complete such a mysterious style, the film has a clear sense of rupture in part of the narrative, but I think this sacrifice is worthwhile. Its visual effects, soundtrack, actors, and script perfectly fit together, making the final questions of the film loud and loud.
There are so many outstanding things in the movie. Beautiful scheduling, "A Clockwork Orange"-style zoom (from close-up to panoramic view), active narrative soundtrack, fabulous setting and art style... There are too many, and it should undoubtedly be the year of 2019 The best (I certainly hope there can be better).
More importantly, none of these things are for form and form, they all serve the theme. What happened to the young guerrillas is just an irrelevant story in the general environment. It was people who were more civilized than these young people who provoked the war and brought death.
"Monkey" is the epitome of the war in Latin America, and it is also an allegory of the entire human race.
I never write film reviews, this is my first one. Because I was really deeply shocked. Latin American writers and art creators shook my beating heart of boredom time and time again.
Under the skin of advanced animals, we are still a savage monkey.
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