François Ou Jong's new film "Franz" is a romantic story a hundred years ago compiled from a series of white lies. The characters in the play try to seek forgiveness, complete salvation, and even unconsciously allow hostile countries and nations to live together in harmony through constant speech and lie.
"I am your son's best friend in Paris. We went to the Louvre together. He liked Manet very much, especially a painting of a man in white lying on a bed." Just after the First World War, the Frenchman Adrian came to the Louvre. The German town, after reluctantly intensifying the national hostility of the local old people, fabricated the history of their son Franz who died in the battle in Paris.
In the world of images constructed by Ou Jong's black and white reality and color lies, Adrian and Franz came to the Louvre together, and went straight to the subject of Manet's paintings. The subjective lens first pointed to the painter's most famous large-scale work "Lunch on the Grass", and then it was shaken down, frozen in the close-up of "Suicide". This is a rare impressionist work created by Edward Manet between 1877 and 1881. A man who seems to have just finished his life, still holding a gun in his hand, half lying on the bed, there are still a few pieces of furniture in the picture. Manet skipped the scene where the suicide was happening, and jumped directly to the scene after the incident without narrative content and without preaching. It is rare because in the category of historical paintings, death and suicide are usually associated with sacrifice, idealism or heroism.
Why did the French who came to visit suddenly add this painting to the story of the lie? Ou Rong throws out a mystery.
"At the time when I was obsessed with truth and transparency, I really wanted to shoot a work about lies. As a student and fan of Hou Mai, I found that when the film formed its own narrative, the lies were always beautifully folded. There is a friend Tell me Maurice Rostand has a drama about lies. The story happened after World War I. I began to study it in depth, but sadly discovered that this drama was adapted into a movie by Liu Bieqian as early as 1931, "Broken Lullaby" (Broken Lullaby ). My first reaction at the time was, don’t challenge myself, how can I surpass Liu Bieqian?” When Ou Rong’s modest expression of his original intentions, he also realized that Liu Bieqian’s works completely followed the drama and adopted young Frenchmen. From Derrian's perspective, "The One I Killed," also means knowing all the secrets from the beginning. "And I decided to adopt the perspective of the German woman, the fiancee of the sacrificial warrior, Anna, just like the audience. At first, I didn't know why the French appeared in the German town and why weeped in front of the tombstone of Anna's fiance."
Adrian's trip to Germany is like an adventure to find hardship. Although the war is over, parents who have lost a large number of young people must be full of hatred for the French who were enemies not long ago. With his handsome appearance, polite manner and emotional recounting, Franz's fiancée and parents let go of their grudge against the country and family. However, it is not easy to bear the identity of the enemy country and obtain the understanding of the residents of the town at a wider level. It will even make Franz's father who invited him as a guest to become a "traitor" in a certain sense. In the tavern, the old man faced his old friends who had estranged himself and said passionately: "Who sent the children to the battlefield? It was not us, their fathers. When we were victorious, we killed the French children. At that time, we celebrated with beer here; when the French won and killed our children, they celebrated with wine over there. We are all celebrating the deaths of our children stupidly."
With such a beautiful "speech", is there any hatred or hatred that shouldn't be let go? That damn war is over, life should be beautiful again, and Europe should be beautiful again. It should have poems, "I met Franz in the bookstore. He was looking for Verlaine's collection of poems, and I was reading Rilke." Anna recalled the beginning of love, whether it was French symbolism or German romanticism. It nourishes a group of young people with beautiful hearts at the turn of the century; it should have music. Adrian, who calls himself the violinist of the Paris Orchestra, picked up Franz's violin and played Tchaikovsky at Anna's house. The famous song "Song-like Andante"; it should also have art, including Manet's cozy "Picnic on the Grass" and the obscure "Suicide".
Adrian’s beautiful lie about the friendship in Paris is almost unsustainable. According to the same-sex themes that director Ou Jong is good at and the excessive imagination of the age of corruption, the audience may think that the French will reveal a forbidden love. The plot moves towards metaphors related to the "Suicide" painting. Adrian didn't know Franz at all. The first and only time they met was in a trench that
was tense enough to detonate the air... Anna, who was told the truth, knew that such a reversal was impossible to be forgiven. So she acted as a liar connecting the two sides, disappointed to Adrian who returned to France, the lie was "Franz's parents will not forgive you, you can write the letter to me and I will read it to them"; to Germany The old couple in the small town, the lie became "Adrian's mother is seriously ill, he must go back, the orchestra tour mission has come, he missed you very much, he will come back whenever he has time."
Franz's parents living in sweet lies. Of course, she didn't want Anna to stay widow, and even encouraged her to go to Paris to find the missing Adrian and marry her son's "good friend" in love. From here on, except for the letters sent back to Germany, Anna Time in Ou Jong's lens, there is no need for colorful lies. In the meticulously crafted classical black and white frame, Anna set off, went to the Paris Orchestra to listen to Kossakov's "A Thousand and One Nights", went to the Louvre to sip Manet's "Suicide", and then waited for sweetness Adrian behind the lie...
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