Text / Gucheng If I didn't come here with a purpose, but accidentally found myself standing in this place...that would be a bit of a sense of despair. - Kafka, "The Castle" tells fate so lightly that only Kieslowski can do it. "Blind Chance" puts the irreversibility of time on the shelf, selects endpoints from the vast timeline, and discusses the inevitable consequences of life's accidental experience - the rising plane, the sudden explosion and the ashes. Life is hijacked by chance, tossing and turning, making choices, but still unable to escape fate. Isn’t this our most tragic lament about the emptiness of life? 1. "Song of Opportunity" was filmed in 1981. It was during the transition period of Kieslowski's thought. His film style was changing from an emphasis on the description of external reality to a hint of inner diversity, from an open The field of politicization turns to the field of psychology or metaphysics. However, the political appeals infected by him have not completely disappeared, as Kieslowski later expressed in an interview with French TV, “People like me who have been in contact with communism, no matter if they believe in it or not. Those who oppose it, or report indifferent attitudes like me, have been infected by it and cannot be cured.” It should be said that for Kieslowski of that period, it was impossible to forget about politics and history. Although "Song of Opportunity" and "Short Working Day" edited at the same time cut off the film's direct path to political reality through jumping editing and illusory reverie, and even "time" replaced politics itself and became a measure of political behavior , but the political incitement of the two works itself is not weak at all. We see that politics is not only a lingering plague attached to individuals, but also a prop and background for creating contingent events. The 1968 school purge movement and the ensuing worker strikes and The anti-Semitic movement has become a key node in determining the fate of Witke. The reason Witke dropped out of medical school was the death of his father and the loss of his sense of purpose. At the same time, young people in Poland were aware of the hypocrisy of the government, which instigated student demonstrations to turn the populace against intellectuals. So they were confused, lost their beliefs, and their future was uncertain, and there were only three choices in front of them. The film presented these three choices to the audience in the way of Witke catching a train. In the first story, Witke caught the train to Warsaw, accepted the guidance and introduction of Werner, an old party member, and became a member of the Polish Communist Party. He believed that social reality could be improved through cooperation between individuals and the system. Turk went to the hospital to mediate on behalf of the Communist Party, trying to stop the "rebellion" of the radicals. The director narrated various details of the mediation in a playful tone, in fact, it was alluding to the embarrassing situation of Witke. After that, because of his girlfriend's arrest, Witke had a conflict with his boss and had to leave Warsaw for Paris. However, when he arrived at the airport, a strike broke out in Poland and he was told that he could not leave the country. In the second story, Witke offended the guards at the station by missing the train, was sentenced to mandatory community service and befriended activist Malek. At the latter's invitation, he joined the anti-government, anti-communist underground groups and was baptized by religion (Stefan was his priest). At the same time, he fell in love with his childhood friend's older sister, Vera, who, ironically, was married and Jewish, and was forced to emigrate after a protracted anti-Semitic movement broke out in Poland around 1968. Desperate at this time, Witke wanted to leave Poland on loan to attend a conference in Paris, but he was unable to get a visa because he had to inform the government of the whereabouts of the underground group. In the third story, Witke did not catch the train but met Olga, a female student in medical school, so he went back to school, got married, and had a child. He refused to join the party and was resistant to religion and anti-government organizations. He is the favorite student of the dean of the medical school, and went to Libya to attend an academic conference in place of the dean, but in order to celebrate the birthday of his beloved wife Olga, he changed his flight and had to take a connecting plane via Paris. It is worth noting that at the airport the director captured two key shots for the audience, a female flight attendant with a document in the first story, and a wheelchair-bound Stefan in the second story who is also waiting for the same person. a flight. In other words, the plane that Witke will be flying on at the moment is the one that the first two stories should have been on. Tragedy happened, however, and as described at the beginning of this article, the plane exploded shortly after takeoff. In the first two stories, the protagonist is politically inclined, either throwing himself into the Stalinist-shrouded Eastern European authoritarian regime, or throwing himself into the embrace of Western left-wing liberalism. However, the result always backfired, and he was inevitably marginalized. In the third story, the protagonist no longer has any political beliefs. When he is happily living a middle-class "happy" life, the hourglass of fate is turned upside down again. The end of the film tells the audience that even if the individual is desperately free from political will, the final result will inevitably be implicated by innocent people. This kind of despair of post-World War II Polish politics abounds in Kieslowski’s early works ( People, Imprint of Life, etc.). Kieslowski once said, "Whether from an individual point of view or a symbolic point of view, it is impossible to find a place that truly belongs to an individual in Poland. , the conflict of despicable social reality." From this perspective, "Song of Opportunity" may be regarded as the concentrated expression of Kieslowski's political ideals, and his proposition of "breakthrough from individual destiny to political will" persistent attempt. 2. The greatness of "Song of Opportunity" lies in its use of images to transcend the boundaries and locations of time. The film breaks the inherent order of time and establishes multiple narratives under the conditional assumption structure of "if...then...", presenting a kind of video rhetoric that looks like "sweet words" but is actually exquisitely laid out. In the film, the director borrows the train as a machine The iconic symbol of the era constructs an imaginary time tunnel, and resets each time node through the action of the protagonist chasing the train. This rhetoric has been emulated by many subsequent film works (such as "Laura Run", "Sliding Door" and "The Butterfly Effect", etc.), and the clock time in the machine age has been subtly deconstructed several times. Kieslowski said of the idea of "Song of Opportunity": "How many coincidences must I be here today? When a person chooses a path, in a sense, he also chooses On the other road, there are other contingency. In order to understand where I am now, I have to go back in time, look at the past, and see which ones have taken this road. Inevitably, which is free will and which is accidental." In the film, Kieslowski repeats the "if not" assumption three times through the juxtaposition of three stories. Through the three "if not", we see that the subjective factors of the individual determine the fate of the individual. For example, in the first story, if Witke did not beat his boss, even if a workers strike broke out, he could go to France as a party representative; in the second story, if Witke voluntarily exposed the secret printing base, then Visas to France can be obtained directly from the authorities; and in the third story, the tragedy would not have happened if Witke didn't take the place of his teacher at the medical conference, or if he didn't celebrate his wife's birthday. However, Witke in the film once lamented his luck to his girlfriend. When his mother gave birth to him, his twin brother was stillborn. If the younger brother was born first, he would not exist. It seems that Somewhere in the "luck" is more important. It is worth noting that at the beginning of each story in the film, there is a scene where Witke runs from the ticket booth to the rear of the train. During this process, several elements such as rolling coins, drunkards drinking beer, and patrolmen will appear. Obviously, in the Western context, the tossed coin means chance and probability, and the randomness of the coin falling affects the time when the drunkard picks up the coin to buy wine, which in turn interferes with Witke's running path. In fact, through this series of linkages, the director links whether the protagonist can catch the train to a random event such as a coin toss. This example shows that the fate of an individual is not determined by the individual's subjective initiative, but depends on contingent objective events, and the trajectory of life is more like fate. Judging from the end of the film, Kieslowski pessimistically chose the latter between "man is determined to conquer the sky" and "destined". If the former emphasizes a kind of indomitable subjectivity of Westerners, it is the "I think" in Descartes' eyes, and it is also Hegel's "absolute spirit", then the latter depreciates human subjectivity and believes in the individual who is dominated by chance The inevitable tragedy of fate, with a mystical fatalism. At the end of the film, the director infinitely magnifies the contingency that dominates the individual's destiny, creating a horrifying scene that destroys all previous efforts and possibilities, and is extremely cruel. The spring toy in the film is the most bizarre echo of the end of the film. When Witke saw the tube-shaped spring toy "autonomously" climb the stairs with the help of gravity, his eyes showed surprise and wonder, but once it fell to the bottom of the building , the spring that loses its gravity is like dead. Witke pointed to the spring that was still shaking and said, "Look, that's a dying struggle." Little did he know that his various attempts on the road of life were just a dying struggle. . 3. In "Song of Opportunity", Kieslowski on the one hand promotes contingency and the uncertainty of the future, telling the protagonist that his own characteristics/identities/identities are changeable and can be changed. But on the other hand, he still wraps the protagonist into an infinite loop after all. Those different characteristics/identities/identities conferred by chance do exist, but people with different characteristics/identities/identities will eventually come to the same end, a definite, doomed, and long-designed abyss. By presenting the possibility of three alternatives, Kieslowski materializes those uncertain assumptions, which rejects any nostalgic possibility of contemplating the contingency of history in the present, telling us that there is no need to carry "time". Don't treat me" resentment, remorse and unwillingness, and shouted "If I was what I was then, I am what I am now". History will not give any comfort to an individual's fluke, it will run over everyone's body, and everyone without exception leaves a trace of being run over on the ground, no matter what the shape of your trace, a gust of wind. When it blows, it will turn into dust. In fact, Kieslowski is not a born pessimist, but the reality of human existence itself is full of contradictions and paradoxes. To this day, there is still a huge controversy about where the individual should be placed in society. In the social network jointly compiled by moral ethics, religious belief and political will, the "individual" is often fearful, tormented, and in a dilemma. Aren't the fatalism and despair in "A Song of Opportunity" our existential reality? Kierkegaard said that choosing despair is not to escape from life, but to break the closedness of human existence and complete the breakthrough and transcendence of human existence. Today, those who distort the postmodern spirit with hedonism use deconstruction methods to resolve the predicament that human beings are in. They have lost our ability to evaluate and reflect, and have lost our basic moral bottom line. an insignificant social presence. And Kieslowski's pessimism, "Let humanitarianism not be a kitsch sensationalism or cheap optimism, or even a kind of tolerance or warmth, it carries the most basic concern for the plight of human existence, and it is a traumatic Pain is the ultimate line of defense, a pessimistic but not desperate arrogance." (Liu Xiaofeng, "Heavy Body") 2010-8-13 20:25 Originally published in "Book of Rites" Postscript: After writing this article , when I read Zizek's "The Law of the Unconscious: On an Ethics Beyond Good", I suddenly found that the three "choices" offered by "A Song of Chance", or the possibility, are based on a philosophical discussion of ethics basis. There are three options in Zizek's formulation: to provide ethics with a direct ontological basis (communism of choice) through some basic conception of the good; Universality takes a proceduralist turn to save the former (dissidents); and the "postmodern" attitude, whose quintessential, all-encompassing rule is "don't impose your own game rules on others' games", i.e. Keep the narrative game diverse (neither deny nor affirm ambiguity about any political opinion). And these three choices form Hegel's syllogism: the basic ethics itself based directly on the supreme good; then its "opposite"; and finally, the "negation of negation," the postmodern negation of universality itself. We find the third option inherently contradictory, and in fact it has the potential to become a subspecies of the second position, imposing a second-level formal rule of tolerance for intractable disagreements. Lacan's position on this syllogism gives birth to a new "choice", namely "an ethic that denies the symbolic traumatic reality experienced in the abyss of encounters with other desires. In essence, "Song of Opportunity" is an ethical interpretation of the real world, trying to fill in the cracks in the edifice of ontology, which Zizek calls "assigned loyalty", which in my opinion, It's a kind of filling. 25 Originally published in "Book of Rites" Postscript: After writing this article, when I read Žižek's "The Law of the Unconscious: On an Ethics Beyond Good", I suddenly discovered that "Song of Opportunity" provides Three "choices," or possibilities, are based on a philosophical discussion of ethics. There are three options in Zizek's formulation: to provide ethics with a direct ontological basis (communism of choice) through some basic conception of the good; Universality takes a proceduralist turn to save the former (dissidents); and the "postmodern" attitude, whose quintessential, all-encompassing rule is "don't impose your own game rules on others' games", i.e. Keep the narrative game diverse (neither deny nor affirm ambiguity about any political opinion). And these three choices form Hegel's syllogism: the basic ethics itself based directly on the supreme good; then its "opposite"; and finally, the "negation of negation," the postmodern negation of universality itself. We find the third option inherently contradictory, and in fact it has the potential to become a subspecies of the second position, imposing a second-level formal rule of tolerance for intractable disagreements. Lacan's position on this syllogism gives birth to a new "choice", namely "an ethic that denies the symbolic traumatic reality experienced in the abyss of encounters with other desires. In essence, "Song of Opportunity" is an ethical interpretation of the real world, trying to fill in the cracks in the edifice of ontology, which Zizek calls "assigned loyalty", which in my opinion, It's a kind of filling.
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