I still remember how I found out about this movie, a holiday of doing nothing, borrowing a bunch of Japanese movie discs from friends, trying to get into the gates of old Japanese movies. A friend brought me some very traditional Japanese video discs, Toho Toei Daiying Shochiku, Suzuki Kiyoshun Kurosawa Akimura Shohei Kobayashi Masaki, and there are such weird things in them. On the cover, a bandaged geek intertwined with textures, gloomy and dead, I took a fancy to it at a glance and took it as the first part of getting started. Unexpectedly, as soon as I entered the evil door, it was as deep as the sea, and I was still trapped in it. I did enjoy the unique scenery of Japanese movies, and I applauded the golden age of 1960. But I still can't forget the first time in my life, the surprise and obsession it brought me, the boundless imagination and the tender philosophical pain. Architect Hiroshi Kawara is one of the representatives of the new wave in Japan. After his "Sand Girl" enjoyed a worldwide reputation, he completed this "The Face of Others" under the pressure of the peak of his career. . This is the third time the emissary has collaborated with novelist Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu. The novel based on the movie, Kobo Abe, continues the topic of the girl of sand, discussing what identity is, and the dilemma of whether or not to integrate into society, the nature of freedom, and the pressure of public opinion in society. But he was rejected by foreign critics, with comments from well-known websites saying the film was "too chic", "too esoteric", "isolated", "enslaved by the film's signature", "strange than cathartic" ", in general a post-Daughter of Sand failure. "The Face of Others" is the first Japanese urban backstory of the imperial envoy Hiroshi Kawara. Different from the independent and exotic scenes in the previous "Trap" and "Daughter of Sand", more Japanese elements have been added. The film opens with an ever-increasing variety of portraits, ranging from a face without facial features, to one portrait, to two portraits, to four portraits, to countless portraits. It reminds me of the Holocaust and survivor scenes in war documentaries. The unidentifiable person walking down the dark street also appears at the end credits, in response, as one of the film's most famous scenes. Crowds of masked people, faceless people who live in fear every day, disguised as having no personality, were exiled and alienated. Abe's novels are deeply influenced by Kafka and other existentialist literature, which shows the irreparability of memory. "The Face of Others" brings it to the extreme. He created a faceless man Okuyama caused by a chemical experiment. Decided to put on a new face, allowing him to freely change his perception of work, marriage and society. And seduce his wife as someone else. It mixes themes of existentialism and rebirth, and the structure is based on many dark sides and multiples, mirror images and causal reflections. The existence of Okuyama's division is emphasized through a series of visual similarities, as well as the repetition of the eerie melody of Toru Takemitsu's music. The scene where Okuyama rents the apartment twice, and the encounter with the landlord's daughter about a yo-yo, is the clearest example of duality. Not only that, if you observe carefully, you can find that every detail of "The Face of Others" can find echoes and double superpositions. Okuyama in the film is often frightened by himself in the mirror because he copies other people's faces onto his own. Okuyama, who wears a mask through glass reflections and multiple expressions, seems to have no connection with himself, bizarrely divided, and self-exiled like a wild horse. This seems to imply that his ego personality still exists subconsciously, but is out of tune with this world. The doctor's clinic where the new faces are made has lots of anatomy and blank walls, the exact opposite of Okuyama's home, which has Japanese-style furniture and dolls, and distorted scenes in both places. The clinic set is one of the most astonishing visuals of Japanese cinema in the 1960s, a baroque fantasy designed by renowned Japanese architect Isozaki. This is an obsessive spatial perspective, constantly changing furniture, revealed through light and scenography. The doctor's squeezing of the human flesh mold makes itself a metaphor, showing the futility of identity. Edict Kawara Hiroshi used bizarre filming and editing techniques to express the unstable and cruel reality. A sudden stretching put Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian body into the lens to satirize the inhumanity of the doctor's creation of human faces. experiment. By zooming in from the doctor to Okuyama to the human body line on the glass, this shot expresses a philosophical duality, redefines Leonardo da Vinci's paintings and warns of the undercurrent of violence. In fact, the doctor has played many roles of different definitions, the avenger, the creator, the goddess of gold, and even the philosophical incarnation of Okuyama, the director himself has said that this doctor is just another part of Okuyama, when Okuyama When the doctor was killed and the doctor slowly slipped out of the scene, I believe everyone felt more leisurely and slowly than nervous and shocked. Looks dead. The films made by Hiroshi Kawara seem to be rejecting the reformation of modern cinematography, traditional black and white, full screen, still images, close-ups of eyes, sudden stretches, wash-out transitions, X-ray images, documentary street photography, Standard Editing, Impressionist Frames, Change Focus, Quick Sweep, Frame Skipping, Adjust Image Angle, Still Montage ... Does this also reflect the director's own anxiety about the evolution of art? In the later period, Hiroshi Kawara turned the film objects into calligraphy, pottery, painting, bamboo weaving, and flower arrangement, transforming from an avant-garde director to a traditional craft artist. The influence of World War II on the director, especially the Hiroshima incident, the scarred beauty who received radiation from the nuclear explosion, a Japanese bar named after German that Okuyama and the doctor often go to, the shooting training by the beach, etc. can be seen. Anxiety about the impending war culminates in two light-related images, a set of intense explosion rays and an ominous sunset beam, all revealing scars from the Hiroshima nuclear explosion. None of this is mentioned in the novel. One of my favorite scenes of a bold pioneer appeared in a transition scene of Scar’s female brother. Scar jumped into the river in the early morning to commit suicide. When my brother saw it, he let out a hysterical cry. The human body was shot directly by the light of the nuclear explosion, and instantly turned into a dry corpse of an animal. . Another expresses the great pain of the character after losing his lover. Compared with his previous works, this "The Face of Others" is undoubtedly bolder and more divisive, especially in the last half hour of the film, the director used a very tight cross-cutting, two erotic scenes and two death scenes developed in parallel. reach a climax. The imperial envoy Hiroshi Kawahara and "The Face of Others" which I admire are undoubtedly the unrestrained and free-spirited banners of the Japanese film industry in the 1960s. The face, the bandaged face of the invisible man, the face produced by the doctor, the batches of identical masked faces appearing on the street, all make the face and even the identity more metaphysical. At the same time, it occurred to me that our kinship is also a form of mask, a kind of outward appearance. These seem to resonate with the director's misanthropy and weird thinking. Wrong and distorted social relations are the inevitable result of social progress. As the doctor discussed with Okuyama in the bar, the manufacture of a large number of masks will lead to the shattering of morality and values. Did you control the mask, or did the mask control you? 2012/11/26 The human body was instantly transformed into a dry corpse of an animal through the direct rays of the nuclear explosion. Another expresses the great pain of the character after losing his lover. Compared with his previous works, this "The Face of Others" is undoubtedly bolder and more divisive, especially in the last half hour of the film, the director used a very tight cross-cutting, two erotic scenes and two death scenes developed in parallel. reach a climax. The imperial envoy Hiroshi Kawahara and "The Face of Others" which I admire are undoubtedly the unrestrained and free-spirited banners of the Japanese film industry in the 1960s. The face, the bandaged face of the invisible man, the face produced by the doctor, the batches of identical masked faces appearing on the street, all make the face and even the identity more metaphysical. At the same time, it occurred to me that our kinship is also a form of mask, a kind of outward appearance. These seem to resonate with the director's misanthropy and weird thinking. Wrong and distorted social relations are the inevitable result of social progress. As the doctor discussed with Okuyama in the bar, the manufacture of a large number of masks will lead to the shattering of morality and values. Did you control the mask, or did the mask control you? 2012/11/26 The human body was instantly transformed into a dry corpse of an animal through the direct rays of the nuclear explosion. Another expresses the great pain of the character after losing his lover. Compared with his previous works, this "The Face of Others" is undoubtedly bolder and more divisive, especially in the last half hour of the film, the director used a very tight cross-cutting, two erotic scenes and two death scenes developed in parallel. reach a climax. The imperial envoy Hiroshi Kawahara and "The Face of Others" which I admire are undoubtedly the unrestrained and free-spirited banners of the Japanese film industry in the 1960s. The face, the bandaged face of the invisible man, the face produced by the doctor, the batches of identical masked faces appearing on the street, all make the face and even the identity more metaphysical. At the same time, it occurred to me that our kinship is also a form of mask, a kind of outward appearance. These seem to resonate with the director's misanthropy and weird thinking. Wrong and distorted social relations are the inevitable result of social progress. As the doctor discussed with Okuyama in the bar, the manufacture of a large number of masks will lead to the shattering of morality and values. Did you control the mask, or did the mask control you? 2012/11/26
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