I'm old now, and the older I get, the more I think about it. I can't catch things on the water anymore. I think underwater. --Jean Luc Godard
Author/Simon: When the camera is not placed in front of a luxury skyscraper, but in the hands of people, we once again have the ability to explore and record reality. The European realism that appeared in the history of film is undoubtedly a huge and organic response to the artistic wave of "people" itself. The directors began to cast their eyes on the people at the bottom and began to criticize the bad society.
The proposition that art belongs to dust is inseparable from the support of modern technology. Film technology is one of the media that surpasses human blueprint and figuration. The use of hand-held cameras shortens the distance between blueprint and figuration, making the wild flowers of dust splendid.
The Belgian film "A Promise" is a film that is so close to dust. The director of the film is Jean-Pierre Danet and Luc Danet. Because of their unique insights and scrutiny of the capture of reality, they are good at making The combination of his own style and the humanitarianism advocated in his work is called the Darney Brothers by fans, and the Darney Brothers also became famous for this film and won the "Fifteen Directors Award".
In 1996, they traced back to the dark period of illegal immigration in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, and criticized the moral issues of individual growth in a bad social environment and the close relationship with the family of origin through the perspective of children.
1 [Doomed Suffering: Young Egg and the Black Widow]
The achievements of the Darney brothers in the film are recognized by history and movie fans. Regarding the topic of "Who Am I", which is the ultimate philosophical topic, the Darney brothers' lens is not stingy toward the people at the bottom, watching the stories about the suffering of ordinary people. lifetime. The title of "One Promise" directly addresses the core storyline of the film: the last words of a black woman's husband to take care of his wife and children by the young Igo at the time of his death. However, the director chose to fulfill this last word in a filthy, mixed, and barbaric living environment. During the period, what was horrifying was: due to the existence of multiple discriminations, language (this pure form) became the fragile and castration of the underclass. Tool of.
When the hand-held camera swayed through the damp and cold Belgian town with a deadly atmosphere, it implied that the Darney brothers would dissect the ultimate secret of morality and human beings in this naked land - about love, about suffering. Fifteen-year-old Yigo and his father lived by collecting rent and living under the same roof with a group of illegal immigrants of all ethnic groups. The lack of knowledge, Yigo has always been loyal to his father, who is in power in the economy.
The story begins with the accident of an illegal worker from West Africa falling from a building. In order to cover up the truth and avoid the investigation of the government department, Igo's father plans to sell his wife to be a prostitute, but the black widow always chooses to live in the world of lies of Igo's father. Waiting for the return of her husband, in morality and absurdity, Egg, as a young individual, chose to betray his father in order to fulfill the other's last words.
When the camera calmly witnesses and even says that he is peeping at the black women from Yigo's point of view, we see that Yigo has a hole in the wall of the pantry where he can peep into the black women's room. This is the first time the film has sexual enlightenment. It means that a teenager who lacks sex education and knowledge, in the turmoil of hormones and the chaos of "self", chooses the redemption of conscience between a selfish father and a suffering mother and son.
Out of a natural, inner, surging sexual impulse and the humid, cold and extremely lacking maternal warmth of the living environment that Igo lives in, these two are embedded in Igo's tender body, and the power of primordial matrilineal nurture dominates Igo. Ge was sober in the suffering and brilliant in the barbarism, which is why the last words of "a promise of gold" will always become an unfulfilled and even betrayed father/paternal attachment in Yi Ge's heart.
Egg betrayed his father -- we sometimes say that this is a sign of a little boy becoming an adult, his resistance to patriarchy, his search for himself and even the dialectic of good and evil. It has become the predicament that Egg has to face all his life. If Truffaut's current child is a "resolute and confused teenager, roaming around in a big city", then the current child of the Dana brothers is a "resolute and confused teenager, looking for the world in a small closed town".
They inherited the characteristics of the first half of Truffaut's "children", and used handheld cameras to reproduce the conditions of the people at the bottom - shaking, restless, peeping, and forbearance, showing that thin life is also an inescapable truth in the style of realism. The obscurity of the external environment and the clarity of the characters' hearts form abruptly, but it is precisely because of this that we say that Egg's redemption in the dust is no less than the great crucifixion of Jesus.
2 [Parallel joys and sorrows: wandering and redemption]
The film directly reflects the situation of the current situation with the background of illegal labor, immigration wave, and racial mixed living. In the early 20th century, Belgium was located in western Europe. Since modern times, as a powerful country with industrial resources, it once created the illusion of "dream of wealth", ignorance and ignorance. The desertion and fantasies caused by black people, chaos in public order, and imbalance between people and society at that time, the Darney brothers began to explore the living conditions of marginalized people in the chaotic and interlaced reality.
Black widows, Korean laborers, British guys and other people are intertwined in the same space, and they control the growth of the young Yigo. Whenever the time to collect rent is approaching, Yigo deals with banknotes like his father. When the money is in his father's hands, Yigo Ge resumed his attitude as an apprentice in the depot, allegiance to his father and others.
When the black widow is the only character in the whole film that plays a functional role in the plot, when the male protagonist peeps at her body, the audience has already seen the physical interaction from the eyes, a kind of instinct embedded in the body and mind triggers realism The brilliance of the film, the film bursts out in the humid haze about the most primitive, purest, and least beneficial proposition-about who I am, this proposition also makes Egg begin his wandering to atone for his father-paranoia, Fleeing, caring, hugging, and Yigo's series of actions all interpret the helplessness about "sadness" and the confrontation about "sadness".
Through the last words of the deceased, the Darney brothers lead the main line of the movie to the road of redemption of the characters, complete the moral integration through realistic sacrifice, and choose the attitude of the "purifier" from the perspective of Yigo, a teenager. Yigo witnessed his father trying to When burying the guilt and deceiving the deceased's wife's truth, just to protect his own safety, the young Yi Ge, who does not have the mature concept of weighing the pros and cons, is more persuasive of pure whiteness and good and evil, so Yi Ge gambles for her and owes the debt. , the dead husband pays the bill, rescues the black widow in the father's design, finds a place for her to settle down, and takes her feverish child to the hospital overnight to pay the bill...
The camera is always not afraid of fancy, like an old man with his head lowered and looking at the beauty of the past, Yi Ge wanders in betrayal and redemption, but what is moving is Yi Ge, a young and strong boy, always in his eyes. In the direction of "goodwill", wake up again and again, and become firmer and firmer towards "self".
The father and son who know the truth and the black widow form a stable triangular relationship. The difference is that the three occupy the top with their own joys and sorrows. In a sense, the three of them meet in the same space, but their respective beliefs are from Not connected. It is this parallel joys and sorrows that makes realism so real, black widows - being physically insulted, bullied by people peeing, father Egg taking advantage of the weakness of women's kindness, weakness, widowhood and loneliness to write forgery The letter drives its sales plan to fruition...
The father's ignorant belief drives the growing Egg, only when he continuously resists his father to realize the freedom of "self" choice, the Darney brothers' purpose of moral torture can be completed-it turns out that when the world is enough In times of sadness, parallel pessimism is likely to warm each other.
3 [The Art of Honesty: Faith and Reality]
The design of death is the result that the audience knows in advance, and the continuation of the living after its death is the meaning of life that the Darney brothers spy on. The black widow was stranded in Belgium, a developed industrial country in Europe, from the faraway West Africa. The reality of bereavement made her betray her and depend on her children. For Egg, they are nameless souls, and they have no hometown and no yearning. In the distance, there is no family and no care for the family anymore. This is also the "art of honesty" demonstrated by the realistic film - breaking the dream of the prodigal son.
Illegal immigration is an extremely common social phenomenon in developed regions in Europe and the United States. Multi-ethnic living makes the intimate relationship between people unfamiliar and cold, and the inward drive of racial discrimination also makes black people living in foreign countries have to be keen on themselves. The only and pious belief, which is also the main reason why the black widow and the white Egg are always incompatible.
History and humiliation made black women passively submit to social checks and balances, and the anger and doubts that were difficult to suppress during the period far outweighed the weak beauty in society. Black widows resisted Egg's help and were obsessed with what they believed in. At the same time, the camera also revealed an ignorant obsession. The black widow swiftly killed a chicken, used the chicken intestines to tell fortunes for her missing husband, feared witchcraft, and repeatedly soaked the feverish child with the potion suggested by the wizard, and he carried with him The spliced cut-off puppet...
It's all dynamic and awe-inspiring to her, this inalienable world of "self" is a dead, ancient civilization for the years the Darney brothers photographed, from their artistic creation We also interpret it again: Realism is cruel and inclusive at the same time, it does not mean class, race, skin color and even their own obsessions.
Completing a philosophical proposition through the young Egg is the best redemption for reality. As a white man, Egg and his father, in a sense, have some kind of active existence in society, and they are honest and loyal to capital. Yes, but they are hesitant and contradictory about the redemption of conscience and morality, and the young Egg has a quality that his father does not have or has disappeared - health.
There is a word worth mentioning in the Greek word "soteria" which means redemption. In the subsequent development of the English word, it was rewritten as "salvation" which means integration and health, so it will have a double meaning for the redemption of the individual - the body Integration with Divinity.
This is what the Dane brothers gave it to the young Egg, who witnessed the death of others, instinctively covered up death, obeyed his father to deal with death, and finally approached death actively - the blood of the deceased stained Egg's ankle, He piled sand on the edge of the corpse with his own hands, endured the pain of needles pierced into the skin when tattooed under the beatings and scoldings of his father. Compared with the passive belief of black widows in choosing to survive, Egg's betrayal of his father and his fatherhood Atonement actually means more active redemption.
The racial reconciliation in "One Promise" is transcendent. Maybe he entrusted the director with a good wish, or it symbolized the ill-fated "good wish", but the young Egg's honesty worthy of being recorded is in the Darney brothers. In the eyes of society should not be marginalized.
As the famous American detective novelist Lawrence wrote in "Eight Million Ways to Die": "This naked city has eight million people, eight million stories, and eight million ways to die. This naked city has eight million people, eight million stories, and eight million ways to die. , people become addicted to loneliness, sink alone, and then at some point in time, die in one of the eight million ways to die, quickly replaced and forgotten. Fortunately, there is always one person who cares about everything about us."
Therefore, we say that this honest art comes from dust, and like the Darney brothers, we are always looking forward to that clump of wild flowers that no one cares about.
Written at the end: We say that the way to look back on sadness is the same as the way to look forward to the good. It is through the effective retrospective and fantasy of the individual. We call this effect "the fusion of Dasein". The same is true of changes. Whether it is the original avant-garde movement or the neorealist movement, they are all starting from a kind of "self" to "integration". What the Darney brothers care about is the impact of social context on people's reality, and their lens language. They are all exposing the dark side of society, not just "self" moral redemption, and have a fusion of time and space for the fusion of audience and characters. Therefore, the artistry of "One Promise" has finally been rectified by the historical stage of the film.
View more about The Promise reviews
