Calvino opens the "New Millennium Literary Memorandum" about the benefits of "lightness". In his view, literature has two competing tendencies: one that gives language heaviness, density, and concreteness, and the other that seeks to make language as weightless as clouds, wispy dust, and magnetic lines of force. the elements of. The former is represented by Dante, while the latter covers the works of Kafka, Emily Dickinson and Milan Kundera.
In fact, if "light" and "heavy" are conceptualized, there are also traces of such two opposing tendencies in the film world. Revisiting "Barry Lyndon" this week, fell in love at first sight two years ago, and revisiting my still-favorite Kubrick work. In the film, the six-year-old Baron walks into a concert full of friends in ill-fitting shoes, his feet sliding in the heavy wooden shoes and making a crackling sound with each step. It was a deliberate act of revenge by the little baron's half-brother to advertise his Oedipal hatred. (The image of such a naive provocateur is also reproduced in the banquet scene of Ruben Ostrund's "Freedom Square.") But what attracted me most was the scene itself, the Western proverb "wearing someone else's shoes" (that is, the more ) the absurdity of the real thing, and the moral judgment in the silence of the guests, in this collision, the theme of the film’s class difference is brought to the fore.
Kubrick's films are so full of heaviness that even so-called comedies like "Dr. Strangelove" are filled with the horrors of nuclear war and impotence, which is due to Kubrick's film-based character. Bergman, Haneke, Wells are all the same. In contrast, works by Rohmer, Kaurismaki and others. Also on the serious topic of morality, the people and things in their films are light, ever-changing, and full of comically sad situations. This division is not absolute, nor is it intended to prove that the judgments of the literary field are fully applicable to film. But in the choice of visual language, in the connection between one shot and another, in the image inside the picture, there are indeed light and heavy factors that move closely, giving us completely different feelings.
In my mind, the word "light and easy" can be best described as the films of Calvino's Italian countryman Nanni Moretti. His works rarely have profound insights and amazing vision, but they can use the power of wind and clouds to leave an impression of water flowing and clouds. Jonathan Rosenbaum (a former film critic of Chicago Reader) has aptly described the lightness of Moretti's work: "For films that require me to write reviews, I often have to take some viewing notes. "Dear Diary", I found that I had no words to remember. This probably explains the unique and indescribable flavor of this film. Neither the description of the picture, nor the recording of the voice-over, nor the dialogue in the film can be captured to the very essence of the film — the quality of Moretti himself.”
"Dear Diary" is such a work: it is bounded between document and fiction, and reality and surreal are closely intertwined. Moretti plays herself in the film. (In order to distinguish the character from the author, the character is called "Nanny" in this article, and "Moretti" when referring to the director.) The film is divided into three paragraphs in the form of diary titles. The different approaches are subtly intertwined: "The Doctor" is based on his own actual illness experience (even using some documentary images). Archipelago is a fictional journey of two friends in the Italian archipelago. The above two methods are combined in "My Motorcycle". The camera follows Nanny on a motorcycle to travel around the city of Rome, almost like a travel documentary, until the absurdity and reality slowly merge into a furnace.
Moretti's pursuit of lightness is particularly fascinating in the section "The Archipelago". The story begins with Nanny going to Lipari Island to visit friends and try to concentrate on work. His friend was a hermit who lived alone on the island for eleven years studying Joyce's Ulysses. However, this square inch of land has also begun to be occupied by tourists, and the two have to set off to find other peaceful islands. No one expected that during the journey, this friend who lived alone in the world came into contact with TV for the first time, and was attracted by various programs and ups and downs in TV series. He began citing lines from Tiblos and Enzensberger to describe the charm of television, and even threatened to write to the Pope praising its educational function. So when the two finally find an island of peace off the beaten track, the old hermit is horrified by life without a TV. In the final scene of the story, the camera follows him trotting all the way, chanting "how do we live without TV", to the ferry by the sea.
Here Moretti may have satirized the hypocrisy of intellectuals. But in this story TV is less like the evil Satan and more like the apple of the tree of knowledge, helping this man who has been addicted to the metaphysical world for too long to return home. The hermit who is fascinated by the world of television may be hilarious, but he still has options to escape. He trotted all the way, swift and agile, escaping from the heaviness and running towards the sea, towards the civilization and lightness that TV represents.
There seems to be a general disdain for works like Dear Diary, where works that "look lighthearted" are always less powerful than four-hour long shots. But Moretti, with his simple and refreshing style, insists on pure and low-key image and emotional expression in his works for ten years. For me, it's a more noble insistence. Although I hate all awards, I still feel very happy to think that Cannes, which has been unreliable for many years, has been reliable once and awarded him the best director of that year.
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