When the expression is still, the colors start to jump.
Aki Kaurismaki is a Finnish director. He is very good at capturing the deep and majestic emotion of the calm alienation of the Finns. I don't know if the land of Northern Europe is because of the cold or because of loneliness, their restraint and calmness are more extreme than the Japanese. I have heard that if you take a bus in Finland and there is a person in the front of the bus and all other seats are empty, the second person who gets on the bus will definitely sit on the other side of the last row.
This is a nation that feels that its breath disturbs the other.
"The World of Floating Clouds" begins with a warm piano piece. The hoarse and mellow male voice makes people feel as warm as being soaked in mulled wine. A waitress led a couple to their seats and handed them two wine red menus. This is our heroine, Aina. She is a restaurant foreman who has to deal with various matters in the restaurant, including alcoholism and frequent breakdowns. chef.
The story revolves around her and her husband, Kerry, a bus driver. The two live a peaceful life with little surprises, but soon they lose their jobs one after another. After losing their jobs, the two of them faced various life crises that followed. Through this contradiction, the film showed the relationship and destiny between husband and wife. At first, you may suspect that these two are a good-looking couple. They speak indifferently to each other and communicate bluntly; but slowly through a series of life changes, in those hidden details, you can feel the difference between the two people. Booming love and strong trust.
This is Nordic love - when we look up at the sky together, we hug each other deeply.
What impresses me about this film is not only its calm and strong emotions, but also its wonderful set art. The biggest feature is the constant appearance and repetition of red. It's almost the same red, maybe even the same piece of cloth, throughout the film.
When several kinds of red appear in the picture at the same time and overlap in space, Akey also deliberately designed the distinction between "red as the background" and "red as the main body". The distinction is nicely drawn by lightness and purity.
and the use of red with other colors
red and blue
red and green
Other colors in the film are also used very delicately, including furniture decorations, which reveal the simplicity of the Nordics, yet delicate and lovely, and their "hugge" spirit.
If red is the star of Aki Kaurismaki's film, then yellow is his neutralizer. The appearance of khaki makes red and blue and green harmonious and orderly at all times.
The setting of "The World of Floating Clouds" has a strong sense of stage. The furnishings in the home are almost very simple, but the location, style and color of each furnishings are very elegant, and you can clearly feel a "sense of arrangement". In terms of color, almost all of them are of low purity and low brightness, but boldly used contrasting colors; character performances are often calm, but in music they often express romance, sadness or sadness in a sad and straightforward manner. And the shot scheduling is very simple, almost fixed camera position, panorama + medium shot, rarely close-up, and occasionally the shot "pushes down the characters" emphasizes the psychological activities of the characters. This simple shooting technique and the flat performance of the actors further accentuate the stage sense of the film.
Deliberate art and scenery, but the characterization is very delicate and real, just like a real life repertoire on stage.
Outside the article:
1. When the budget is limited and there are many scenes and a large area of color needs to be used, a certain color can be used as the protagonist throughout the film, so that it can play different functions and roles in different scenes, and change it in different scenes. Harmonize other colors to let the main line color create a different atmosphere.
2. I like Aki's soundtrack very much. When I wrote this article, I searched for him. It is said that every movie of his will have a record player and a band. He himself also insisted that a movie should not exceed two hours, because he loves smoking and is afraid of affecting smoking, his movies basically do not exceed 90 minutes, or even shorter.
3. He is also a very "leftist" director, always focusing on the little people and people at the bottom. He has a strong feeling for workers, including the restaurant "TYO" opened by the couple at the end of the film, which translates as "workers restaurant". If he is a Nordic director, it is better to say that the proletarian working spirit of Eastern Europe has a deeper influence on him.
4. There was a photo of the couple's outdated son in "The World in Floating Clouds". In fact, it was the death of an actor whom Aki worked with many times. The film used the photo of the actor when he was a child to remember him. Such a gentle person.
5. Some people say that Archie's colors are very similar to Edward Hope's paintings. Maybe the color matching is true, but his scenes will be warmer. Maybe Hope is depicting the lonely bourgeoisie, and in Archie's eyes The little people at the bottom are more warm and optimistic.
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