Giamatti plays himself in the film, Paul, a powerful American actor who lives in New York. Chekhov's stage play "Uncle Vanya", in which he plays the leading role, is about to be staged. The huge psychological pressure prevents him from being separated from the play, and he is very distressed. After learning that the soul can be extracted for storage, he decided to temporarily take out his soul, relieve the psychological burden, and replant the soul after the stage play is finished.
After the ancient philosophical topic of the dichotomy of soul and body was materialized, a Pandora's door full of artistic innovation was completely opened. The following story involves the appearance and substance of the soul, the leasing, trading, and smuggling of the soul as a commodity, the rejection of the implanted soul, the shadow price of intangible assets, and even the profitability of soul speculation. Hedge Fund! Of course, the most important thing is the eternal question of what soul is raised in the film.
When the protagonist Paul first arrived at the soul storage clinic to ask how to ingest the soul, the film very sensitively avoided the need to explain the essence of the soul. The doctor in charge told him that the current research does not explain what the soul is and what its effect. , But the development of technology allows people to extract, store, and replant their souls, nothing more. When Paul was told that he could wear special glasses to observe the depths of his soul, he immediately refused because he lacked self-confidence because of fear of a void in the soul. Therefore, apart from seeing the various weird external forms of the extracted soul, the audience did not face the question of what the inner soul is. I think this arrangement is very clever, because the topic of what the soul is is so important that it is impossible to explain clearly in one sentence or two; besides, there has never been a conclusion on this issue. Paul repeatedly mentioned Uncle Ben in the lines of the stage play. Hua, mention of Dostoyevsky, and even the drama itself of "Uncle Vanya" all reminded that the topic of soul is actually a kind of metaphysical spiritual speculation, rather than "an eagle". "Chickpeas" have a distinct shape and are clearly visible in a transparent glass bottle.
So, how to answer the question of what the soul is?
This depends on Giamati's superb performance. Without a soul, Paul first became less sensitive, his emotions were gradually exhausted, and his heart was hollow. His stage performances have become superficial and exaggerated, even wretched and disgusting. His physical form has also changed. His wife said that he "appears to be scaly to the touch" and "very dry". In order to save his acting career, he rented the soul of a Russian poet. Not only did he wear the dignified air of a bitter and cold place, but his expression and temperament also changed, and the whole person looked solemn. Xiao Sha is very worried. Not only that, he also saw fragments of memories that belonged to the Russian poet in his sleep, which made him heavy and melancholy, unable to help the "unbearable lightness of life".
At the end of the film, the inner form of Paul's soul was finally revealed. This fragment disappointed me a bit, because it lies between concrete and abstract, and the recurring images of children and life are somewhat clichéd. But after thinking about it, what kind of expression is there to fully show the appearance of the soul? Childhood Memory? Intertwined light and shadow? The tunnel of light and vanishing? The surging wave? a flower? a tree? A grain of sand? laughter? Crying? Footsteps? wind? cloud? star? Or is it the addition of everything, until everything is peeled off again, and the sea and sky become invisible?
Some critics criticized the story of "Frozen Soul" as too much from Charlie Kaufman (Charlie Kaufman), and the style of photography too much like "Being John Malkovich" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Beautiful Mind" (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), but I think for a young director who is just emerging, this is really not a criticism, it can even be used as encouragement. You know, Kaufman is one of Hollywood's most respected screenwriters, and it is not easy to make the story have Kaufman-like air quality. And to say that Sophie Bathers deliberately imitated or even "plagiarized" Kaufman, I think it is really unfair. What did you plagiarize? Is it a temperament? If the soul is really interchangeable as in the film, if the talent, imagination and temperament can really rely on plagiarism, then, God, give me strength, I will also copy Tolstoy, copy Kafka, copy Marl X!
I really like this story. I really hope that one day I can write such a work.
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