Shunji Iwai's debut "Love Letter" quickly caused a sensation as soon as it was released, and it is also one of Iwai's works that we are most familiar with. It has a typical Japanese style, and the picture always seems to be high-gloss and overexposed, which makes the color fade part of the color, and it looks fresh and elegant. "Love Letter" is just such a pure film about pure love, about death, and about remembrance. When Hiroko attended the memorial service of his fiancé, Fujiiki (hereinafter referred to as Oki), accidentally copied his previous address in the memorial book of his middle school. Originally, I sent a letter without expectation, with a few numbers to express my grief, but I did not expect to receive a reply, and the inscription was exactly the name of "Fujii Tree". So after a few twists and turns, I finally realized that the other party was a girl with the same name and surname in the same class as Nanshu Middle School. Through the letters of the two women, the female Fujii Shu (hereinafter referred to as the female tree) confided the "good" memories of the male tree that were sealed deep in the memory, and also allowed Bo Zi to understand the side of her fiance that she did not know. Mie Nakayama plays Hiroko and Nyuki, two characters who are similar in appearance but far apart. This creates an obstacle for the film. Hiroko and Nyuki cannot meet and appear in the same scene. The structure of the story and the director's design cleverly avoided the collision between the two. The communication between Bozi and Nvshu, Nvshu's reminiscences and portrayal of Msshu, combined with the film's triple clue narrative unfolding narrative techniques, together constitute this solid and wonderful triangle relationship. In the film, Hiroko made a special trip to Otaru to see the female tree without fruit. The director designed a very ingenious shot. At the noisy intersection, Hiroko softly called out "Miss Fujii", and the female tree who had been cycling stopped and turned around. Looking back, the camera was fixed for a few seconds at this time. When all the audience thought they were meeting here, the camera cut to the panoramic view, and the crowd swarmed over and drowned the blog. The female tree did not see Bozi, but Bozi clearly saw the female tree who looked similar to her, and thus learned the real reason why the male tree chose him. She also resented, but in the end, Bo Zi shouted heartbreakingly "How are you? I'm fine!" at the distant mountain where the male tree was buried, everything was relieved and she no longer missed it. No more resentment, let go of all nostalgia for the past, and truly bid farewell to it. The whole movie is a memorial to the passing of time-dead old people, lost youth, lost love. However, as far as Japanese traditional culture is concerned, there are always resentments and death hidden in beautiful things. Japan has an allusion that "the cherry blossoms in spring are graceful and beautiful, but there are always bones buried under them." Although the film is as beautiful as a prose poem, it also hides the breath of death everywhere. The memorial ceremony of the male tree, the cold of the female tree, the death of the female tree's father, the dragonfly frozen to death in the ice and snow, the relocation of the old house, the rescue of the female tree, etc. These series of symbols conveying the message of death run through the film. In almost all of Iwai Shunji's films, he tried to peel off the veil of death from different angles, the fight in "Lily Zhou", the accident and the pistol in "Dream Traveler". In the film, both Bozi and Nvshu are shrouded in death. In particular, I want to talk about the scene of the female tree seeing a doctor in the hospital. She leaned in the seat and fell asleep, vaguely hearing the nurse calling the name "Fujii Tree". The end of the corridor was suddenly illuminated. An unassisted hospital bed drove from the corner. The scene was quickly edited two or three times. The sick car was getting closer and the female tree saw the father who was being rescued lying on it. , She and her father were standing at both ends of the corridor. At this time, the director used a compensation lens (Hitchcock lens). The camera moved backward while using a fast forward zoom lens. The picture suddenly deformed, the corridor space was elongated, and the trees ran away. , The camera follows her, swinging back and forth between the upper left and the lower right, switching her profile and back from time to time. When the female tree pushes the door of the rescue room, the scene suddenly switches to the farewell of the girl Fujii Shu and the young Fujii Shu and the beginning of middle school. The scene of the roll call. All the people she saw in her dream have passed away, and her youthful memory has also passed away, and now she is slowly remembering it. However, the brother-in-law of the dead father forgot the anniversary of the death of his eldest brother. The young girl Fujii was skating briskly on the snow on the day of his father’s funeral. In the wake of his death, he saw the male tree who came to return the book with a bright smile... In this film, Iwai Shunji handled the portrayal of death very beautifully, sad but not sad. Shunji Iwai, who was born in a TV station, also used many methods of shooting TV in filming, such as live report-style follow-up shooting and multi-camera jump cuts. Traditionally, in order to create a sense of three-dimensionality and space between characters and between scenes in a movie frame, it is very important to carry out the positioning of the characters and the arrangement of the in-depth composition. A series of technical methods are needed. Achieving these goals, such as the arrangement of tracks, the fine adjustment of zoom lenses, and the delicate placement of lights, are all processes that must be clearly defined in the so-called on-site scheduling. However, Iwai Shunji took a different approach. He did not want to blindly use the mature solution, but used a large number of wide-angle lenses, performed a large number of abnormal multi-primary light source lighting, and performed a large number of flexible changes in the camera position, which was efficient, time-saving and labor-saving. , But at the same time it can bring an inexplicable sense of presence, and a lot of attempts have been made. In the film, the director uses a shallow depth-of-field lens to interpret Zhongshan Mihui's performance, allowing the audience to get closer to the characters. In the composition, you can see a stable picture that conforms to the standard composition principle, or a picture that deliberately breaks the balance. People and scenery correspond to each other, and the timely appearance of scenery can always fill in the short-term lack of language of the characters, making the picture extremely fluid. In the use of tones, we can clearly see that when telling the clue of Bozi, the picture is cold tones, full of boundless white snow. At the beginning of the film, a long shot, Bozi got up from the snow, walking from very close to the screen to the bottom of the mountain, no people can be seen. The screen has only two colors of snow white and blue and black, and Bozi's clothes are mainly cool colors. It wasn't until the scene where Mr. Akiba showed his love to Hiroko that the orange fire appeared; when telling the clue of the female tree, because it was Otaru in winter, it was covered by heavy snow everywhere, and the color tone was still colder, but it was better than Boko; only in memory The scenes of the boyhood are as colorful as Hayao Miyazaki's cartoons. At this time, the soundtrack has also changed from sad piano music to lively violin music. The director used warm tones to describe memories, and cold tones to write reality, creating a sharp contrast, leading the audience to pay more attention to this memory, and his nostalgia and reminiscence of the past can be seen. In terms of light consumption, Shunji Iwai has his own unique concept. Shooting in high light and back light, which seems to be suicidal to other photographers, has become his signature movie style. This technique is reflected in works such as "The Love Letter" and "Everything About Lily Zhou". From a photographic point of view, so-called backlight photography is a technique different from normal photography because the final product it depicts is not identifiable by the human eye under normal circumstances. Generally speaking, the most obvious sign of backlight photography is silhouette, because often the background exposure level is higher than the foreground, the background is normally exposed, and the foreground without light will be dark. This phenomenon cannot be seen by normal naked eye observation, because the human eye will automatically adjust to ensure that the brightness information of the gaze area is complete. The backlighting technique used by Iwai Shunji is an extension of this foundation to uniformly increase the exposure, so that the faces of the characters can be seen clearly, while the outlines of the characters are melted into the slightly overexposed background. This is close to the effect of naked eye observation, and it is a condition that exists widely in life. Generally, movies will put a lot of effort in the lighting of the film, through 4 to 5 angles of light, to create a very correct character image in art, but it also loses its authenticity. The backlight can serve as the main light source, while diminishing background factors, highlighting the presence of actors, and greatly enhancing the authenticity. It is not pretentious and embodies the simple beauty. This tendency is common in Iwai's movies. At the same time, backlighting is a very introverted means, which is very suitable for expressing the mood of the protagonist in the film-the male tree has a deep and introverted character, and ultimately does not confess; the female tree's obscure favors disappears; Bozi represses The emotional sustenance. I noticed that in "Love Letter", all the places where light can pass through windows, doors, etc., all present a dreamlike light effect without exception. It is caused by too much high light, and the characters pass by. Blurred, the outline faintly becomes less real. One of the most classic scenes is that the male tree is reading a book by the window, the white curtains beside him are dancing with the wind, and the boy is looming beside the curtains. At this time, light came in from outside the window, and the boy was in a backlit position. If it is an ordinary shooting, the boy's face will be dim and unclear, so the director has done a fill-in process to make the boy's face clear enough and contrast with the high-light part of the curtains, and the effect of partial light spots appears, which is also true and dreamy. The female tree raised her head inadvertently, staring at the silent boy, her dim sentiment spreading secretly. At the end of the film, the female students delivered a book with a library card with a picture of a girl named Fujii Shu to the hands of the woman. The title was Proust's "Reminiscence of the Water Years". Nv Shu once looked through the library card, but unfortunately she did not discover the secret on the back. The book was handed to her by the boy Fujii, and that was the last time they met. Nv Shu took the library card, understood everything, and turned a thousand times in one time. In a previous memory about the past, she thought it belonged to Bozi, but in fact it belonged to her.
View more about Love Letter reviews
