"In My Father's Cave" selects the currently more fashionable fringe theme-incest. However, these indecent content has not become the only material for the director to attract the audience's attention. Instead, the theme is slowly presented through a calm and blue-toned picture, telling the audience the sublimation and sublimation hidden in the movie content. Blending point. Brand McGain is a profound person. He is good at capturing the shining points in emotions, and he also knows how to dig out the dirty points in the characters' hearts. He is a surgeon wearing a nurse's hat. He used a scalpel to segment the characters one by one, separated the images, and then sew the ragged characters gently, slowly pieced together the broken images, so there are often flashback shots in the movie, occasionally confusing. But when you have completely digested the movie, you will feel that this stitch-by-thread stitching is so ingenious and so precise.
Everyone has their own private space, in this space, we can use our talents and hide our mistakes. You can make a loud noise, you can run softly, you don't need to be wary of other people's speech, and you don't need to worry about the evil of others. But a private house in a small New Zealand town suffered unprecedented rumors. Even at the end of the film, Paul set fire to the house, leaving only a painting that Celia liked. Why is the small private space? It had a huge influence. It turned out that strange anecdotes related to the three generations of "incest" occurred in the small house. The recruits include father, son Paul, Paul's girlfriend, and daughter Celia born to Paul's girlfriend and his father. The relationship between the characters is complicated, and it is not easier to deal with than the epic movie, and the clues of the film are complicated, and it also travels through time and space, so it will even test Brand McGain's ability to control.
There is no doubt that Brand McGain succeeded. He clearly put a complete set of clues and the events involved in front of the audience, and it was full and full of background. Paul is the main character of the clue, and his role is the son. According to the "three-generation relationship" mentioned in the previous paragraph, he is the most complicated and challenging. Firstly, he wants to establish a relationship with his father, secondly to have a relationship with his girlfriend, and thirdly to have a subtle relationship with his "sister." Shun is not a very easy task. At this time, the director's commendable shining point appeared. He not only handled it in an orderly manner, but also was full of brilliance. I admire such clue masters as Oliver Stone. I think Brand McGain is approaching Christopher Nolan's screenwriting standards.
In addition to the brilliant clues of the characters, the theme also appears profound and intriguing. The title of the movie refers to "father", so the comments about the father became the main theme of the movie. In many fathers' films, more than 90% are non-critical. In my memory, the father in Hou Xiaoxian's "My Childhood" is peaceful, the father in Xu Jinglei's "Me and Dad" is hot, and the father in Robert Bebeni's "Life is Beautiful" is lovely. But in the eyes of Brand McGain, the father is a symbol of evil. Not only did he forcibly possess his son's girlfriend, but he also gave birth to a daughter without regaining humanity and leaving the child without care. Only at the moment of dying did I think of this girl with a question mark, and shared one-third of her inheritance with her. But this can't make up for his father's sin, his father's darkness, and his father's unfeeling. During the development of a series of plots, the mother committed suicide while the son fled his home.
Therefore, Brand McGain's "In Father's Cave" is an essay criticizing "father". In fact, Paul and Celia are also a "father-daughter relationship" to a certain extent, although in the end they are "brothers and sisters." In this deformed father-daughter relationship, the daughter fell in love with the father without any burden. But Paul always thinks Celia is his daughter, so he only gave the warmth that a father should do. He patiently cultivated his daughter's literary creation, played crazy with her daughter, and even gave her savings to her daughter to complete her education. These "father actions" are very different from the "hell" of Paul's own father, and they are worthy of recognition and reference. But because the "father-daughter relationship" of these two people could not be announced, it laid the groundwork for Celia's disappearance below and found a suitable hotbed for gossip. As this article does not involve the plot content, only the relationship between the father and the child, so the plot can only be slightly covered.
Returning to the theme, the movie actually contains a third "father-son relationship", that is the relationship between Paul's brother and his son. After watching the film, I always felt that Paul’s brother was a weird person. He was not good at speech and acted independently. When he found out that his son was taking pictures of Celia, he didn’t take the method of teaching, but said coldly: Your camera will not Belongs to you again. Imagine that in a situation of lack of communication, the son must be more silent. As expected, Paul’s nephew is a shy boy. He dared not love or express himself. When he grows up, he will have a lack of personality, and this lack is just that. Caused by the father. In these three clues about the father, I found the thought that Brand McGain wanted to express, and the feeling that he wanted to show, that is, "the father's words and deeds hit the child's heart directly."
The soundtrack of the film has a messy color (Mazzy Star), which is also mixed with some violent elements (Patti Smith). Although these musical elements are no longer popular now, they can feel the shock of the soul when they are placed in the movie characters. Music is indeed the ear of the movie, and the excellent soundtrack can take the movie to a new level. Therefore, the confusion + violent notes make "In My Father's Cave" even better. The film won the 2004 San Sebastian International Film in Spain. Festival Youth Jury Award, 2004 Toronto International Film Festival International Film Critics Award.
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