The pull film of "The Gaze of Ulysses" firstly illustrates that each of An Zhe's films has very luminous passages that are worth analyzing. Here I only choose the last two parts of the "National Border Trilogy" as the drawing objects, that is, "The Gaze of Ulysses" and "Eternity and One Day". One is to save time, and the other is because these two films left me the most impressive. Today, I will finish "You" first, and a detailed review of "Eternal" will be released later. Secondly, this film review is mainly aimed at audiovisual language, with a little personal analysis on the plot and theme (many people don’t understand the plot). As for the other aspects of the film, it is not involved. Well, the feature film begins. Subtitles at the beginning of the film: If the soul wants to understand itself, it must stare at its own soul. Like most of the opening captions, the "gaze" here almost covers most of the themes of the movie, and the entire storyline of the movie is related to the "gaze". After watching the film, we found that the meaning of "gaze" actually has at least three layers, which I will mention in detail later. Next, a documentary film of busy textile workers was screened. The director raised several questions in the tone of the male lead: 1. Is the content true? 2. Is it really the first film (Greece)? 3. For the first time to focus on this place (Aedra Village)? After watching the video, we know that the answers to these three questions are no. 1. The content is not true. The actual situation is completely opposite to the utopian situation described in the documentary film, which is full of war and pain instead of busy weaving; 2. Not the first one. Before this film, three undeveloped negatives shot earlier were hidden. These three rolls of negatives are also the target that the male protagonist is looking for throughout the film. 3. Not the first time. It was the three undeveloped negatives that first focused on Adela. The real show begins: ①Scene: The male protagonist (the film does not tell us his name) learns the origin and destination of the three rolls of negatives on the coast, and he decides to embark on a journey for them. The long shot here is very interesting. First, it was shot in black and white to visually express the past story described by the narrator. When the lens returns to color (transition method), the photographer falls and the lens returns to reality. The fusion of the imagined scene and the real scene is realized only by changing the color tone, which can be described as concise and effective. Shooting the two scenes together also makes the protagonist's thinking process more intuitive, as if we have followed the protagonist to think once. This has many more layers of meaning than the way of directly cutting scenes and recalling. There are several similar usages in this movie, and each time there is a corresponding transition element, I will focus on it next. Here is the bright line for the film’s storytelling: three rolls of negatives. ②Scene: The male protagonist saw a crowd of moviegoers with black umbrellas, a torch singing team, and riot police on the street. He wanted to escape quickly. There is a visual symbolic element here, that is, the male protagonist is getting in a taxi. The beautiful woman I met before. He muttered a few affectionate words to the woman's heart. I personally feel that beautiful women are actually a symbol of the motherland, as can be seen from the referential nature of his words. He returned to his motherland with mixed emotions, and he must have a lot of words to confide in him. The audience, the singing team, and the police should also have symbolic meaning, so I won't analyze it here. ③Scene: Ulysses met an old man at the border and agreed to travel with him and sent him home. There was a subjective long shot during the trip. We saw the scene of refugees standing and staring. The background music also showed their suffering. Helpless and complicated emotions of the male protagonist. Sending the old man home, the old man was stuck in the same place. Obviously Kressa had completely changed (the baptism of the years or the washing of the war? Both?), she felt extremely strange and didn't know where to go. Here is a ring shot of the old man, gradually pulling from the panoramic view to the distant view. We saw that there was no one on the street, so the sense of strangeness and confusion increased, and we fully realized the strangeness the old man felt. ④Scene: He was detained on the train due to passport issues. At the border, he decided to go to Plovdiv (a filmmaker was exiled here). The fantasy and reality scenes were also photographed together. We followed the hero in person Experienced the experience of the two filmmakers being exiled in the past. The transitional element here is the person stamping the passport at the border. ⑤Scene: The male lead came to Bucharest (his hometown) because the two brothers My brother said that you can buy movie-making machines here. The hero began to fantasize again. How it was shot: The male lead is standing in front of the door of the carriage, subjectively seeing soldiers and pedestrians passing by (transitional elements). Then the young mother entered the painting. The hero saw his mother. After returning to the carriage, the setting on the train changed accordingly, becoming the previous style. The next scene: (Soviet) armed carts full of soldiers, singing Katyusha in chorus; workers with red flags? (I guess the identity of the worker) An Zhe is worthy of being a master. Using several groups of people with different identities walking around the street, he easily reproduced the environment and events at the time and created a very accurate atmosphere. Okay, here comes the most showy scene. ⑥Scene: The male protagonist has gone home and saw his family and relatives. They are celebrating New Year's Eve. In this house, the protagonist recalled a lot of past events. When he was a child, everyone spent New Year’s Eve together, his father was released home, his uncle was taken away, his father got permission, and the People’s Forfeiture Committee confiscated the furniture. Taking photos with the piano and the family... The six events were completely condensed into one environment to shoot. Only a few simple lines or transitions of characters were achieved, and this kind of thing was done by Anzhe. The following is a specific analysis: 1. The male protagonist returned home, and the camera followed the male protagonist around the house, giving us a general impression of the family’s dinner party: crowded, rich, and happy. Note that in this incident, the identities of several characters were clearly introduced by the male lead’s greetings one by one: Grandpa, Uncle Lan Jiro, and his wife, etc. We also know that today is New Year's Eve. 2. Follow the shot. The shot starts in the living room and then returns to the living room. Everyone was dancing, and suddenly my father came back. After giving a hug, my father immediately went to change his clothes. My father said "Happy 1945" (The details of my father's past are unknown, but he must know that he has a story) (In 1945, World War II ended, is it related to this?) 3. The dance continues. Then two people came in and took away Uncle Lan Jiro (this uncle mentioned something about the "concentration camp" to the male protagonist's mother in the first incident, and he probably committed this matter). At this time, Lan Jiro turned around and said "Happy 1948". 4. Everyone keep dancing (what is the melody played on the piano? Very familiar, but I can't remember the name, sorry). At this time, what permission did Sparrow (father) get (it looks like 80 families can leave), everybody very happy. 5. The people from the name confiscation committee came, and a group of people opened the door and went straight up the stairs. At this time, Sparrow said "Happy 1950". The group of people took away some of their furniture and even the piano. 6. The family decided to take a "last" photo. At this time, the male protagonist became like a child, which is what he looked like in reality when these events happened. We know that these events are his memories. Then, the camera gradually moved forward from the panoramic view of the whole family and gave the child a close-up. We saw the expression on the protagonist’s face when he was young. Next, the hero woke up in the hotel, so the paragraph just now can also be interpreted as a dream. Dreams gave a reasonable explanation for the surreal scene just now, but it was actually just an explanation. This condensed shooting method is not known to be several times more concise, several times better, and several times more powerful than separate shooting. Several things with a sense of age are completed by one scene, which gives the audience a strong feeling in their hearts. How does it feel? Just stare. To stare is to omit details and grasp the overall situation. The pre-departure and transitional elements of each event here are: 1. Father is back; 2. "Happy 1945" as his father said; and the person who enters the door to take Lan Jiro; 3. Lan Jie Luo’s "Happy 1948"; and continue to dance; 4. Sparrow’s permit; and continue to dance; 5. Confiscation of the committee members; and Sparrow’s "Happy 1950"; 6. Group photo. This is an excellent example of director's scene scheduling! ! ! ⑦Scene: The hero and the heroine witnessed Lenin’s statue being assembled on the ship; the reason why the hero and the hero were separated is complicated and not analyzed in detail. When they parted, the background music was a very beautiful piece. The symbolic significance of the visual element of Lenin's statue is self-evident. In many of An Zhe's works, there are images of such a thematic nature, each of which is like a flash in the pan, but has a profound meaning. Lenin is the representative of Marxist thinking and the spokesperson of communist society. Therefore, in front of the war-torn people, he is majestic and tall. From the subjective perspective of the male protagonist, we can see that there are a large number of crowds on the other side of the canal watching the statue, and some people even kneel on the ground to pray... So Lenin The statue symbolizes everything, you know... Here is a ring shot of Lenin's statue. Well, it's very meaningful... ⑧Scene: A young lady took the male lead carefully across the border and came to the young lady's home, only to find that it had been destroyed by the war. The young lady's words to the dead husband and family members were very poetic. The young lady took off the male lead’s clothes and washed them in the river, and put them on the clothes of the dead husband. The male lead’s well-fitted physique made her miss her more, so she took the initiative to make affection. What I want to say is the background music here, which is like praise, sigh, and emotion, and there may be a little refutation... An Zhe’s refined lines are also admirable, and the expression of Miss Sister is complicated. There are not many direct words in his emotions, a few actions, a few poetic words, and a few expressions. ⑨Scene: He came to Sarajevo where the war was raging, the final place where the negatives were hidden. He found the chemist and found the negatives. The two lines here are very important, making the whole theme completely surfaced. Male protagonist: "You have no right to suppress that gaze, it is war, crazy behavior, death, and other reasons. You have no right to do it." Chemist: "...and if I am not the collector of the disappearing gaze , What am I?” We finally understood that the gaze actually refers to the three rolls of negatives. They are the gaze of a captive (that is, an exiled filmmaker). Those few negatives must have recorded real wars, crazy behaviors, deaths, and other reasons at the time... This is the first meaning of "gazing." The next segment of audiovisual immediately increased the irony: ⑩Scene: The poetic dialogue between the two leads to a foggy day, a carnival day for everyone. People of different races gather on the street to play music visuals: gradually from the panoramic view to the distant view, scattered crowds watching, to the band standing in two teams. We even saw a man and a woman playing a lover's story on a simple stage. But under the cover of the foggy day, this kind of gathering looks very tired, but there is still a trace of vitality. Then, we saw people giving funerals, and there were tombstones everywhere in the cemetery, and there was almost no new space to bury the newcomers. Hearing: The background music here is beautiful, and the music itself has the color of "after suffering, a short carnival", this is the most iconic track in this film. These are few shots with a relaxed atmosphere in this film. Effect: The weak carnival symbolizes people's sparse hope for the future. The foggy weather has strengthened this sparsity. At the same time, the foggy weather also satirizes the great danger of war. If it were not for the sky to temporarily blind the snipers' eyes, the people would never have a respite. And only after this short pause can people have the opportunity to bury their loved ones, and have the opportunity to shed tears for their dead relatives. Of course, the effect is more than that, it is good for us to get the solution. Typical characters here: string band, funeral procession. Typical events: playing music and burying relatives. The typical events of only two typical characters used to accurately describe the general environment and atmosphere at the time, which had the effect of "seeing the big from the small". This is much more effective than spending a lot of money to shoot big scenes. For example, take a carnival. Does the average person think "dancing, singing, eating..." everything? That would not be poetic. Okay, here comes the most tense scene of the film: ⑪Scene: The male protagonist meets true love and walks in the fog with his true love family. Because the fog obscures the perspective, the family walks towards the enemy’s muzzle one by one; if the male protagonist witnesses the death of everyone without this scene, the color of the whole film will be much lighter. Audiovisual: First, the whole family’s panorama, and then the child will turn the lens into a medium shot (close shot) and a fixed lens (the frame of the fixed lens actually symbolizes a safe zone). Then, after fixing the lens, we only saw the white mist on the screen and the lines from the family from afar. After a few shots, we realized that they were killed. Everyone's voices here have added a layer of effects, and they have become very hollow, as if they have been placed in an empty field in the middle of the night, without seeing the direction, and groping at will. The hollow voice itself also hinted at the imminent danger. We did not see the detailed shots of the murder and the soldiers' looks. This may be full of intolerance, full of to all The dark forces spurned, or, more often, stood in place like the hero-helpless. The soldier's line "God has given us a great meal." The short carnival, before feeling seriously, encountered the end of life. As a result, the camera pulled back to the orchestra just now, and obviously, the joyous musical has become a tragedy. ⑫Scene: The male protagonist returns to the theater, facing the screen where no negatives are shown, and painfully chanting poems. The poems here are completely condensed by the protagonist (director)'s emotions. Among them, the "you" in the poem mostly refers to the motherland. Hejiayuan may also refer to the people and those in power, or it may refer to the audience. Until the end, the detailed content of the three-volume negative was not shown to the audience, and it was actually unnecessary. We know that there is no substantial difference between what the three negatives recorded and what the male protagonist encountered... Well, the second layer of "gaze" is there: similar to the two filmmakers, the male protagonist is about his location The gaze of Greece or the village of Edra in the era; the third layer of "gaze" is also present: our audience's gaze on the encounters of two different protagonists. Well, there are more gazes, and more than that... The lens gradually stretches from the close-up to the long-range, we see a male protagonist who is bitterly moaning, getting farther and farther away... The end of the film. Thematic analysis: The suggestion of the opening subtitles, the straightforward explanation of the "gaze" by the male protagonist and the chemist, and the strong contrast between the Greek reality described in the film and the opening documentary, we can roughly grasp what An Zhe wants to say: a For a soul to understand itself, it must reflect on its own soul; if a country understands itself, it must also reflect on its own soul; if a person wants to understand its own country, it must also reflect on its soul. After this kind of reflection, people can be better as people and the country can be better as a country. What is a person? What is the country? Of course, this is only the most direct and conspicuous theme of this movie, and there will be no more detailed and deeper analysis. Well, the second layer of "gaze" is there: similar to the two filmmakers, the male protagonist's gaze about the Greek or the village of Edra in his time; the third layer of "gaze" is also available: our audiences have two paragraphs Gaze at the encounters of different protagonists. Well, there are more gazes, and more than that... The lens gradually stretches from the close-up to the long-range, we see a male protagonist who is bitterly moaning, getting farther and farther away... The end of the film. Thematic analysis: The suggestion of the opening subtitles, the straightforward explanation of the "gaze" by the male protagonist and the chemist, and the strong contrast between the Greek reality described in the film and the opening documentary, we can roughly grasp what An Zhe wants to say: a For a soul to understand itself, it must reflect on its own soul; if a country understands itself, it must also reflect on its own soul; if a person wants to understand its own country, it must also reflect on its soul. After this kind of reflection, people can be better as people and the country can be better as a country. What is a person? What is the country? Of course, this is only the most direct and conspicuous theme of this movie, and there will be no more detailed and deeper analysis.
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