Leningrad in the 1980s-
A small auditorium was full of over a hundred young people in their early 20s. They stared at the stage intently, shaking their heads slightly, changing their mouth shapes from time to time, but leaning against the back of the chair for fear of making a loud noise. Around the auditorium, there are people like instructors or security guards pacing back and forth, watching their words and deeds closely.
This is the scene of a rock concert. There is no diving and no pogo. At the beginning of the movie, we sneaked into this "obedient" rock scene with two girls through the window. The camera shuttled between the narrow backstage and the compact stage. On the stage, a rock musician with sunglasses, his right hand swept across the strings of an electric guitar, his mouth tightly closed with a microphone. His name is Mike, the hottest rock star in the youth circle.
The concise story line of "Midsummer" revolves around Mike: Mike and his wife Natasha meet Viktor, Mike's admirer. Victor himself is also a songwriter and singer, and his increasingly revealed talent has been appreciated and generously assisted by Mike. At the same time, Natasha also fell in love with Victor. Victor regarded Mike as a mentor, and the three began a seemingly stable triangle relationship, but under the vibration of the strings, drumsticks, and vocal cords, there was pain that none of them could avoid. Humming a melody in a cramped apartment, copying a cover, or secretly giving a small concert in a friend’s living room, or returning to the club’s auditorium to formally perform on stage, directed by Kirill Sherebrini Kirill Serebrennikov condensed the three people's contacts into a few specific spaces, scattered in several black and white corners of Leningrad, the big city of Novi. Obviously, the director has carefully considered the lighting and scene scheduling, which complicates the enclosed small space. Natasha's concealment and candor and Mike's free and easy and loss are all intertwined with the first appearance of Victor's first studio album. .
But the director kindly left an outlet for these young Leningrad people: Although most of the realistic part of the narrative of "Mid Summer" is presented in black and white, the four surreal fragments interspersed in the narrative are presented in the form of animation. , Which is the "childish realism" described by the photographer Vladislav Opelyants of the film-accompanied by four classic rock music, the white chalk paintings overlaid on the live-action images started a tomato war for the dull train carriages, and can also be played in Leningore Le supports the entire universe, or makes this city have a warm red in the heavy rain at night. In these MV-style clips, rock music mobilizes the rhythm of passers-by and passengers of all ages and identities, implying that the power in this gloomy city is gushing out, and the turning point is already surging.
The film is adapted from real events. Historically, Mike Naumenko was the lead singer of Zoopark and Viktor Tsoi was the lead singer and founder of Kino. The title "Midsummer" is taken from a song titled by Kino. Like the sex pistol band that had a huge influence on his music creation, Cui himself actively voiced politics in his creation in the late 1980s. As an actor, he appeared in Sergei Solovyov's cult film "Assa" (1987). At the end of the film, he clenched the microphone in a black jacket and used his song "Change" as The end of the film: "We are looking for change with our eyes / into our pain and joy / into our beating blood / change / we are waiting for change." However, he finally failed to wait for the change to come; but to this day, "Change" is still It has been sung in the protests and demonstrations of the Russian people over the past few years.
In the film, the director Selebrennikov's performance on politics was very restrained, and did not try to dramatize or romanticize the political participation of these young people around 1980. The director himself has been the director of the Gogol Center of the Moscow Theater since 2012. He has been repeatedly censored for his dramatic works that have challenged and provoked the regime. A year ago, he was suddenly charged with “suspicion of corruption” and has been detained to this day. However, as far as "Mid Summer" is concerned, the director did not regard politics as the selling point of the film. Instead, he chose the most peaceful stage in Victor Cui's life, focusing on the characters and the story itself. Political tension is for the film. More is the objective reality that underpins the story. But even if there is no head-on conflict, we can still read their dissatisfaction with reality and the regime between the lines. At the same time, the director has cleverly used the tension of the political atmosphere through the dealing with the lyric review teacher and the audience's listening to the concert. Sit tightly and convey it to the audience.
Even for some senior rock fans, these Soviet rock musicians have a "honey taste"-they love the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Iggy Pop, but they also love Billy Joel and Black The Sabbath-but I personally think that such a smorgasbord of taste is indeed the Western rock music in the eyes of the young people of the Soviet Union at that time. They are what they love: they love manic riffs and smooth melody. They love little love and love. Muttering also loves screaming angrily. After all, they don't care if it is punk, hardcore or metal, or if the rock music is of pure blood. For them, everything is brand new, like taking off their clothes on a hot summer night and rushing into the cool water. They just want to get closer to it, to get closer to it. All labels can be removed, torn, and forgotten. Or maybe they never saw the label. Like babies falling to the ground, sucking the aura of the whole world frantically, learning words. They imitate a voice, a chord progression, and a riff, and their spirits are longing for the arrival of a new era. And it is these simple and reckless moments that constitute the moments in the film that really hit people's hearts.
Think back to the drunken passengers on the trams with spacesuits painted on them, and the cross-regional half of the country with a red paintbrush and a red dress just for a woman crying in the rain. They stubbornly run out of tune, playing their own beats, whether he sings the neurotic Talkings Heads or the arrogant Lou Reed, for these living people, they are just proclaiming in their own way With the existence of the individual, we look forward to the advent of change in our own way.
At the end of the film, the director chose to fall back to music and love. Return to the small auditorium of the club, return to the gentle and bold eyes that originally looked at the stage, return to the impulse and purely personal emotional memory brought by rock music. This memory comes from the Drum Tower MAO Live that I rode for 10 minutes on Friday night in high school. Maybe it’s because you don’t want to take off Kurt Cobain from the rehearsal room to the stage all year round. This cardigan, as far as he is a ticket to a music festival tied to his wrist, as far as Sao Rou is still hardcore, the memory itself has nothing to do with these definitions, or perhaps it has nothing to do with rock music.
The first deep focus DeepFocus
View more about Leto reviews
