"Zama" is an extremely rich film in terms of images and texts.
The Spanish military officer Zama, who was born in Argentina, was eager to be transferred to a better position, but to no avail.
When the title ZAMA appeared, the overall structure of the film was clearly revealed in the story of the aborigines. Zama is like the kind of fish in the mouth of the aborigines, trapped on the riverbank for life, coexisting with elements that repel oneself, struggling for a lifetime but staying in place. In the video, the director almost all chose a fixed medium and long lens. No matter how complicated the movement of the characters is, the frame of the scene always locks the movement in it like a cage, resulting in a sticky spatial state. Not only that, the tone of "Zama" also tends to be in a state of overflow, as thick as the clay on the bottom of a river, forming the bottom tone of the image, a slow to flow impediment. Even if there is no complex character movement in the space, the director is still full of deep colors (like the thick coating method in oil painting) and intentionally aggravated environmental sounds (constant humming of insects and birds), creating a space for an almost static picture The sense of volume. However, in this swollen sense of volume, the audience is as comfortable as Zama. But the slow-flowing and unbearable look is exactly what the director needs. She used clever techniques to break through the barriers between the film characters and the sense of reality. The screen becomes a mirror. Through the screen, we complete the self-assimilation of the mirror image (that is, the protagonist Zama).
In the text, there are also many recurring images, which further enhances the sense of closure of the film. The most important of these is Vikunya, a god of death who does no evil. Although Vikunya has died thousands of times in people's mouths, to Zama, he has always been like a ghost, wandering in the hot and humid air. In a sense, Vykunya’s phantom, like Zama’s desire to be dispatched, became a hopeless thought that was subjectively given up and killed the anger. More secondary images, such as bees, spiders, and coconuts, have also been mentioned in the movie more than once. They all show an inescapable and circular view of historical time and space in this primitive rainforest of South America. . In such a cinematic space, the clear binary opposition between enslavement and being enslaved, natural and unnatural, has been blurred. No side has a completely overwhelming victory that should have happened. The colonizer and the colonized are like two sides of one body, mutually exclusive and entangled, struggling for life on this continent.
For Zama, living in such an environment caused his self-spirit to withdraw. In scenes such as a dialogue with the governor, the director deliberately dilutes the original narrative main line dialogue, and instead materializes the heart activities of other characters and brings them to the most conspicuous position. Zama's sense of subjectivity disappears, and the lens captures the perception of the environment different from Zama's body like a floating ghost. In some scenes (uninhabited hotels), ghosts appear directly in physical form, and then naturally connect to the plot of Zama's illness and physical weakness. The wear and tear of the environment on the body leads to the escape of the spirit. In the last part of the development, Zama volunteered to join the forces hunting down Vikunya. The unshaven Zama, physically and mentally worn to the limit, was obviously unable to complete any tasks. Later, he was taken prisoner by Vikunya, which was completely expected. And Zama, who finally broke his arm, awakened his perception through death, and faced the little boy's question "Do you want to live?", I wonder if he still has the strength to answer?
It’s also interesting that as a female director, Luquicia’s re-creation after many years, Zama’s pursuit of multiple sets of female characters ended in a disastrous defeat. From peeping a bath on the grass at the beginning to violently beating others, Zama has been in a situation of superficial superiority but actually helpless when confronting women many times. Zama, who has an official position, is not spiritually favored by any women. He is helpless like a beggar on the street, which seems to herald a certain dilemma for modern men.
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