Then, there is no more. In the movie, all those who hold negative views are just talking about it.
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the competition for the best film at the 88th Academy Awards, the one that had won the most was "Wild Hunter", followed by "Focus". The latter won the prize, and most people are happy to see it happen.
Hollywood’s industrial system has always been conservative, but its practitioners, as parts of large machines, are essentially a class that has not fallen into decline, and its political inclination is “leftist”, just like the workers since the age of the big industry. "It is inevitable to worry about the "workers" and keep a distance from the "rulers".
In this world where the rules of the game are set by a few people, if anyone, such as a group of investigative reporters, speaks for the insulted and harmed who can’t make a sound, and wins a beautiful confrontation with the powerful, There happened to be another film that told the story restrainedly and forcefully, and there was no reason for the Academy Award votes not to love it. What's more, the main rival of "Focus" this year, "The Wilderness Hunter" is exquisite, but lacks the direct power of the director's predecessor "Birdman".
"Focus" is adapted from a real incident. It tells about the in-depth investigation and visit of a four-person report team in the "Focus" column of the Boston Globe at the beginning of this century, and finally revealed the ugly truth about the local Catholic Church's condolences to priests sexually assaulting children. That year, the "Boston Globe" related reports won the Pulitzer Prize the following year.
Initially, these reporters were investigating only a problematic priest, and they were old things that had been reported. Then a "survivor" mutual aid organization provided a list of 13 priests involved. This number was enough to shock the reporters, who visited the victims one by one in their doubts. It turned out that these priests specifically chose to start with children born in poverty. At the beginning of the 19th century, a large number of Irish and Italians moved to the Boston area, and Catholicism was their main belief. To this day, Catholicism is still the largest religious group in the area. Most people were raised in the Catholic way as a child, but in the new century, religion has long been relegated to the second place in the lives of most young people. However, "If you are a poor boy from a poor family, religion is very important." The priest took advantage of these children's rare beautiful sustenance in poverty-faith, and at the same time destroyed their faith. What the reporters saw was the broken souls who were still living in the shadow of childhood as adults.
And this is not the end of the investigation. A vulgar priest who has been studying this kind of phenomenon for more than 30 years told them that the problem is not that there is "a little black sheep", but that it is already a "recognizable spiritual phenomenon" in Catholicism. The reporters were prompted and began to look for priests who had been transferred in a short period of time for decades of "emergency response", "sick leave", "unallocated" and other reasons in the public church documents. Finally, they found and investigated 87 people. This number is in line with Sepp’s calculations-he believes that at least 6% of priests deal with children.
The journey of several reporters lasted several months. However, in this long process, except for the two lawyers working with the church who were unwilling to speak at first, and some public materials that could be consulted disappeared inexplicably, these "uncrowned kings" always There was no decent counterattack from the opponent. In the TV series "House of Cards" (2013), politicians personally pushed to know too many female reporters off the subway platform and staged the exciting scenes of "all martial arts", which has nothing to do with this film.
On a practical level, it is mainly thanks to the surrender of secular power in modern Catholicism. At the same time, this is also the aesthetic pursuit of the film. It may be that in addition to the revelation based on the reverse investigation of the directory, the other parts of "Focus" are promoted in a flat manner. The whole film does not smear the victim's tragedy and the perpetrator's crimes to form a strong "color collision". The effect—just like the Korean movie "The Melting Pot" (2011) with a similar theme, did not add to the big story the plight of the personal lives of a few reporters—just like most Hollywood commercials.
"Focus" is like an excellent investigative report, using the "news language" that accurately conveys information and reveals a clear point of view. While clarifying the scandal, it also allows the audience to have an "immersive" experience. How investigative reporters usually work. Also nominated for Best Picture, "Big Short" is also a movie about a certain industry. It uses dazzling techniques to explain the operation of various financial industries. "Focus" and "Big Short" seem to be two opposite ways. The former is simple and the latter is fancy. In fact
, they are quite different. First of all, they consciously want to tell you the daily operation of a certain industry. hear. This is not common. Although most of the characters in the movie have occupations, they usually exist as "settings." After watching "The Birth of a Star" (1954) for nearly three hours, you still don't know how a Hollywood star was born under the "big studio system"; after watching the three "Godfathers", you don't know Ke How does the gangster system of the Lyon family work? The movie didn't try to tell you this at all.
Secondly, both films put social responsibility first. "Big Short" points out that the upper echelons of the financial world are not completely ignorant of the subprime mortgage crisis. At the top of the food chain, they "just don't care" about the loss that the general public is about to suffer. Of the two, the mood in "Big Short" was more intense, and it was almost hoarse in the end. But "Focus" is one of the best. It is like an objective report. It looks up at the subject in the pen with a calm eye. It doesn't cry or shout, it's not curious, and it doesn't even show mercy. As for the reader, it's not angry or crying. Cry, that's another matter.
What’s rare is that in the situation where the “villains” were doing almost nothing, "Focus" kept the plot tension to the last minute. You can probably guess that the phone call of the daily newspaper would be blown up when the report was published, but the four reporters When you entered the newspaper, the movie successfully mobilized the emotions you expected. This tension, on the one hand, largely comes from the plot mode of "breaking through the barriers and fighting monsters" and escalating levels of difficulty-from investigating a priest to proving that the entire system has a problem. On the other hand, there is a small suspense in the film. : When
Robinson, the protagonist of the film and the person in charge of the focused column, reprimanded the lawyer McLeish for not revealing the list of problem priests he had, McLeish said that he had already sent a list of 20 people to the newspaper a few years ago. But it fell to nothing. Who did not follow up on this clue a few years ago? A senior newspaper office who has repeatedly held cautious opinions on this topic looks suspicious. Before the report was about to be published, Robinson admitted to his colleagues that this person was himself. McLeish sent the material to the Metropolis Edition. Robinson had just taken over this section at that time, and "doesn't remember this at all."
The truth is revealed, there are no hidden tricks in the newspapers, no one wants to cover up their own faults, and some are just too routine to "ignore". The reporters as the protagonists are not perfect people who are all drunk and I am alone. The Boston Globe also did not hear the shouts of these children in the whole city for so many years.
Looking at it from another perspective, the blueprint for the story of "Focus" involves the spiritual distortions of the clergy, the gap between classes, the "invisible hands" of the church, a bright but corrupt and unknowing city, and outsiders who challenge the established pattern. etc. Garabedian, a lawyer who has been working to expose the truth, said that he is Armenian himself, and the new editor-in-chief of the newspaper that sent this topic to the "Focus" column is a Jew. "Like me, we are bystanders." The lawyer representing the church urged Robinson to stop targeting the church, "Look around, these people are good people and have done a lot of good things for this city." Saipu reminded the investigation team that further investigations may have to pay a price, and the church "will let you Anyone who stands up to speak is silent."
Regarding this kind of motif, we can think of "Open Eyes" (1999), the poetry drama "True Detective" (2014), and even "The Dark Knight" (2008).
Regarding the "invisible hand" of the ruler, "True Detective" has a series of names that are obviously related to the cult, but the two detectives' investigations are completely inaccessible. They are all nobles. Some of them are only on the cult's core family pedigree. The name exists, and there is no official appearance in the series. "Open Eyes" has the mask that the male protagonist wore when he went to the underground dance and the scarlet billiard tablecloth of the scene where the employer revealed his trump card to the male protagonist. At the ball, everyone watched the actor being forced to take off the mask in front of the scepter because he was not a member of this class, and the actor later saw this mask appear next to his wife’s pillow with a look of horror. He stopped rushing to spy on the underground ball and returned to his middle-class daily life; and when the employer explained to the hero that the death of the beauty queen was an accident, the atmosphere was relaxed and frank, only the tablecloth seemed to greet Agha Mennon’s red carpet tells another story.
And "Focus" does not have those "organs", it is not such a movie. It has a very good degree of completion, but it hasn't gone further in art, or is it because it looks too much like a survey report from language to conception, there is not much metaphysical pursuit subjectively, and there is no flash of light objectively. Father Huansu said that the church would trouble them soon, and there was indeed a "mediator" who came to lobby Robinson and said that this was the idea of the new editor. To be honest, he doesn't love this kind of city like we do. One day you will be promoted, but where can you go.
Then, there is no more. In the movie, all those who hold negative views are just talking about it.
This is not fair to "Focus". To be precise, it lacks interest in the grand motif that may be extended in the blueprint of the story. After all, everyone in the newspaper at the end went to support the "Focus" column to answer the call. The ending subtitles showed that the truth was exposed on a larger scale due to the influence of this case. Because the involvement was too wide, the subtitles had been gone for a long time, and it might have been enough. Up.
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