I believe that when most people were in elementary school, they were taught by Chinese teachers to learn to see the big from the small. However, it is very difficult to do this. Throughout our own movies, we tend to prefer to tell big stories, big backgrounds, family and country hatred, love for children, wars, and strange emotions, but we rarely sit down and tell a short story. The steady-paced "Problem That Isn't A Problem" is rare in the Chinese film world, and it is the blessing of Lao She's original work. "Three Billboards" not only tells the story in a small point, but also uses some abnormal techniques.
Different names
From the perspective of business operations , the name of "Three Billboards" seems difficult to attract people's interest, neither can see the clues of the story content, nor can it guess its type. billboard? what? But after reading it, you will feel endless charm. "Three" means more in our culture, but in the Western context, it is an Aristotelian philosophical deduction. As soon as the film comes up, you will dispel your doubts about the title. The syllogistic evolution-"Rape to death", "The murderer has not yet been arrested", "What's the matter, Sheriff Willoughby?" These three slogans, each One can expand a good story, and the meaning is different. As a result, three lives in one life, three lives in more, the extension of the movie was expanded from the beginning, giving the audience countless imaginations. The number "three" appeared again later, it was the three suicide notes of the sheriff, the content of which was written to reply to the thinking about these three billboards. This is also the first point raised in the film: "Only through love can you achieve inner peace, and only through love can you extinguish the flames of anger." A
different rhythm,
but if you think this Hollywood-style "love solves everything" It’s the subject of the film, that’s wrong. Because the film is interrupting our expectations for the development of the plot with a different rhythm from beginning to end.
When my mother walked into the deserted billboard rental office, the book she read was "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". At the initial pace, it seemed that she wanted to create enough conflicts between the mother who seeks revenge for the girl and the slack policeman. Come out of Cohen's black humor. But the sheriff’s suicide made the plot take a turn for the worse. He even wore a headgear on himself when he committed suicide. “Don’t take it off, just call the younger ones.” He seemed to be open-minded. , But it is a kind of giving up in the face of incurable illness and self-blame that cannot solve the case. Under the full drama conflict, the inferior little police officer was dismissed for releasing violent emotions. This should have been an action to meet the expectations of the audience, but then the script shifted the focus of the supervisor to the little police officer. The scene of "Memories of Murder". When the little dwarf comes out to help the protagonist's mother, you will want to see the cheerful scene of the little devil character Yizhu in "Game of Thrones", but in the end, he just lost a few words and turned back silently after being humiliated. MacDonald’s script does not give a turning point at a fixed point in time, but it always gives a cold blow in places that the audience can’t imagine, just like when a small policeman throws advertising sales out of the window. Different
criticisms
MacDonald did not show many schedules in the film. Most of the time, it was the actors who played to their fullest in a small space, but there were a lot of criticisms involved.
In "Focus", the incident of Catholic child prostitution, which took two hours to concentrate on criticism, made the mother a bitter attack with only one fragment. In the "Central" region set by the script, conservative views occupy traditional power, but the various scandals of the church have weakened this spiritual power. The little police officer abused black people, and his own mother expressed his nostalgia for the slavery era. This is an old tune in American movies for decades, but when the new black police chief scolds him as a bastard, we will realize again , American "political correctness" has eroded into all aspects of the language environment. LGBT is also a topic that can’t be bypassed. Little police officers and little dwarfs are obvious targets. As the sheriff said, if all racially discriminatory are expelled, there will only be three police officers who are all homophobic. Regarding possible prisoners, MacDonald boldly criticized the American military privileges. The suspect escaped the restriction of the judicial system because of his status. This is unacceptable for the two protagonists who are struggling to the end because of resentment. This emotion is also attached to the audience. These places are where MacDonald is strong. He has a lot of criticisms to express, but he will not exert any force in these places. With a little bit, he can achieve the effect of two or two strokes. Different
Violence
Unlike Quentin’s movies, MacDonald’s violence does not give people an adrenaline-filled desire. But in the final analysis, the core of "Three Billboards" is about "violence."
Almost all the main characters in the film fight, using the ex-husband's mouth to express bluntly: "Anger will lead to greater anger." In the middle of the film, there is only one scene of the reason for the daughter's accident, but that scene is okay. It shows the influence of her native family on her-mother and daughter are too stubborn, in the face of rough life, there is only one way to do things head-on. This violent confrontation exists in every relationship in the film. Husbands, mothers and daughters, police and civilians, subordinates, and judges. According to traditional Hollywood script processing methods, after several violent-forgiveness treatments, It will usher in the embrace of the view of "love inclusive of everything", but MacDonald played with the audience again. In the end, he arranged for the two protagonists who were originally contradictory to embark on the "Bonnie and Clyde" with violence against violence. The road completely subverts the possibility of tenderness, and makes us more deeply aware that some pains are indeed not solved by simple revenge or simple letting go, but may be impossible to solve at all.
As the lyrics of "The Last Rose of Summer" appearing repeatedly in the film, "And fond ones are flown, oh, who would inhabit, this bleak world alone?" The people are gone, and my heart is gone.
The different scripts
"Three Billboards" and "The Shape of Water" won two awards in Venice last year, giving a sigh of relief to the inadequacy of American films at European film festivals in recent years. Unlike the latter, the former is almost entirely supported by scripts and performances. In this more than one-hour work, we saw the ups and downs of the plot, and also saw the unreasonable but natural ups and downs, and finally ushered in a meaningful blank.
MacDonald’s script shows us such a good story that goes the other way, exquisitely but not deliberately. He does not need a grand narrative background, a complicated relationship with many characters, or a beautiful photography and a soundtrack that surrounds the beam. He only needs to let the actors perform restraint, accurately grasp the rhythm, and not tell the story. Take a look at the right time.
This is what Chinese screenwriters need to learn, because we haven't seen such a short, concise and rich original story on the screen for a long, long time.
(Rollin)
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