"Joker", the winner of this year's Venice Golden Lion Award for Best Picture, " officially" met with domestic audiences a month ago, triggering another round of heated discussions. Although "Joker" has been well received, it does not mean that the other shortlisted films of this film festival are not worth paying attention to. On the contrary, there is a very dazzling masterpiece.
Rotten Tomatoes freshness up to 97%, has been demanding Metacritic gives the ultra-high 94 points points , second only to the annual Bong Joon-ho 's "parasites" , and Martin Scorsese new work of "Irish" with point.
Although it has not been received in Venice, this film can be called the uncrowned king . It ranks first with a super high score of 3.95 in the international media magazine score. The second and third places in the list are Poland, which has recently been caught in a storm. Skye's new works "I accuse" (3.7 points) and "Joker" (3.4 points).
At the Toronto Film Festival shortly thereafter , it took second place at the People's Choice Awards , behind JoJo Rabbit, another awards season hit .
As a sketch movie , this film can gain such a high reputation, it is really hard for the audience not to look forward to——
From all the materials released by the film party, including posters and trailers, it is not difficult for the audience to see that this is a "dual perspective" movie.
Like the trailer clip, the film opens by showing the audience a throwback to various happy moments in their past lives, complemented by the respective voice-overs of the two protagonists and a rather soft, cheerful, loving and sad soundtrack.
The hero Charlie (Adam Driver) tells about the kindness and warmth of the heroine Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), as well as her talent as an actress; while Nicole introduces Charlie's self-confidence and greatness as a playwright. Creativity and being considerate as a father are responsible.
Through this rather beautiful "mutual introduction", the audience will understand the character characteristics of the two protagonists, and the distance with the characters will be quickly shortened.
This scene also emphasizes the depth of cognitive understanding and love between the male and female protagonists - after all, it is a scene of "sprinkling dog food". But in the subsequent scenes, the movie quickly revealed the "truth" of the story. Charlie and Nicole are facing the problem of a broken marriage . They are being mediated by a mediator, and the previous voice-over is that they are each under the mediator's request. Write yourself appreciating each other's strengths and why.
The film opens with a very efficient and warm narrative rhythm to this perhaps not-so-warm-looking story, a "marriage story" about divorce .
Director Noah Baumbach is not a shame for movie fans. As a creative filmmaker, Baumbach has continued to contribute to "Frances Ha" after his directorial debut "Twenty Years of Madness ". , "American Mistress" , "Meyerowitz's Story" , and also served as the screenwriter of "Fantastic Daddy Fox" .
The filmmaker's style can be described by the word "talking" . Most of the rambling characters are trapped in life due to various trivial matters or troubles. It is the pursuit and confusion of young people about the past, present, future and friendship, family and love.
This story comes from the creators of the role and the type of real-life experience, very easy for the audience to find resonance and sense of substitution, and therefore popular pursuit to become a unique type: mumblecore (Mumblecore).
Although it may not be a typical Whisperer, Baumbach also obviously absorbed the essence of this genre, and created one after another very talkative but very vivid and lovely characters in the film , and this time "Marriage Story" is the same. .
As the story of the film progresses, the audience will understand the two parties who are divorcing from different perspectives, and perceive the character characteristics of the two protagonists, their strengths and weaknesses, their thoughts and choices, and the love and relationship between them through the bits and pieces of life. Finally, the reasons for divorce and the struggles behind it are tangled.
With the characters as the core, the quality of the film is naturally directly related to the performance of the actors. Fortunately, "Marriage Life" does show the excellent performance status and achievements of the two leading actors.
Although they all have some of the top roles in Hollywood movies and the popularity behind them (Adam Driver is the villain of the recent "Star Wars" trilogy Kylo Ren , and Scarlett Johansson, not to mention the leading role starring Marvel "black widow" next year will be released), but unlike the role of science fiction movies or diffuse change commercial film set in the "marriage story" movie theme this a reality, the main role must be done to-life flesh and blood before It is possible to convince the audience and then empathize with it, which will be more intuitive in terms of acting skills.
Facts show that without the shackles of Hollywood's key projects, the performance of the two is obviously more casual, natural and full of vitality :
Charlie's conceit and dominance are advantages as a theatre director as an artist, but as a husband as a father, as part of a marriage, they turn into arrogance and straight men's cancer for granted ; Nicole's concern for emotional Sensitivity makes her a good actress, but in her love life, this, along with her shyness to communicate, has become one of the triggers for the breakdown of the marriage.
All kinds of trivial and real life and emotional details are shown just right and layered by the two leading actors, which naturally makes the characters more vivid and allows the audience to see the happiness and misfortune in their relationship more clearly.
After the emotional accumulation in the first half is over, the super expressive power brought by the film in the second half is enough to make everyone stunned.
In a rather long shot, Charlie and Nicole were first discussing some specific matters of the divorce, but as the topic continued to deepen, the two sides began to turn over old accounts and accuse each other, and this accusation quickly escalated became a quarrel .
The initial quarrel still had some content and reasons to speak, but when both sides lost their minds and were completely dominated by anger, the quarrel evolved to the point of mutual abuse and curses, and even accompanied by violent behavior of smashing things and furniture. After calming down, the two sides realized what just happened and what kind of damage they had caused to each other, but this kind of damage doesn't seem to be able to make up for the suture by crying and saying sorry at the end.
This can be called the best quarrel scene in recent years, showing a real "quarrel scene". The two actors used a strong explosive force to match the long-shot scheduling of the indoor scene of the film, making the extremely powerful emotions wantonly The explosion hit every viewer .
As far as the scene is concerned, everyone breathed a sigh of relief after the scene, and some audience members silently wiped away the tears swirling in their eyes. After all, arguing is a very personal but also very common life experience. .
Despite its focus on divorce, "Marriage" is also heartwarming, especially in the context of their eight-year-old son Henry .
Maybe Charlie and Nicole are not good husbands and wives, but they must be trying to be good parents and good mothers, and the main conflict that the film focuses on is also the custody they are fighting for.
Despite the breakdown of the marriage, Henry was always their emotional bond and an "excuse" for them to keep in touch, and the two cared and competed for Henry (even Charlie made a lot of jokes), the same Both parties make up for the failure of the marriage and for each other's guilt and regret .
Through this setting, the film outlines another possibility for the emotional life of contemporary people - maybe divorce does not have to be a tragic ending . Of course, as the suspense that runs through the whole film, the final outcome of the two protagonists still needs to be verified by the audience in person.
It is worth mentioning that this time, director Baumbach did not root the story of the film in New York as before, but turned the city into a narrative background, setting the twin-city background of New York and Los Angeles .
This setting not only brings a bit of "Broadway VS Hollywood" interest to the film, but also expands the range of groups the film focuses on - this time, the story is no longer about the despondent young people in New York, but expanded to The emotional distress and marital problems that middle-class families across the United States and even the world may face .
Judging from the feedback from the final harvest of this film, Baumbach does have the possibility of taking a big step forward and becoming a "master". Of course, whether the director can become a new master, or even become Woody Allen 's successor, still needs to be gradually verified in subsequent works. But there's no question that "Marriage Story" is one of the most unmissable movies of the year.
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