Incompetent power
Text | Mei Xuefeng
About the author: male. Senior media person, digital product enthusiast, long-distance running and Tai Chi enthusiast. Served as the editor-in-chief of the founding issue of "Watching Movies·Midnight Show".
1
Compared to Martin Sicoses' previous movies, the biggest change in this movie is that he has become kind.
But it's not that he is not keen on violence now. It is important to know that this movie is about a killer's story, but it lies in his attitude towards violence in the movie.
In his previous movies, most of his protagonists are proud of violence. They have been immersed in a violent environment since childhood, and the only thing they are good at is violence. They are mostly vulgar and ambitious, punching out their own world with their fists, and then driving themselves into the abyss under the drive of their uncontrollable animality. They can't see the price that fate has already set for them. This is true whether it is "Good Guys", "Stories of Casino", or "The Wolf of Wall Street".
In short, what Martin likes best to shoot is a story of a person fighting against himself, but this kind of confrontation is beyond their knowledge. They live like animals, going straight to their peak and straight to their peak. The reef in life.
From this perspective , Coppola is too classical for shooting gangsters as well. The characters in "The Godfather" all have an imaginary cleanness in their ups and downs. Martin’s street characters carry a kind of sewer heat and trash smell. It is this kind of brutality that gives his movies a vigorous vitality, just like Joe Paisy in his early movies often played. The three sentences are not far from the murderer of FUCK. They have never had the ability to look at life outside of themselves, so their tragedy seems so pure.
2
This is the biggest difference between this "The Irishman" and his previous films. The role played by Robert De Niro is no longer the kind of jungle animal driven by his own desires and emotions. He appears to be quiet and calm like never before. Most of the time he was gentle like a gentleman and kind like a chef. He is the most fierce member of the gang, but outside of him, the normal world of black and white, the upper society that he can't understand at all, is far more vicious and cold than him. This is the real chill of this movie. The place. At this time, his enemy is no longer himself, but the world itself. He killed Al Pacino, which is evidence of his final surrender to this world. He was unable to resist, so he gave up resisting.
Whether it’s the landing of the Bay of Pigs in the film, the shooting of Kennedy, or the killing of Pacino’s leader of the National Truckers’ Union played by De Niro, the entire world is controlled by a more invisible power network. There is no way to escape. In the film, when De Niro argued to Joe that Pacino was also a high-level player, Joe said he was not counted, and the world was far beyond De Niro's imagination. This is why he still does not tell the truth to the FBI even after decades, all the parties involved have died, because he no longer has any naive or simple ideas, and looks calm and calm on the outside. He was actually scared to death.
Such a powerlessness is in sharp contrast with such a fierce character, and it also forms a kind of sad temperament of the film. Each of us has no ability to keep any of our beloved things, we can only go down the river. , Concurrent with the pollution.
Another key point in the film is the relationship between De Niro and his daughter. If we say that in Martin Sicoses’ previous movies, women are always touched by the violent but unrestrained behavior of the male protagonist, then this movie is the opposite, his quiet The youngest daughter was shocked by how fierce his father beat the grocery store owner. This gentle-natured woman has since moved away from this beast-like man in his heart. In this violent world, her favorite is the relatively less violent Pacino, but he was eventually killed by her father, so the bond between her and his father was completely broken.
He just watched his daughter stay away from him. His daughter is like the conscience and gentleness hidden deep in his heart. It tortured his heart, while the larger dark world represented by Joe Pessi is oppressing him. He is between the two. Dilemma, trying to maintain balance. He wandered between Joe and Pacino, trying to find a way to reconcile them, which was kindness within his power.
In his gang type, Martin merged personal tragedy with social tragedy and a life tragedy for the first time. Everyone is trembling, everyone is in a dilemma, and everyone is hovering on their moral bottom line. Behind their seemingly expressionless hearts, there are guilt and sadness that they can hardly express. They have never been so weak, and they have never been so normal.
This is also the change after Martin gets older. The hormones in the body and the anger towards the world gradually fade, and are slowly replaced with an understanding of the individual and the complexity of the world. So there is no conclusion anymore, and all that is left is a long and complicated silence. Just like at the end of the film, Robert De Niro asked the pastor to leave him with an open door, full of thoughts and no one to tell, life's ups and downs can only be cold and warm.
I am very happy to be able to see this movie, Martin Sicoses, finally has a Coppola-like calmness and Hou Xiaoxian’s boundlessness. This is indeed a movie that can only be made after he gets old, because only when he gets old can we have the opportunity to understand: Only in decline can you lead to a darker place, and only incompetence is the real bonanza of art.
Edit|Langlang
Typography | Turner
THE END
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