――Han Xi
needs to tell the story before writing this film review, but to be precise, although this film is less than 30 minutes, the author has a feeling of nervous breakdown. I think most audiences will have this kind of feeling. I feel that this is closely related to the performance style of the film, and the story and themes expressed in the film are even more so that people must stop and ponder carefully.
The story assumes a major background, that is, the third world war, which is the so-called nuclear war. This film was shot in 1962, and the world was in a state of extreme cold war, so rumors about the third world war often It will appear in the media or in the mouths of some politicians. It is of great significance to the times to take this as a background. Later, although "Twelve Monkeys" borrowed the idea of this film, the background was a catastrophic virus. However, this film borrows a lot of pictures of the ruins after World War II. Although the form is a black and white static pattern, it can give people a heavy sense of history, and the sense of the city after the dilapidation is extremely shocking to every audience. mind.
Going back to the story itself, after the war, the survivors were obviously not united, so there was a distinction between those in power and the captives, but they could only live underground, the world was shrouded in nuclear radiation, and they lived like rats. Life. As a result, the captives became experimental mice justifiably, and those in power had to use the experimenter's memory to see if they could go back to the past. This was just an experiment and did not mean to stop the war. The chosen captive was named Ollie.
Ollie's memory has been cleaned, he needs a new memory to complete the memory of the past, in fact, this process is undoubtedly the process of changing the past, and the purpose of those in power is also this, they need to be able to change the memory of the past, of course It is only in the experimental stage for the time being, so let the memory created by Ollie gallop. For a person, especially a person who was a prisoner after the war, the memory created must be good, so he remembered the attractive beauty he saw at the Paris airport in his childhood. This is a memory about love, which doesn't actually exist. It was just created by Ollie, but it made him feel the beauty of life.
The experiment of those in power was successful, they let Ollie continue the next experiment, and they didn't care about Ollie's new memory, whether it was good or not, it had nothing to do with these crazy warmongers and these crazy scientists , and the next experiment is to send Ollie into the future. The experiment continues, but the people of the future do not accept this captive. There are no captives in the future world. Of course, Ollie is not allowed to enter their world with the fanaticism of modern people. Olly failed and was imprisoned again. stand up. But just when he was depressed, the people of the future recognized Ollie's emotions and decided to accept him, but Ollie planned to go back to his newly created memory, where a beautiful woman was waiting for him.
The story seems to be unsatisfactory. Although the people in the future made Ollie return to the pre-war period, those in power after the war never allowed the captives to escape. Just as Ollie ran towards the beauty, the power-holders also appeared beside him. Li died on the road to the good, and at this time, there was a child standing next to him, the child's name was Ollie, he saw beauty and also saw death, so that this child was created when he was subjected to experiments by those in power after the war. a good memory.
Thirty Minutes of Mirroring tells a bizarre time-space-shifting tale of human memory that's fun and jerky. The most important idea of the film is not the real person traveling through time and space, but the memory. This is by no means a Terminator-style sci-fi idea, but a metaphysical way of thinking. When new memories are created, the past naturally changes, and memories become so powerful, even scary. But we noticed that the source of all Ollie's memories was the scene he saw at the Paris airport when he was a teenager, sunshine, beautiful women and dead people. Among them, the sunshine and beauty are his real memories, and the dead are the images in Ollie's later creation memory, but he returned to before the war and affected the memory of the young Olly. Therefore, memory has become two forms. One is that the strong source is due to childhood memory. This expression is in line with modern psychology. Even if memory can be created, its basis must come from childhood. The other form is about the reincarnation of memory, which is also a kind of loss. The memories created by Ollie are all based on the image of beautiful women. This is a childhood memory, and the end of the created memory is Ollie's death, which is also a child. time memory. Therefore, although memory is powerful and can change many things that one hopes to change, it still returns to its origin in the end. A circular memory, no matter how it is created, will never deviate from this circle.
What exactly is memory? The film uses its form to express the concept of memory, and of course, this form is also the reason why the viewer's nerve is almost collapsed. Memories are moments, moments that lose the concept of time, and have no color. The entire film is nearly 30 minutes long, and almost all of it is composed of still pictures, and the only dynamic picture is less than ten seconds, that is, the beautiful woman lying on the bed and blinking a few times. Dynamic pictures will be missed. The memory is taken from time, it is just a pair of black and white pictures, which is the director's interpretation of the memory, and the free dynamic picture has nothing to do with the memory explained in the whole film, but a symbol of love. In the memory created by Ollie, every encounter between him and the beauties is intermittent, on the one hand because the memory itself is just some pictures, on the other hand it is an experimental reason, but we as the audience can understand that Ollie Lee was hopelessly in love with this woman, but what about this woman? The clues of the narrator of the film are all concentrated on Ollie's body, and there is no narration about the woman. Therefore, the woman's psychological activities are almost non-existent. At this time, a means is needed to reflect it. Seconds of dynamic pictures, eyes, and tenderness blinking, so the beautiful love is all explained. Although simple, it is extremely clear.
There are two sets of static pictures in the film that are very exciting. They not only function as a narrative, but also convey a sense of compassion from the director. The first combination is borrowed from the ruins after World War II. A kind of anti-war thinking, a lament about the disaster caused by war. Another combined picture appeared in the museum. Ollie and the beauty visited the creatures of the earth that were more primitive than humans. Although they were all specimens, they could calmly pay attention to all human behaviors. Combined with the earth destroyed by humans in the plot, it can be seen how distressed the owners of these earliest earths were. And the love between Ollie and the beauties heated up in the museum is undoubtedly a nostalgia for the beauty of the past.
In addition, the film is mostly shot with cool tones and highlights, and in the experiment, the characters are placed in a narrow and hazy background. This sense of oppression is in the sharpest contrast with the beauty created by Ollie, especially the graceful image of the woman.
The sound of the film is also very distinctive. There is no dialogue, only a calm voice-over of a man, who seems to be indifferent to the story. In the process of telling the story, the music and the inaudible muttering. Sounds sounded from time to time, and more importantly, the heartbeat sound effects during the experiment. The use of these voices has played a strengthening role in the film, especially the voices of murmurs and heartbeats, all in the prison environment, which clearly shows the dilemma of human existence and the situation of Ollie, while the high-profile outsiders are in a prison environment. Music is somewhat nostalgic in comparison.
The whole film is actually hopeless, even quite pessimistic. The first is the point at the end. Ollie makes a request to the future person to pursue his own happiness, which is also the process of pursuing freedom, but the man in prison stops all this. Ollie didn't die because of the war, but because of the people in prison. This undoubtedly shows two possibilities. The first is that people after the war still did not reflect at all. This can be seen from the existence of underground prisons. The purpose of their memory technology is not to prevent the nuclear war that will destroy the earth. , but continue to kill, killing those who are running for freedom and beauty. The second possibility lies in Ollie. If the memory is created by him, then he has the right to choose, choose the beauty in the memory, he created love and created beauty, but he finally chose death, so , Ollie died at the gun of the prison boss. Ollie's heart still can't get rid of the shadow of death, he still lives in death, so all his choices and creations are just towards death. The murderer is still the murderer, and the murdered is still the murdered, and the world has not changed at all. So people in the future will reject these post-war lives.
As mentioned earlier, the film was shot during the Cold War, and the shadow of the war did not fade away. It exists in everyone's memory. Even if you can relax your mind, this memory cannot be erased. Although the film uses an unconventional story of time and space interaction, it actually tells about the damage caused by war to human beings. This damage is extremely huge and cannot be avoided at all. Any beauty can only exist in imagination. , that is not a real memory, and the end result of the imagination is a beautiful destruction, which is more cruel than those memories themselves. Can the future accept these war-distorted or war-wounded people? This is a question, perhaps an eternal proposition!
Han Xi
2007 in Tongzhou
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