The legend of Wentini may be the most romantic analogy between love and water: the only condition for the water elf Wentini to transform into a human body and live on land is to obtain a loyal love. As a result, love becomes a breath-like necessity, a symbiotic curse and a fateful ticking time bomb. So at the end of it, the Little Mermaid turns into foam in the morning sun, and Wentini has to kill her betrayed lover and walk back into the water.
For Wentini's propositional composition, there may be no more suitable executor than Petzold. As a director like a political and economic scholar, he is good at placing his protagonists into the grand history, and in the long lost, disturbed and aftershocks, love seems to be the only thing these individuals can grasp. for the water that gives them substance. Trapped, they rely on damaged love and passion in the void to try to reshape themselves and find meaning.
However, perhaps because the pre-set expectations were too high, Petzold's execution of this new exploration was not perfect. The collision of fantasy elements and love types in "Wendini" is poetic and romantic, with the heartbeat, the temperature of the neck and the dizziness of being washed by water, but Wentini's legendary setting that is too obscure and blank may be understood by the audience Story logic and character motivation create obstacles;
On the other hand, the topic of architecture and the urban development history of Berlin in "Wendini" continues Petzold's author's thinking on homeland, history, time and space, but Wentini's water spirit and urban planning interpreter's thoughts The two spaces of dual identities, reinforced dust and blurred water do not seem to be able to blend together smoothly. The whole story is like the separated water and land, lacking the bridge that connects.
If you enter the story without reading the synopsis, viewers who are unfamiliar with the legend may not know that the heroine Wentini, who has orange-brown curly hair and walks a little stiffly, is a water elf. Before the climax of the swimming pool, "Wendini" almost deliberately did not touch the fantasy setting that the heroine was a water elf. There was only a code word in the aquarium and a few strokes that did not spit after drowning. Details that connect Wendini with water. If it's a little more far-fetched, I can barely count the title card that Wentini sheds when she sheds tears. After all, tears are also a kind of salt water.
Such obscure handling brings a mysterious ghostly feeling to Wendini, and also makes the whole story melt into horror and poetry at the same time. However, this treatment also brings with it the unreasonable assumption that audiences from different cultural backgrounds know something about the legend.
If the threshold for understanding Wendini's identity setting can also be supplemented by "modern audiences have the habit of reading profiles before watching movies" or "Wendini is a household name in the European mythology system", this kind of understanding of raw materials The selective cutting and confusion caused by the lack of information reaches its extreme when Windini kills her ex-boyfriend.
According to legend, Wentini, who experienced the betrayal, seemed to have no other choice but to kill the betrayal and return to the bottom of the water. From the moment when the ex-boyfriend showed his love for others at the beginning, the love that allowed Wentini to exist has died out, the legendary curse has come true, and the countdown to the ending of Wentini's drowned lover and walking into the water begins. The whispers in the aquarium are the call to return, and Christopher's awakening is also because Wentini corrected the sweet and bone-chilling mistake with Christopher, completed the inevitable killing, and finally returned to the track set by fate.
Before Wentini walks into the water, "Wendini" can be seen as a symbiotic creature with love, a story that explores the origin of love with a sudden exception. From this perspective of interpretation, "Wendini" is actually more like a modern variant of "The Little Mermaid" than "The Shape of Water" (after all, Andersen created this fairy tale based on Wendini), both are Peeping into love from an outsider's point of view, it ultimately settles on sacrifice and a heavy sense of fate.
However, the above interpretations that may be far-fetched are just speculations based on legendary data. For the principles and rules of this fantasy story, "Wendini" does not give a clear explanation, nor does it express any kind of motivation involving Wendini's characters. hard setting. The end result is to turn "Wendini" into a bit of a bloody "life-for-life" melodrama.
At the Berlin Film Festival, "Wendini" emphasized in the press nots to the media, "After Wendini touches her own elements again, she must return to the water." According to the latter statement, it seems that the moment Wentini and Christopher were washed by the water when they first met, her final departure was doomed.
No matter what interpretation the creators prefer, it cannot be denied that "Wendini" is a movie that requires the audience to understand off-site information and a "movie that needs instructions" (quoting a short commentary). The obscure part of the story of "Wendini" is not a commendable ambiguous expression, but to a certain extent, it hurts "Wendini"'s attempt to discuss love.
When we can't be completely sure, whether Wentini's missed beat is because of unrequited love, because she saw the fate of chasing the debt, or a combination of two factors, we have no way to sort out Wendini's Dark thoughts and feelings are entangled like water plants. Under such intimate observation and the exclusive perspective provided by Wendini, we have no chance to really enter her heart. Maybe love is really more difficult to understand than imagined, and the water elf is really a mystery that requires us to keep our distance.
During one of the presentations, Wentini invited the audience to point out their location in a massive model of Berlin. In the close-up of Wendini's eyes, the white model house is infinitely enlarged, blending with the real scenery outside the window, and Wendini is also subtly placed in the space of the whole city.
In this compact film, Wentini's account of Berlin's urban transformation and architectural history takes up a lot of screen time. However, it is a pity that, apart from the changing placement of the space mentioned above, Petzold's reflections on Berlin's history through Wendini's mouth at other times have a strong sense of separation from the texts in other parts of the film.
The comments on the Humboldt Forum probably pinned on Petzold's greatest selfishness, using a building in the city center that violated the principle of "Form Follows Function" and carried modern functions in the shape of an ancient building to discuss its identity in the torrent of history The ever-changing Berlin and Germany. However, this meaningful line is somewhat unclear when viewed in the whole film, and I don't know how to understand it.
Perhaps the contradiction and compatibility between the new and the old is the reconciliation of Wentini and Christopher's new relationship built on the dead love, but this far-fetched understanding cannot make up for the difference between the sideline and the main story. Disconnection, and the blunt discussion of historical, political and economic topics under the setting of element spirits and the theme of love.
The relationship between Wendine and water is self-evident, and her status as a creature in ancient legends contrasts with the heaviness of Berlin's land-based history. Under this kind of writing, Wendini should have become a double bond connecting water and land space and its symbolic meaning, so that the stage where the story takes place and the story itself are integrated into a whole.
But in "Wendini", the historian Wentini and the water elf Wendini are more like two incompatible identities. When the branch about land and history travels, the setting of the water elf appears thin and not Appropriately, even this identity is selectively forgotten, and in the hot and humid love story of the water elves, there is no room for a profound discussion of the city.
This lack of a sense of unity is not because the theme of love is "superficial" and incompatible with the larger world (Cold War is a positive example). "Wendini" is Petzold's attempt to jump out of his comfort zone, and from the results, he doesn't seem to know how to start with the new material of elemental elves, and how to put them into his own construction smoothly and naturally in the system.
The scene design in "Wendini" is actually very good. The sparkling fish tank and the deep underwater with swaying water plants, the train station where lovers embrace each other, and Wendini's orderly but not warm small room, all embrace tenderly, absorbing their protagonists. However, the subtle lack of the sense of whole makes the space and fragment become a little broken. In a city like Berlin surrounded by water, "Wendini", the love story of water and land, unfortunately does not feel like being surrounded by water.
However, while "Wendine" may not represent Petzold's highest level (creators have steep learning curves for new things, after all), "Wendine" is still a very charming and Delicate work. The opening breakup scene is completed by the two actors in close-up, with the church bells and piano playing slowly in the background, and the next scene, when Wentini walks into the museum, the panoramic camera immediately pulls her out of her emotions. Come out and put in the building models and the crowd.
This is where the director's skills are demonstrated, and in the subsequent stories, when the protagonist returns to the same scene every time, Petzold can use different camera positions and scenes to distinguish emotions and tell different stories.
The most valuable part of "Wendini" is probably the depiction of a true and natural romantic relationship. The two actors Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski carry over the tacit understanding of "Transit" into this film, creating a warm and unintentional sense of intimacy. Wentini and Christopher lie in water plants and broken glass and are baptized by love and water at first sight. It is definitely the most amazing romantic scene in recent years, and the two people rub each other's necks and lean on each other like small animals in their daily life, which is also close to life but not at all. Body language that doesn't detract from the intensity.
It is precisely because of this that the end of this love is so poignant and cold. The water that Wentini finally walked into was the same water that she and Christopher swam over the water plants and listened to him sing Stayin Alive before, but they seemed to come from two planets.
"unda" in Latin means waves, but at the end of the film, the water that comes into view is unexpectedly calm. The legendary water elves returned to the water only after losing their love, but Wentini who experienced Christopher was lucky. She no longer needs to choose between love and water. The name carved in the depths of the water will be the proof that Wendini will always coexist with love.
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