Author: pASslosS
Among the film lists online in March, "Open Heart World" is particularly noteworthy - it was not only shortlisted for the main competition unit of the Venice Film Festival, but also won the Queer Lion Award.
But the audience's expectations for the film didn't stop there.
In addition to the blessing of Oscar winner Casey Affleck's "producer + actor" dual status, the starring lineup also includes Katherine Waterston of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" , as well as the starring actress "Fantastic Beasts " and "Women's Fragments". Vanessa Kirby in Venice .
The story takes place in upstate New York in 1856, which is depicted in the film as a claustrophobic place isolated from the world. A small wooden cabin hidden by ice and snow stayed on the screen for a few seconds, and Abigail couldn't sleep.
"Pride is almost gone, hope is slim, and we have a new year."
On the first day of the new year, Abigail described her observations in a listless tone. A few months ago, her young daughter died of diphtheria, a trauma that was enough to tear a family apart.
She and her husband, Dai Yafen, sat at opposite ends of the table, eating boiled potatoes without a word. This scene reminds people of the sinister black and white tones in "The Horse of Turin" , where life seems to have dried up and regressed to the primitive state of "survival".
One more thing here, this film is adapted from a short story by Jim Shepard , and the opportunity that prompted the original author to write this short story was a blizzard that occurred in upstate New York in 1856. While browsing the diary of a local farmer, he came across a note that read:
"My best friend has moved away, and I don't think I'll ever see her again." This note became the origin of the story, and at the same time it was decided that this would be a story centered on the character's self-report .
In the film, Abigail writes endlessly in her spare time, the only way she can express her inner life.
In February, upstate New York came out of the freezing cold, and no one could have predicted that it was about to be torn apart by screaming blizzards and savage fires.
When Abigail met Tully for the first time , there was a frank reliance in their eyes.
Unlike Abigail, the brooding contemplative who sees the world as an umbrella of ink and imagination, Tully, her whole body lifted, her cheeks rosy, and her hair loose in the air. She is direct and has no habit of being driven by imagination.
Abigail and Tully have created a space away from their established lives, and their men are shelved outside together.
They share experiences about family, farm work, children, childhood and regrets, and occasionally sit by the campfire silently or simply incoherent.
There is a scene where they wring out their steaming clothes together in the sun, and their emotions have been externalized into a golden scene.
Love is as precious as the sunset, and they fall in love. But there was no template to tell them what kind of emotion it was.
And the most successful part of "Open Heart World" is that the spark between Abigail and Tully is effective. Shy smiles and unmoving eyes, touching fingers, foot massage-like caresses, awkward kisses...
Their intimacy is built on the director's fine-grained insight into physical emotions, as well as the vibrant clumsiness and childlike joy of those who love each other.
In love, Abigail leaned back on the bench beside the table, arms stretched out in complete relaxation.
Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy.
She becomes a pioneer of her own emotions, loyal to the manifestation of her true desires.
Looking back on past same-sex videos, in fact, the most frequently used highlight is the "shame" that arises from the awareness of same-sex desire. However, "Open Heart World" abandoned similar psychological constructions, only let them fall into emotion, and postponed the doomed love as much as possible.
So the film is both sensual and modern-minded. Although the Romanian filming location gives the film a barren tone, after watching it, I can’t help but wonder if these peasants living in the 19th century were really so open-minded that they could articulate their deepest feelings and be honest with the almost Forbidden desire?
But these two points alone are difficult for even a modern person like me to do.
However, the foundation of "Open Heart World" is still a classic love story. In the tradition of heterosexual movies, this model has been tried too many times, and it is actually a little less challenging.
Coincidentally, "Open Heart World" and "Ammonite" are both lesbian-themed films in the 19th century, which shows that whether it is a true story or a fictional story, in recent years, filmmakers have intercepted/depicted "lesbians" from history. "Love Story" practices are frequent, and unknowingly, new safe zones have been created.
Among them, the gold standard is, of course, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" , which revolves around it besides "Ammonite", "Elisa and Marcella", "Tell the Bee", "Vita and Virginia" and "With Emily" Crazy Night .
The common theme of these lesbian films with period backgrounds is the invention of "love" in a time and space without emotional paradigms.
Returning to the film, in fact, in addition to Abigail and Tully, the two male characters are also worth pondering.
Finney recorded Tully's every move, where his wife went, how long she stayed there, whether she did housework, whether she would give him a baby, whether she cheated...
This is a male character tied to religious and patriarchal traditions, and the devil incarnate we often see in other films.
His cruelty to his wife stemmed from the way he treated women. The film doesn't deliberately highlight whether he murdered Tully because she fell in love with a woman, but it's conceivable that if Tully fell in love with another man, the ending would be the same.
But Daya , played by Casey Affleck , has an incredible arc of character. He always speaks in a hoarse, hurt voice (Casey Affleck's own skill). Compared to Finney, who tried to control Tully, the role of Daya jumped out of the existing framework.
At the end of the film, the audience can get a glimpse of the human side from Daya. He did not show any signs of disorder, nor did he use it to blackmail his wife. In the face of tragedy, Abigail and Daya were allies who persisted to the end and sympathized with each other.
Indeed, Daya is a person with limited emotional expression. To Abigail, he was as close to Tully as a sewing box was to an atlas. But he was still able to bury his longing in his heart and find a way to save himself through Abigail's feelings for Tully.
On the other hand, his question to Abigail explores the limits of man, a kind of "powerlessness" . Abigail's reminiscence of Tully, self-hatred for incompetence, and their daughter, are similar wounds.
But in fact, "Open Heart World" was almost destroyed by an obvious flaw.
What the audience hears in most of the pages is mainly the voice-over. It is drawn from the text of the novel, and although it is calm and vivid, its over-reliance on voice-over almost touches the taboo of the art form of film.
What's more fatal is that these voiceovers have a complicated and profound literary quality. When we take out a single line, we will find that it is full enough, so in order to make way for this fullness, it is inevitable to weaken the audiovisual.
It can be said that the charm of this film comes from the text, and the shackles also come from the text . When they read beautiful and delicate lines in the woods, the characters seem to have withdrawn from their daily lives. But in order to experience such pure romance and poetry, I persuaded myself to immerse myself in this kind of overhead aesthetic, and I accepted it without hindrance.
But it's amazing that, instead of being a nuisance, there are many moments where the voiceover creates a new harmony. The prose and poetic language has become an "atmospheric engine", and the director creates a new audio-visual structure around the text, editing, photography, sound and period elements... They transform the collocation scheme and flow forward and evenly.
So it's not that a film can't have a voice-over, but it needs to use it creatively.
The voice-overs in the film are more often used as unspeakable voices or private secrets of the characters. And precisely because of its calm tone, the emotional function is handed over to other audiovisual elements. The director said that the recording of the narration was almost a secondary creation of the film.
Impressive visual scenes are also present, as in this dizzying snowstorm captured by photographer André Chemetoff .
Many of the interior shots in the film are inspired by 19th-century paintings, including the work of the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi . The atmosphere of the film's exterior is reminiscent of painter John Singer Sargent .
Of course, the most difficult element to ignore is the music, which is a truly integral part of the film. Daniel Bramberg, who provided the soundtrack, had already started composing before the film was turned on. He was involved in the filming process, drawing inspiration from the natural environment and consciously building the scene around the voiceover.
The track on the soundtrack is so clear that it's almost a musical version of a private diary.
The trembling of the wooden floor, the neighing animals, the swaying cowbells, the whistling sound of the wind... use the melodious jazz melody to pull the emotions, and use the experimental notes to fill the anxiety and challenge, just like the blizzard and the wind that were abstracted by the sound. The screaming flames in the middle of the two fit so well. After watching the movie, listen to the soundtrack again, and the scene will emerge precisely in your mind.
Although "Open Heart World" has rich and complex elements, it is almost the opposite of "Portrait of a Burning Woman". The director of the latter, Celine Sciamma, was very restrained in the use of the soundtrack, and the deliberately created blanks successfully sublimated the few melodies in the whole film.
But we can see another scheme in action in Open Heart World. The voice-over and music that dominate the film can communicate. They walk on a one-line line and turn into different forms of prose poetry.
As the artist Laurie Anderson has tried in her music, she combines language with music, with music in language and literature in music. She has filmed a prose film "Dog Heart" , which is also filled with a lot of narration and melody, but it is harmonious and very charming.
If "Open Heart World" is a tune, the film's use of rests is also interesting.
Daya's sudden appearance interrupted Abigail's fantasies twice, once when the music came to an abrupt end to wake Abigail from her love affair, and once at the end of the credits, Abigail held Tully in her arms. , Memories of the skin-to-skin relatives buried in the diary, but the picture ends, and everything returns to reality.
At the end of the day, diaries are fantasy, and atlases are an extension of fantasy.
The text spy on his own heart, but also spy on the distant lover. Cowardice hides in Abigail's emotionally charged prose, her bravery resting in the enjoyment of pleasure, but incapable of saving. Just as she had sneaked up to Tully's house and magnified Tully's figure with a telescope in the corner.
Abigail is a bird that sings in a cage and a bird that survives the cage. But that's about it.
What can the words in the diary bring? In fact, in a closed environment, the only variable is imagination. Imagination can be used for suicide, but it can also be a form of therapy. It is a methodology for understanding the proposition of "being".
The only thing one can escape from is imagination, like Finney.
But all one can use to save oneself is imagination, like Abigail.
In the film, the dead daughter and the dead Tully uncover the bloody truth that "old fears always replace new ones."
The pain of life is constantly renewing, and new soil is waiting to dry up, and it urges the persistence and tenacity in the emotions to be more compact. In general, "Open Heart World" is a film that does not disappoint, and it has great advantages in terms of atmosphere, audio-visual language, and emotional tension. When you watch it, it will be like experiencing a phantom downpour.
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