Watching the Dead King: After the "Ammonite" starring Ronan and Kate, we finally waited for another Ji film. In the 32nd issue of " Garden ", the one I want to recommend to everyone is this "Open Heart World" starring Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston. At the Venice International Film Festival last year, the film won the Brokeback Lion Award for its outstanding performance, and some people called it "the female version of Brokeback Mountain".
Column | Garden
Author|Hua Wuyan
Speaking of British actress Vanessa Kirby, many domestic audiences have met through "The Crown", "Mission Impossible 6" and "Speed and Passion: Special Action". The real breaking moment in her acting skills was the "Women's Fragments" that won the actress at the Venice Film Festival last year, and was later nominated for the Oscar.
Coincidentally, at the same Venice Film Festival, Vanessa Kirby had another film shortlisted, that is, Norwegian director Mona Fastold's new work "Open Heart World". This lesbian theme film, which successfully won the Brokeback Lion Award, allows us to see another side of Vanessa.
Compared with the highlight moments of female pregnancy shown by Vanessa in "Women's Fragments", as well as the suffocation and pain that are approaching the real; the 19th century classical young women she portrayed in "Open Heart World" are also provocative. His attitude and straightforward temperament are praised by fans and audiences.
But "Open Heart" is not a lace pornographic film that exposes two powerful actresses, Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Wadston, but it is a deep dive into the frontiers of the United States. The nooks and crannies of the period, and the tragic lives of two peasant couples. The film is based on Jim Shepard's short story of the same name, and Shepard himself participated in the screenwriting work throughout. Another screenwriter, Ron Henson, is the original author of the western crime film "Death of a Sharpshooter" starring Brad Pitt.
As one of the stars of "Open Heart", Casey Affleck met Ron Henson through "Death of the Sharpshooter". When Affleck asked Hansen if there were any good stories worth filming recently, Hansen recommended the novel Open Hearts to him. That's why Affleck is both the star and producer of the film.
In order to be consistent with the style of the original novel, director Mona Fastold uses a diary-style narrative throughout the whole process, and tells the story of another hero played by her and Vanessa from the first-person perspective of the heroine Abigail. A touching story between women Tully.
On January 1, 1856, Abigail, who lived with her husband Dale on a remote farm in the northeastern United States, chronicled her lonely, boring, and gloomy day as usual.
For Abigail, her life with her husband Dale was dull and uninteresting. Dale is a simple and honest farmer who works hard for the farm. Except for the occasional fiddling with his mechanical devices, he spends all his spare time keeping accounts.
But Abigail is a sensitive woman with literary fantasies. In addition to being interested in literature and poetry, she also uses lyrical and delicate words every day to reflect every layer of turbulence in her heart. Originally, after the birth of the young daughter Nellie, the relationship between the husband and wife was temporarily bonded, but Nellie suddenly suffered from diphtheria and died suddenly at the age of five. Abigail and Dale's marital crisis intensifies.
It wasn't until one day that Tully showed up in front of the church and caught the attention of Abigail, whose life began to take on a new lease of life.
Facing the restrained and conservative Abigail, Tully was much more outgoing and lively, and took the initiative to chat with her for a long time in front of Abigail's door. Since then, the two have embarked on a journey of friendship. Complaining about their respective husbands, revealing their hobbies and hobbies, as well as the agitated emotions between them, gave the two tired and numb hearts a rare warmth in the cold winter wind.
In the further in-depth communication between the two, they began to develop some kind of strange feelings. At first, Abigail just used slightly ambiguous words to write down her psychological changes in the diary; while Tully was much more frank and frank, she even took the initiative to show her love to Abigail and gave her a shallow Shallow kiss.
As a result, the two women, who are not loved by their husbands at home, treat each other tenderly and become a couple who are "cheating" on a daily basis.
However, Tully's husband Finney is a sensitive and tough character. After he gradually realized that Tully had become indifferent to him, he not only committed domestic violence to Tully, but also drove Tully overnight, taking Tully to another lonely farm.
At the end of the film, Abigail finally bravely embarks on a journey to find Tully, only to find that Tully has been dead in bed for a long time. Life had to go on, and Abigail had to live the years to come in the fantasy that Tully was still alive.
Many people compare the film to "Brokeback Mountain" directed by Ang Lee, believing that both tell the story of a gay couple cheating on their other half behind their backs.
However, there are still some differences in the setting of the relationship between the two characters. The pair of cowboys in "Brokeback Mountain" actually fell in love long before they got married, but they thought they would never see each other again in the future, so they chose to get married; while "Open Heart World" is similar to "Bridge Bridges" The "Cheating" design of the two heroines steals the forbidden fruit under the cover of their marriage relationship.
So, in this relationship between Abigail and Tully, we can clearly see the emotional difference between them. Abigail is more reserved and timid. Although she has long been in love with Tully, she can't bear it. It wasn't until Tully confessed and kissed her face to face that she expressed her more fiery emotions with an eager kiss back.
Abigail hardly ever took the initiative to visit Tully's house, and every time the two of them got along, she was wary of being seen by others; even when Tully was frostbitten by a heavy snowstorm, she didn't dare to visit easily.
In the final analysis, Abigail is indeed greedy for this sweet relationship, but what she wants is an infidelity within a safe range, not an elopement that goes beyond the norm.
But Tully is different, she is always eager for Abigail's response and initiative. In fact, she always wanted to break the status quo of the two, seeking the possibility of a lifelong adventure.
However, this tentative proposal was interrupted by Abigail's panic. As the film "Ammonite" shows, in the context of the mid-nineteenth century, it was almost impossible for two women to enjoy same-sex love.
Abigail and Tully's different attitudes based on love are actually closely related to the personalities of their respective husbands.
The reason why Abigail tends to have an affair is the "acquiescence" of her husband Dale. Although it is not in the film whether Dominion Dale knew the truth during his wife's affair with Tully; but whenever Tully visited the house, he would leave and let the two private parts. From this point of view alone, Dale has been very tolerant of his wife.
This is mainly because, for Dell, Abigail is not just a wife, but also a safe haven and support.
We can see the clue from the bridge section of the blizzard. The film makes use of the extremely cold weather of Blizzard's dance to show two points: 1. Dale's timidity as a man. After mending the sheepfold in the blizzard, he dared not venture home. 2. Abigail's tenacity and determination. She tied a twine around her waist and rushed to the sheepfold to rescue her husband.
This can be seen in the plots of Abigail taking care of her sick husband, Dyer's story about the psychological shadows he experienced after the earthquake when he was a child, and the fact that he made it clear that he could not live without Abigail. Dyer's dependence on his wife can be seen.
But Tully's husband Finney was different, a savage and violent Christian. On the surface, he restrained Tully with biblical verses about the relationship between husband and wife and the duties of a wife; in reality, he was a ruthless hypocrite who cruelly killed animals and took revenge on his wife. Without hesitation, the basic teachings of goodness and forgiveness in the Bible.
Although the film did not directly reveal the truth of Finney's murder of Tully in the end, from many details, we can see the motive of the domestic abuser to kill his wife.
There are a lot of details in the film that underlie this shadow. For example, Fanny once told Tully about the wife murder case in the county, the obvious streak on Tully's neck, the bloody towel in Tully's house, and Tully's dancing with Finney, her arms gradually dropped and she died quietly.
In fact, whether it is Dale's forbearance or Finney's tyranny, they ultimately point to the imprisonment and terror brought by the male discourse system in the society where the husband is supreme.
This chilling atmosphere is the most impressive in the two idle strokes of the film.
One of them is the Blizzard bridge mentioned above, in addition to the rescue operation between Abigail and Dale, there is also a scene where Tully intends to take shelter from the snow in the cabin. At this time, in the dark corner of the wooden house, there was a voice that said, "Come closer to the girl, it's warmer here". When Tully lit the match, she saw three middle-aged men who were staring at her.
Severe weather, superimposed on the potential sexual threat of men, became the iconic symbol of the era that inspired women’s physical and mental fears.
Another more secret critical scene is when Abigail is on her way home and sees a house on fire, and the young girl is trapped in the attic by the raging fire and burnt to death.
Here, the film not only borrowed the accidental death of the little girl to again arouse the pain in the heart of Abigail's daughter who died of diphtheria, but also foreshadowed Abigail's next more tragic pain: the complete loss of her beloved Tully.
These terrifying scenes with a primitive and savage atmosphere have an inexplicable sense of horror and loss under the excellent movement of director Fast Oud.
This makes people think about how much of Abigail and Tully's homosexual love is really based on love and how much is based on helplessness in such a cruel era that does not regard women as complete individuals.
As Abigail puts it in her prose-like lyricism, countless girls marry women who, without knowing the joys of life, have to wither away in the obligations of marriage.
When Abigail cast hopeless eyes on Tully, who has rushed into her life, and when Tully hoped to get the source and nourish life from Abigail's delicate soul, they once felt a kind of Unprecedented relaxation and vitality.
In the film, whenever the two heroines are shown getting along with their respective husbands, the pictures are basically dark and dull indoor scenes. As women, they either have to bear children for men in bed, or they have to handle heavy housework. The language of the shots is also often framed as a door frame to imply the two people's "prisoned" state.
When Abigail and Tully are alone, they are mostly in a space with sufficient light sources, or on the grass in the suburbs, or on the side of the fireplace, and the state between the two is mostly idle chatting, which is natural and flexible. .
As a result, the love of this pair of same-sex couples was especially heart-wrenching when Tully fell pale. The love between them is actually not just a couple relationship, but more like a soul mate and a confidant. No matter which one is missing, it is tantamount to enduring the pain of cramping, pickling, and exposure to the sun.
The film "Opening the Heart World" borrows the fictional story of same-sex love between the modern history of Europe and the United States, to dissolve and refute the male discourse system, and to reconstruct and fill the gaps in the female discourse power. It has become a trend in European and American literary films. .
Celine Sciamma's "Portrait of a Burning Woman" and Francis Lee's "Ammonite" not only focus on the subtle interaction between lesbians, but also refer to the loneliness and helplessness of women in the tide of history with pain.
The love between men and women is actually an exploitation of the supremacy of discourse power for women; only the emotions between women can play a consoling and healing role. Love is not only a hormonal catalyst for mate selection, but also a powerful means of gender criticism.
As a female director's film work, the film "Open Heart World" is also unconventional in sound effects and photography.
In terms of soundtrack, Daniel Bloomberg, a young artist born in 1990, was invited to play soft and gentle music with wind instruments throughout the whole process, allowing the protagonist's emotions to spread quietly. In the scene of the blizzard, atonal music and hissing were used to create a terrifying and unknown atmosphere of unease, which made people feel anxious for the two heroines all the time.
On the photographic level, 16mm film is used to make the film have a classical charm. Compared with "The First Cow", which has the same consideration on the screen, Fastold obviously adjusted the saturation and contrast of the colors to a lower level, which is very desolate.
All these make "Open Heart World" a very attractive film, which makes us feel sentimental and even more moved by the forbidden love of women in that era.
Column | Garden; Author | Flower without Banquet
Official Account | Watching Movies and Seeing Death
Editor | Teenager on the Roof; Please indicate the source for reprinting
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