Chris Mark is best known for that 27 minute short film "Dike", which was made from scratch It consists entirely of frame-by-frame still photos, interspersed with a sober voice-over, about a surviving man who was captured and experimented with after World War III, teleporting him back to the past through a dream, where he was in a dream. Found the woman he was obsessed with. As far as genre is concerned, this is an experimental sci-fi film, and its groundbreaking way of reawakening the essence of the film - the so-called dynamic picture is nothing but the illusion of continuous playback of 24 frames of high-definition photos per second. .
The only "animation" in the film lasts only a few seconds, and you will miss it if you are not careful: a dozen close-ups of the woman's face as she falls asleep stay on the screen one by one. The picture brightens a little again, so her charming sleeping face emerges from the darkness again, and finally, the woman blinks at the camera twice—a shame if you happen to blink twice at this point.
Of course, if it's just a form of winning, then I don't like it. The moving thing about "Dike" is that, for the first 27 minutes, the film moved forward with a kind of detached, restrained, clock-like precision, following a rhythm that is neither fast nor slow, without superfluous movements, almost making people feel cold. However, everything changed in the last two seconds - what a wonderful chemical reaction, the rigorous "tick" sound of the previous 27 minutes, turned into two heartbeats in the last two seconds.
"thump". a bit.
"thump". again.
I had a lingering illusion that the black and white film turned color at the last moment and moved. What an unparalleled illusion - you suddenly realize that this "sci-fi film" is nothing more than a love story, so simple that there is no plot, only a heartbreaking fallen figure.
"Dike" is Chris Mark's tribute to Hitchcock's "Vertigo"; while "Dike" is a tribute to "Twelve Monkeys" starring Brad Pitt, and Michael Shamberg also made a "Souvenir", which is also a tribute to this film. Of course, paying tribute is not just a hobby in the film industry. The MV for David Bowie's "Jump They Say" is also a small tribute.
"Dike" is already very good, but I prefer another documentary, "No Sunshine". It is still a film strung together by a voice-over, fragmented memories of Japan. Chris Mark and Japan are still very fateful. There is a bar in Japan called La Jetée. Every day, people who pass by sit under the poster of "Dijin" and drink. Chris Mark also appeared... The wet colors, shaking shots, and self-talking narration in "No Sunshine" make the whole film appear poetic and blurred. How wonderful it would be to see it once on the big screen.
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