Thomas is a director in Hollywood. As a director, his career has encountered a bottleneck, and he has not produced a work for four years; on the contrary, his wife's acting career is booming, and he has just won the Emmy Award. Unfortunately, in this case, the wife's infidelity led to the breakdown of the marriage, and Thomas had to leave his beloved daughter and return to being single. Once, Thomas couldn't sleep on a night flight, and finished reading a realistic crime theme that he was not interested in - the book "The Face of an Angel" written by the Roman female journalist Simone about the death of a schoolgirl, and produced a novel. Interested in making it into a movie. So Thomas rushed to the Italian city of Siena, where the case took place, for a field trip, and met Simone here, where the movie begins. "Angel's Face" is a movie that needs to be watched carefully to understand, and the movie-watching mode in the theater is not the best way for it. But if a movie can't be recognized by the audience in the theater, can it still be called a movie? This is not a problem with one movie, but a dilemma facing the entire film industry. On the one hand, film is an industry with high investment and needs to get high returns quickly; on the other hand, many film directors regard themselves as artists and bring as many private goods into the film as possible to make the expression of the film more obscure. The content of the performance is more profound. The films of the director Michael Winterbottom I have seen include "Killer in the Heart (2010)", "Strong Heart (2007)", "Nine Songs (2004)", "Passionate Accident (1998)", "Endless Love (1996)", I was also able to fight hard enough. Just by looking at these works, you will know what kind of director he is not willing to be in industry. "Angel's Face" is such a film, the work of a director who is unwilling to be industrial. First of all, there are too many characters in the movie, and the relationship between the characters is more complicated, which is a taboo for commercial films; secondly, the parts of memory and imagination often appear before the personal point of view, which is very abrupt and brings great difficulty to the audience's understanding of the plot. . (Students who are familiar with early Hong Kong movies will remember that in order to clearly express a memory or imagination, the old movies like to use a push shot all the way to the eyes); third, the story is ostensibly tracking the murder of a girl. It's actually misleading, the point of the movie is not the murder at all. That is to say, what could have been made into a thriller, murder, sensuality or decadence "Death of a Girl" was turned into a midlife crisis. This kind of author's film with a strong sense of self-expression is often a nightmare for investors. Because of this, the film has been separated from the general public, and the return on film investment is difficult to guarantee. Of course the director of the movie knew what he was doing, so the director borrowed the character from the movie to complain about Thomas who had the same idea: "Caroline handed you a true crime thriller, you really said you were trying a medieval morality Story?" "The script you want to hand over now is about a middle-aged man who has lost his way", "Thomas, you're too young to navigate a midlife crisis". This role may be the representative of the producer. She is euphemistically persuading Thomas to return as soon as possible, but Thomas is trapped in his own world and cannot extricate himself. Maybe this is the charm of art, it can make us so addicted to forget this utilitarian social reality. I often think that movie fans who like to watch movies will have a little bit of a silly air of a daydream. How boring it would be if everyone in this world had only one goal, and that was success in the mundane sense of money. Sadly, we live in such a boring world. Fortunately, there is literature and art that allows our tired body and mind to have a place to rest. It's good. So, this is not a movie about "Death of a Teenage Girl," but a redemption movie about the usual midlife crisis. We often see such a routine: a person fails in his career and his marriage is in crisis, so he chooses to leave a sad place, thinking that he "lives elsewhere". Thomas leaves Los Angeles for Italy, escaping the clutter of real life and starting a new life journey. But the ingenious thing about this movie is that a cliché story has become profound and plump by adding the suspense of a girl's death as a gimmick. In order to solve this suspense, Thomas entered the university city of Siena, where the deceased lived. The world of Siena was displayed in front of him, all kinds of people came on stage, and Thomas' own world was also displayed in front of the audience, allowing us to Feel the love and sorrow of this frustrated director. Hitchcock once coined a unique word called "McGuffin" which is a non-existent or unrelated thing, but it is the core of the conversation, the action and even the whole story. Here, "Death of a Teenage Girl" is this "MacGuffin", and when I understand this, all the incomprehensible parts of this movie suddenly become clear.
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