- Puyou's "Home in the Snow Mountain"
Although it ended with two men laughing for four minutes, Romanian director Puyou's new work "Home in the Snow Mountain" is still full of aggression. He seems to record a family dispute that alternately erupts in a casual tone, but in fact leads the topic to the geopolitical embarrassment of Romania and the fatal paradox of the slowness of the whole nation-tradition, politics, religion, left or right Right, front or back, believe or doubt, all this seems to be based on evidence in a closed apartment - as Puyou himself said - "extend the infinite in a limited space" - in the approach to reality In the experience of images, the direction to the deep meaning may be more divergent.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the 9th to 40th day after death is God's investigation period, and on the 40th day, the family needs to hold a special memorial ceremony and ask God to decide the return of the dead. According to the traditional concept of Eastern Europeans, the death of the head of the family will always trigger the imbalance of power within the family and lead to successive family conflicts.
This topic of the film comes from the same personal experience of Puyou. The protagonist Lary in the film works in Geneva, and Puyou completed her studies in Geneva; in 2007, Puyou's father died, and he went home from the funeral and witnessed the event. A series of family conflicts, and by the way, a quarrel with an old schoolmate of his mother, who is incarnated in the film as Evelina, the old woman who never forgets the rule of Ceausescu.
The film is almost entirely narrated in large sections of long shots, some of which are as long as nearly 10 minutes, and the single scene slows down the passage of time. It seems to construct a reality equivalent to life in 1:1. In some other films using similar shooting techniques, the photographer is always accustomed to using the camera's quick dispatch to avoid too many character dispatches, and tries to pursue a so-called "real texture", but Puyou takes great pains to move the characters away. Positions, relationships, trigger links, all taken into account, lighting, composition... together build a secret delicacy.
The camera itself is an important participant in this refinement, it is always a slow observer, and does not immediately change the way of viewing due to the increase of curiosity - just stays quietly outside the crowd, concerned but lazy Looking at the people - it seems to be the last time the ghost of the dead father is wandering in the world. He shuttles between his loved ones, silently watching them quarrel, cry and reconcile, stalk his beloved son, and watch his family struggle to get a good dinner.
From Puyou's old-age home documentaries in his early years to "Medical Unreliable", which won him the "One Kind of Concern" award, Puyou seems to have never given up his attention to the subject of the elderly, and his discussion of the elderly also seems to point directly to the question of life. .
For the title of the film "Sieranevada", the original meaning is actually a Romanian transliteration of "Sierra Nevada". Puyou said that in the film, the old apartment buildings left over from the communist period where people lived looked like a continuous line from a distance. Like snow mountains.
If we interpret the film according to the formula of political inference, the death of the father means the fall of the traditional Romanian national spirit, and the younger son cannot wear his father's clothes, which seems to imply the embarrassing practical applicability of the traditional spirit; several sons represent diverse Social forces and trends of thought, while mothers are like nature itself, trying to balance and nourish everyone.
However, if everything follows the above logic, it seems to be too rigid, because the main characters in the film cannot be labeled with specific labels, and their personalities are distinct and flesh and blood are still full. They discuss politics at the dinner table, as well as Internet pop songs; they argue over ideas and cheat; they laugh at other people's crying and can't help but shed tears themselves - the characters arch around a powerful The aura itself has a fermenting potential for expansion, chaotic randomness and seemingly unavoidable sadness.
The film itself is a kind of non-urgent search, wandering among the crowd, among the words, but staying out of the way. In this search, the answer seems to be missing, the truth of "Charlie Affair", the truth of "9.11", the truth of Tony's affair, the truth of Relu's addiction to cigarettes, the truth of daughter's friend's drug addiction, the truth of father's soul Where do you go, why do women cry... but from a distance, these questions seem to have retreated from their original colors, condensed into one, and looked at you as cold as a snow mountain. Retreat desire, retreat vanity, retreat from what you despise and depend on, and the rest may be the answer.
2016.5.12
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