Plato's cave metaphor: imagine a group of prisoner in a crypt; they stay there since childhood, tied chains can not be turned around, only to see his shadow on the front wall. Behind and above them there was a fire, and there was a path through the cave; along the path was built a low wall like a screen for a puppet show. People carried various utensils through the path behind the wall, and the firelight projected the utensils through the wall onto the wall of the hole in front of the prisoner. Prisoners naturally think that shadows are the only real thing.
This movie looks like a single-line narrative, but it actually has two narrative lines and two natural born killers. The bright line is Mickey the Murderer (Plato's Cave), and the dark line is Wayne (the medium). The dark line has no entity in the first half, but appears in the movie in the form of projection. And in the climax part of the film, there is the transformation of bright lines and dark lines, and the visual storytelling skills are superb.
Shaping the cave (dark line):
Plato's metaphor of the cave runs through from beginning to end. The fire in the cave is directly embodied as TV and media. The projections of various media appear in every corner of the film just like the projection of the cinema on the screen. The scenery outside the car, the scenery outside the window, even the scenery on the wall. People live in prisons without walls formed by the projection of the medium, just as humans live in the projection of the fire in Plato's cave. The media kills invisible, but they don't have to go to jail.
Out of the Cave (
Bright Line ): Mickey and Melorie are driving in the world projected by the media. In their eyes, the world is no longer real, but only an illusion formed by the media. Melorie recalls Mickey's redemption: flashbacks in soap opera form. The Melorie family lives in an ideology shaped by television, and every member of the family lives as if they were acting. It wasn't until Mickey appeared and killed Mellorie's parents that she was saved from the reality soap opera.
The murderous couple killed all the way, because after seeing the cage of the media, the human in their eyes was no longer a real human, but just a walking dead. The real human desires are animal: to kill and hunt. So Mickey said: Killing is pure.
Indian snake breeder (religion): The
Indian wife asked the snake: I gave you food and shelter, why did you bite me? The snake said: Because I am a snake!
Mickey is a human who has escaped from the cave, like a pack of wolves returning to the jungle, and cannot be kept in captivity. The Indians felt that they just watched too much TV and didn't know until they died that they represented human nature and were untouchable demons. Like the tiger in the zoo bites, is the tiger guilty?
This story is a transition point between the media cage and the real cage. Some people keep birds of prey as pets, which can be understood as religious influence, but religion is nothing but a cage without materialization.
Shaping the Cell (Dark Lines):
Mickey and Melorie are in jail, but they're big stars in the media, and people love them because they're real. Media guy Wayne decides to put a killer interview in the middle of the Super Bowl to get high ratings. In the visible cell, interview two free men. You are free, therefore you are guilty.
Wayne is another murderous man who uses the media as a weapon to stifle the human mind. An image keeps appearing in the film: a man sitting in front of a TV, having his head chopped off.
Mickey's series of remarks caused a prison riot, they took the opportunity to escape, Wayne picked up the gun and shot the shoot to prevent him from gaining media influence, Mickey handed the camera to him and said, you better use this shooting shoot! In English, shoot has the dual meaning of shooting and shooting, that is, the light and dark double lines of killing in the movie.
Rush out of the cell (bright lines darkened):
Mickey was interviewed, pointing to the Tai Chi pattern on his hand: everything has yin and yang sides, you can't deny the dark side of human nature, it's like a shadow, it's part of your body. At this moment Mickey's shadow appears on the wall, like the shadow in Plato's cave, but this shadow is real, you can't see your own shadow (dark side), only the light (media illusion). The whole world is like a skin that covers your shadow.
After the escape, Mickey picked up the camera and killed Wayne live, saying, if I let you go, it's just like everyone else. It's not Wayne that they're going to kill, it's the media violence that Wayne represents. Mickey goes from murderer to savior by killing Shoot Media with a camera.
The most outstanding part of this film is the transformation skills of light and dark lines, which are hidden very naturally, and the visual language is rich and bizarre. It is my favorite Oliver Stone work.
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