1. The advance and lag of movies.
For a specific problem, from tradition to innovation, ideas may take hundreds of years, and literature follows it and develops slowly. For example, about "fairy tales"-from medieval folk songs, to Renaissance legends, to various sorts and collections in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and finally to the 20th century, they were finally thoroughly written by several modern writers. The ground changed its face.
Film, a new art form that only emerged at the end of the 19th century, stood at a very high starting point from the very beginning. From tradition to subversion, it may only be the distance between the first episode and the sequel. Directors and screenwriters are free to take advantage of the entire previous long stream of literature, draw nourishment, and create works that will surprise the audience's mind before the color and sound arrive. In the hundred and twenty years of film development, we can see a complete system of resistance and reconstruction. For example, it took only 55 years from "Sleeping Beauty" to "Slumbering Curse".
But from another perspective, compared with literature, film is also lagging behind. When the film began to advertise subversion, the pioneer writers of modern literature were tired of all this. This is, after all, in general, literature is a niche art, focusing on the author’s personal expression and free creation, it is always more advanced and prophetic; movies are popular art, focusing on audience acceptance and word-of-mouth box office. It still has to fit the values of most people at the moment. For example, the adaptation of the novel "Sleeping Beauty", half a century ago, British writer Angela Carter was brilliantly presented in the novel collection "Blood-Stained Room".
2. The focus of different adaptations
There are numerous adaptations of this ancient fairy tale in literature and movies. In addition to Angela Carter, there are also novels by Kawabata Yasunari. Erotic film director Katelyn Brea (the director of "Hell Anatomy") has remade "Sleeping Beauty". Considering Brea's consistent style, naturally, this work will focus on exploring the heroine's "sexual awareness" condensation, Groping and awakening. Because, the strange thing about the original version is that the princess has never been in love before, and she is under the closed protection of the king, but after many years of sleep, she can fall in love immediately when she is kissed and awakened by a stranger. The film’s approach to this issue is to allow the princess to experience everything that a real girl should experience in her long sleep. In fact, some interpretations of the original version of this fairy tale contain the metaphor of "sexual awareness". For example, "spindle needle pierces the finger and bleeds" is obviously a metaphor for "girl breaks".
From this point of view, it seems that the theme of fairy tales is the easiest to "retell" because it has the most loopholes. In other words, it is the simplest and most direct. After listening to the original story, the audience (mainly children) would not ask "Where does the princess's sexual awareness come from?" "Will the princess starve to death without eating or drinking after sleeping for decades?" "The king ordered the burning of all textile machines. , What do the people wear for so many years?" "Is Marlene Fissen fed up and can't live with a little girl?" This is a similar question, but only immersed in "they have lived a happy life since then". In the magical and omnipotent ending.
A short film in Canada in 2007 is particularly interesting. Its thinking is completely deconstructive, even to every detail. Its details are full of old-fashioned ridicule and irony-the entrance and exit of the castle are equipped with anti-theft doors and slings; the public phone is indoors; the prince's horse is smarter than the prince, and so on. Its ending-the girl is not awakened by the prince's kiss, nor is it awakened by the prince's horse kiss, but is awakened by an alarm clock-purely a modern Sleeping Beauty text. Although weird and bizarre, it is more in line with reality. Girls do not need to be awakened by others, which is of no use; at the same time, what they have is only daily life—perhaps everything before is just a dream.
This year, the focus of this new film is more diverse, but it still focuses on the women themselves. Including the relationship between women and men, the relationship between women and so on.
3. Analysis of several ontology problems
To be honest, I was disappointed with Maleficent, probably because I had too much hope before. For the first film made by a director who was born in art and design, we couldn't ask it to tell the story in the gorgeous scenes at the same time. But a movie is a story first, and the most important thing is to tell the story well. This does not mean that you can narrate from beginning to end. The 59 version only inserts narration in one part and one end. The whole movie depends on the plot, which is more in line with the basic routine. It's like when we tell a story to others, we say at the beginning: "Now, I'll tell you a story." At the end, we say: "Now the story is over." And in the process, do others still need your reminder?
And Maleficent looks more like a collection of all the illustrations in a storybook. Look at the beautiful pictures while reading the words. This breaks its coherence, so we will feel that this is a stage play rather than a movie. Certain scenes appear so abruptly that we unconsciously need more preparations and supplements, or simply delete them.
And even for the presentation of the pictures and scenes, it cannot be said that the director has not done enough-the whole story is almost a grand scene schedule, which is too empty under the support of thin conflicts and conflicts. If it has been positioned to focus on shaping the heart of the character, it should be enough in the scene scheduling. In short, the details are too little, the lens is flat, and the depth of field is not enough.
In addition, the three-stage script division (30 minutes for establishment-30 minutes for development-30 minutes for resolution), although extremely neat, failed to make a natural connection.
But the soundtrack is still great. Musical hints and correspondence are achieved. For example, the music of several one-man shows by Marlene Fissen can reflect the mood of the characters at that time. There is also the main melody soundtrack played twice, once when Marlene Fissen said goodnight after hypnotizing Aurora, and once when the former awakened the latter and said hello, the music corresponds to the character, indicating that it was when saying goodnight , Marlene Fissen’s psychology began to change.
Image
1. The abandoned woman is
no exaggeration to say that the whole movie is supported by Marlene Fissen, and everything else can be ignored. In addition to Angie's acting skills, this is mainly because the image of Marlene Fissen condenses several types of female images.
The first is "abandoned wives." This is an important one in the gallery of Chinese and foreign literary images, because it seems that men all over the world have other pursuits besides love, while women only have love. So it's not uncommon for men to abandon women for status, reputation, and other things. In this film, the king is for the throne.
But the most special thing about this film is the setting of "wings". "Wings" symbolize the strength of women themselves, and Marlene Fissen, who can fly freely, is extremely powerful. [Note that the character's name Maleficent is very similar to the word Magnificent. 】This shows that Marlene Fissen is definitely different from most miserable abandoned wives. She is not the kind of delicate woman who has nothing but love. When she was a child, Marlene Fissen already possessed a powerful force that made other elves jealous. She will eventually rule the Moor Forest. There is no denying that everything is natural. This is different from "Frozen". Elsa was initially in a state of disharmony with her own power. First, she needed to identify herself. Marlene Fissen doesn't have this stage, and she has proud eyes when she pitches, and her self-confidence is bursting.
If Elsa symbolizes the first stage of women's self-identification, then Marlene Fissen is the second stage immediately following-full self-expression. However, this power has been "castrated" by men. The king stole her "wings" while abandoning Marlene Fissen. In fact, in reality, countless women voluntarily "cut their wings" for men.
2. Goddess of Nemesis
This is closely integrated with the previous point. It is precisely because of being abandoned that revenge is required. Just like the classic "Medea". This small group of "powerful" abandoned women was unwilling to be cowardly, and began to strengthen themselves from another side, embarking on a road of "blackening" that is not recognized by the world. The most intense performance of this mode is seen in the movie "I Spit Your Grave". More representative is "Kill Bill"-the name of the movie actually means "beyond the male shadow" and restore the freedom of the soul. For this reason, the heroine endures, perseveres, practices martial arts, reaches her limit, and thinks completely. Next, move forward step by step, and finally act completely, slapped the evil shadow to death with one palm—it looks like a fable.
Marlene Fissen's revenge was much more euphemistic in comparison. She directly destroyed the human kingdom without violence, or killed kings and queens-which is in fact completely possible for her-and chose a more "feminine" way: one that can be attributed to jealousy And the way of anger. This is more in line with the characteristics of women. You ruined me when I was sixteen, then I will let your daughter be ruined when I was sixteen; you lied to me to have a true love kiss, then I promised your daughter a true love that never exists Kiss. It’s like fighting with a girl. If you break her pen, she must take revenge on your pen. If you grab her hair, she grabs your hair. You scold her as a silly girl, and she replied. You are a dead bitch.
3. The
image of a witch can also organize a long landscape avenue. Three grim-faced old witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. More in fairy tales. The witch in "Snow White" is a representative of absolute evil. In "Daughter of the Sea", the mermaid turns to the seaweed witch for help in order to get his legs. The witch is more neutral. In modern fairy tales, a group of good witches suddenly appeared. They possess wonderful magic and are willing to help others. I was impressed by an episode in the early Disney cartoon "Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck". The stingy Donald Duck teased his three little nephews on Halloween and refused to give them sweets. The old witch who likes children can't watch it. So, she used her magic to play with Donald Duck, and finally the little ducks got a big bag of candies each.
The variation of the concept of the image of witches reflects the change of the era's view of women themselves. In some eras, the term "witch" was an insult to a woman—"That's a beautiful woman!—she is a witch." Now, fairy tale books praise those clever little witches.
In history, witches as a profession originated in the Middle Ages. After the Renaissance, there are more and more legends about them. The French historian Jules Michele wrote a history book about witches during this time in the mid-nineteenth century. This book has a unique style of writing. It combines academic historical materials and poetic imagination, based on solid materials, and reflects the author's emotional moral orientation. Some wonderful places must be excerpted, because in my opinion, these passages are completely the perfect interpretation of the image of the witch in Maleficent. As the author said, what he was about to write was "the life of the same woman for three hundred years." The
poor female prophet, frozen by the faint fire from the dead leaves, was beaten by the icy north wind, she I felt a violent flogging in my heart. Living alone makes her uncomfortable, but it also refreshes her spirits. The arrogance is awakened, bringing a warmth to the heart and the power to illuminate the soul. Her clever, flexible, and stern eyes became as sharp as these ice needles, and the world, the world that made her suffer, became as transparent as glass in her eyes. She seemed to have conquered a territory, and she was very happy.
Isn't she the king of this land, doesn't she have many courtiers who worshipped the land? The crow was obviously waiting for her. Like the evil omens in ancient times, they flew in groups solemnly and mightily to tell her the news of the day. The wolves slid past shyly and greeted her with a slanted glance. As for the bears, they sometimes drag their cumbersome bodies to the entrance of the cave and sit down, just like visiting each other in the deeds of the desert godfather.
——Isn’t this the scene when Marlene Fissen was wandering alone in the forest after being "stolen", summoning crows, and rebuilding self-confidence.
This "king of death" in people's eyes has transformed into the "king of life" in a bizarre way.
"No," she said, "Leave my hatred to me. I only ask for this. It makes me scary and terrifying... Stirring fear is the characteristic of my beauty, it is like this black snake Dark hair, as well as the face carved with pain and struck by lightning are the most
suitable ." ——Marlene Fissen was originally a spirit of life, and then was hated to grab his soul and let everything surrender under his feet, in the forest of thorns. Zhen Zhen walked alone.
This is not only a story about a magical world, but also an allegory of the fate of many women in history.
The life of the same woman for a thousand years!
4. Angels and enchantresses are
well known. They are two typical female images in traditional narrative texts. Although they are at completely different poles, they reflect the same problem, namely, how women are recognized and demanded. The bipolar image embodies two emotions of "adoration" and "fear". Just like snakes, they are usually compared to women. On the one hand, snakes are sexy, enchanting, viable, fertile, and full of motherhood. Therefore, our ancient myth regards Nuwa (human head and snake body) as the ancestor of human beings; On the other hand, snakes are ferocious and insidious, deep in the city, and highly toxic. Therefore, in ancient Greek mythology, there are such terrifying banshees as Medusa (Snake Hair).
In Maleficent, the unique feature is that not only the two female images are displayed side by side—Aurora and Maleficent; more importantly, there is this female figure in Maleficent. Two images.
First, this is a supplement to the "cause vacancy" and completes the statement about the villain's own history-the "wife" is not flying in the air.
Second, it corresponds to the image of Aurora's angel-the two have such similar experiences! Thus, another very important question arises: the alliance between angels and witches.
*The alliance between the two-the characteristics and strategies of feminist works.
In previous works, angels and enchantresses can be said to be two characters who are not in the same dimension. One is in the sky, responsible for the ideals placed on men, and the other acts as underground. Negative teaching materials, responsible for requesting and alerting women to self-examination. For thousands of years, the two have become potential or obvious enemies consciously or unconsciously. When the women stopped stepping into this trap, they suddenly discovered that these two people were actually in the same group! They have the same history and common enemy.
Specifically in the movie "Sleeping Curse", this alliance is manifested as one, the correspondence of experience; the second, the narrative perspective; and the third, mutual help.
Many details show the correspondence of experience. For example, Aurora and the young Malefelsen played with the elk in the forest; they both liked to fight mud fights with elves; Malefelsen confronted her after defeating the human army. The tree spirits who fought together nodded slightly to express their tacit understanding, and finally, after Aurora ascended to the throne, she also nodded and bowed with the tree spirits beside him to show their alliance.
As for the main body of the narrative, we will find at the end that the person who told the story was the old Aurora, and she was completely from the perspective of Marlene Fissen. From whose perspective it is for whom to think. For example, for the same scene of a female lion chasing an antelope, if we stand from the perspective of a lion, we will hope it will succeed. On the contrary, if this documentary is about the story of antelope, we Will hate the lion. The narrative perspective reflects the emotional orientation, which shows that Aurora understands and supports Marlene Fissen, regardless of who she kills.
Third, the alliance between the two is even more reflected in the fact that they have rescued each other one after another. The gaze and guardianship of Marlene Fissen ensured the smooth growth of Aurora, which was beyond Marlene Fissen’s expectation. As stated in the previous quoted text: She wanted to destroy, but her nature made her unconsciously Take on the role of rescue and healing. Even after blackening herself, she will still heal the trees. (She was doing this when little Aurora came to see her.) In history, witches are actually a doctor who specifically targets women. "Only the devil... and the witch, the monster who always goes the other way and antagonizes the religious world, comes to observe women. They dare to trample on customs and take care of a woman’s own prejudices and take care of her health... instead of receiving treatment. , She would rather die, she said. And the barbarian witch kept her alive." And Aurora awakened the kindness of Marlene Fissen, who was more like a kind of salvation.
Symbol
in the main male-female relationship-the king and the witch-not only represents the universal relationship mentioned before, but also a symbol of "civilization and nature".
From the beginning, following the narration of the narration, the main contradiction was established: the opposition between the human kingdom and the Moor Forest, the former intends to occupy the latter’s wealth.
King-Humanity-Civilization-Conquer-Violence-Male.
Witch-nature-primitive-peace-healing-female.
The witch is afraid of iron—a natural fear.
The forest of thorns-the gap between the two.
In the first great battle, Marlene Fissen had such a line: "you are no king to me." This reminds me of Orestes in Sartre’s script "The Flies" to the god Jupiter. saying: "you are god of the sea, the sky god, god stone of Jupiter, but you are not human god." equate, say the two are in fact:. "you can not dominate me"
to discuss
a , Women dominate the world?
Immediately above.
Contradictions are always simple, even seem naive, but they are so stubborn. How did "Slumbering Curse" resolve contradictions at the end? It seems more naive-nature has defeated humans, and women have dominated the world. In the ending, the world is in harmony and unity. The point is that this is a female utopia.
And that beautiful scene—Marlene Fissen leading the floating Aurora through the Forest of Thorns—seems to imply that only the protective nature of women can resolve contradictions.
Maybe, if women dominate the world instead of men, there may be fewer bloody wars, but there may be more cold wars caused by jealousy.
* Feminine Utopia-the mode and limitation of feminist works
seems to be something Margaret Astwood said, presumably that as long as an image similar to a "scumbag" appears in her novels, people will Regarding this as a feminist work, their tone is like "scumbags" don't exist, and some nervous women are full of "scumbags." Of course I forgot whether she meant it or not.
In this antagonistic and simple "fairy tale retelling" movie, all this is so obvious that more people have to draw the above conclusions. In the past, the male and female roles in Disney movies were all distorted-due to the limitations of traditional feminism; now, the female image is plumped, but the male role is still not focused on-due to the limitations of feminism.
In fact, many feminist works are keen on depicting female utopias, and of course they were later criticized by more mature writers.
Retelling the movie has to go beyond this direction, and the road is still long and difficult.
2. Same-sex suggestion or imagination?
Finally came to this tangled question. The fan pictures and texts on this kind of movies on the Internet are simply colorful. But is this a hint of the movie itself or the imagination of the audience? For viewers who are keen on imagination, they don't care what the movie wants to express. The important thing is that their inner desires are satisfied. Just like even a writer like Maugham, in the absence of sufficient evidence, he still concludes that Emily B is a homosexual. The reason is simple, because he himself is a homosexual. When he sees a slightly suggestive text, he will be inexplicably excited, so that his emotions obscure his reason, the more he looks more like it, and finally, as the door to a new world opens. In front of him, the darkness before illuminating. Because, you have to know, there is so little literature about homosexuality. What a frustration it feels to be submerged every day in works that express the feelings of others that are not my own. Therefore, it doesn't matter what it is, but what you want.
*Suggestion-about the "gay narrative model" that
this is a theory proposed by a man named Falwell, who called it the "gay narrative space theory." He believes that the traditional narrative model is "dichotomy". Emphasize the difference. "Dualisms such as active and passive, mind and body, existence and absence are based on the two sexes-this kind of heterosexuality based on the narrative space based on the two sexes is necessary for heterosexual narratives." Such differences are destroyed or deleted and move towards the same, which implies that homosexuality occupies the narrative space of heterosexuality. (Excerpted from another paper)
The text of "Slumbering Mantra" is a heart-warming practice of this theory through and through.
At the moment, I don't dabble well, and I can't refute this, so let's do it for the time being.
In addition to this strange theory, there are many other hints in the film. For example, Marlene Fissen has always called Aurora Beastie, [note that it is very similar to Beauty] and Aurora was asleep when I called it three times, so that when people were sleeping, they called "beauty, beauty" to be true. Okay?
For example, Marlene Fissen made a confession when she was confessing in front of Aurora's bed. There was a sentence in it that read: "You stole what was left of my heart." literally translated as "You stole what was left of my heart." "If you try to figure it out, you will find an article. Why is there a residue in my heart? Because your dad stole other parts before. Therefore, Marlene Fissen treats the two feelings equally here.
For another example, when Marlene Fissen was a child, he said "come out" to the prince in the cave, and then the prince came out, and the two fell in love at first sight. But later, almost exactly the same corresponding scene, Aurora said "come out" to Marlene Fissen in the cave, and then she came out, Aurora trembled. Here again the two feelings are assimilated.
*Imagination-the embarrassment and ambiguous
imagination of feminist works are also not a minority. In fact, many feminist works have room for imagination in this regard, because it must focus on depicting the friendship between women. And to what extent is this friendship close to the level of true homosexuality, this is not sure. Too unsure. As we often say, "Two people are as good as homosexuals." But anyway, they are not.
Such as the movies "The End of the Wild Flower" and "Fried Green Tomatoes". The two feminist films have a certain ambiguity because they show the deep friendship between women. The former deepens this ambiguity because of the last kiss, while the latter is the protagonist’s repeated talk again and again.
There is an article that said: "For decades, Disney has implemented the so-called "gay agenda" through corporate means and movie content-that is, to help the world become a more inclusive place." About I'm skeptical about "The Gay Agenda" because the name sounds like the CIA's "Ten Commandments." But the latter sentence does reflect the creative purpose of Disney. It can be said that "Maleficent" did not deliberately express homosexuality, but its hints and the imagination of the audience it aroused, as well as the successful ending to those "strange protagonists" in the film, always give that part of the special view. The shadow group is comforted. ——Yes, the world is slowly getting better.
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