"Now you have two choices: come to my bed, or be taken away by the police."
These were the first words the painter Francis Bacon uttered when he first met George Dyer.
In 1963, in a converted studio from a stable in the suburbs of South Kensington, a thief in a jacket and postman's hat visited him and fell down the chimney like a broken-winged angel - strange room, wall Mottled with paint, the floor is littered with photographs and canvases of dissected flesh and twisted nudes, torn apart and dripping with blood.
The door suddenly opened behind us, and our fat, 54-year-old Mr. Bacon stood outside the door and said the above line to this handsome young man named George Dyer.
Undoubtedly, George chose the former.
In a way, it's the moment when the life of a thief and a great artist intertwine, and on the other hand, it's also the day when a young man meets an older gay who completely changes the direction of his life.
What's so controversial is that George doesn't know if he's gay or not, he's drawn into the world through temptation and coercion until he pays for it, while Bacon knows that from the start all he wants is "to come to my bed" Come".
In 1998, John Maybury filmed the sad story of Bacon and George with an emotionally charged lens, "Love and Color".
The actor who played George in the film was Daniel Craig, who later played the new generation of 007. Although he had not exercised huge muscle groups at that time, it was not difficult to see his physical condition: fit, angular, and bulging with blue veins. up, full of explosive energy, like an athlete.
They lived together for ten years, and Bacon painted him, looking like a mass of rubbed and twisted muscles.
Later, this "Portrait of George Dyer" sold for 42,194,500 pounds (about more than 400 million yuan) at Christie's London Post-War and Contemporary Art Night Market.
The association with George greatly stimulated Bacon's creative enthusiasm, and this painting is considered to be the best of Bacon's portraits of his many gay lovers. When they lived together, Bacon used to have George sit in the center of his studio. George doesn't understand art and smokes with his legs crossed.
The creative process is full of violence, and the bright red paint is thrown on the canvas and smeared directly by waving both hands. The most difficult to grasp is the human face. Compared with Picasso's cubism, the human face is more turbulent, dismembered and twisted, and the mutilated organs are chaotically assembled.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once commented on Bacon as "a terrible man who paints a picture of terror".
Returning to the film, in fact, the most surprising thing about this biopic is the use of the lens to capture this "horror" style of Bacon:
Art historian Martin Harrison said: "Bacon would be attracted to people at the bottom of society, like his own dark side, who liked to hang out in dirty clubs, drink, gamble and prostitute."
There are many scenes in the film where Bacon takes George to various sensual places and same-sex clubs. Through the facets of the glass, the characters are twisted into eerie appearances, their vulgar schmoozing, their high energy and boring time, talking about sex, about group sex and cheating.
Goddess-level actress Tilda Swinton also played a vulgar gay in the film, and she was filmed in a way she couldn't believe her eyes.
Almost no lens can fully see the face, and the virtual focus and wide-angle make people's bodies constantly change, as if flowing in a dark ocean of spirit. In such a field, Bacon has a kind of freedom like a fish in water. Here he is not a big painter, just a man with a eloquent tongue.
The picture given to him also participated in the distortion, and even the bacon after the distortion appeared more real.
But George, the shots given to him are always serious, and his handsome face sometimes appears abruptly in the midst of a crowd of people in fancy clothes. I'm afraid he doesn't quite know who these people are, what they are doing here, and what kind of experiences are behind the topics they are talking about.
He was like a thrown baby, an outsider, as Martin Harrison put it: "Bacon loved adventure, both in art and life. Dyer had little education, knew nothing about art, but He adores Francis like a pet puppy - which puts him at risk too."
The director did not give them too many sex scenes, most of the time it was a close-up of the local skin in the style of "Hiroshima Love". In the light and shadow with a sense of ritual, the relationship between the two is like an unsolved mystery, sensitive, mysterious, full of disturbed.
This image imitates Bacon's '67 triptych, Figures in Bed:
Not only the characters, but the bed, the background, and even the light bulbs are changing. The two people on the bed are tumbling, unable to recognize each other, and their faces are hidden in the flesh.
According to Bacon's friend and biographer Michael Pepia, George Dyer was actually a very kind, gentle man, but that was the problem.
In 1970, in the final year of his relationship with George's lover, Bacon painted a portrait of George that looked quite similar to the philosopher Nietzsche:
Bacon once said that his dream lover was "a footballer's body with Nietzsche's mind", stronger and more conquering than himself, both physically and mentally.
The film shows Bacon's masochistic tendencies in sex, and he desperately longs for an ancient Greek-style teenager with "superhuman" physical strength and willpower to conquer himself.
But obviously, George Dyer, a London kid with a Scottish accent, is not such a person at all. Bacon's lover before George and after George, there is no such person at all.
Bacon's preference is also shown in the film, who takes George to a boxing match and calls it "the prequel to perfect sex." When the boxers in the ring beat each other, and even splattered blood on his face, the picture and sound roared in an instant, and the climax far surpassed all. That is probably the ultimate pleasure that Bacon pursues in his relationship with men.
But the pleasure always cools down very quickly. Facing Bacon's unruly and madness, George is getting lost more and more.
Facing George's fragility and loneliness, Bacon began to feel disdain and boredom. He treated George roughly, found another new love, and even shut George out on a rainy day while enjoying his fresh body.
When George, who was on the verge of collapse, said "I love you" to Bacon, Bacon sarcastically asked him if these slogans were learned from TV.
In the summer of 1971, Bacon's artistic achievements were recognized all over the world. The French "Art Appreciation Magazine" listed him as the first in the "Top Ten Important Painters in the World", and his solo exhibition will be held at the Grand Palais in Paris, France. . In his lifetime, the only person to enjoy this reputation, besides Picasso, is Bacon.
Bacon brought George to Paris because he was the model, the protagonist of every painting, and the muse of Bacon's creative blowout. However, George ushered in the end of his life in Paris. He took a lot of sleeping pills and alcohol and lay down in the bathroom of a luxury hotel. He was 36 years old.
Many years later, Bacon painted a triptych called "George Dyer" to commemorate the death of George Dyer. The picture is full of suffocation, darkness and struggle. A naked man collapses on the toilet, under his body An indescribable black substance flows out, as if the soul is drifting away. How did Bacon, who is so keen on the vitality of men, use his devilish brush to write the final melody for George?
The name of the film is Love Is The Devil, which should be translated as "Love Is the Devil". Bacon never thought about love, he hated the so-called "intimacy whispers" and only wanted to enjoy sex with young men. What does George Dyer mean to him? neither knows.
At the end of the film, the director arranged a redemption for Bacon. In the empty bathroom of the hotel, Bacon met George at the last moment before his death.
He reached out and tried to touch the void body that was no longer in the air.
This is the story of "Fallen Monster" Francis Bacon and his lover George Dyer.
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