Caesar Sozer is the mysterious leader in "The Usual Suspects", and many viewers were shocked when it was revealed at the end of the story that Caesar Sozer was the emaciated Roger Gint (played by Kevin Spacey). Get five-body cast. However, such an unexpected reversal has nothing to do with the previous story.
"The Invisible Guest" is one such movie.
The whole film can be observed in two lines. The first one is about the truth of the case: who killed the young Daniel and who killed the female photographer Laura. This happened in the past. The second is in the present: the protagonist sorts things out with his new lawyer before going to court.
The important point here is that what happened in the first line is shown in flashbacks through the mouth of the protagonist and the lawyer. Since it is spoken, these flashback fragments represent only someone's thoughts, or even lies, rather than objective facts. That is, if you want to deduce the truth of things from only the first line, it is impossible. All you can do is wait for the protagonist and lawyer in the second line to keep adding new information to the first line to find out what's going on.
This approach opens the door to infinite reversals for the film. There can only be one inversion of the second line, and that is that the lawyer is actually Daniel's mother pretending to be. But because the first line is spoken, it can be concealed, distorted, embellished, it can have infinite possibilities.
This reminds me of a joke that circulated on the Internet many years ago: I
went to buy cigarettes yesterday, bought a pack of 20, gave the boss 50, and found me 40. I pretended not to know, put it in my pocket and left.
I didn't go far, the boss called me: You didn't take your cigarette!
I was moved to tears, and gave ten dollars to the boss: You asked me ten more dollars.
The boss also left tears of emotion: young man, bring the cigarettes, and I will change a pack for you.
Smoking the cigarette that the boss gave me newly, the pure taste touched me again: Boss, bring the 50 cigarette just now and I will exchange it for you!
The boss who took over the 50 was also moved again: young man, give me the money I asked for you just now, and I will exchange it for you.
After taking over the boss and looking for my money again, I was moved again and took out a mobile phone from my pocket: Boss, return the mobile phone to you.
The boss burst into tears, and tremblingly took out a wallet: boy, the wallet is back to you.
At this moment, the young man couldn't hold it any longer. He knelt on the ground and hugged the boss's thigh and cried, "Brother, go to Room 304 of the hotel next door and bring your daughter home!"
The boss was surprised after hearing this, sighed, turned around and shouted to the shop: Hong Xing, don't hide, come out and go back with your husband!
Seen this joke all know this is far from over:
I was surprised looking woman emerged from the store, gently shook his head and said:. "My brother, this drug you can have it"
took me When the penicillin was handed over, the boss lowered his head ashamed after reading the manual and said, "Forget it, I don't need this medicine anymore. I'm a HIV virus carrier, I'm sorry, brother!"
My heart instantly cooled. It was freezing, but the sincerity of the boss made it warm like never before. I said, "Brother, I almost did something that I regret for life! To be honest, that ointment is not penicillin, but dichlorvos!"
The boss pondered for a moment, the tears in the corners of his eyes had not dried, he closed his eyes and looked up to the sky and sighed: "Guy, I'm actually not sick at all, your honesty is really touching, I'm so damned!"
I was overjoyed and rubbed the tip of my sore nose,
Said: "Boss , don't do this, I deserve to die! In fact, your daughter is not next door, I lied to you!" The boss waved his hand and said, "Young man, it's okay, it's okay, and, look carefully, it's not you at all. Wife, your wife is not called Hong Xing!"
I suddenly realized, a warm feeling lingered in my heart: "Haha, brother, in fact, there is nothing in my wallet, I just picked it up on the roadside."
I took out my wallet and shook it in front of him. The boss said, "Boy, that phone is just a model. If you don't believe me, take a look." He took out the phone, and the display was just a piece of colored paper.
We looked at each other and sobbed softly when we were moved by each other. I said in a thick nasal voice, "Brother, in fact, the fifty yuan that was given to you at the back is also fake!" The
boss shook his head slightly, a drop of crystal clear tears fell on the ground: "guy, your change actually ... Oh, took Come on, I'll give you for a change."
I was like a burst of tears, retinal blur on his body slightly bent forward in
I flipped through the cash box carefully, and finally I couldn't hold it any longer, and said, "Brother, I don't actually smoke at all! I came here just to spend the fake money!" The
older brother patted me on the shoulder and said in a low voice: "Guy, to be honest, this is not my shop."
What is the reversal in this joke? The truth of the matter is generated through the dialogue between the boss and the guy, not necessarily what actually happened. Then we can achieve the effect of reversal by constantly rewriting or supplementing the assumed facts. There is a word in cross talk called shaking the burden. When the burden is shaken to the bottom, our audience will understand that this is what happened. The above jokes are the same as "Invisible Guest", they are not shaking the burden on the audience, but keep throwing new burdens that have bottomed out on the audience's face. The whole story does not have a process of turning over and shaking the burden, and all the suspense has not been laid before, but it was suddenly revealed.
In order to achieve the purpose of reversal, it is a very lazy approach to add new evidence and plots that have not been mentioned in the previous story in the form of flashbacks. In "The Invisible Guest", there is an episode where Adrian pushes the car into the lake even though he finds Daniel alive. This reversal was added without warning. Perhaps the audience can guess that Daniel is still alive, but it is absolutely impossible to deduce it from the clues given by the film, and it is impossible to find out the plot hinting at this in the previous story. It appeared out of thin air. It seems amazing at first glance, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all.
Of course, some people will say that the protagonist is lying, and it is normal for the audience to not know about this kind of thing. From the point of view of Adrian's flashback, there is indeed nothing wrong. However, in Adrian's flashback, there is a detail of Daniel's father seeing a lighter when Laura went to fix the car. This kind of real plot shouldn't be in Adrian's narrative. Regardless of how he could have the Laura perspective, the presence of such detail is contrary to the flashback from Adrian's perspective. Telling the audience the details of the lighter, but not giving us a hint that Daniel is still alive, why? As I said earlier, flashbacks represent someone's thoughts, even lies, that contradict objective facts. Incorporating objective facts into flashbacks and misleading the audience is laziness and cheating.
The flashback has to be personal, it's not a flashback. When flashbacks are used in movies, what happened in the past actually happened. The film's director and screenwriter Oriol Paul mixed the two.
How did Rashomon, which also uses flashbacks, do it? The film explains how the samurai was killed from the perspective of the thief, the samurai's wife, the witch (the samurai) and the woodcutter. These four stories are not flashbacks, the audience does not know the truth of the matter. There are also no flashbacks to supplement the pivotal plot twist in the movie. The samurai was dead when he died, he didn't swindle a corpse suddenly and get stabbed to death again. The murderer couldn't possibly be a woodcutter either. If you want to have these plots, you have to add hints to the actual timeline. For example, the woodcutter stole the dagger, which the audience will not see in the four versions of the story, because it is an objective fact and should not be added to the flashback. In the real timeline, we can observe the woodcutter's attitude change when he talks about the dagger, implying that he lied about the dagger. In "The Invisible Guest", there is no hint of Daniel's death in the second line, but it is shown to us in a flashback or flashback when we don't know. The reversal is very abrupt and illogical. The fact that Dad Daniel saw the lighter and learned that Adrian was an accomplice shouldn't be in the flashback either. Similar plots abound, and will not be described one by one here.
When the film finally reveals that the lawyer is Daniel's mother, how does it help to uncover the truth? Absolutely not. Wouldn't it be better to let the audience know at the beginning that she is Daniel's mother in disguise and then focus on unraveling the suspense of the first thread? This reversal has nothing to do with the case of the first line.
In "The Usual Suspects," the audience, struggling to figure out who Caesar Sozer is, is suddenly told that the first ninety minutes were all made up by Roger Gint using objects he saw in his office. In "The Invisible Guest," the audience tries to figure out who killed Daniel and Laura, only to discover that the lawyers were fake. If the final reversal is the key point, is there any point in trying to show the process of solving the case? Suspense films should spend more time on laying and breaking suspense, rather than winning by using reversal gimmicks.
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