The film uses drastic editing to explain the mental states of the four protagonists with clips before and after the breakup or reunion. The story begins with the love at first sight between Dan (Jude Law) and Alice (Natalie Portman), and ends with the reunion of Larry (Clive Owen) and Anna (Julia Roberts), which shows the director and screenwriter's attitude towards "sex" and "love". However, the film deliberately cuts out all the sex scenes, which shows that the film focuses on the psychological performance of the characters before and after the venting of sexual desire/erotic desire, and the shooting is different from ordinary erotic movies.
The name of the movie "Closer" means that the situation of the story takes place between "Close" and "Closest". The narrative is precisely the hesitation between this duality. "Closer" puts forward a lot of dualistic concepts-some ordinary people think that they are relative concepts, and break them: "spirit" and "desire", "confession" and "doubt", "jealousy" and "forgiveness", In the end, it comes down to the biggest proposition, which is "intimacy" and "stranger", "love" and "not love". The focus of the film is to express the above-mentioned seemingly opposite but indistinguishable duality concepts, and therefore raise the film's concept of love to a higher level.
1. Spirit and desire
"Sex" and "love", "body" and "soul", "beast" and "human", the above three sets of seemingly opposite concepts are presented in the contradiction between the two characters of Larry and Dan. Larry calls himself the "King of Sultan". He desperately needs body and sex. He needs absolute frankness. Like animals, he likes to be naked and meet each other in jade and silk. From Anna’s dictation, Larry was rude, direct, and domineering. Larry used "sex" as the perfect end of a marriage; even he asked to see Alice's body, we can clearly find that "body" is Larry's soul. The two become one. On the other hand, Anna said that Dan is a little love god, Dan loves sensibly and wholeheartedly, while pursuing perfection, such as he called Larry a beast and not a human. He was perceptual but couldn't accept the parting behavior of Anna and Larry at the same time. In the end he thought he could forgive the sexual relationship between Alice and Larry, but he couldn't. He finally slapped Alice. At this point, we can see that the director is not using a moral ruler to criticize Dan’s sorrow and Larry’s abomination, nor does it praise "spirit" and derogate "desire", but suggests that "people" are spiritual desires under any circumstances. They are all one and inseparable.
Second, confession and deception are
relative to male characters, while the characterization of female characters focuses on the level of "love". Anna and Alice each carry a lie in the movie, but behind the lie coincidentally is for the man they love. However, in the plot set in the movie, we find that even though the characters confess, "suspicion" will always return in different forms. For example, Larry urged Alice to tell her real name personally. Even if Alice said her name was Jones, Larry still didn't believe it. Another example is that Dan still questioned whether Larry and Alice had sex at the end of the movie, even if Dan slapped Alice in anger, even if Alice admitted in person, the same suspicions existed.
In the final analysis, suspicion is because of distrust, and the antecedent of distrust is being deceived. So "confession" can be equated to "deception", because we have no way to know what the other person's heart is thinking. The combination of "confession" and "deception" shows the greatest limitation of love, and it is also the characteristic of love. This Painted a sad background color for the movie.
3. Jealousy and Forgiveness
On the surface, the film is about the "sex" and "love" between men and women, but it is not difficult to find that under these two general directions, there is a more important consciousness hidden, that is, "jealousy and forgiveness." It is not difficult for Larry to catch Alice to find that it is an act of "revenge." Similarly, Larry wants Dan to know that he and Anna are still having sex before the divorce is nearing to divorce is also a kind of revenge. It was a "demonstration of jealousy" that the two pairs of men and women whispered to each other at the film festival. In the end Dan thought that she could forgive Alice but not; similarly, Alice could not forgive Dan in the end, so she stopped crying sadly, instead she said indifferent "I don't love you anymore"; the situation of Anna and Larry seems to be On the contrary, Larry's apparent victory does not mean that he no longer has jealousy and forgiveness. On the contrary, Anna's expression at the end shows that the act of forgiveness has nothing to do with dispelling jealousy. Therefore, in the world of love in the movie, jealousy and forgiveness are not binary opposites, on the contrary, they coexist at the same time.
4. Intimacy and Strangeness——Fuzziness
can finally summarize the general theme of the movie "intimacy" and "stranger." The movie has a deep background. From the beginning of the movie, it was love at first sight of strangers. Anna took the job of catching the faces of strangers in the street. In the end, Anna and Larry were close to each other even though they were in the same bed. "These are two important concepts in film. But the movie cannot separate intimacy from strangeness. Take Dan and Alice as an example. They fell in love at first sight but they obviously didn't understand. It was until the two developed into a couple that they seemed to be close and knew each other, but in the end Dan discovered that Alice had been using fake names. Her real name was Jane. But Alice tells his real name to Larry who gave him money, so how to define "intimacy" and "unfamiliar"? In the latter part of the movie, Dan couldn't help but recall the scene of acquaintance with Alice. It seems that everyone was the closest at that time. It can be seen that there is no boundary between "intimacy" and "stranger" between people. So just like the meaning of the theme song: we don't know why, we can only know "so and so." The film does not give an authoritative choice between "love" and "no love". On the contrary, it is extremely vague, but it is this "vagueness" that makes the height of the film elevated.
Five, leave blank
The editing of the film is bold, leaving a lot of white space. For example, the protagonist’s "feeling", "unfeeling", and "re-feeling" are not explained. But it is these "blanks" that allow the film to have a broader space for thinking. The director did not fully present the psychology of the role to the audience, just as the people in the play guess, jealous, confess, and forgive each other, but in the end it has nothing to do with intimacy and strangeness. They only feel that each other is close and strange. And white space can express this meaning.
However, the blank space prevents Anna's role from being played well. Among the four roles, Anna is a complete passive. When Dan can choose to own or give up Anna, Larry becomes the winner with absolute possessiveness, and Alice can also say "I don't love you". The ending of the movie is more leisurely and confident to absorb others' eyes on the street. Compared with Anna's character More flat. But in terms of acting skills, the four actors are also of good quality. The scene where Julia Roberts was forced to ask by Larry was full of levels. From guilt to helpless, from helpless to contempt, from contempt to anger, this scene is full of true qualities; Natalie Portman even more The inner characteristics of being strong on the surface and fragile on the inside are expressed, and the different psychological states of the character are expressed in accordance with the color of the hair. Relatively speaking, male characters are more ordinary.
In summary, the movie speaks of the ambiguity of love and life. There are certain limitations in seeing people and things. Just like the audience and the people in the play, they don't know everyone very well, but as if they have a certain degree of understanding, they are actually full of helplessness.
View more about Closer reviews
