At the 89th Academy Awards, Matt Damon, who gave up his role in "Manchester by the Sea" for "The Great Wall", was ruthlessly ridiculed by host Jimmy Kimmel and looked at his old friend Casey Affleck, who was holding a statuette. Matt Damon's mood is so complicated that he may not be able to communicate with outsiders.
Since then, Matt Damon has "knowing the shame and then being brave", and the selection of films has become extraordinarily cautious.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to achieve what one wishes.
In 2017, he starred in Alexander Payne's "Shrink Up". Before the film was released, it was hotly discussed as a hit in the Olympics. However, the play was too deliberate, so that the film's reputation collapsed before the awards season. . In the same year, the "Murder in Lost Town" starring him also sold well, but George Clooney borrowed the script of the Coen brothers, but he couldn't borrow the talents of the Coen brothers. It was a good story, but the filming was too mediocre.
Then came the 2019 "Flying Car King", which has a good reputation, but since it is a "two-heroes drama", it is inevitable that there will be comparisons. Matt Damon's performance in the film is not as good as Bell's, and that year's Oscar winner competition Intense, Bell failed to make the final nomination list, and Matt Damon was even more hopeless.
If it doesn't work once, then do it again. Matt Damon did not have many attempts in the matter of Chong Ao, at least not as powerful as the former Xiao Li and the current Bell.
This year, Matt Damon's new work "The City of Stillwater" has the posture of rushing to Austria.
Can you help him realize his dream? Hard to say. But after watching the whole film, I can say:
The movie was well done and Matt Damon played it well. Of course, Chong Ao depends on fate, but in terms of standard, this film is definitely qualified.
The "Still Water City" in the title refers to the small town where Bill, played by Matt Damon, lives, located in Oklahoma, in the south-central United States.
Oklahoma does not have a strong sense of presence among the states in the United States. Apart from tornadoes, the most famous one is probably its "deep red" attribute. Simply put, as a big voter of the Republican Party, most of the people here are voting would choose Trump over Hillary or Biden.
In other words, this place is a gathering place for "red necks", and "conservative" is synonymous with these people.
Bill, played by Matt Damon, is a typical "red neck", with worker status, ordinary family background, and even his appearance and dressing style conform to people's stereotype of "red neck". Tall, stocky, bearded, sunglasses and jeans are standard, and that Carhartt shirt is a status symbol.
The film tells the story of Bill, an American "red neck" who traveled across the ocean to the French seaport city of Marseille to find a way to exonerate his imprisoned daughter.
In other words, the film's main storyline doesn't take place in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and there are far fewer Americans than French people throughout the film.
But I have to emphasize that the title of the film is very precise. Bill's identity determines the direction of the whole story. Of course, the director Tom McCarthy's drunkenness is not in Marseilles, France, but in the United States where he lives. .
Back to the story itself. In the film, Bill's daughter, Alison, was charged with killing his girlfriend Lena while studying in Marseille and was sentenced to prison. When she realized that her case had a new turn, she entrusted her father Bill to visit her to help her. After contacting a lawyer to exonerate her, Bill found evidence in Marseille alone after being told by the lawyer that there was no hope of overturning the case, and finally helped his daughter regain her freedom.
Alison's case has a prototype in reality, the famous "Knox case".
The so-called "Knox case" refers to the rape and murder of Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student at the University of Perugia in Italy, in 2007. In this case, Kercher's roommate Amanda Knock Sles and his ex-boyfriend Sollecito were the most suspected of crimes and were quickly arrested by the police, but during the trial, Knox repeatedly revoked his confession and was finally acquitted four years later in 2011, the court gave The reason is that the main evidence is flawed.
There is no doubt that Alison's case in "Stillwater City" is very similar to Knox's case, except that the relationship between the characters has changed, and the direction of the case is almost the same. Clearly, the screenwriter was inspired by the blockbuster case when writing the script.
Naturally, many North American audiences who are familiar with the "Knox case" viewed "Stillwater City" as a movie "adapted from a true event", but after watching it, many people were irritated.
The reason is very simple. Although the film borrows the shell of the "Knox case", it does not intend to restore the case in a down-to-earth manner. For several important characters in the case, the screenwriter not only changed the relationship between the characters, but also It is a bold fiction of the so-called truth.
The Knox case is still inconclusive. Although the vast majority of people believe that Knox and her ex-boyfriend are the murderers, the evidence is flawed. According to the principle of "suspected guilt," everyone can only accept the fact that Knox has regained his freedom.
In "Still Water City", the director clearly told the audience what the truth is.
The truth is, for the film Stillwater, the negative comments from North American audiences revolved around the discussion about the Knox case, and it was very interestingly divided into two factions.
One faction believes that it is already very problematic to adapt such a real incident from the perspective of the "murderer"'s father. Such a perspective will create a mental presupposition of "the murderer's innocence" and let the audience sympathize." The murderer" and the father of the "murderer" are very unfair to the victim.
The other faction believes that Knox has been found not guilty, and the law should be respected. The creator of the film fabricated the truth of Alison's guilt, which is more or less a kind of harm to Knox, if she is really innocent. Yes, is it not a slander that the film is made like this?
These two factions, inadvertently, actually reflect a certain division in American society at the moment, with different positions and different ways of thinking about issues.
My opinion is that the "Knox case" can be put aside. Since the film does not emphasize that it is an adaptation of a real event, then we have the right to regard it as a fictional story. Obviously, director Tom McCarthy did not focus on the so-called case. The case of Alison in the film is just a pretense. What McCarthy wants to shoot is actually a series of conflicts caused by the case.
If this movie is really going to make "The Knox Case" honestly, I guess Matt Damon wouldn't choose to do it, and there's no need for Tom McCarthy to make it into a movie or a miniseries, right? easier?
What Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon value must be the inner conflict that this story can dig deep, and that inner conflict can be described by one word I mentioned earlier: fragmentation.
In Stillwater, we can feel this disconnection all the time.
The most intuitive is the division of language, or the division of culture.
Bill, a non-French-speaking American, could hardly move in France. Even when he called someone, he had to ask a friend he just met to help translate. The most interesting thing is that the director designed such a bridge: Bill, who lives in the hotel, heard someone playing music loudly on the terrace outside, he asked the other party to lower his voice, but the other party refused him with "can't understand English". , and later we learned that this person who "doesn't understand English" is actually very fluent in English.
To put it bluntly, fragmentation is not formed objectively, but subjectively. The French can speak English, but the French are reluctant to speak, and the French can get to know the Americans, but the French are not interested in that.
Fragmentation is a breeding ground for prejudice. Seeing Bill, French friends will ask questions like: "Did you vote for Trump?"
In the eyes of the French, Americans are made up of symbols piled up one after another, especially a red neck like Bill, who will be covered with labels.
The director also used a lot of ink to describe the relationship between Bill and the local stage actor Virginie in Marseille and Virginie's daughter Maya, which seemed to illustrate the preciousness of universal values, but in the end the director brutally broke The beauty he created tells us that the deep-rooted divisions make universal values even more fragile.
Virginie's willingness to accept Bill to live with her doesn't mean she's willing to accept Bill's "red neck thinking", and when Bill's way of doing things conflicts with hers, their relationship is doomed to shatter.
In one of my favorite lines in the film, the little girl Maya said to Bill, "You are my favorite American." In fact, young Maya had no concept of "Americans", "Americans" and "Americans." "French" is not very different in her heart. She said that she liked Bill, just simply like it, and it couldn't be more sincere.
In that moment, universal values transcended fragmentation, but unfortunately only for a moment.
Fragmentation also exists between generations.
From the beginning to the end, Alison was full of distrust of her father. She didn't believe that her father could help her get out of the crime, and she was unwilling to tell her what the truth was. To a certain extent, Alison took advantage of her father's love and trust in her. , and finally achieved its purpose.
Alison, who has lived in France for many years, obviously doesn't agree with many of her father's habits and ideas. Her actions are less like an American from Stillwater and more like a French. She would join the locals in supporting Marseille FC rather than stubbornly favoring rugby, and she would talk about sex at the dinner table instead of being pious and reserved like her father.
In the film, Alison lost the necklace his father gave him with the words "Still Water City" printed on it. The necklace not only became a crucial prop in the film, but also seemed to imply us:
Alison lost the identity attributes that Stillwater gave her.
The people here are conservative and stubborn, but at the same time principled, pious to God, and believe in universal values.
The director did not choose to stand aside. He showed the shortcomings of Bill's red neck, but also let the audience see the merits of Bill.
Perhaps what McCarthy wants to say most is that whether you are left or right, New Yorker or Texas cowboy, American red neck or French literary youth, in this gradually fragmented world, you should choose to embrace universal values.
I love the ending of the film, after the calm, the father and daughter are sitting in the yard of their house, the daughter says, nothing seems to have changed, and the father says, for me, everything has changed here.
For the father and daughter, the constant is the external environment, but the change is the internal state of mind.
For the United States, from Obama to Trump to Biden, and back to the Democratic Party, but nothing has changed? Of course everything has changed.
For this world, the division is gradually forming and deepening. At first glance, nothing has changed, but in fact, everything has changed.
Under this kind of separation, films like "Still Water City" are even more precious. It did not choose to shoot the subject matter that would please the old white men in the academy the most, and did not subconsciously approach Bai Zuo to criticize the red neck. A good enough story to tell.
McCarthy didn't shoot any particularly dazzling scenes, and Matt Damon didn't contribute many particularly explosive performances, but the rhythm was right, the performance was accurate, and the design of every scene and every dramatic conflict was a proper benefit. of.
It's a bit like a lot of the movies Lao Dongmu has made over the years, stubborn and self-righteous, and impeccably beautiful.
It is a pity that such films are destined to not be paid more attention by now.
View more about Stillwater reviews
