Some people say that this is a story about the disillusionment of the American dream. The facts are rather like a source of fate. In this black world, there is no so-called American dream. There is no struggle here, only depravity, violence, and profit. If you degenerate, violently, and ruthlessly, the closer you are to success. It's hard to say that this is a struggle myth about the American dream. What it actually tells is the story of how marginal characters survive in the cracks. There is no struggle in the social sense here, and even the rules of the gang do not apply. Henry, Jimmy, and Tommy are not only marginal figures in society, but also weak marginal figures in the underworld. The practical significance of this story is that their struggle will never be recognized, and their destiny will never be recognized. Ending: Abandoned. The significance of the myth lies in the ending Henry escaped this fate, and the method is exactly the rule he learned in the sinister arena: there are no rules, no morality.
So the more beautiful, the more illusory.
For Scorsese, to create a surface of light, the story has the cornerstone of its existence. This is what the "sociologist" is good at. The gorgeous moving camera, the arbitrary and restrained rhythm, the voice-over, the fast editing, and the freeze frame. The marginal language in the tradition is here to the extreme, but it does not deviate from the tradition. The exploration is Within an acceptable range, just as the characters in the story live between the rules of the underworld and the rules of the white way and cannot be arrogant, once they cross the boundary, they lose the value of existence. So the seemingly powerless things are radiated with brand new vitality here. This kind of approximate romantic technique is used to express details close to the documentary, and there is also a kind of unrestrained tension besides the accident.
Robbery, murder and arson, fraud and abduction, these anti-social content, in the fast and rhythmic narrative, glows with a hint of dream, a visible joke, but I am afraid that everyone has this kind of unconstrained life hidden in their hearts. Dream. The powerful lens language not only brings the characters into a new world, but also brings us into a world that has never been touched. Here, violence and tenderness coexist, death and rebirth coexist, betrayal and affection coexist, beasts and lambs coexist. But like all loser stories, when the flowers of evil bloom most beautifully, it is usually the time when they wither.
This kind of life has a strong tragic meaning, it is a one-way dead end, and when it comes to Scorsese, it adds a bit of ridicule. So no matter how many flowers are in the beginning of the story, everyone has to be judged by fate at the end. For those who live in the cracks and cannot avoid crossing the boundary, there are only two endings, the death of the underworld and the prison of the white road. Tommy, who thought he had finally integrated into the Mafia, was shot headshot by his comrades; Jimmy, who lived in seclusion, thought he could steal a life, but became a victim of betrayal; and Henry, who was abandoned, escaped the fateful ending with a realistic choice. He personally destroyed that seemingly fairy tale world, which was originally built by him.
A large number of period songs are used in the soundtrack, which is the same as the viewpoint of young Henry, which is the memory of Scorsese in childhood, which is reproduced through images. Compared with other people's use of soundtracks to contrast or contrast emotions, Scorsese has his own unique approach. He overlaps the visual rhythm composed of camera movement, scheduling, and character movements with the music melody, thus creating a soothing, ethereal and decadent feeling, and firmly embeds the imprint of a great era into the fictional story. You may not be able to tolerate this blatant violence, but the rhythm is like breathing.
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