"In Columbus" is definitely the most unexpected, best-looking, and most advanced drama I've ever seen this year. In fact, its theme is not only about love, but also about family, self-recognition, and the past. Reconciliation, growth beyond self-limitation.
At the Sundance Film Festival, "In Columbus" aroused strong sympathy among many fans, and the network score was even higher.
MTC even gave a sky-high score of 89! This score has surpassed many classic movies of the same type.
Generally speaking, the story structure of "In Columbus" is very ingenious and exquisite. Its sculptural pictures and character display methods are extremely delicate, and the soundtrack, editing and picture presentation are clearly layered and have extraordinary depth.
There is a cobweb-like clear storyline under the seemingly steady rhythm. A steady visual presentation will challenge your concentration limits while expanding your imagination and purifying your perception.
After reading "In Columbus", the simplest word to describe it is "comfortable".
In fact, just talking about the plot, "In Columbus" is not a maverick.
The film tells the story of Kim, a Korean translator, who came to the American city of Columbus, where his architect father accidentally fainted and fell into a coma during a local inspection.
During his days in Columbus, King met Casey, a local girl who dropped out of school to work in the library. Casey was an architecture fan and admired King's father very much.
The film takes Columbus as the shooting location because this small town with a population of less than 50,000 people, located in Indiana, USA, has nearly 60 famous buildings, ranking sixth in the "American City Construction Ranking". People are amazed.
Relying on the love for architecture, the two gradually came together, from talking about architecture to their own life.
The two protagonists of the film are very interesting.
King apparently came to Columbus as an outsider, and when Casey spoke to King for the first time, he was surprised at his fluent English, which King dismissed as normal.
Jin obviously has a background of studying abroad in the West, and the director also wants to express some thoughts on the imagination of a globalized immigrant country.
As an immigrant, Kim has a successful career, and his father is a well-respected master who has achieved success. Even Kim's first love, his father's student, was an American and an object of Kathy's adoration.
Let’s look at Kathy, a local, who dropped out of school at home due to family reasons, and relies on odd jobs to make ends meet. She has just gone through the darkest period of poverty in her life. The mobile phone she uses is actually an outdated product without Internet access.
The gap between immigrants and locals in status and identity is cleverly hidden by the film, but the deliberate arrangement is really interesting.
The encounter between the two in Columbus was not only for falling in love, but also for recognizing themselves.
To this end, in the character setting of the film, a comatose father and a mother with a drug addiction history are specially arranged.
Jin was at odds with his father and did not speak for more than a year. Jin complained that his father did not give him a warm childhood and was always not by his side. When he came to Columbus, he couldn't even stay in the ward for one more second. Complaining and family affection were intertwined, which made him feel uneasy.
The relationship between Casey and her mother is also very tense. Her mother has a history of drug addiction and is constantly changing with unreliable boyfriends. Kathy was forced to drop out of school and stay in Columbus to care for her. Recently, her mother started to make a new boyfriend again, and Kathy was so afraid that the past would repeat itself, she began to check the guard every night, and she was in a panic.
Kim wants to leave Columbus, but is forced to stay temporarily;
Casey wants to stay in Columbus, but her dream is tormenting her to leave as soon as possible.
One of them is stuck in the past, the other is worried about the future.
The meeting of the two will be the beginning of their mutual growth and unraveling of the knot.
Looking at the story and plot alone, "In Columbus" is not advanced and unique.
It is fascinating that "In Columbus" actually wraps this story in the textual connotation of the famous local building, which is definitely a way of building a story that has not been heard before for many years.
Architect Luis Barragan said:
I believe in architecture with emotion. The life of an "architecture" is its beauty. This is very important to humans.
The film mentions that architecture has the power to heal human emotions because of the meaning it carries.
For a person, architecture is often entangled with memory. Some buildings have unique and irreplaceable memories for individuals, which may be sad or happy. Architecture itself will make us go back to the past and invade the time. In the vortex of memories, it evokes private emotions that we cannot forget.
In the film, Kim and Casey got to know each other because they talked about architecture, and then their relationship became more and more intimate. The browsing and interpretation of local architecture opened their hearts, allowing them to talk to each other and find the crux of their hearts.
For the relationship between Kim and his father, the notebook left by his father recording the local buildings is the key for the two to break through the estrangement.
Kim took his father's notebook and searched everywhere for the architectural prototypes in his paintings. Accompanied by Casey, he began to gradually understand the importance of buildings to people. At the same time, he learned about his father and himself again. He didn't want to stay with his father because he complained about the indifference left by his father in the past, and he was ashamed of his own past.
While constantly interpreting the meaning of local architecture, Kathy discovered her passion for architecture. With Jin's suggestion, she began to accept the dream she was chasing in her heart, and at the same time understood that she would let go of the past and believe that her mother would have a new life. , a positive future. She was reluctant to leave because she was afraid of the unpredictability of the future and was not confident enough in herself.
In the film, we can clearly see that Casey ranks the local buildings, and the reason for the ranking comes from her relationship with the buildings.
Some buildings were the places where she was most sad, and some buildings were the lucky places of her sudden hope. The meaning of buildings was attached to her life path and became an important part of her memory.
Here, In Columbus strikes a balance between text and image. In movies, images and texts, that is, sound and pictures, are naturally separated, because one needs to mobilize people's vision, and the other needs to test people's brain power. Film masters often make one aspect to the extreme and are forced to ignore the other.
"In Columbus" always controls the balance between the text and the image. The exquisite picture composition and building display are accompanied by highly refined line information, so that ordinary movie fans, even those who do not understand architecture at all, can easily interpret for its metaphorical purpose.
It is precisely because the director uses the concept and image of "architecture" in the film that the contradictions that may arise during the double intensification of text information and image structure are resolved.
These buildings that appear in the film are intertwined with the characters' emotions and their cognitive values, so the buildings are no longer cold stones, but organic creatures with comforting hearts, and become a field where life and emotions germinate.
As a result, the building has become the driving force of the plot, and even the key to the arc of the characters.
The cognition of the characters is constantly changing in front of the building, allowing their mental strength to grow, breaking through the obstacles of the past.
Finally, I have to mention the beautiful and accurate photographic composition of "In Columbus".
The film makes extensive use of the mirror's counter-strike effect, which is a metaphor for glass.
In the dialogue of the film, "In Columbus" rarely uses conventional front and back play, but in a fixed camera, one person is presented in carefully arranged mirrors, one is either on the side or not at all, using the form of voice-over .
The construction of this dialogue method highlights the central characters in the dialogue, allowing fans to focus more on key characters, the director's motivation becomes clear, and the role of this scene is immediately highlighted.
At the same time, using the composition of the mirror, the characters are naturally divided, and the unnaturalness and division between the characters are presented metaphorically.
The rooms, corridors and streets that appear many times in the film all reveal a deliberate sense of distance.
This use of space allows "In Columbus" to expand on the geographic aesthetics of the building. Time is biased towards the textual content of the film, while space focuses on the emotional aspect of the film, connected by the ubiquitous buildings in the film.
In Columbus makes full use of ambient aesthetics to create a fluid, emotional medium in the set composition that is truly evocative.
In addition to mirrors, there are also glass on buildings. King has said more than once, "more glass". Most of the buildings that Casey likes have a large number of glass as a landscape feature, and the glass naturally carries the heart of the characters and the theme of the film. metaphor.
In the end, Kim chose to stay and retrieve a way to repair the father-son relationship from the building.
And Kathy chose to leave, she found her true direction from the building.
One of them forgave the past, the other regained confidence and moved toward the future.
The relationship between men and women, family relationship, and the relationship between man and architecture and nature are so subtly dissolved in the story.
"In Columbus" has a magical power that gradually penetrates into the heart. You don't even know when you started to indulge in the narrative structure and aesthetic dynamics of the film. When the film ended, an inexplicable emotion lingered in your heart for hours. , the aftertaste is endless, like a new life.
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