This article was first published on wx Princess [Popcorn Factory]
Author / sayoko & building blocks
Original address [ http://t.cn/AimHXB0c ]
The biography we are talking about today is related to gambling, and it is also the directorial debut of the famous screenwriter Alan Sorkin .
You may not have any impression of his name, but I believe you must have heard of his masterpieces, such as the Oscar-winning Zuckerberg biography "The Social Network" and the American drama "The Newsroom".
The work that follows is also nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay .
The heroine Jasmine, who was supposed to use skiing as her career, showed her skills in the Olympics, but a mistake ruined her athlete career.
The failure brought a huge blow to Jasmine, so she chose to go to Los Angeles to take a year off before going to law school to study, and this choice started her life as a "poker princess" .
She met Dean while working as a bartender. Dean proposed to let her be his secretary and let her be responsible for organizing and running his own underground poker game.
The players present were all celebrities, and it was extremely refreshing to spend a lot of money, and Jasmine naturally gained a lot—she got a tip of $3,000 on the first night.
Since then, she has gone farther and farther on the road of running a poker game. As wealth and fame grew, so did trouble, and ended up being prosecuted for allegedly illegal gambling... how would she deal with it?
The film adopts the method of interlude , and two timelines are intertwined: one line tells how Molly transformed from an unknown waiter to a "poker princess" in high society; actions and the moral choices she faces.
The film still has Sorkin's strong personal color, and the most prominent feature is the use of a large number of lines to promote the development of the plot and shape the characters.
The incredible experience of the protagonist of the story and Sorkin's profound screenwriting skills make the film wonderful. The explosive lines and fast-paced editing allow the audience to quickly integrate into the tense atmosphere of the film, allowing the audience to establish an emotional connection with the characters.
This kind of treatment is very useful when explaining the background and characters, but the climax and ending of the film are also dealt with in this way, which I personally feel is a bit rushed and unconvincing .
This is also the reason why the movie, although wonderful, cannot stand up to scrutiny.
For example, for the long talk between the father and daughter at the end, the film critics are seriously polarized: some people think this scene is very warm and touching, while many people think that this episode is abrupt and makes the film fall into a cliché.
I prefer the latter.
The film begins with the clue of a skiing competition, which seems to have nothing to do with poker, to lead to a turning point in Molly's life.
At the same time, the clue also leads the audience to explore her relationship with her family. Her father's strictness and indifference had a deep impact on Jasmine, and his cheating also caused great harm to the family.
Look again at the previous scene of the father-daughter conversation.
Jasmine, whose account was frozen, was penniless and had to use her gloves to pay off the rent of her skates. Standing on the long-lost ice, she recalled the lost game.
As if trying to make up for something, she slid quickly across the ice. The staff told her to slow down, but she just turned around and said, "Come and catch me . "
This is Jasmine's reminiscence of her skiing career, a manifestation of her rebellious spirit, and a symbol of her reconciliation with the past.
It might be more convincing if he left blank here to give the audience more room to think, instead of suddenly appearing his father, who has no sense of existence for most of the movie, and forcibly dragging Jasmine out of her psychological predicament.
This also involves a question: Does this work count as a women's film?
As the protagonist, Jasmine is talented, intelligent, brave and decisive, and her unyielding mentality allows her to gain a firm foothold in a microcosm of a male society like the poker game, and even surpass these men with "absolute power".
Since she was a child, she thought marriage was a trap and socializing was a joke.
She said she has no hero, and if she can achieve her goal, then she is her hero.
It seems to be full of the style of independent women?
However, if "Jasmine's Game" is labeled as a "female film", its content is somewhat ironic.
First, her original career was built on powerful men.
Whether it was first spotted by Dean, or kicked away by Player X after she used it, or even in the final game she built herself, her status has not changed.
Molly's dissatisfaction with Player X resulted in her being kicked out of the game
It looks like she's sitting next to the game in control, but she's still powerless .
As long as she arouses the dissatisfaction of someone at the poker table, she will be in danger. After all, who is really a modest gentleman in such a situation? Later, the threat of the Russian mafia is also natural.
Second, Jasmine's starting point was to gain attention and recognition, especially from her father.
As mentioned earlier, the father played a role in helping the audience analyze the psychology of the protagonist at the end of the film. In my opinion, this arrangement has undoubtedly weakened the color of "women's films" to a large extent, and also deprived the characters of opportunities to grow themselves. .
On top of that, other female characters in the film are marginalized.
Facing her husband's cheating mother, a lawyer's daughter, and her partner who helped her set up a poker game... Their existence has little to contribute to the development of the plot, and is very empty in character creation.
Others say it's an inspirational film.
Because Jasmine had fallen to the bottom many times, she had never been able to let go of her defeat in the face of failure.
Molly mentions one player, Harlan , in her recollection of the hand , who was a cautious poker player. Others are after the thrill of gambling, and he's here to play poker, so he always wins.
But often walking by the river, there is no wet shoes, no one would have thought that Harlan actually lost to the worst poker player in the poker game.
So he began to give up on himself, gave up his once cautiousness, kept buying chips, and lost all of them, always feeling that he could win back next time.
Every gambler had the confidence that he could win back, and Jasmine had already seen this clearly.
And why isn't she a gambler?
Compared with the "protagonist of inspirational films", I think the identity of "gambler" is more suitable for her.
She bet her life on the poker table, willing to gamble, taking huge risks to make a profit, thinking "I want to win it back" again and again.
The good news is that after so much, the protagonist's archetype, Jasmine Bloom, is now committed to creating work communities for women to help them succeed.
She made a lot of mistakes and learned lessons, and finally got out of the poker game and really owned her own business.
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