Looking through the past film reviews, I found that I have never seriously written a Japanese film. In all fairness, among the film and television levels of China, Japan and South Korea, South Korea’s film industry has progressed rapidly after the millennium, and there are countless excellent genre films, but they lose in the approaching style, serious routines, and few surprises; China’s film and television level has improved slightly in recent years. , there are occasionally excellent works, but the whole is still mixed and needs to be rectified and transformed; in contrast, Japan has developed the most stable, the overall level is not low, and the development of various film types is relatively balanced, whether it is a commercial film that sells at the box office. , or literary films that can compete in international film festivals, are remarkable.
I have always felt that Japan has the most complex national character in the world: strong militarism, but also has the best anti-war movies such as "Farewell to Arms" and "Merry Christmas on the Battlefield"; the sense of collective centralization is deeply rooted, but Dystopian masterpieces such as "Ghost in the Shell" and "Akira" were born that yearn to break away from the system; warm, delicate and meaningful like Ozu Yasujiro and Yamada Yoji, evil and avant-garde, sharp and fierce, and like Oshima Nagisa and Nakajima Tetsuya... But whether it's singing loudly or chanting in a low voice, Japanese movies are among the movies and TV shows of China, Japan and South Korea, and the movies that can best see people and life.
So I chose this 2004 Japanese masterpiece "The Wife Killing Story", and I wanted to seriously talk about the touching thinking about life and the human nature hidden behind the weird and absurd style of Neon Country. care.
01A script that does not depend on performance is a really good script
In fact, each good movie has its own way. Some of the shots are beautiful and well-composed, such as "The Grand Budapest Hotel"; some are superbly performed, and they can't survive without being crazy, such as DC's new "Joker" this year; some have grand and profound themes Soul-stirring, such as "2001 A Space Odyssey"; and others, the script is solid and well-conceived, such as "The Wife Killing Story" to be talked about today.
In fact, from the overall structure point of view, "Wife Killing Story" continues to use the Guy Ritchie-style narrative method: several branch lines and several groups of characters go hand in hand, and cross each other, resulting in a series of "accidents", and finally will be relatively independent. Several stories are connected into one body. However, compared to the dark humor of "Two Smoking Guns", several stories in "Wife Killing Story" are more absurd and magical:
A middle-aged man couldn't stand his wife's torture, so he killed her and buried her in the woods, but after driving back, he found that his wife was waiting for him at home, so he tortured each other again, then killed his wife and buried her body, and then returned home again. Once he found his wife unscathed... Repeating this countless times was all in vain, so the man decided to invite a professional killer to come to the door, but on Christmas Eve, the two ended their fight. Just when the man and his wife were reconciled, there was some hope for marriage. At that time, the killer came to the door, and the wife fell in a pool of blood again, but this time, she never got up again;
A female designer of an advertising agency, whether she is eating at a restaurant or taking a taxi, is thinking of her own advertising works. Even when she is having sex with her boyfriend, she is thinking of work. She is an uncompromising workaholic. But unfortunately, his creativity is not recognized by customers, and her boyfriend not only discourages him, but also sneers at his career. So the female designer got angry, hired a killer to kill her boyfriend, and devoted herself to work, but misfortunes did not come singly, and she accidentally left the tape recorder that recorded her countless advertising ideas. When I was searching, I was suddenly tired and tired, so I turned and left;
Three stupid punks make a living by burglary all day long, punk A is gay, and has always had a good impression of punk B but dare not reveal it. After another burglary, the three spent time in the sauna. A admitted his orientation, but B did not respond, so A turned to the other two people in the sauna to chat and talk about jokes to ease the embarrassing atmosphere. The two were actually killers. After a few words, they showed their weapons, but B, who had been silent, bravely stood in front of A and was seriously injured. Only at this time did B finally confess his feelings for A. , so everyone rejoices;
A warm and loving family of four, although all supported by his father's meager salary, it can be considered a happy life. Once the whole family participated in a hypnosis performance, the hypnotist happened to be the boyfriend of the female designer, and in the performance, he succeeded Through hypnosis, the father of a family of four thought he was a bird, and when the audience cheered, the killer hired by the female designer rushed onto the stage and killed the hypnotist, while the father was in a state of hypnosis. There is no way to recover, so the family can only silently endure this sudden misfortune...
The last story is about 2 killers who appeared in the previous 4 stories, one of them is a salesman from a Japanese killer company, the other is a professional killer he invited from the UK, and every time the British killer encounters A person will ask each other very much: what's the function of your life? After that, he killed the wife of a middle-aged man, the boyfriend of a female designer, and seriously injured the gay gangster. Every independent story is strung together. .
From such a large plot description, you can easily imagine that the temperament of "The Wife Killing" is very dark and weird, even a bit cult, and the actors' performances are extremely exaggerated and unskilled, but this does not hinder Our viewing experience has even become part of the unique style of the film.
Here is the relationship between the performance and the script: the script provides the basic scale for the actor's performance and determines the way and direction of the performance, and an excellent performance can maximize the beauty of the script, and even It can make up for the small flaws of the script to a certain extent. Take the "Joker" that DC has swept the world this year as an example. Joaquin Phoenix's wide-open and three-point performance has firmly captured the hearts of every audience. I don't know how many people have become crazy dancing on the stairs. This year's best clip, but in fact, the script itself is nothing new, it is nothing more than the anger of the people at the bottom of the society, and the plot connection is not smooth and natural, but the excellent performance makes us ignore these small flaws in the script .
But "Wife Killing Story" is just the opposite: you can't pick out any bright spots in the performance of the whole movie, no character is amazing, but the movie is very smooth and exciting, this is the excellence of the script itself, it is maintaining The strong style is also enough to justify it. It looks frizzy and magical, but it is actually exquisite and fine. It is good enough in itself, so it no longer needs to rely on the bonus of the actor's performance. Similar to the Spanish film "The Invisible Guest", which was very well received at the time, we all sighed with emotion after watching the film. Even if Kris Wu and Angela Baby were cast in this film, it would not be too bad. It can be seen from this that we have always exaggerated the importance of actors to the whole work. The script is the bone and the performance is the skin. A real good movie needs more beauty in the bones, not just on the skin.
02 Life is a tragedy when viewed up close, but a comedy when viewed from a distance
This part deals with the theme of the movie. Throughout the 5 short stories shown in the film, all of them are jokes about accidents and reconciliation of all kinds of helplessness.
A middle-aged man who kills his wife is always unable to achieve his wish, and every time he uses a different method to kill his wife, his wife will have another skill to torture him: he rammed his wife to death with a shovel, and the wife returned to become a kung fu master; he After dismembering his wife, his wife's limbs became cannonballs that could be fired; he burned his wife to death, but when she woke up, she had more fire-breathing skills... He thought that he would be like his wife for the rest of his life. "Hate each other and kill each other", but what he didn't expect was that in this time and again, he actually got to know his wife again and discovered her cuteness.
From the horror of the failure to kill his wife for the first time, to the habit of his wife dying and coming back to life, to the humorous attitude towards his wife's revenge, love is actually slowly re-emerging. So when his wife fired his arm as a cannonball at him, he fled and muttered: "Oh my god what a weapon", when his wife threw fire at him and lit the cigarette in his hand , he actually felt that it was very "practical" to have such a wife, and on Christmas Eve, his wife dressed herself like a Christmas boot and rushed towards him, but he laughed: "What kind of look are you?", so the wife also endured Can't stop laughing, the two of them stopped fighting, sat in front of the window and looked at the stars together, and even, the two foolishly used a marker to draw eyes on the windbreaker...
But just when the two decided to change their minds and live a good life, an accident happened. The killer whom the middle-aged man contacted before came to the door and killed his wife without saying a word. The husband didn't care, buried his wife as usual, and drove the car. He went home and waited for his wife to come back to life again, but he never waited. So he broke down, and he rushed into the killer's office and leaped out of the window there.
This little story of killing a wife actually has too many rich connotations. The act of "killing his wife" may be a metaphor in itself. Isn't every fierce quarrel between two people in love like killing each other once? Those sudden fights and inexplicable handshakes are not just exaggerated interpretations of trivial marriage life? Good things are always so short-lived, and accidents happen to come before tomorrow. Isn't this the irony and helplessness of life? As for how we should face these accidents and helplessness, the movie gave us the answer with the story of the family of four.
The family of four was originally poor and happy, but because of watching a hypnosis show, they suddenly came into trouble: the father was hypnotized and thought he was a bird, but before the hypnotism was restored, the hypnotist was murdered, so the father could only Facing the future life with the "thinking" of a bird, for this family, they not only lost their pillars, but also had another "burden" that broke their hearts. So the wife could only take her husband to various hospitals for consultations, while the daughter and son carefully concealed the "ugly incident" in the family... The hospital has no sympathy for such a patient, and just wanted to keep the father as a research sample, the daughter The son can no longer get his father's favor, but he has to worry about his father's daily safety. Finally one day, "Dad Bird" thought he could fly and fell heavily from the roof. His wife could no longer bear this kind of life. The family was about to collapse, but the youngest son said the following words:
This is the ultimate answer the movie gives us: there are always so many accidents, so many pains and losses in life. These pains may come from family, friendship, love, career, self-esteem, and even worldview and life ideals, no matter what How much we are, we still have to grit our teeth and live, because life is too short, there is no time for us to indulge in sadness all day long.
There will never be a worse accident in the world than Dad suddenly turning into a bird, but even so, you can choose to practice flying with Dad Bird. Maybe one day, Dad can really fly freely between cities. And can successfully save the middle-aged man who jumped off the building in frustration. A close look of life is often a tragedy, but we can give this tragedy a long enough time, because the power of time is unimaginable, it is enough to wash away the unforgettable sadness, and then let the barren life bloom with little yellow flowers. And in this struggle of turning sadness into joy, we have successfully survived our own lives.
03 "Sweet and sad" victory
"The Wife Killing" looks weird and absurd, but it's actually a very cute movie. It's a little sad, a little decadent, but it won't make you feel really hopeless, because there are always some details that will make you smile:
The middle-aged man who killed his wife had the green windbreaker with painted eyes, the Buick covered with flowers and plants, and the milk that spewed out of his mouth when he saw his wife come back to life for the first time; Weird advertising design brain holes; several connotative jokes told by thieves; the paintings drawn by the son of a family of four; the "smile please" slogan posted in the killer's studio... These rich details endow every The warmth of the story is just right, which makes this movie that should have died to the end more innocence, tenderness, humanity, and a smile on life, so at the end of the movie, when the bird father who learned to fly When we caught the man who killed his wife who fell from the building, we in front of the screen were moved from the bottom of our hearts.
Thinking about it carefully, most of the excellent new film and television dramas released in recent years are so sweet and sad. The discussion about love and life between the heroine and the pastor in "London Life" is so sad, but it also makes people see the brilliance of human nature; "To His World", the two teenagers run away together with ghosts and meet each other along the way. It is full of filth and hypocrisy in the adult world, but the company of the two of them is so pure and pure, and in the end they both understand what people mean to each other; "Rick and Morty" even more the absurdity of the real world and the darkness of humanity Performed to the extreme, but you can always be moved by Rick's sincerity and his love for his daughter, grandson and granddaughter...
Pop culture reflects the group unconsciousness for a certain period of time. The current world is too complicated, people are generally too tired, our expectations for the future are no longer as enthusiastic and high-spirited as people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but more about whether the world will become increasingly unbalanced. confused. Perhaps from the perspective of the entire history of development, human beings have passed their youth, and thus lost the so-called "forever young, always tearful" romance, but transitioned to the demise of the idealism of middle-aged people, the practical necessity of a last resort. supremacy, and the anxiety of struggling and dilemma.
Spread evenly on every individual living in this era, it is the powerlessness and loss that contemporary people generally feel: the development of this world has already had the inertia of being out of our control, even if we follow the trend, we cannot escape being run over by the wheel of history. The fate of pressure, let alone swimming against the tide of the times.
So under this kind of loss, helplessness and anxiety, works that are too sweet lose their sense of authenticity, and works that are too sad will only make people feel further lost. So for us who are small, the absolute beauty of fairy tales is unbelievable, but we sincerely hope that the art world will not be as sad and heavy as the real world. Life is too short, even if we know the sad ending, we don't want to indulge in sadness all the time, so what we hope to see is to reveal the helplessness of life, but let us ignite a little bit in a relatively sober state Confidence in the future.
This is a "sweet and sad" victory. What really impresses us is not the beauty in decadence, but our courage to live unyieldingly even when we are in a difficult situation. There is no way to avoid the helplessness of life, and this era does not produce heroes enough to save the world, so we can only lean down and reach out to ourselves in the dark depths.
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