Counting "Isle of Dogs", Wes Anderson has already made nine feature films. If you look at "Bottle Rocket" all the way, you will easily find that his approach is not so fixed, and the quality fluctuates within a certain range. And until now in this "year of the dog", Weiss is still "conservatively" groping the boundaries of his own style and subject matter.
As the saying goes, "Nine Nine into One". So let’s take the opportunity of "Canis Island" to come to a "stage summary" about Wes Anderson when "Canis Island" is released.
1 Wes’s New Wave Spirit
In addition to constant exploration, Wes Anderson certainly has something he has always adhered to. Throughout his works, the biggest feature is not the highly designed colors, props, composition and lens movements, but the deep "French New Wave State" behind the form. The American director who was born in Houston in 1969 has never shy away from the profound influence of Truffau and Godard on him.
He started watching Pauline Kyle's film reviews (a famous female critic with a reputation no less than Roger Ebert) in his first year of high school, and was invited by the Standard Collection "Your Top Ten Movies List" in 2012 , Selected nine European films of the 60s that he strongly loves in one breath. He was touted as his successor by Martin Sicoses just after filming his second feature feature film "Rushmore," although the two works seem to have very different styles. Old Martin spoke highly of Weiss's film as "gentle and elegant, interesting and moving".
Weiss is often regarded as one of the most important and unique film authors of our time. His creative experience can be summarized as the process of absorbing contemporary films, especially European art films. The most influential European films are French New Wave films. From the bright advertisements of American Express and Prada, we can recognize Truffau’s "Ancestors and Occupations", "Day and Night" and Godard's "Outlaws" at a glance. "A clear tribute.
Of course, from the point of view of technique and form, Weiss is very different from the New Wave masters, but they have the same effect on the theme of the text. In French New Wave films, the lens always focuses on young people on the margins of society. They have a decadent and unruly temperament, and their daily lives are sloppy and decentralized. Their actions are erratic, and they are often involved in an incident. With the development of a series of events, we can see these ordinary class children glowing with similar characteristics of opinion leaders. These events are full of randomness, leading the characters to some accidental ending. Therefore, the openness and ambiguity of French New Wave texts mostly originate from the erratic characters themselves.
The protagonists of Wes Anderson obviously have strong similarities with him. Most of the characters in his films are also young people with fuzzy backgrounds, or marginal ones who are old but retain a strong childish mentality and innocent personality. A survey of his role groups is also a picture of the intersecting integration of all classes. These characters rooted in the pedigrees of modernism, postmodernism and existentialism constitute the "French New Wave State" of Webster's films. In "Bottle Rocket", Digenan, who was born in the working class, was the creator of the team plan. In "Youth and Younger", Fisher of the barber's family was the leader of the club in the noble school. In this "Canis Island", Leading the four famous families (a metaphor for the "Chinese class" in Japan) to form a dog adventure team is a dirty stray dog named "Chief".
Wes Anderson expressed his strong French New Wave complex. In an interview with The New York Times, he admired that Truffau could not only make a neat and beautiful film like "The Story of Adele Hugo", but he could actually make "Pocket Money" as natural as it is. Documentary works of ism. The plot of elopement and marriage in "Moonrise Kingdom" is inspired by "Pocket Money" and Waris Hussein's "Two Little No Guess".
Unlike the New Wave, Wes Anderson's works are extremely complex in form and skill, and there is no serious and obscure narrative. For the public, he has more gimmicks in his movies than those of his predecessors in France, and he is naturally more popular-although the box office performance has not been very good. After I came out of "Canis Island", I heard the three girls next to me calling out "suffocation is good" and "explosion is good", saying that I have never seen such a movie. Weiss’s film is like this. The charming design of colors, composition, props, mirroring, and soundtrack can easily make a very deep first impression, especially for new audiences who have not been in contact with him-congratulations and gains Three female fans.
2 The independent source behind the style
Weiss’s films are not commercially successful, but they are frequently favored and invested by large companies, and they are highly prestigious among the public and have many fans. I think the reason is that, as an American, he only retained the textual features such as the subject matter and theme of the "French New Wave", and the effect of thoroughly localizing forms and values. In this way, it caters to the tastes of big production companies, and is able to open up a private space in the commercial field.
Weiss has shown himself as an independent director for many years, but in fact he has been affiliated with various major Hollywood studios since "Bottled Rocket". As we all know, the most famous independent film festival-Sundance Film Festival is a springboard for many young directors to enter Hollywood, and Wes Anderson also started here. His feature film debut, "Bottled Rockets," was produced and distributed by Columbia, one of the six largest companies, at a cost of 7 million U.S. dollars. Starting from the second movie, "Youth", "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" are all invested and produced by Disney’s Touchstone Pictures. Behind Darjeeling (The Darjeeling Limited) is Fox Searchlight Pictures (Fox Searchlight Pictures), two years later, the same as "Island of Dogs" produced with stop-motion animation, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" It is directly co-produced by 20th Century Fox (the old fox is really good for the old fox). At the "The Grand Budapest Hotel" that made him shine, the producer and distributor returned to the Fox searchlight. This year's "Canis Island" is jointly produced by Fox's animation department, and Fox and Searchlight are responsible for global distribution.
The only exception is "Moonrise Kingdom" in 2012. Although the film is distributed by Focus Features, a subsidiary of Universal, there is no major company involved in the production. The main filmmakers are Weiss’s own company: American Empirical Pictures and Steven M. Rales’ Indian Paintbrush. The two are also old partners.
It can be seen that whether we call him an author, director or independent director, he has always been favored by the six Hollywood majors. On the other hand, the concept of "independence" is also very general. Scholars generally believe that from a historical perspective, independent films refer to the works of dominant or mainstream films, whether defined from the economic perspective of production and distribution, or divided from aesthetics and forms. In Hollywood, everyone treats non-Big Six films as independent films. From this point of view, the day Wes Anderson began to rely on the six major Hollywood studios, his independent temperament does not seem to be as pure as imagined.
Is it true that the important label of Weiss's fame-the identity of the independent director is false? It can't be said completely. The so-called "time makes heroes", when Wes Anderson debuted, independent films in the United States were not so independent. However, he appears to be shining in such a transformation, and his works can also reveal a rare texture. These are closely related to the history of the development of the independent film movement in the United States.
American film scholar Douglas Gomery divided the Hollywood film industry after the advent of sound films into four periods: The first was the era of oligarchic syndicated companies that began in the late 1920s and lasted until the Paramount Act of 1948; The second period was the period of recession and transformation of major studios, which lasted until the abolition of the "Hays Code" in 1968; the third period was the period when the audience was regained from the TV set, which was reflected in the color wide screen and other technical means in the 1970s. Widely used; the fourth period began in the mid to late 1980s, when multinational companies formed a media empire. The development of American independent film also roughly follows these four periods.
After more than 20 years of foreshadowing from 1960 to 1980, with Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh as the standard bearers, the American independent film movement began to reach its peak in the 1990s. Wes Anderson can hardly be called to participate in this movement, so academia did not include him in the relevant research system. But he is clearly the biggest beneficiary.
Film creators who are extremely disgusted with the big studio system have been around since the birth of the studio. Starting from the second period divided by Gomeri, a number of film works that drifted away from the mainstream gradually appeared in the United States. From the experimental films of Maya Deren ("The Lost in the Afternoon") and Stan Brahag ("Stop Images") in the 1940s and 1950s to Andy Warhol ("Empire State Building" in the 1960s) "), to the "exploitation films" of Roger Coman and the "New Cinema Movement" of John Kasawitz, the independent temperament is becoming more and more evident. Among them, Kasawitz is also known as the pioneer of American independent film.
Just as rock music was "invaded by the British", Hollywood was affected by Italian neorealism, national film renaissance, and the French New Wave. In the late 1960s, the vigorous "New Hollywood Movement" began. This is a highlight in the history of American film development , and it has also cultivated a group of famous directors we are familiar with now: Francis Ford Coppola ("Rain Clan"), Martin Sicoses ("Who Will Knock on My Door), George Lucas ("American Style Painting"), and Steven Spielberg ("Duel"). They were called "movie boys" at the time, and their works are quite non-mainstream and subversive.
But soon, Spielberg and Lucas shot "Jaws" and "Star Wars" one after another, which is considered to be an important turning point in Hollywood history, and completely brought the entire industry into a new era, that is, "blockbuster movies." era". Batch after batch of high-concept movies continue to break investment records, and large-scale productions with high investment and high returns have become the mainstream. During this period, studios began to upgrade to multinational companies, and eventually formed several large entertainment empires. Hollywood’s global production and distribution strategy has rapidly cultivated large-scale film markets in various countries. People are immersed in these action films, science fiction films, disaster films, and romance films produced from Los Angeles, enjoying ample Hollywood flavor and hooking.
The former movie guys have become the big coffees now, from the non-mainstream to the mainstream. Soon, they themselves became the object of opposition. Beginning in the 1980s, a group of directors such as David Lynch and Jia Muxu continued to adhere to the spirit of independence and opposed the flood of Hollywood blockbusters.
From a market perspective, the boom in blockbuster movies has led to a geometric increase in the number of screens. However, due to the high investment and long production cycle, there are not enough blockbusters on the market to fill these spaces, leading to a cold winter in many theaters. . From a creative point of view, the era of blockbuster movies has broken the harmony between commerce and art. The high degree of typology, stylization, and entertainment has completely reduced Hollywood movies to commodities. Behind the proliferation of remakes and sequels, the implication is the lack of originality and novelty, which not only consumes the company's brand value, but also arouses the boredom of the audience. From an industrial point of view, Hollywood’s global development route has brought about increasing production costs, as well as large and inefficient institutions. The operation of enterprises has become more and more rigid, the monopoly is serious, and the production and quality of movies are both Due to the decline, the new director is also difficult to get ahead.
In response to these problems, while some large companies continue to take risks on the tightrope of high investment, they have also established or acquired independent film companies to participate extensively in the production and distribution of independent films in order to find another way out. Independent film companies such as Miramax and Lionsgate that emerged in the 1990s are among the leaders. And Soderbergh 1990 "Sex, Lies, and Videotape", is regarded as the beginning of a wave of American independence.
These independent films have filled the screen space that emerged in the era of blockbuster films, and have become an excellent supplement to the market in addition to large-scale productions, and have also solved the survival dilemma of these movie theaters. On the other hand, these empty theaters also provided the soil for the growth of independent films in the 1990s, and excellent small and medium-cost films regained their living space. On the other hand, independent films have also effectively solved the problem of Hollywood talent gaps. Many new directors, screenwriters, actors, and even editors, art designers, colorists and composers have emerged in independent films and entered the mainstream. Vision.
Independent films are no longer the opposite of mainstream commercial films at this time, but complement each other and develop together. Big companies have also seen the business opportunities and market value of independent films. That's right, it's Quentin's "Pulp Fiction".
This film, with an investment of only a few million, has won more than 200 million box office worldwide and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In fact, in the early 1990s, "Sex, Lies, and Videotapes", "Barton Funk" and "Pulp Fiction" received Palme d'Or in succession, which gave American movies a long face. Moreover, the returns of "Pulp Fiction" are so huge, and the market performance of some other outstanding independent works is also very good. Of course, these independent films are also regular Oscars. All of these have made big companies fully realize the potential of independent films. After all, they not only want to make money, but also have a reputation, so they are deeply involved in this field.
Some scholars once defined the group of independent directors in the United States in the 1990s and believed that they constituted a huge "independent dock" system. Judging from the name, it is aimed at Hollywood. However, it now appears that this statement inevitably has a taste of presupposition. It was the fusion of business and independence in the 1990s, that is, the fusion of mainstream and non-mainstream, the fusion of big coffee and newcomers, and the fusion of large production and small and medium costs that "save" the industry and audience at that time.
Therefore, the development and growth of American independent films did not impact the original large studio structure, nor did it damage the market share of high-investment special effects blockbusters. These independent films take advantage of the lack of realistic themes and humanistic care in the blockbuster, or the unique sense of form, to make up for the audience that the blockbuster does not cover, and also fill the neglected theater space . The industry and the market have also maintained a relatively healthy state. But what we cannot ignore is that this irreversible commercialization process has seriously damaged the definition of "independent film" itself. The term "independent" is now more used as a marketing gimmick, and has lost its academic discussion significance. Not only Wes Anderson, but also other American independent directors. Traditionally, American independent films are on the verge of extinction.
(Nowadays, China is also facing a similar situation, with the ever-increasing number of screens and the convergence of mainstream commercial films. And to a certain extent, the quality of China's blockbuster era is more worrying. Then, how to develop in the future, I do not know the psychology of the bigwigs. Is there any point A?)
For Wes Anderson, it is self-evident that his temperament is inherited from the "New American Independent Film". His independent label is both a summary of self-exploration, but also a marketing gimmick of the issuer, in order to win people's favor. His film itself, in terms of aesthetics and artistry, does have a certain distance from mainstream commercial blockbusters, but it does not break away from the commercial type aesthetic system. Therefore, in addition to enjoying the blessings of the American independent film movement in the 1990s, Weiss is also a beneficiary of the commercialization of independent films.
Today, the box office is no longer the only source of income for these bloated entertainment empires, or even the main source. Therefore, Wes can get tens of millions of investment at every turn. On the one hand, his works have enough selling points, which are derived from his independent aesthetic temperament. The film owner can either announce the commercial film according to the strategy of the commercial film, or promote it as a work of art. Even if its box office is unsuccessful, it can still pay back through DVD and copyright. If the business performance is really bad, treat the money as word-of-mouth marketing. Who makes Wes’s films generally praised? On the other hand, the blockbuster party also likes to take some alternative things to advertise their taste. In addition to the bombardment of special effects blockbusters, they are also eager to enrich their product sequence, making the brand more diverse and artistic. These works by Webster have an immeasurable increase in brand reputation and goodwill.
In a word, everyone loves Wes Anderson.
3 Webster's theme and American values
As mentioned earlier, Weiss did not fully imitate the themes and forms of the French New Wave, but carried out a drastic localization transformation. It is prominently manifested in his depiction of personal freedom and sublation of the nuclear family view. Especially the latter, we cannot often see it in the French New Wave. Even if you see it, it exists in another state. In the United States, these are typical mainstream values.
First of all, due to years of cooperation with large companies, Weiss will inevitably have some compromises (the film side will also have compromises). The personal and family concepts he promoted in his works are most valued by major companies. Although I have talked a lot about the independent film movement in the 90s, the American film industry continues to maintain a good momentum. But after all, there will be a smell of copper in the business field. Weiss and the big companies have maintained a cautious posture while taking their own needs.
We can even see a metaphor for this kind of caution, or entanglement, in his films. The role of Bill Ubel in "Life in the Water" seems to imply a large company system where tolerance and pressure coexist. At the end of "The Great Daddy Fox", the passage where Daddy Fox and his family are eating in the supermarket is quite ambiguous. First of all, it is more obviously promoting Weiss’s consistent view of the nuclear family. However, combined with the previous series of adventures, especially the plot of dialogue with the wolf in French on the road, it seems that he is also using this scene to declare his unrestrained insistence on his position.
In Wes Anderson's movies, we can often experience the concept of family supremacy behind them from absurd behaviors and incidents, which is not the same as "Die Hard", "Back to the Future" and other films. Second. But the characteristic of Weiss is that he abandons the form of family, and instead induces family affection in a substantial sense in a state of division and dissociation, so as to bridge and compensate. This has a lot to do with his childhood experience.
Weiss's father is an advertising agency manager, his mother is an archaeologist, and his great-grandfather is the author of "Tarzan of the Apes", the famous Edgar Rice Burroughs. When Weiss's parents divorced at the age of eight, it became an indelible shadow of his childhood. Since then, Wes has lived with his mother and two brothers, and can only see his father on weekends. In order to escape the broken reality of the family, he gradually filled his childhood with lies and fantasies.
In middle school, Wes Anderson fell in love with a woman who was much older than him, and had to transfer school due to the strong rebellious psychology of adolescence. In 1987, Weiss entered the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in philosophy. It was in a script elective class here that he met his important creative partner Owen Wilson in the future. The short film "Bottled Rockets" shot by the two in 1994 attracted the attention of Sundance, and eventually received a US$7 million investment in Colombia.
We can see that Wes, like Quentin, is a director from a non-professional background. Although the two have different styles, they can still find some things in common. For example, they are all deeply influenced by the French New Wave, the movies are full of personal interest, and they all use Hollywood big-name stars. If you look at the American independent film movement, Quentin is still Wes Anderson's predecessor. Coincidentally, Quentin and Weiss have a lot of new wave tribute elements in their early works. And "Bottled Rocket" and "Falling Dog", even in terms of de-plotting, are exactly the same.
Weiss read a lot of classic works in his school days and adapted them into various strange stage plays. This is probably how his play skills came from. Weiss’s favorite writers include Jerome David Salinger, Stephen Zweig, Hannah Arendt, etc. In addition to the French New Wave, he is also deeply influenced by directors such as Roman Polanski, Orson Welles, Martin Sikoses, Mike Nichols, and Satyajit Rey. We can see these personal hobbies in almost all of his works. For example, "The Genius Family" not only pays tribute to Wells's "The Great Amberson Family", but the prototypes of the characters in the film are almost all from Salinger's novels. "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is adapted from the background story of Zweig.
Weiss has never made a personal biographical film in the strict sense, but because each film writes his own script, he dismembered his childhood into various materials and incorporated them into colorful images. These all reflect his desire to reappear those illusions and make imaginative compensation for his bad childhood experience. We saw the family estrangement under the eaves in "A Genius", the extended family affection in "Crossing Darjeeling", and the image of his longing father in "The Great Fox Daddy".
However, unlike Bergman and other directors who have divorced in the same family, Weiss's work is not gloomy, but full of quirky optimism. On the one hand, its visual design and humorous narratives are constantly interspersed with it; on the other hand, it is its family philosophy based on traditional American values. What Weiss has been discussing is a way of deconstructing the existing form of the traditional family to close the gaps between family members. For example, "Aquatic Life", although expressing a certain kind of separation between blood ties, he does not make a derogatory depreciation, but uses ingenuity and beauty to dissolve the inner melancholy, and arranges the implicit sadness with absurdity and humor.
We can hardly see the great pain and torture in Weiss's works, although the plights of the characters are enough to make them react, and these plights are often caused by family problems. Many times, Wes’s role is just mechanically encountering problems, solving problems, and achieving goals in unimaginable ways, and will not give up easily. In "Canis Island", all the dogs are exiled to the deserted island full of trash, but the film does not heavily render the gloomy and sad atmosphere, and the dogs' modeling and communication methods are not to create a certain despair and darkness— —Of course, this also has the natural look and feel of stop motion animation. What the film does is to unfold the story simply and interestingly, provide an adventure, and then subvert itself.
Even in "Bottled Rockets" where there are few family dramas, we can use Anthony to lead Digenan to steal our own movies, reflecting Wes's core family concept. After Anthony entered the house, he straightened the slanted items in the house, and Digenan stole the earrings Anthony had given his mother, making him annoyed, and found his sister to put her back in her mother's jewelry box. "Stealing a home" is an offense and destruction of the traditional form of family existence (houses, parents and children living together), while aligning objects and returning earrings is a defense of the emotional essence (family affection, family order) .
"Island of Dogs" does not take the family theme back to the second place, besides being wrapped in a strong political metaphor. As an adopted son, Atari seems to have little affection for Mayor Kobayashi. He did not hesitate to risk his life to go to the garbage island to find his guard dog. In his eyes, Diandian is more like his own family. "Looking" has always been a means of maintaining family affection in Weiss's work. In this new work, it has become the main line of the story.
However, after finding a little bit, Atari found that this loyal guard dog had a new home and asked the owner to relieve him of his post. So to some extent, Atari became an abandoned child. He distributed the biscuits left to the other stray dogs, and took the Chief as a new guard dog. The chief is also a stray dog, and also has the attribute of "abandoned".
The self-subversion is that "Canis Island" shows a different taste in the text, which has to make us abandon our views on Wes Anderson. This subversion is mainly concentrated at the end. In a dazzling parallel montage, we see that the dogs and humans in the film return to a peaceful and peaceful state. However, the strange thing is that the information implied by the movement and composition of the lens has a frightening taste. The echoing scenes before and after the regime change seem to show that the ending is not as good as imagined.
Such a Webster's ending still maintains the openness and ambiguity of the past, but it reveals a strange cruelty and chill. This feeling does not seem to be common in Webster's films, but it may be the key to truly distinguishing "Canis Island" from his previous works. In my opinion, this obviously cannot be confined to the family category to discuss, but should be combined with the overall story structure, especially the political implications contained in it.
In any case, "Canis Island" does continue Weiss's maintenance of the nuclear family view, that is, under the premise of betraying the traditional form, reducing the difficulty of the characters returning to family affection, and at the same time creating a goal worth pursuing. But this time, he played down the emotional essence contained in it, and instead emphasized some meaningless sacrifice by giving up freedom, violating the original intention, and creating contradictions. This sacrifice was supposed to be prepared for a positive emotional goal, but in the end it didn't change anything in essence, revealing the postmodernist meaning of abolishing depth, bidding farewell to tradition and continuity, and leaving itself and history in a state of rupture. This time, the goal in Webster's work has become impure, and it is reflected in the ending, which is a rare sense of sadness.
4 Webster's narrative and aesthetic style
Wes Anderson’s movies are full of visual tricks: wide-angle lenses, profile shifting, overhead shooting with props, and so on. He has a distinctive recognition and authorship, and has even been labeled as "obsessive-compulsive disorder" and "paranoid". The previous article wrote that Wes Anderson’s temperament was inherited from American independent films in the 1990s, and the American independent films of that period embodied non-traditional aesthetic types that were different from Italian neorealism and the European New Wave. From this perspective, Wes is probably the furthest along this road.
American independent films used to have a close spiritual and artistic relationship with European art films, such as "Taxi Driver" by Lao Ma. However, after the 1980s, directors represented by the Coen brothers began to deviate from this relationship. When it comes to Wes Anderson, it has changed a lot.
Obviously, his films abandon the avant-garde and experimental nature of European art films, and have strong commercial appeals in narrative, editing and cast, and even consciously present the positioning of Hollywood films. Generally speaking, Weiss's works not only have a strong personal style, but also have a significant tendency to type in narrative . He did not boldly betray or rebel against traditional art films, nor did he attempt to innovate commercial films, but simply created personal characteristic works. Like the American independent directors in the 1990s, he must first tell a more popular story, and then process it with various artistic elements. This kind of expressive technique with a strong sense of form makes his works have a different kind of charming charm.
"Budapest Hotel" is the pinnacle of Webster's style. Not only does the text have a rich sense of hierarchy, it also has an appropriate and beautiful ideographic structure. In this film, its style can be considered to be completely formed. Regardless of the color collocation, the start and end of the soundtrack, the unique performance form, and the most discussed composition rules, including the change of the frame, they all present a self-consistent aesthetic logical relationship. A large number of retro objects and saturated tones make the entire film extremely marked.
"Canis Island" is hard to say what breakthroughs have been made in Webster's style. Like the previous works, this film also uses a lot of closed composition . This kind of composition has been widely used from the beginning of the film to the 1960s. Later, due to the rise of realism and various new wave movements, open composition gradually became the mainstream.
In short, the closed composition focuses on the completeness and balance of the layout of the subject within the frame. It aims to create a complete, self-sufficient and independent world, and deliberately breaks the boundaries between the space inside the painting and the space outside the painting. The integrity of the closed composition leaves the audience in a "vacuum" appreciation state, completely focusing on the frame without considering other visual spaces. The auditorium plays in "Youth and Youth" and the theater plays in "Life in the Water" are typical examples of closed composition.
Wes Anderson's closed composition often establishes a small utopia inside the frame. In "Budapest Hotel", Webster's closed composition has a new way of playing. He presents the three time and space of the story: 1985, 1960 and 1930s in different frames. In 1985 it was a common 2.35:1 widescreen, in the 1960s it was a 1.85:1 masked screen, and in the 1930s it was a very retro 1.37:1 format. The three kinds of frames bring a sense of differentiation and richness, and also make the story show more different textures. In the 1930s, which occupies the main part of the scene, the closed composition emphasizes the depth of the picture. The depth and height changes brought about by the frame complement the film’s nested narrative structure.
The frame ratio of "Canis Island" is 2.35:1 (in order not to allow subtitles to be added to the screen, the domestic release changed the frame to 1.85:1, so there are very wide black borders on the left and right of the screen), and the Webster is not lost. Closed composition method. The scenes of garbage islands, wards, classrooms, and great halls in the film are all expressed in a closed composition. In addition, Wes often uses the plug-in perspective to create picture frames, such as the tent in "Moonrise Kingdom", the coffin in "Budapest Hotel", and the tree house in "The Great Papa Fox". In "Canis Island", cages and TV are frequently used plug-ins.
In addition to closed composition, Webster's works are also symmetrical . A large number of symmetrical compositions are flooded with Wes Anderson's works, forming his most recognizable picture features. The picture of Weiss’s film often takes the center line as the axis, and the elements on both sides of the picture are arranged in five to five, which can be left and right, or up and down. For example, the opening of "The Genius", such as the church in "Moonrise Kingdom", and the outrageous 95% of the pictures in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" are all symmetrical compositions. "Canis Island" is a bit convergent to be honest, but every time a symmetrical composition appears, it still makes people smile. In any case, Webster's film is hailed as "the gospel of obsessive-compulsive disorder patients."
Generally speaking, symmetrical composition makes people feel rigid and depressing, but when it is used in Wes Anderson's movies, it shows a kind of four-frame comic style. This stems from its organic combination with closed composition, as well as its relationship with performance, color, camera, and subject movement. In addition, in Webster's works, the meticulously crafted details are always dizzying. Some unexpected small elements or small movements are often added to the symmetrical composition to make the picture appear fresh and jumpy.
No matter what the composition is, it is not just for grandstanding in Weiss's movies. First of all, Weiss chose this kind of visual design naturally out of personal taste. Secondly, this composition can most effectively form the comic effect of its dry humor (Dry Humor). In addition, in some important scenes, the symmetrical/closed composition embodies the weight of different characters, their mental activities, and their destiny. Finally, a large number of symmetrical/closed compositions can give the film a sense of age and painting quality.
In addition, Weiss 's use of color, light and shadow is also very unique. Among them, color is an important means for Weiss to convey emotions. At Milan Fashion Week in autumn and winter of 2015, even international luxury brands such as Gucci, BALLY, and Lacoste collectively paid tribute to his color matching. In Weiss's first eight films, high-contrast, high-saturation warm colors are his favorite. But these bold colors can achieve a certain kind of coordination and unity in the picture.
Goethe said in "Theory of Colors": "When the eyes see a color, it will act immediately. Its nature is to inevitably and unconsciously produce another color immediately. This color is the same as the original one. These colors work together to complete the sum of colors." In "Moonrise Kingdom", green forests are dotted with yellow wheat fields, and the overall tone of the picture is dark yellow with a distressed effect, making this story about childhood have a distant and fresh A sense of age.
"Life in the Water" uses a variety of contrasting colors to reflect the distress and anxiety of the characters. There is a large area of blue in the film, and the ideographic function carried is different from the blue in "Youth and Younger". The blue color here carries the perseverance of the past and the faint pessimism of the future, rather than the confusion and melancholy faced by the students in "Youth and Youth". Steve, played by Bill Murray, wore a blue uniform and a red hat, suggesting his anxious heart. The colors in "The Genius Family" are even more messy, and the colors of the clothes of each family member represent their different styles.
This slightly cartoonish performance technique was pushed to the extreme in "Budapest Hotel". The film uses bolder colors than previous works, especially the bright red walls of the elevators and the purple uniforms of the hotel attendants, creating a strong contrast of visual impact. The deliberate use of black and white images to show Gustavo's death is a contrast in visual structure. As the story progresses, more and more cool colors begin to appear, heralding the protagonist's increasingly crisis situation. Including those uniforms and military uniforms, they are a combination of retro styles and saturated colors, exquisite, playful and poetic. In any case, the pink that symbolizes beauty and love in desserts is eternal.
I say this may be controversial, but this surreal use of color can even see some of the shadow of Camp Sensibility. Although Camp is popular among homosexuals, it is also used to refer to the exaggerated, dramatic, stylized, and over-exaggerated style. Obviously Weiss's work contains some interesting (obscure) Camp characteristics.
5 The inheritance and changes of "Canis Island"
"Island of Dogs" not only inherits Wes Anderson's closed and symmetrical composition (I don't think he will change it for the rest of his life), but the color also escapes the boldness and contrast of "The Grand Budapest Hotel", returning to something similar to "Throughout". The dark and cool colors of Darjeeling and The Great Fox. Since the main stage is on the garbage island this time, the brown land and gray-black garbage are the main colors, including the protagonist chief in black (although the back is washed white). Therefore, bright colors like the pink nose and the blood stains on Atari's face have become very conspicuous details without making the picture look too serious and depressing.
The film also follows the scene scheduling of Weiss's minimalism. This seemingly mechanically sluggish scheduling style is a secret to the overall temperament of Webster's work and its ubiquitous form of humorous performance . Dry humor is the meaning of cold humor. The actors basically have no exaggerated expressions and violent actions, and at the same time they conduct dialogues quickly and lack changes in their tone. It's just that the content of the dialogue is often full of interruptions, jumping thoughts, and weird accidents, and the interlocutors seem to be used to it. This humorous style similar to neuro-comedy allows the audience to understand the character's psychology or plot theme by paying attention to other picture elements.
In "Canis Island", Weiss's postmodern narrative tricks are still in use, such as flat and fragmented narrative techniques . For linear narratives, time extends vertically. In "The Genius Family" and "The Kingdom of Moonrise", we often interrupt the vertical fluency of the narrative due to the insertion of memory fragments. This is a flat spelling in the macro narrative. paste. Some non-coherent editing in coherent scenes, such as "Crossing Darjeeling", uses collage to compress the depth of time. In addition, the composition and the use of multiple scenes scheduling combined shots also make the narrative space show the characteristics of flatness, which in turn creates a kind of overhead and dissolution of historical significance.
Atari’s scene on the slide is performed by using a set of small long shots. This processing technique makes the picture vivid and humorous. And the process of the dog adventure team's journey to Five Fingers Island was spliced together in a multi-scene scheduling method. Although still pursuing minimalism, it presents a sense of patchwork in the large structure.
This film, like his previous work, uses special effects subtitles to point out chapter names to divide the narrative time and space . This is also Wes's old trick. This approach will make the story faintly reveal the effect of alienation. Of course, the characters in the story frequently face the camera, which is also the reason for this sense of alienation. Not only that, it can also make the story more rhythmic, it also has the effect of adjusting emotions, and even presents a certain characteristic of popular literature. "The Genius Family" uses a total of ten chapters in the prologue and postscript to tell the story, and the transition screen of each chapter is a close-up of the book page. In "Canis Island", most of the chapter names appear in the empty shots and are accompanied by Japanese. In addition, the film also uses subtitles to mention some characters and time. Special effects subtitles are also part of the picture movement here.
The track push lens and the lift lens are Weiss’s iconic lens movement methods . Most of the time, the camera position of Weiss is fixed, and the lens and composition are also very stable. But as soon as the camera moves, anyone can immediately notice its existence. This provides the audience with another very vivid look and feel, thereby avoiding visual fatigue and maintaining a high degree of attention to the picture. The push, pull, and pan of Webster's movies are often very fast, just like cartoons. This "blind" lens movement is still to fit the humor and character state of his films. And some of the shots of overhead props are more for visually presenting the fun of change. Panning long shots is another favorite option. There are many panning long shots in "Canis Island", such as the scene of dogs riding on the abandoned assembly line.
And on a stop-motion animation, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" as Weiss in the film with dramatic light and shadow to render the story atmosphere and emotional state . "The Great Fox Daddy" is the dividing line of his creative level. Since then, he has more thoughts and attitudes towards the use of light. In this film, when shooting dogs, the front light is mostly used, and at the same time, enough auxiliary light is added to make the transition between light and dark of the character softer. In the performance of Mayor Kobayashi, the light source is often far away, and there is light from the bottom up, reflecting the terrible face of the villain. The lighting in the speech was solemn and gloomy. Not only to shape the characters, the light and shadow in this film also have the function of strengthening the artistic modeling and showing the specific environment.
With regard to the use of props, the film continues the previous path. In Weiss’s story, maps, itineraries, plan books and other props that reflect the character’s planning are the most common. The itinerary of "Crossing Darjeeling", the mobilization meeting of "The Great Daddy Fox", the war room discussion of "Aquatic Life", the theft plan of "Bottle Rocket", and the plan to find the prophet in "Island of Dogs". The inevitable plans in these accidental adventures became part of Webster's work, revealing the fierce conflict between order and randomness, and often ended up when the characters encountered random events and the plans failed.
The difference from the past is that this time "Canis Island" has a lot of thoughts on the choice of language. The Tower of Babel, which creates language barriers for humans, has become the most important invisible prop in the story. At the beginning of the film, subtitles were used to inform the audience that all dog barks in the film are in English, while humans speak Japanese without subtitles, unless there is a simultaneous translation in the story. Of course, for people who are proficient in eight languages (at least bilingual in Japanese and English), this deliberate narrative barrier will not affect them. But for most people, simply "do not understand" is enough to make us look at the problem from the standpoint of a dog.
Here, effective communication between populations is obliterated. The separate language systems of humans and animals herald irreconcilable opposition in the general sense. We can understand the language of the dog through the translated subtitles, but cannot understand the villain's rhetoric. So what if the other way round? In addition to trying to make people feel more immersive and present, this kind of processing of speech also hopes to elicit linguistic aspects.
In addition, the theme of "Canis Island" is larger than that of Weiss's previous works, and it also unexpectedly involves many political metaphors. Concentration camps, exiles, living experiments, genocide, and student movements are all highly condensed in Japanese history about the "Chinese Order", militarism, the war of aggression against China, biochemical experiments, the massacre, and the Japanese student movement in the 1960s. Of course, Wes has never cared about the continuity of reality, so the grafting of these materials together forms a textual context with multiple historical stages, and also makes the film show an ambiguous overhead structure.
This time, the soundtrack is no longer the British rock that Wes loves, but instead uses Japanese folk music. This time, Alexander Despra’s soundtrack is really great. It is probably the best interpretation of Japanese music by a foreigner I have heard since "Shogun 2". The percussion music composed of fluorene beats and Taiko drums basically runs through the whole film. If this is another movie, I might think that the music is too full, but in this movie, it is an important means for the cohesion of the shots, deeply involved in the narrative without overwhelming the audience. Strictly speaking, the soundtrack is not non-narrative. There are three little fat guys in the opening of the film.
Of course, "Canis Island" is not a perfect movie, nor does it reach the height of "Budapest Hotel". Maybe it's because the layout has become bigger and the topic has become relatively serious, which makes it have many flaws in plot turning and character status. However, Wes Anderson is able to rely on his keen artistic sense to grasp the balance between different styles, mix together, and create his own alternative audiovisual spectacle. The important thing is that he will not deviate from the public aesthetic at all, so he can easily capture the hearts of countless fans. In short, Weiss is already a veteran on the road of formalism, and I hope to see any breakthroughs in his lower works.
Little easter egg: In the film, the scientist's assistant Yoko Ono pays tribute to the famous Yoko Ono, the wife of John Lennon. Even the dubbing invited me to do it. The Beatles are Weiss’ idols.
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