French director Luc Besson said in an interview at the Shanghai International Film Festival: "Watching a movie in the cinema is like kissing a girl, and going home to watch a DVD is like kissing a girl's photo. The big screen is always the best way to watch a movie. The best choice." Luc Besson hit on the soft underbelly of most Chinese film lovers. In China's current movie environment, so-called movie watching is mostly a discounted movie viewing behavior. You can imagine how different it would be to sit in a movie theater versus a living room while watching Titanic; the latter could turn into a nightmarish experience.
But just as Luc Besson said "only ten films in his life" has become a lie, the "forever" he said in the second half of the sentence can never be the absolute best. Luc Besson, who is engaged in commercial films, could not realize that there is another kind of film in Hollywood's Galactic Battleship.
Like a Jim Jarmusch movie. Unlike the Hollywood movies that the masses mingle with, Jarmusch's films always seem a little offbeat. Like a boy hiding in a dimly lit corner, silent alone. Don't try to disturb anyone, and don't take the initiative to let others notice your presence. As long as you see him, you can't help but come over and sit down face to face with this lonely boy, exchanging loneliness and loneliness with each other. It's hard to imagine people huddled together on warm, comfy couches in movie theaters, chewing delicious popcorn, and quieting down to watch these kinds of films.
This kind of movie is suitable for sitting in a quiet room, facing the world of light and shadow alone. Outside your window can be a noisy street or a quiet neighborhood, and outside the window is the sound of hawkers who occasionally pass by. These sounds remind you that you are watching a movie, that you are watching yourself.
Jarmusch's film "Broken Flower" won the Grand Jury Prize at the 58th Cannes Film Festival. Like the French film "Children", which won the Palme d'Or in the same year, the film tells a simple story. A letter from a strange woman disrupts Tang's life. The pink letter sign let Tang know that a woman had given birth to a son for her 19 years ago. Now that the son has grown up, he has started to leave home in search of his father. Unlike Tang, who still chooses to remain single, neighbor Winston has already married and had children. Winston took the initiative to play the role of a private investigator, helping Tang to find the truth among his many girlfriends. Don took Winston to investigate the road map and set out on the road to find the woman he once fell in love with when he was young.
Much of the film takes place during Don's journey to find different women. Tang's lovers are all over the United States, driving all the way, and slowly spreading out is an American style painting. From middle-class residential areas, to the poor neighborhoods of Detroit, to country roads, buildings and highways of all styles are displayed in front of the audience. Along the way, Tang visited four women successively, and the director implicitly used the flowers that Tang gave them to express their differences. Office worker Laura, a beautiful and unrestrained Begonia flower. Real estate seller Dora, elegant and frosty tulip. Animal communicator Carmen, the lofty and independent lily; hippie Penny, the beautiful and thorny wild rose.
"Why are you here?" The four women, living in their own orbit, wishful or unhappy, asked Tang. He looked at the woman beside him calmly and said that he was just visiting by the way. Then he drove on the road again.
Travel is a metaphor for life. Along the way, Tang felt the changing external world, and his mood gradually warmed.
When he came to his girlfriend Michelle's grave, he put the chrysanthemum in front of her tomb, and then lay quietly under the big tree in the cemetery to hide from the rain. In the wet rain, tears rolled in Tang's eyes. The once beautiful young girl has long been asleep in the cold cemetery, and the passing years have brought silent sighs to the living.
The past of the five women is not explained in the film, and many ambiguous blanks are left for the audience to imagine and guess. This is also the trend of recent movies - the audience and the director perform a movie together. The woman in the journey of life becomes the platform for him to look back on his life, and Tang picks up the traces of collage love. But these five relationships all ended in brokenness, and the distance in the mind was getting farther and farther. At first, they were able to have dinner together and even be gentle with each other, but gradually the cracks between them became bigger and bigger, and they got punched in return. Even to the last person and ghost, the difficulty of communication is getting deeper and deeper.
Everything came to an end. Tang Zhe turns home and encounters a boy who is looking for his father. Tang bought food and drinks for the hungry boy, and the shy boy relaxed slightly and chatted with Tang. Tang felt that the boy in front of him might have something to do with him, so he tentatively asked about the boy's father. The boy was embarrassed and ran away with his travel bag on his back. Tang stood in the middle of the street and couldn't see the boy's figure.
Many things happen and pass in front of us, and we can't catch them. Despite the unforgettable sad past, Tang is still alone. Who is the woman who wrote to her, and where is her son? The director did not give us the promise lightly. The pursuit without an answer retains a warm ambiguity.
"Broken Flower" is a soft road movie. Different from the roughness and desolation of previous road films, the film shows a subtle beating of the soul. Some seemingly easy-to-find details exude a warm fragrance in the film, and some fleeting moments have a comforting color under the touch of the director's hand. And the lonely mood always slips out of the audience inadvertently, pulling your little finger and I will not let go; the humor that exudes is also invisibly stained with a touch of air-conditioning and adheres to your and my skin. The delicate sensibility and light-hearted performance of Bill Murray, the actor of Tang in the film, coupled with the light humor and confusion of director Jarmusch's bones, make me feel that "Broken Flower" is a film that can affect my life journey in recent years. .
Different from the films of "living elsewhere" shot with the head, the films shot by Jarmusch with heart are never far from our lives, never far from our lonely and desolate hearts. As Jarmusch said: "I don't want my movie to be one where the audience can call and order pizza after watching it. I want my movie to be like a poem or a song that can float in the audience's mind. In the mind, let the audience take it with them wherever they go." When Hollywood movies focus on myths and pirate ship adventures, returning to Jarmusch's films, we can appreciate the preciousness of his films.
As long as you have ever been depressed, as long as you have withdrawn from prosperity and faced yourself in the mirror, you will no longer be surprised why this director can continue to shoot his favorite movies. Whether choosing black and white images or color, what remains unchanged is Jarmusch's consistent insistence.
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