We're all idiots, even on the biggest throne in the world, we're still sitting on our own ass. --Montaigne [law] philosopher
Author /Simon: The twentieth century is a special structure. In the first half of the world, people all over the world suffered. The second half is often seen as a process of introspection to heal the pain caused by war and exploitation in the first half. The social atmosphere began to be confused, and the bourgeoisie no longer showed the confidence of the winner in a arrogant, barbaric and oppressive manner, but the elite paradigm dominated by knowledge and education silently monopolized all virtues and wisdom, kindness and freedom. Dasein delivers a fatal blow to an ordinary generation in the silent/rising civilisation. The bourgeois class that hurts the ordinary so secretly is also called by Nietzsche as an "educated philistine". This social nature is more prominent in the French director Claude Chabrol's classic work "Grim Rites" during the French New Wave. : The illiterate heroine finally carried out a bloody massacre against the elites full of hypocrisy driven by the perverted society. The cold and alienated image of the protagonist is once again revealed by the expanding violent factor in his heart. The hypocrisy and dark wounds and violent slaughter exposed by the director , the cruel symbiosis of the two, has generally become an indescribable symptom in the hearts of ordinary group portraits of that generation.
[French] La cérémonie (1995) Genre: Drama / Thriller / Crime (112 minutes)
01【The Tragedy of the Era of Elite Supremacy · Anesthesia · Dark Injury】
The rawness of Chabrol's films forced me to start believing in Nietzsche's "God is dead" because if I wanted to read such a complex man I had to focus on the man himself, but in the second half In Europe, where the society is severely divided, it is difficult for us to try to describe the cowardice or pursuit of the survivors during that period.
In this French crime film "Grim Ritual", Chabrol no longer uses the traditional mainstream narrative formula to present universal love, but uses a unique "fatalism" perspective to once again complete his understanding of the elite. The exposed critique of the middle class/bourgeois class, and the sympathy for the survivors and the re-examination of the portrait of the criminal spirit.
The concise narrative of the film makes it possible for the audience to see the psychological trajectory of the characters clearly. The female protagonist Sophie came to the middle-class Leliffe family to work as a maid with the secret of her illiteracy, and finally slaughtered her family when the secret was discovered to induce criminal behavior.
At the beginning of the movie, Mrs. Catherine Leleaf took Sophie from the train station at one end across the long road to the villa's house, explained the home environment and settled Sophie's residence, and then left, leaving Sophie with a A bulky old TV and an ordinary bedroom. But the always cold picture and Sophie's character are always in harmony, which is destined to be a life of nothingness.
The Leleaf family is a typical elite class. They often hug each other on the sofa and listen to the opera "Don Juan", chat about their favorite musicians, and plan the preparations for their next trip, without any worldly worries. . Such an elite portrait makes us yearn without even hating it, because it is an era of respected social ethos and called "civilization".
And I can only call it the "civilized class". They are rich in knowledge but can also selectively reject or dislike the value of the poor. Catherine's husband George, was ashamed to learn that Sophie was illiterate. It was rumored that Jeanne killed her own children and gradually insulted her, and unconsciously nailed the fate of "Sophie" and even "Jeanne", a post office worker, in a tone of elite supremacy - a group of ordinary people from the lower classes.
In the second half of the rise of capital, we no longer look at people's attitudes in terms of absolute wealth and poverty, and this morbid classification standard has gradually been replaced by "knowledge rights" at the dawn of civilization. When the camera sweeps over the dull advertisements, funny performances, clumsy sign language, and eyes that hate words on the cumbersome TV in front of Sophie's eyes, we can always unconsciously or consciously communicate with those on the Leleaf's bookshelf in the context of the movie. The neatly arranged readings, the Mozart portrait, the expensive radio, the thick stack of plays are interconnected. Although we have been away from the era of barter for a long time, the prejudice that people can't get rid of is amplified or even warned by director Chabrol's use of spatial object memory.
In order to strengthen the division of the class, the film often chooses to present the entertainment and noisy program sound on one side and the classical music full of philosophical richness on the other end. A three-dimensional and isolated world of human society at the end of the twentieth century was deconstructed. The elites control the social rules, and the empowerment of human values has become their inertia to anesthetize themselves. During this period, they once again lost the consciousness of civilization, making the supremacy of the elites a tragedy of the times.
02 [Portraits of Civilians in the Post-criminal Era, Distortion, Indifference]
From the background of the war in the first half of the year, people began to constantly look for new outlets in film creation and eliminate outdated narrative structures. ", breaking the "rigid state" in traditional films.
"Grim Rites" is a valuable artistic creation that follows the expectations of the French New Wave value system. Chabrol began to break through the characteristics of Jean Alain's crime, and opened up the post-criminal era through the perspective of the original sin of desire. That is to say, when people no longer commit crimes because of "bread", the distorted criminal pleasure becomes the dominant factor in crime.
The friendship between Jeanne, a working girl at the post office, and Sophie, the maid, exists in the film in order to drive the characters to reveal their deep true personalities. In fact, they are isolated from the society. First, as members of society, they do not have the so-called family context like the Leleaf family. Second, they do not have the ability to look forward to the future. The breath pressure of the upper class suffocates them, and only a deformed mentality can make them balance their hearts.
Jeanne hates Catherine, who wins beauty pageants only because of tall, blond women. She can't help but feel bad about being insulted by Melinda because of the breakdown of her old car, and even being insulted by George's harsh words. . All of this is in a limited space. Because of the existence of Sophie, Jeanne's hatred for the rich will gradually soar in the future, and the distorted inner environment also makes the characters become typical of the post-criminal era.
The so-called inner drive that drove Jeanne and Sophie to kill the Leleaf family in the end is due to the individual's hatred for the wealthy, but the film's expression of their inner drive is slightly cruel. The director avoids the appearance of natural light in order to reveal When the elites dominate society, it is not only capital and knowledge that monopolize, but even the hidden meaning of the film language of sunshine and breeze. The cold and lonely Sophie lives in the attic of Le Lifu's house. She habitually closes the curtains. The only pleasure is replaced by vulgar TV programs. The secret of illiteracy determines the distance between Sophie and others.
In Chabrol's eyes, Sophie is described as this: a vulgar woman who has no taste and is cold and clumsy. The unconventional women with difficulty in reading and the elites who appreciate opera are under one roof. The former seems extremely lonely. All the virtues and wisdom, kindness and freedom carried in the unfamiliar and vast writing system are only left in the Sufi consciousness system. Thriller and Exploitation.
Chabrol cut out complex lines on a large scale, and used opera as the background music to mix and break through the transformation of people's status in reality. The self-liberation of both becomes possible. Sophie's forbearance of illiteracy was regarded as an outlier by George. The lack of knowledge and upbringing caused the humility of human nature. When Sophie really fired the shot, we finally woke up from the illusion rendered by the opera. Neither hatred nor disgust is silent.
The final slaughter is not a moment of crime either, it is the real appearance of a tragic figure whose long-simmering, artistic flair of the bourgeois class finally becomes a tribute to the portraits of their ceremonial elite. I think the French philosopher Pascal praised: When people are noble by thinking. Then he must have ignored the unconsciousness of highly praised people. In the finale, Chabrol sacrifices the frontal facial features of the characters, and takes the night in front of him as the base, in the silhouette of the mirror, the so-called post-criminal civilian portraits are completely presented, they are between the real and the fictional. , revealing that helplessness and sympathy, but also full of calm and horror.
03 [Double Deconstruction of History's Fate, Festival, and Immortality]
From the perspective of the character structure of "Grim Ritual", the ratio of males to females often alludes to the distribution of sovereignty in an era, and for the sovereign, all disputes under it are unnecessary struggles of people, even ordinary people. The mere pursuit of the right to freedom has become the contempt of the upper class.
As the only complete male image, George holds family rights and social status. At the same time, he also dominates the children's values as an educator. His daughter has good sex education, and his son also has the independence to grow up. So that the bourgeois class can continuously expand its inherent spiritual value through intergenerational relations.
But as Jeanne said: "The troubles and sorrows of these rich people will only be about what color to choose when buying a car, or how to strive for the best interests when they are fighting for family property." The non-violent elimination of the poor by society has made people's mental coldness continue to expand, and even deprived them of their right to appear on the stage.
Sophie and Jeanne finally reconcile, in fact, they cannot escape the ideology of "killing" human nature in their bones, and "killing" in the film also constitutes the characters' repressed criminal drive. In the social order dominated by capital or, more precisely, still male-dominated in the later century, Sufi is an illiterate woman who "killed the father". In her mature consciousness system, the "father"/represented sovereignty is nothing but It is a portrait burned by the grave in the fire.
And ridicule the disappearance of male sovereignty, and it has never been able to fill Sophie's own physical defects. The established sadness has become the lifeline of Sophie's character, and the only one who can relax her is Jeanne, who is also "killing" women. . As for the truth of Jeanne losing her daughter or killing her, Chabrol seems to have deliberately not given clear words in the film, so that Jeanne is only an unredeemed, uneducated, questioned person from beginning to end. , The underclassmen who were ridiculed.
When we deconstructed "Grim Ritual" from Sophie and Jeanne's point of view again, we couldn't help thinking of a quote from Nietzsche, a relative of George in the movie: "There are many things in good people that disgust me, but they must not be evil." At this time, we take this sentence back to the beginning of the film. The villa of Le Lifu's family is located at the other end of the boulevard. The seaside road to Le Live's house and a large light-transmitting tree-lined path.
Since then, the image space is either humorous or cool, so that the film exudes a sense of death ritual that is indescribable like a festival. The silent plunder of society ends up taking away a piece of freedom and what looks good, even theocracy. When Jeanne savagely exposes the hypocrisy of the offerings of the rich, what they see are expired cans, naked dolls with severed heads, stinky clothes... What they get is the humiliation and dismissal of priests. And all of this seems to be in line with George's bitter words: " Life is hard, you can't read." The fate of history is also clear, and the dawn of such civilization not only did not shine into the world of Sophie's inferiority complex, but also Leaving hidden burn marks in her terrifying fate.
In the second half of the 20th century, when the same perverted and numb society and class differentiation were used as the background, which drove the protagonist to "kill the father", we compare it with the Chinese writer Su Tong in the 1960s. To compare the "Ku's father and son" in the book "The River Bank", if Ku Wenxuan's "father-killing" behavior reveals the protagonist's identification with "patriarchy", and even his desire to regain his "revolutionary right to speak". eager. Then the heroine Sophie under the lens of Chabrol is the end of the "patriarchal" society and the cruel ritual of "deformed virtue". When all the audible violence and pain have quietly passed away, what people get is not rebirth, but more of a mute-like imprisonment and self-dilemma-like immortality.
Simon Ending: Acknowledging oneself is a socially involved process, during which some people learn hypocrisy and others break down. But in the confusion of social atmosphere, people began to learn to coexist, so we can no longer ignore the human consciousness required by "civilization". The appearance of non-violent demons caught the ordinary us by surprise, and to prevent this from hurting the ordinary again, we, as a rising generation, must realize that the moment of gavel no longer exists, and more people are needed to eliminate the established class. A sense of superiority, otherwise not every cruelty will be preceded by a "sound of shock" warning.
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