In feature films, I have always liked movies with small characters and small stories with character dialogue as the core. Like the protagonist in Woody Allen’s movies, the protagonist is nervously chattering, Love is in a trilogy, a short feature film that is almost full of dialogue, or a film that is completely close to the personal feelings of a small person like Wong Kar-wai. Individuals are in this world. Received great attention, not the attention of being a superhero, but the attention of being a "person" in a certain sense. From the content outline of Zuixiang folk songs, I feel that it should be this type of film.
The story told in the film is very simple. In the 1960s, Greenwich Village, New York, was an important source of the golden age of folk songs. The protagonist Levine was an ordinary folk singer who insisted on pursuing his musical dreams, living in a difficult life and relying on friends everywhere. Relief was able to barely eat up, boarding, wandering, singing, looking for a way out of life, and finally returning to the original point.
In the process of watching the film, I always have a faint mentality, that is, the expectation of a certain result. I hope that the protagonist will come out and stage a show of ugly duckling's revenge, just like a martial artist. Like the novel, the protagonist's remarks are not easy to be seen by martial arts masters, and the scene of pretending to be a pig and eating a tiger is the most refreshing. When I watched it, I didn’t realize that I had such an urgent expectation. I didn’t realize until the end of the film that the director didn’t give the answer at all, or, in other words, didn’t give the answer you wanted, and then I walked on empty space. Lost and stupid. After thinking about it in a blink of an eye, I discovered
this expectation. The reflection on this expectation is exactly in line with the theme of this movie, and it has to be amazing.
It's quite a mockery. Some people tend to ridicule, belittle success and mainstream values, and praise the so-called "quality of self-pursuit and independent spirit". What? This movie expresses the director's irony of contemporary American mainstream values. Artists of the era pursue art and insist on pursuing the praise of the independent spirit of quality "Frivolous words, while at the same time dreaming of their own dreams of getting rich and successful. Unwilling people are not necessarily people worthy of respect, because even though more people are also not affirmed and recognized by mainstream values, they also criticize and sarcasm and resist, but they still use the mainstream values they criticize and ridicule. Their logic is only to make themselves affirmed. That is to do things in a noble name.
The best part of the movie can be said to be the contrast before and after. At the beginning of the movie, the male protagonist was beaten when he went out after singing in the bar, faded out, and entered the memory. The typical flashback technique begins. Many foreign movies use this kind of beginning. At the end of the story, at the point of memory, the film also explained why the male lead was beaten—the folk performance in a bar mocking an old lady. But here the director handled the ending in a way that I have never heard of, making small changes in the camera position, lines, and character movements. The incident is still the protagonist being beaten in the title, but it shows in the details. The difference is like a cycle. My God, these few strokes directly tell the cycle of the male lead's fate. The whole film is no longer an event, a small fragment of life, but constitutes a panorama of life.
When I realized this, the life of this character, or at least his young age, came to mind when I realized this. He was depressed and troubled, his face was pale, sickly, looked down upon, pitiful, pessimistic and weak. It is arrogant contempt and firmness. Oscar Isaac’s performance is awesome, and you almost understand his character when you see his look. The loser, who is in a weak position in social relations, has no right to speak. According to our current words, he is lonely and indifferent. Therefore, he is either a weak old man or a weak silent person. Anger will not be the norm, but sadness will be the only thing. Become a lasting attitude.
And what I saw in the film was powerlessness and sorrow, powerlessness and sorrow for fate and the world. Regardless of whether Levienne is a talented gold, or a loser with insufficient talent. Even if you have no talent, it is sad that God has bestowed you a firm love for folk songs.
Even when Levine finally returned from Chicago and the interpersonal relationship was terrible, he did not show a trace of anger or rant, but just sat at the table and said to Carey Mulligan that I was really tired. This is the sadness of idealists.
(At that time, she said to him the only gentle sentence in the film. She
ran away in tears!)
People have the need to identify with others and affirm their self-worth, which is even a very core and important psychological drive in the heart. But if it happens that you have an idea that is contrary to the mainstream values, you think about what is right and what is wrong, you submit, persist, resist, accept, seek belonging, pursue freedom, reflect, and be at a loss. Finally, the body and soul are offered as sacrificial offerings of truth, whether it is turned into dust or ashes. This is very moving and admirable. Levine insisted on his opinion and taste on folk songs, and turned a deaf ear to commercialization, which permeated his thinking about the value of life. For example, his sister asked him why he didn’t look for a decent job, such as being a crew member. He answered "like Dad?", the collapse of patriarchal authority may be one of the driving forces for his unyielding to traditional authority.
Another interesting point is that Levine refutes Mulligan’s values and said, did you know that there are two kinds of people in this world, one is the person who divides people into two kinds of people. Here I mean it is a paradox~ This does not put myself into the problem of set paradox ==.
Dim bars, folk singers, old-school people talking, small rented houses, cats, hand-knitted dark sweaters, eyes in the subway, the girl next door’s long straight hair, sloppy on the road, sofa guest, heaven, how charming, It is sorrow to be submerged in the waves of the times, and what is missed is regret. Everything has passed and turned into a fascinating light and shadow.
After reading the outline of the content, I guessed it might be a biographical film. After watching the film, I would definitely need to look at the background information and other film reviews, but I did not expect that this is actually a completely different film. Biographical films that require background information. Just as the film director Coen Brothers explained in an interview with foreign media, this film is not a biopic of a folk singer, but an elegy reminiscent of the golden age of folk music in the 1960s. "It doesn't matter who you are, the important thing is that you are a part of this wave of folk songs," the director said. This is the real theme of the film.
It doesn't matter who you are, what matters is that you are part of this wave of folk songs. If you still feel sorry for the ending of the film or your situation, read this sentence and read it ten times.
2014.7.23
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