Old director: Oliver Stone likes to shoot political themes, from "Assassination of Kennedy", "Nixon" and "Bush" to the present "Snowden". After completing the "Vietnam War Trilogy", he switched from war to political themes. It can be said that his path of director is firmly on the road of political correctness, going further and further. The focal person of an era is usually the character that attracts him, whether it is the president, the man of the wind, or the controversial Snowden.
During the Toronto Film Festival that just ended, in the highly anticipated blockbuster, "Snowden" was the first to hit the street and was rated as a bad film on Rotten Tomatoes. In the 134-minute movie, with the transmission of Internet and electronic information, it flashbacks the details of Snowden's life and work for nearly 10 years between 2013 and 2004. The de-heroization of the whole film attempts to start with the details of the biopic, expounding the events of the characters in the complex background. It is destined that these 134 minutes will not be ups and downs, and even the audience in the elderly field on Tuesday afternoon will struggle to watch the entire film. However, such a role will always be performed by someone, and such a story will always be filmed. It is only a matter of time or night. As for whether Oliver Stone has acted too hastily, whether Americans have once again quickly consumed their historical events, everyone's expectations are different, and naturally they also have reservations about the film. The first person to appear in Snowden’s live-action film is not Snowden, but a reporter played by Zachary Quinto and a documentary director played by Melissa Leo. The two are in a Hong Kong hotel. The hall anxiously awaited Snowden's arrival. When playing the back of the Rubik's Cube with one hand into the mirror, we knew that it was Snowden. As a result, Joseph's intellectual appearance appeared, and his mouth was almost the same as the original voice of Snowden, which was convincing. Halfway through the film, he grows up Snowden's small beard that surrounds his lips from his cheeks. The temperament of the whole person became more and more similar. He said that in order to prepare for the role, he flew to Moscow to meet Snowden for four hours. During this period, although Snowden tried to shift the topic from himself to the incident, Joseph said , He actually wanted to know more about Snowden’s own life.
Director Oliver Stone said in an interview that Joseph is his first and only choice. They had never cooperated, and instinct told him that Joseph was the most suitable candidate, both in appearance and inwardness. This sensitive subject in the film has been controversial so far. The director and screenwriter are deliberately avoiding the extension of the film in the direction of heroism, so there are not many sensational characters in the whole film. Only halfway through, Snowden used the Rubik's Cube to bring out the confidential documents in the SD card, and then took a picture of him facing the strong light outside the base, striding forward with a smile on his face, and then his back was swallowed by the light, as if The silhouette of the alien disappeared at the end, as if to a place we didn't know. At the end of the film, the real Snowden appeared in the ending subtitles and said the sentence: "What I did today is to make us no longer worry about tomorrow.".
Snowden's life picture Although the director Oliver Stone and Snowden have met nine times because of the filming of the film, the director himself also said that no matter how deep the film is, it only reveals the Snowden mystery. At the surface of life, he is still a mystery. In the two-hour film, in addition to Snowden’s untimely military life in his early years, there is also his experience of finding another way to serve the country, joining the CIA, and the girlfriends he started dating, living with him in U.S. military stations around the world. The two separated and reunited, noisy, heart and body, life and work pressure, constantly superimposed on Snowden, repeated polygraph tests, answering those fixed questions, but the answers were no longer standard. It's harder to convince myself. The girlfriend loves photography. In the film, he constantly freezes Snowden's life moments, giving the audience a lot of accumulation of realism.
Shelen Woodley, an actress who became famous by "The Divergent", said that she met Snowden's girlfriend Lindsay herself only three months after the filming started. For her, how to play a convincing girlfriend , Is also a big challenge. There is also an eye-catching supporting actor in the film: Nicholas Cage, who plays Snowden’s first colleague and friend of the CIA: Hank. His slightly reserved acting skills make Cage lose the aura of the past, instead Naturally starring in a fat and lovely friend, still added points to the plot, as if seeing the early natural interpretation of Cage in the films of the Coen brothers and Charlie Kaufman. In addition to weakening Snowden's sense of heroism, the last part of the nationwide reflection, the film attempts to analyze how his personal life and work content led him to become a "fourth citizen". At the same time, we must also be responsible for analyzing the various surveillance programs developed and used by the CIA and the National Security Agency, so that the film adds another layer of meaning to inform the public how our information security is over-protected (used) protected (used). of. In the film, a member of the Security Bureau said an important line: "What people want is not freedom but security." Just as it is difficult for us to define Snowden's own behavior between the state and the individual, the judgment criteria are different under different frames of reference. Freedom and security are not two opposing issues, but under information monitoring, they become opposing issues. This makes it difficult for everyone as a real Internet user to choose. When we come to the forefront of academia, the real complexity is often not technical issues, but philosophical issues. The next step in slowing down the development of science and technology is our unique ethics and morality. After the armed conflict of war is over, the clash of civilizations continues. Between different political systems and economic systems, between national and personal interests, and between eternal contradictions and interests, we need to constantly reflect and stare at our past. Hope in the future.
In this year's Toronto Film Festival, there is also a documentary called "All Governments lie". This is a serious documentary that discusses the professional conscience of Western media reporters and gives the Western political system a shot in the heart. Today we experience a catastrophic event, followed by excessive reporting and public opinion orientation, and then wait until the event subsides, the nature is determined, and there will be documentaries revealing the truth like "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Fourth Citizen". Later, when everyone hadn't forgotten it, we began to adapt such real stories again, refine and dramatize them, and then put them on the big screen, as if it became a closed-loop event consumption. From the outbreak of the incident to the end of the movie, after a few years or even decades, the movie has become the last part of people's reflection. It satisfies people's reverie and prying heart of the event, and at the same time allows the audience to experience and participate in the event once again, considering their own behavior and thoughts, whether they can withstand the test. Among the countless CIA staff, there is only one Snowden. And we believe that he will not be the last to stand up to challenge authority and defend freedom for more people. As long as this film tells the story honestly, nothing else.
September 21, 2016 Toronto Xiao Xuan Er Ji——————————
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