From the very beginning of the film, this film looks a little different. When it was still in the factory, the lines began. This is a monologue, the voice of a man (in this monologue, the picture or the camera lens is always black Yes, we can't see the speaker): "Ok, let me say this, (ah)…let me say this…if I lost my wife, and…next day, a lone bird land my window soon…" We know, Film is the art of combining audio-visual, that is, the art of combining image and sound. But here, as an intentional emphasis on sound, what is pursued is the emphasis on sound based on the separation of sound and picture, thus forming a special ideographic form and technique. As a film rhetoric, this emphasis on sound cannot make people pay attention to the images on the screen, it makes people pay full attention to what is missing outside the picture. The reason why the director arranges this here is to highlight the content of this monologue, which seems to imply that Anne's ex-husband (Shawn) is not serious and unfaithful to Anna. Moreover, this monologue also guides the audience to think in advance about the narrative content of the film. On the other hand, the director deliberately avoided the positive description of Anna's ex-husband. In this way, some comparisons between Anna's ex-husband and little Sean (such as appearance comparison) that may be brought along with the development of the plot are omitted. The lack of positive description also makes the film more suspenseful and mysterious. Another point, this movie is about Anna's love, so a person who deceived Anna's feelings is not worthy of arranging a positive description. Although it seems that the whole film plot revolves around this Anna's ex-husband, in the end we know that this Anna's ex-husband doesn't love Anna at all, and the deep love expressed in the whole story actually has nothing to do with the man who has no heart at all. The director made a choice for us as the audience. We don't need to see his clear appearance. It is enough to rely on the picture the director presents to us, because in Anna's love world, he is only a symbol, a person who is loved. The symbol of love exists, if it is just a symbol, it does not need to show its face.
What follows is a dream passage with the "long mirror" figure of speech as its main means. At the beginning of this paragraph, a special treatment method is adopted. Attentive viewers will find that the appearance of the picture gradually fades from the middle to the two sides (especially in the upper and lower areas), which makes people feel that this shot seems to be in Intentionally imitating the sight of a person, what a person just saw when he opened his eyes: a man running in the snow, a backside shot from above. This set of long takes fits with the desire to document the action and is cut into the film's narrative as a single shot. On the premise of maintaining the polysemy of reality, the "long mirror" figure of speech needs to present more subject "eyes" and some special meaning. The subject's "gaze" reflected here is, I think, a direction of thinking deliberately created by the director. After this narrative segment is a picture of a baby, then the "gaze" here can be regarded as a display of the baby's consciousness (or It is said that the director wants the audience to understand so). And the content of this narrative segment also has a certain metaphor. A man is running. The image in this specific environment gives people a feeling of "following" and "seeking". In the action description of this character, the camera lens Following all the time, the "following" and "seeking" embodied by the camera is precisely a theme of the film.
In addition, if this group of "long mirrors" is analyzed in conjunction with the previous monologue, it is also a balanced structure. The monologue paragraph is sound-heavy and has no picture, so it can be said to be static. Here, the "long mirror" slightly emphasizes the picture (although musical sounds are added, compared to monologues, the musical sounds are not so unique. Distinctive meaning. The sound element here is more to match the presentation of the picture, not to separate it deliberately, but to participate in it as a whole), deliberately depicting a dynamic feeling, not only the characters are moving, but the camera is also moving. This group of "long mirrors" maintains a layer of flowing "poetic feelings" in the care of the external world.
This set of images of Anna's ex-husband dying in a bridge hole is an excellent use of "frame in a frame," a kind of "accent" of film narrative. The "frame in the frame" highlights and emphasizes the characters in the situation and the scene, and at the same time, it also forms an identification of the frame, thus forming a rich visual expression. The picture frame here is the arch wall of the bridge hole. The black silhouette of the man in the bright light in the bridge hole is highlighted in the darkness. The camera slowly zooms out, creating a sense of visual distance for the audience, just suggesting that the characters have passed away. , about to die.
Another use of the "long mirror" that has to be mentioned is the close-up long shot of Anna in the concert hall where Anna and her fiance arrived after their meeting with Little Sean. The long shot here shows a very different style compared to the long shot analyzed earlier. Because the "interrogative" long shot has more subject color than the "poetic" long shot - "deliberate". It is often used to express a rhetorical intention by breaking the usual duration of the shot, or with a special way of moving the shot. Although the shot here does not show the unique "discourse" skills of long shots with changes in the center of motion, it has a kind of "inquiry" with its specific "stubbornness" and "continuous care". This group of shots is about 2 minutes and 24 seconds in total, of which the close-up long shot accounts for about 1 minute and 44 seconds. This "long shot" lasts for a long time, giving the actor plenty of time to show her acting skills and show the slightest changes in expressions. As for the audience may feel impatient. But at the same time impatient, the audience's viewing psychology has changed, and they can't help but ask: "What is she thinking?" or "How is she in the mood?", and so on. The camera takes a close-up look at the heroine Anna calmly and for a long time. Although she is sitting in the concert hall, it can be seen from her expression that she is very worried, tears are floating in the corners of her eyes, and her mind is obviously not in the concert. It is precisely because of this that the understanding of the music here should not only be the performance of the concert, but also a depiction of Anna's psychology. The ups and downs of the music are just an escaped expression of Anna's psychological activities—— Anna's heart was struggling. The description of the actors' movements also corresponds to this. We see that every time Anna seems to be about to cry, her fiancé will come over and whisper to her. This arrangement just reflects the inner feelings of the two parties that Anna is trapped in. a confrontation. "Close-ups add drama with the impression of being up close. The pain in the heart also seems to be within reach. If we stretch out our arms, I will touch you and feel uneasy. I have all the painful eyelashes. I can almost Feel the taste of your tears. Never before has anyone's face been so close to mine..." ([French] Jean Epstein, "Hello, Movie"), this is the best way to describe this feature. Appropriate. This close-up pushes the camera into a small space, and the emotional power accumulated by the characters' complex emotions and inner struggles bursts out so closely that the audience can have an immersive and empathetic sense of presence.
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