In a nightmare, I walked slowly through the dark and cramped underground passage, and came to an object similar to an operating table. On the "operating table" lay a man who was restrained and slowly struggling, although I couldn't see his covered eyes, but I could still feel the terrifyingly twisted face. Beside him, several grim-faced and grim-looking "staff" whispered, as if trying to direct his soul to their ideal boundaries. That man just silently expressed endless pain, minute after minute, second after second, until he died of despair. This is not the plot of the movie, but the nightmare that the scene in the movie left me as a viewer. This movie has a strange name - "Dike". Let's first turn our perspective back to France in the mid-1950s.
At that time, there were many maverick young filmmakers who attacked some well-known French films and big directors through various channels (the famous "Cinebook" was its main position). They think that the official so-called "high-quality movies" seem to be exquisite, complete, and quite enjoyable on the surface, but they are actually clumsy and boring to the extreme. No surprises, no innovation, step-by-step, follow the rules, at best, it's just video junk shot according to high-quality text. They are not paper tigers who only talk about soldiers on paper. After scolding enough, these young people with full personality began to show their skills in practice, using more powerful evidence to prove their seemingly radical remarks. As a result, following the European avant-garde and Italian neorealism, one of the most prestigious and influential movements in film history, the New Wave, was once again launched in France, the "motherland of cinema". When this vigorous New Wave movement was in full swing, another group of "Buddhist" film artists living on the left bank of the Seine in Paris did not participate in the countless heated debates and quarrels, but kept silent. They started to create works that were as slanted as the New Wave, so they were called "left bankers". Among the most famous representatives are Alain Resnais (representative of "Hiroshima Love", "Last Year in Marienbad"), Agnès Varda (representative of "Five to Seven", "Face, Village") "), Margaret Duras (her major achievements in the film industry are mainly in screenwriting) and so on. "Dike" director Chris Mark is a "left bank". He is an energetic and versatile filmmaker, but as a director there are only a handful of works that have been handed down, and "Dike" is one of the most striking and flawless works. I think I've seen quite a few movies, but it's absolutely rare that I can call it "flawless". The length of "Dike" is only 28 minutes. The whole film is composed of fixed-frame pictures except for a 6-second winking shot of the heroine at 19 minutes and 47 seconds. Such extreme expression not only does not confine the layering and richness of the film, but also organically integrates various seemingly irreconcilable ingredients such as science fiction, war, love, suspense, thriller, mysticism, surrealism, etc. They were all handled in an orderly manner by Chris Mark, like a god. Although it is only 28 minutes, and the viewing effect is close to PPT, But the story of "Dike" is very full: after a nuclear war that destroyed the world broke out, the male protagonist, who was a prisoner, was repeatedly forcibly sent to the past and the future as an experimental subject of time travel. Once, on the eve of the outbreak of the war, he met and fell in love with a beautiful woman on the embankment. He often used the opportunity of time travel to accompany the woman, which rekindled his desire for a better life after being tortured in prison. 's hope. Until one day, people in later generations invited him to the future world where the catastrophe had ended, and he gave up this golden opportunity for the woman he loved deeply. And just when he went back to the past again and rushed towards the direction of the lover who was waiting for him, he suddenly saw a jailer following him coldly grinning at him. Nightmare finally reappears in reality... Motifs about time, memory, dreams and dual reality are the areas that the "left bankers" are most concerned about and good at. The so-called "double reality" is "reality in the heart" and "reality in the eyes". In the view of the Left Bank, the inner real world of human beings is far more important than the objective real world, and has more charm and expressive value; good literary and artistic works should focus on discussing the "reality of the heart" rather than reflecting the objective reality. This also predestines "left bank" films to follow the non-mainstream line of "avant-garde" and "existentialism". If you've seen "Terminator," "Avatar," "Ready Player One," and "Twelve Monkeys," then you'll feel familiar with this concept. These sci-fi classics all borrowed the structure, ideological purpose and aesthetic concept full of apocalyptic sense of "Dyke" by coincidence, that is to say, Cameron, Spielberg and Gilliam are the three great directors of Chris. Mark's descendants and followers. Although the whole film is only composed of a series of freeze-frame images without color, the poetic French narration, the moving story, the mysterious sound effects that appear and disappear, the elusive sad soundtrack, and the ancient Greek sculpture-like one The faces make each frame of still black and white picture seem to be full of condensed and vigorous tension, which is both suffocating and terrifying, poetic and majestic, sad and moving. In my mind, the 28-minute "Dike" has all the elements that a good movie should have: eye-catching plot, abundant imagination, shocking audio-visual experience, profound ideological connotation, and images. Music with a high degree of style, and the courage to innovate and subvert tradition. "24 frames per second" has been regarded as "the truth of film" by many filmmakers, and "Dike" is like a black pearl inlaid on the devil's belt, which is deviant and captivating. Kerry
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