Everyday social news is full of strange things. Occasional murder cases will always leave people with a sense of "how could this happen?". The police will definitely investigate in the direction that the victim and the murderer must have a mortal feud. In some such cases, after the murderer is found, it is found that the motive for committing the crime is because of some trivial matter, which will shock people even more. Words such as "cold-blooded" and "neuropathy" will immediately appear in people's hearts. In a flash. However, some sociologists or psychologists, and even so-called nonfiction writers, will think that there must be a reason for this, so they will investigate and report on the results. " is such a work, and it has been adapted into a movie twice.
So... will there be a movie that wants to convey the director's inner thoughts through cold-blooded cases? French director Claude Chabrot's "Grim Ritual" (or "Ritual") is one such film.
Most movie nerds over the age of 40 are definitely not unfamiliar with Chabrol, and they will definitely be able to talk about the relevant film history right away. The three words "French New Wave" may be the first sentence, and then it will be Chu Fu. , Renais, Gundam, Rohmer, etc. In the 1980s, students at art academies raised their hands in class to answer the teacher's question, "Does anyone know what the French New Wave is?" The teacher would answer jokingly, "Student, I'll spank you four hundred times before explaining what the French New Wave is."
Historians who have studied French history may not know the above-mentioned film directors, but they must know that in those years when these directors were very active, France was at war with Algeria in Africa, and that one day, tens of thousands of French living Algerians gathered in Paris to advocate for Algeria's independence, leading to a massacre (an event mentioned in the movie "Hidden Camera"). In such a politically turbulent era, the films completed by these talented directors have been favored by professionals and movie nerds all over the world, and have become an immortal classic style. The French film industry played a catalytic role?
I don't remember seeing Chabrol's films at the activities of the campus audio-visual club during my college days, but I have definitely seen "The Four Hundred Blows", "Gone Breathing" and "Last Year at Marumba", the last of which is rewatched even now , should still not see why. I came across Chabrol's "Grim Ritual" while browsing an online video platform by accident. When I further saw that the actor has Isabelle Hupe, who is arguably the best acting and charming in France, I immediately started watching.
If you don't read the synopsis beforehand, I still have expectations about what kind of ceremony the title of this work of Chabrough, who has the title of "French Hitchcock", refers to, but it may be very difficult before the first half of the movie. Wondering, because it seems like it's just a movie about an ordinary low-class woman Sophie, who goes to a middle-class family as a servant, and meets Jenny, a rude woman who works in the town's post office. The first half of the movie (actually from beginning to end) is just as bland as the interactions between Sophie, Jenny, and Sophie's helper's family members, as well as the daily chores, as Sophie is an illiterate first. After the suspense is laid out, it makes people feel that something must happen in the end. Unexpectedly, what happened in the end was that Sophie and Jenny killed the host's family in cold blood, and the tragedy happened when the host's family of four were watching the opera "Don Giovanni" (the host was a Mozart fan). This bridge section will make many people feel that it is too abrupt, and they may keep thinking about why it is so after the end? What is the director trying to express?
I don't understand philosophy and sociology, and this is what makes a countryman like me feel deeply confused after watching this type of film. However, because of the identity and background of the murderers and victims in the film, I am reminded that the film is talking about the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat? The question is, the film was released in 1995, and it has been four or five years since the Berlin Wall was knocked down. Could it be that Chabrol was a follower of Marx? Or do you want to use this movie to spit a formal saliva against the Berlin Wall, which has been sent to an unknown construction waste dump, to express an innocuous accusation?
After watching the movie, I immediately searched the Internet, and I found a document that records that Chabrero once joked that "Grim Ritual" was the last communist film. How about true and false? The answer lies in his heart. It was only when I searched for information on the opera "Don Giovanni" and found that "in the end everyone sang, 'This is the end of the wicked! And the wicked deserves death.'", I couldn't help it Doubt, does the movie really mean - pan-bourgeois are villains?
I have no experience with opera, so I can't understand the deeper meaning of "Don Giovanni" introduced before and at the end of the film. If you ask me, "What's your opinion?" My opinion is... My opinion is that Sophie and Jenny are like the two real murderers in Cobbetti's "Cold Blood", just for no reason. It will reveal the evil side of human nature, because the same murders are committed for trivial matters.
The movie explains some of Sophie and Jenny's past. For example, one of them is suspected of killing her relatives, and the other is suspected of killing her own flesh and blood. From these two points, it can be interpreted that there must be some kind of special dark in the process of their growth. The encounter caused the two to have a serious deviant character that regarded life as nothing, especially Sophie was illiterate, which seemed to make her feel inferior, so inferior that she dared not let people know it, and therefore had a tendency to be hysterical, which was also her fault. One of the triggers of the murder. Jenny hated rich people very much. She always felt that such people were superior. Sophie gradually agreed with her opinion, so when the two helped the church to get clothes from people who wanted to donate clothes, Jenny was very picky. The clothes were unbearable, and Sophie taunted along with her. Such a move stabbed people who wanted to do good deeds, so they were dismissed by the priest after returning to the church, but the two never had the heart to introspect.
Perhaps, it is true that "people are inherently good at the beginning." However, some people's growth process can be caused by family factors or social environment. In short, they gradually become animals in human skins. Whether it is the two male murderers in the real case recorded in Cobbetti's "Cold Blood" or the two female murderers in Chabraux's "Grim Rite", in my opinion, they are all beasts in human skins.
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