This article is reproduced from WeChat public account: Frank's Movie World
Speaking of Francis Ford Coppola, the Godfather series can be said to be his world-famous masterpiece, but few people know it. In fact, in addition to the Godfather trilogy, Coppola has also shot other styles that are very different from the Godfather series. The work, the film we are talking about today, is "Youth Without Youth" directed by Coppola in 2007. The story of this film is similar to David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". Linguistics professor Dominic, who is over 70 years old, was struck by lightning and rejuvenated, and thus experienced a love interlaced in time and space. Coppola used a very poetic film and television language and elegant and smooth lens to make this film. Presented very beautifully.
The film begins with the ticking of a clock before the first shot, followed by a series of close-up shots of clock instruments, deformed clocks, and skulls. Accompanied by the woman's gasp, it's a life that's struggling or dying. This series of meaningful shots reminds me of the famous painting "Eternal Memory" by the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali. When he was 5 years old, Dali's father took him to his brother's grave and told Dali : You are the reincarnation of your brother. A short sentence changed Dali's worldview and opened his life in an unconventional way. Dalí's paintings and the stories behind them are similar to the core of this film. In the film, the protagonist Dominic has also split into another self after rejuvenation. The material properties of clocks are often expressed as metals, which are hard, precise, indifferent and even It is a cruel display of its most fundamental function - recording time.
Both Dali's paintings and Coppola's lens language convey the characteristics of time's "paralysis", "flow" and "solidification". Going deep into the cultural situation, we can feel the director's extreme complexity of time and life like Dali. On the one hand, time is indeed as cruel as it feels in daily experience. It is constantly passing and irreversible, showing the feeling that the personal world is facing collapse under the oppression of life at that time; on the other hand, its passing is like Like weak water, it passes away casually, and it flows gently so that people can't feel its sharp cruelty; when people suddenly realize that life is about to end, time can gently summon past events through the gathering of memories , emotions and people's knowledge and wisdom.
After a series of overlapping shots of clocks, faces of women, and words of ancient civilizations, our protagonist, Dominic, comes in. At this time he is an old man, and Coppola uses his favorite Rembrandt. Lighting. In the dark set, only half of Dominic's face is shown in the dim light. He looks lonely and mysterious. The way the character comes out is so similar to how Coppola's character appearances were handled before in The Godfather. I myself also like Rembrandt, one of the most famous painters in the Dutch Golden Age. He is not only good at painting portraits, but also painted a lot of history paintings and genre paintings. His portrait paintings use a strong contrast of light and shade to highlight the image For the main part, Rembrandt's use of light is so impressive that the French 19th-century painter and critic Flomentin called Rembrandt a 'luminous bug', while others say he painted light with darkness. His magical shading constitutes the strong dramatic color in his painting style. The Rembrandt lighting in Coppola's films also brings a unique sense of mystery and dramatic tension to the film.
The subtitles started after this series of shots, the background is a bright red rose, the flower is still shaking, just like in the water, the flower in the water, the moon in the mirror. I think Coppola should be more concerned about the Chinese classical Culture and philosophy have been studied! (The behind-the-scenes footage said that due to the needs of the plot, the actor Tim Ross specially studied Chinese. Later, the newspaper feature told us that it was Easter. And the protagonist Dominic was on Easter. The day was struck by lightning and rejuvenated. It was accompanied by the whispers of passing women, "they say whoever dies in easter, goes straight to heaven." A layer of religious overtones.
Coppola used some unconventional shots in this film, or inverted or reversed characters and worlds. Among them are Freud's dreams, and Coppola tried to use some symbolic language to explain his vision of the universe. , the world, the understanding of life. There are also some political metaphors, which are very informative. A good director, a good movie is like this, through his works, you can easily enter another different world, and wander in it, thinking The meaning of the cosmology of life. This is the charm, energy and value of an artist. He can control a person's will and thoughts, even if the manipulation and control are temporary. Sometimes, I even feel that this is another level "Fascism". The difference is that this energy can lead us to a more positive and positive thinking.
I really like the use of blue light in the film. It is very layered and creates a cool and alienated atmosphere. At the same time, the world represented by this cool light is completely different from the world represented by Rembrandt light. A world. The artistic effect brought about by this light is a sense of separation between reality and dream. In my opinion, such a film cannot be interpreted, because the film itself is a kind of philosophical existence, and it is the expression of the director's philosophical thoughts as an artist. And the film is just a medium. This film is sad, nostalgic, confused , neurotic. Just as the tragedy of life cannot be understood and interpreted.
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