Let death call its true name
—— "Sun and Moon without Light" film review
When time and space are reconstituted into separate time and space; when time is only time and space is only space, we will lose the ability to describe the simple and unpretentious appearance of a husband and wife. It was not until the figure of a monk fell into the frame that people were rescued and regained the concept of time and space.
What impresses me most in the film is the text: I think that in this journey, among all the prayers to time, the most gentle one is that the lady at the Houde Temple, to her cat - Xiaohu What he said: "Cat, no matter where you are, may you be happy forever."
The film uses a woman reading a letter as a clue to tell the stories of many journeys. A series of seemingly unrelated images and digressing narrations about death, decadence, time and space, dreams, and the emu of the Ile de Paris. A letter from an unknown author, a dream that has nowhere to go, images that travel through all corners of the earth, and even specially processed images. "Sun and Moon Without Light" builds up a complex world view, deconstructs time and space, and then examines and reorganizes it.
First of all, we have to ignore the picture and the frame, and divide the whole film into three types of people, the recorder, the recorded person, and the viewer. Between these three, a special time-space relationship is established through gaze. As for the content of the entire film, time and space are deconstructed with letters and dreams, and time and space are deconstructed with editing in form.
When our discussion first started, it seemed to be difficult. Because any image has its own time and space, that is, the shooting time and space of the recorded person and the viewing time and space of the viewer, as well as the shooting time and space of the recorder. The spatial relationship of images seems to be based on the viewer's gaze on the images. Therefore, before continuing the discussion, we also need to point out the space-time particularity of this film.
First, the shooting time and space of this film are relatively jumpy. Second, the time and space of this film are two more layers than other time and space, one is a dark picture, and the other is a specially processed video picture. Third, in addition to the gaze of the common images, the gaze of the film should also consider the gaze of the recorded person, the gaze of the dark, the gaze of the specially processed image, the gaze of the TV, the gaze of the three girls, the gaze of the mask, etc.
So far, the existing time and space are: the ordinary time and space of the filmed, the ordinary time and space of the viewer, the dark time and space, the time and space of the three girls, the time and space inside the TV, the time and space outside the TV, the specially processed image time and space, and the time and space of death. Therefore, the time and space of this film is special, and it also builds its own time and space system.
Second, the space-time relationship between the three needs to be clarified. At the beginning of the film, there is a darkness, the three girls, a darkness, the plane descends, and another darkness. The director uses a long black screen to break the continuous time and the same space, and then reconstructs the reconstruction of the entire image space-time. The director did this, firstly, to break the audience's habitual time-space relationship to images from the very beginning, after all, this is a video work about time and space, and secondly, to lay a foundation for subsequent reconstruction, that is, the intervention of dark time and space, It makes the whole film have a unique sense of breathing, because the characteristics of dark time and space are only temporal, but time and space depend on the viewer. In this way, temporality can be used to adjust the rhythm, the rhythm of time and space, and it can also give the viewer an alienation effect.
After that, we look at traditional masks, television, specially processed images, and three girls. Traditional masks symbolize a longer history. They are watching us from history. The first is to trace back the time and space from the eyes of traditional masks, and the second is to incorporate the eyes of history into this scene. while watching. TV itself has the characteristics of time and space, and if the TV is placed in a backward era of the last century, the TV program is broadcast at a fixed time, that is to say, the same film and television drama is broadcast at a certain time in a certain area. This is not only the internal space-time of the TV, but also the external space-time of the TV. The biggest feature of TV is the repeated playback, that is to say, TV represents the repeated playback of an identical image in different time and space. The important thing in this seems to be the external world of TV. Specially processed images, that is, the original images are processed into images that are incomprehensible to us, including the two-dimensional electronic world, or others. The most important of these is to create a "third-dimensional perspective", that is to say, the recorder, the recorded person and the viewer are all in the three-dimensional world, and the recorded person becomes a part of the second dimension, and the special treatment is independent of In addition to two-dimensional and three-dimensional, special existences can be referred to as non-human perspectives. Three girls, the writer said that he still didn't feel where he should be placed. The three girls are part of the recorder. Most of the films are objective records, coupled with personal expressions, giving the images a self-portrait. But the three girls constitute the part of the recorder. They cannot be called records, but expressions. In the director's cut, the three girls are not records, but expressions. This part is an independent time and space for the director, of course, he can also see it by placing it in two darkness at the beginning of the film.
Then, let's discuss gaze and the spatiotemporal relationship that gaze brings. First of all, we should consider the lens nature of the act of gaze, that is to say, the shooting of the lens and the gaze are the same under certain circumstances, but there are some differences between the two. In the category of documentaries, the camera itself has the behavior of eyes, peeping, watching and other people. In the process of fixation, the first space-time relationship between the watcher and the person being watched is the one-way transmission of information from the space-time of the person being watched to the space-time of the watcher, and the person being watched is full of emotions and emotions. Absorb with prejudice (this is different from Introduction to Communication); and if both parties look at each other, it is a two-way transmission of information, and at the same time, they receive information with mutual emotion and prejudice. Secondly, there is a difference between staring and shooting, in short, the difference between similarities and differences in time. So what is there to discuss about such a space-time relationship? Gaze often brings a sense of isolation, or a sense of space. The gazer and the gazed may be close or distant, but in any case, the two are isolated, that is, physical isolation will lead to isolation of the act of gaze, perceived loneliness, or Talk about a sense of personal space. This can explain why the director first placed the clip of the three girls in the two segments of darkness, that is, the sense of personal space. As mentioned above, it belongs to the director. It is the director who deliberately separates the individual from the others, that is, a sense of personal space. Begin to tell us a sense of isolation, detected in the gaze. Secondly, the gaze in the image can also superimpose time and space. The camera and the eyes are looking at each other, then the person being photographed was originally looking at the camera, but now he is the audience. The audience brings a sense of isolation, that is, the time and space are completely dislocated, but because of the interoperability of human beings, the special The connection, which is the so-called soul seeing the soul, has created a connection between two unconnected time and space.
At this point in the discussion, spatiotemporality and gaze can come to an end. Next is the deconstruction and reconstruction of the content of letters and dreams. Letter, a medium that uses words to forcibly connect two time-spaces, even with lag, repeatability, etc.; dreamland, a virtual second time-space that transcends the existing time-space through imagination. Therefore, whether it is a letter or a dream, it is a kind of tailoring and splicing of time and space. And when the letter is used as the clue of the film, coupled with the characteristics of the editing itself, the film can build a huge space-time system.
For the time and space of the film, as well as many imaging techniques, I will not mention too much here. Finally, we should come to the subject. "Let death call its true name". For me, this sentence is the theme of the film, and it is also the most memorable sentence for me. We mentioned above that the film constructs multiple layers of time and space, and the reason why these time and space are constructed is to me that the most important thing is to make us realize that we are trapped in time and space. If there were no images, then we would not have known about the emu of Paris Island, Japan and Africa. We are trapped in time and space, and the manifestation of trapping us is that our memory is incomplete. Not only that, but also the topic of death. No matter how limited we are, we will all go at some point, and we don't know when we'll go, just like the lady who lost her cat and doesn't know when it will go. Therefore, the lady prayed to the gods early. It can't help but remind me of that monk, peace and tranquility. The monk's method is advocated, and it is indifferent to the restricted life and death. Limited life and death are inevitable, the limitations of the human species. From the perspective of human beings, time and space and life are all limited, so the sun and the moon have no light, which cannot be perceived as a human. And if you think about it like this, you will fall into a meaningless whirlpool, so the director gives his answer to comfort himself.
"Let death call its true name", the first emphasizes myself, that is, there is no need to deny the limitations of my own existence, and the second is transcendence, which can be understood as the third kind of person of Camus. At the end of the film, the director put together the video of the volcanic eruption shot by the three girls and friends for him, and the previous streets and houses were buried. As can be expected, it is a grand historical trend that will cover us. This is a kind of sadness that comes from human beings, this is a kind of tragedy that comes from nature, but in the end, we can whisper "May you be happy forever" at the end of time. Since then, human beings have comforted themselves in human ways under their own logic, even if the sun and the moon are dark.
[This article is all personal understanding, there is a possibility of misunderstanding]
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