I haven’t written a long review for a long time. With the increase in the number of movies, my movie viewing habits and various types of movies have co-evolved, and they are all in circles. But I recently watched "The Absentee" by the Coen Brothers, and I still recorded it, for fear of forgetting it after a long time.
The film tells the story of the protagonist's experience of being sentenced to death for manslaughter. He is deep in the vortex and is often aloof, restrained and calm as if he is watching other people's experiences, but instead highlights the absurdity and cruelty of the world around him.
The theme and structure of the film are similar to Abel Camus' novel "The Outsider". When I read the novel a few years ago, I read it at night. In those life-like descriptions, I read the protagonist's alienation from reality, and then fell into a drowsy sleep. write. Reading to the end of the last night, the protagonist knew that he was about to die, as if he was a traveler who had been lost for a long time, and suddenly turned his head and caught a glimpse of the wonderful scenery of the world. That nostalgia for life finally made me feel the same despair, so that day I lost sleep with the protagonist. We are surrounded by daily work and life trivia every day, and the feeling is familiar but alienated. Only when you really have to choose to leave them, for better or for worse, do you realize what you have missed. Like a tool hidden in the depths of the storage room, like a book hidden in the corner of a bookcase, you only realize its value when you move and organize and throw it away. It's just that life is a special object that we can only have temporarily, but there is no room for bargaining when we give it back.
"The Man Who Wasn't There" goes one step further, grounding the protagonist's sense of alienation in the unpredictability of the world. To make everything more like our life, or let us bring us more into the world of "The Outsider".
Hair is also part of the human body, but people cut it off and throw it away with the trash. It is said that after a person dies, the hair will continue to grow for a period of time, is it because it is not aware of the departure of the soul?
Barber Ed and his brother-in-law opened a barber shop. Accidentally discovers that his wife Doris is cheating on her boss Dave; Ed meets a dry cleaners businessman when he is getting a haircut, and he decides to take a stake, but has no cash on hand. He wrote an anonymous threatening letter to Dave, blackmailing him into handing over money; after Dave handed over the money, he found out that something was wrong, and during the dispute, Ed accidentally killed him. Dave made fake accounts to raise money, and Doris was involved as an accountant, who happened to be drunk that night without an alibi. So ironically, the police caught Doris as a murder suspect.
It's not over yet, Ed helped his wife Doris to file a lawsuit, and spent a lot of money to hire the best criminal lawyer in the area. Ed went to the dry cleaners businessman to ask for money, only to find that he had already run away. When Ed had some doubts about his identity at first, the businessman kept bluffing, "If you doubt, find a lawyer!". Of course Ed didn't do that. The sense of destiny in life was fulfilled again in the matter of finding a lawyer. Ed told his lawyer and his wife the truth, and wanted to apologise for his wife. Lawyers rejected his proposal on the grounds that the true version was too convoluted to be convincing. Yes, people believe what they want to believe. The barrister cited the uncertainty theory of quantum physics: "Your observations affect what is observed; the more you observe, the less you know."
Seeing that the case is about to win, Doris commits suicide because of the crime, and Ed walks to the electric chair because of other coincidences. Full of joy, he sponsored the girl next door to find the master to learn the piano, so as to pin his hopes on life; after the master saw it, he only felt that his aptitude was mediocre. On the way home, the girl would have the wrong idea and wanted to kiss her; he panicked and got into a car accident, and the girl died as a result. During the execution, he sat where the guards shaved his head, as he had done for countless working days. He had just seen the flying saucer the night before, and its piercing light enveloped him, but it made him feel calm. Compared to everything unknown after death, flying saucers are at least a familiar concept.
At the end of Camus' "The Outsider," the protagonist says:
At this time, the long night was coming to an end, and the whistle sounded. It announces that some people are going on a journey to a world that will never concern me. For the first time in a long time, I thought of my mother. I think I understand why she got another "fiancé" in her later years, and why she's playing the "start all over again" game. Over there, over there, around nursing homes that are dying, the night feels like a sad moment. Mom was so close to death that she should feel relieved and ready to start it all over again. No one, no one has the right to cry her. Me too, and I feel ready to go through it all over again. It was as if this immense anger had cleared my mental pain and made me lose hope. Facing a night full of information and stars, I opened up for the first time to the touching indifference of the world. I experience the world so much like me, so friendly, and I feel like I was happy in the past and I am still happy now.
And in "The Absentee", Ed, who is about to go to the electric chair, talks about death. :
It's like pulling away from the maze. While you're in the maze, go throughout willy-nilly, turning where you think you have to turn, banging into the dead ends, one thing after another. But you get some distance on it, and all those twists and turns are shape of your life. But seeing it whole gives you some peace.
Death to me was like getting out of a maze. When you are in the maze, you are always confused and ignorant, follow your intuition to turn, follow your intuition to a dead end. Gradually you learn to see from a distance, then the thousands of turns in the labyrinth are your whole life. Looking down at this maze now makes you feel peaceful.
I don't know where I'm being taken. I don't know what waits for me beyond the earth and sky. Maybe the things I don't understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there, and maybe there I can tell her all those things they don't have words for here.
I don't know where death will take me. I don't know what else is waiting for me outside of heaven and earth. Maybe something that I don't know yet will be clear there, blown away like a thick fog. Maybe my wife will be there waiting for me, maybe she can listen to me tell what I've been through, all that words can't describe in this world.
Ed is to the world outside his life what hair is to the human body. Unless it really happens to them, people are indifferent spectators in other people's lives after all. This kind of indifference is not subjective and intentional. Our eyes will always be disturbed by all kinds of dazzling news, and the real facts will always be separated from the observers. It is said in "The Crowd" that people all over the world suffer from car accidents and accidents every day. Death, attention-grabbing but always horrific murders.
It has to be said that this is a dark and gloomy film by the Coen brothers, combined with Roger Deakins' contrasting black and white photography, it seems to have created an unfamiliar time and space outside of reality. However, a large number of narrations with a strong literary nature show a cross-section of the world through a longitudinal section of a person's short life - complex, absurd and perverse. It's a common thread among the Coen brothers' films, and "The Absentee" is especially brilliant.
Among the many directors, the films of the Coen brothers have always been the most appetizing to me. They always aim at the unknown little people, so as to reflect the appearance of the world; with a little joking and mocking, but not mean despise, Rather, they record their history with relish, as if they were princes and generals who changed the world—even if they didn't change anything. At the end of "Drunken Country Ballads", the unwilling musician is still carrying a guitar on his back to pursue his dreams; at the end of "Barton Funk", the Broadway compilation drama that went to Hollywood is still nothing; at the end of "Raising Arizona", the infertile The couple decided to return the stolen child Dink.
When I was in college, the counselor loved Steve Jobs very much, especially liked a famous saying, "To live is to change the world", I don't know if it came from him. Great men are regarded as idols. But gradually I realized that, rather than distant dreams, we should pay more attention to ourselves and the people around us. The movie "The Furnace" said, "We don't live to change the world, but to let the world not change us". Feeling, observing and helping with a compassionate attitude is a more down-to-earth way of life. Many times, we think of the world as too simple, and the chicken soup we successfully learned can’t wait to model the world with a few formulas and a few lines of theorems; but in fact, perhaps the world is the same as the lawyer in “The Absentee”. The more you observe, the less you know. It is too complicated. Rather than refer to the simple and rude chicken soup for the soul and the convoluted thick black science, I would rather follow my inner intuition, make some trade-offs between the simple and the ordinary, and take "not to be changed" as the ideal.
By the way, some recent movie viewing experience, in my current understanding, a good movie is always a multi-dimensional experience, which is composed of many elements of script, photography, color, soundtrack, editing, not just the plot. The plot is of course very important, but if you only look at the plot, it is better to go to the more tortuous eight-point soap operas and the richer storytelling. Just like when we look at a famous painting and read a classic, you can never sum it up roughly in a few sentences; so are the images and feelings conveyed by a good movie. I chatted with a friend who studied architecture before, and traveled long distances in Iceland just to see an old building. I asked her why she had to go to the scene to see it. Can the images and models be replaced? She asked me, why do you want to see the original when you see a painting? The connection between the author and the work must be experienced, touched, and measured on the spot.
Now that fast food culture is rampant, film critics from the media are like crucian carp crossing the river, and there are videos and preconceived film reviews that "watch xxx in x minutes" everywhere. I sometimes take it for fun myself, but only in bad movies. These review videos seem to save viewers valuable time by summarizing and explaining—but what is the time saved for? See more movie reviews?
Some time ago my dad told me that when he watched "Road to Destruction", he suddenly felt the true meaning of the movie. After I watched it, the late-night street under the rainstorm was like a picture of apocalyptic desperation, full of a strong sense of fate. And these can only be experienced by watching the movie.
So writing these is just a record of whims, neither interpretation nor generalization, just recommend you to watch "The Absentee".
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