And Bill August is one of only seven members of the "Double Palme d'Or" club, standing with such great names as Coppola, Imamura, and Kusturica.
All evidence shows that: "Pell the Conqueror" should be a great movie, an epoch-making masterpiece.
But is this really the case?
Not quite - at least I think so.
I would say that Pell the Conqueror could have been a better work, at least a lot better than it is now, but a terrible screenplay ruined it (even though it was adapted from a novel by some Nobel Prize author) .
"Pell the Conqueror" is an ambitious film. It is obviously not satisfied with telling the story of a child's growth, but a vain attempt to calmly state an era and the various imprints this era has left on people. August set up two subjective "lenses" (or "perspectives") in the film, one is Pell's eyes, following Pell's eyes we see the suffering of others; the other is Pell's eyes. Pell's shadow, standing by Pell's side we see Pell's own suffering. August's two perspectives make "Pell the Conqueror" a film about "people in distress, and people's suffering", which in itself is beyond reproach, the tragedy is: how exactly should we describe suffering.
Through Pell's shadow, we witness the fact that the four essential elements of a tragic childhood - no mother's love, rejection from teachers, teasing from classmates, and bullying from peers are collected like stamps in the movie , of course, in order for the protagonist to learn friendship, he also needs to give him a good friend. Of course, this good friend also needs to suffer a lot...
Do you feel familiar? Of course, because there is no difference in their plots with those bad movies we have seen, TVB series, Korean dramas, Qiong Yao dramas, and those messy TV dramas that are broadcast every night on provincial satellite TVs. Although you can say that human suffering is universal suffering, how can we endure that when we turn on a Philips DVD player, there is a TV series from Henan Satellite TV in it?
And through Pell's eyes, what we see is: a worker with the American dream who resisted the foreman, he eventually became a dementia; a rich man fell in love with a maid, and then cruel because of the wrong door. killed their illegitimate son; a widower fell in love with a "widow", and then the "widow" husband suddenly came back; a farmer raped his niece and was castrated by the farmer's wife...
Bill O Gust has the ambition to popularize neorealism all over the world, but the problem is that if the stories in the movie can completely break through the barriers of time and space, and drill around the world like cockroaches, then the "reality" will still be there. will be in? The significance of neorealism is that "Shoe Shine Boy" should have taken place in post-war Italy instead of the United States, "Hunter" should have taken place in Greece in the 1960s and 1970s instead of Cuba, and "Xiao Wu" should have happened in September. China in the 1900s instead of Japan... Let's look at the stories in "Pell the Conqueror", they range from Feng Menglong to Shakespeare to Hemingway, from Chinese costume dramas to Japanese and Korean dramas to Hollywood sensational films, the same tragedy transcends The boundaries of time and space happen at any time, anywhere, without exception, but now, August has moved his theater from Henan Satellite TV to Denmark.
Fortunately, August bid farewell to China's satellite TV in the final shot, and Pell's run by the sea is obviously a tribute to "400 Blows". Yes, any godly coming-of-age film, what reason is there not to pay homage to 400 Blows?
Finally, if there's one great side to Pell the Conqueror, it's its photography. I'd like to thank the cinematographer for this film (though I don't know who he is), he's a true Bazin supporter, his magical depth of field shots are as earthy and vodka mellow as he is The beautiful creation of the film makes me feel like the last two and a half hours have been enjoying the movie rather than wasting my time, which is why, I think, the harsh judges of French Beach and the Kodak Theatre chose this film.
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