"There is no real picture, only the picture is real." The artistic utility of film is reflected in the expression of real pursuits through unreal pictures. The so-called "unreal" is nothing more than an imitation of the original action.
The brilliance of "First Degree Murder" is not in the fierce court debate and the dark denunciation of the American judicial system in this grand context or the purgatory torture of human nature, the difference between the viewer and the jury The reason is that the viewer is more likely to be triggered or refined to think about the above topics through the artistically processed pictures; in addition, for people with certain artistic and philosophical literacy, some seemingly irrelevant propositions can be alert and The prudent awareness of the capture of the next sub-extended out. I will focus on the analysis and elaboration of the content of the film under the above premise.
The director chooses the prison as the starting point of the film's main theme, and selects extreme cases of the prison's interior as the beginning of the story; the director's main concern is obviously the standardization of the prison and the possible distortion of the prison's anomie to the criminals' humanity. Once the prisoner abuse incident is made public, it will inevitably attract accusations and criticisms from many media and citizens. Extensive participation is a necessary condition for public events and the interaction between filmmakers and audiences. In the film, Warden Glenn's method of abusing Henry Young, a criminal who failed to escape from prison, is really outrageous. Whether it is whipping or pushing down and causing injuries, it shows the incomparable cruelty of the warden. However, when considering this series of sadistic acts from the perspective of power cybernetics, the act of throwing prisoners into a dark and isolated crypt is definitely a superb and extremely cruel power to persecute people. It artificially separates people from the outside world, deprives people of various rights and freedoms such as sight, hearing, entertainment, sexual intercourse, etc., and the only need for survival is to survive without awareness. For social animals - humans, such a Torture seems to have transcended the boundaries of punishment and become the cancellation and denial of human nature. Henry Young's situation is easily reminiscent of Doctor Menette in "A Tale of Two Cities" and the protagonist in "Chess Story"; the latter two are more fortunate to find their own playthings, while Henry Young is almost always in the In the dark, there is nothing to rely on. Coincidentally, the endings of the three all point to a unified destination - an abnormality of the spirit and the collapse of human nature. When the scope of punishment is excessively expanded, it is very easy for punishment to break away from rational regulation and degenerate from a just executor to a tyrant's perpetrator, and the regular construction of prisons, the main place for execution of punishment, is particularly important.
Before talking about the institutionalization of prisons, I would like to provide readers with another extreme case, which not only helps us to think, but also enables us to have a deeper understanding of the relationship between prisons and human nature. The famous British utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham once designed a new type of panoramic prison. Foucault judged this innovation from the perspective of power theory in Discipline and Punishment. In Foucault's view, the panoramic display of criminal life is undoubtedly a perverted power operation method to exercise high-pressure control over criminals. Even the full control of behavioral steps, this is simply a variant of the combination of voyeurism and power desire, and criminals will suffer more mental torture than emotional stimulation in this state.
Compared with the former - let's call it a closed prison - the panoramic prison will undoubtedly approach the other end along the same trajectory in the opposite direction. The way the prisoners treat prisoners in a closed prison is like the cold exile of pagans in a mysterious ritual. The criminals who have left the world are not only unable to transcend the world as the Buddhists advocate, and eventually achieve positive results, but instead fall into a more terrifying endless endless The abyss; the panoramic prison will impose complete control on the other side, and the criminals are equally miserable. It is true that the two types of prisons, although very different in construction, are inadvertently coupled in the extreme trampling of human nature.
The director carefully and meticulously presents a case, mixed with allegedly untrue artistic fiction, but with incredible force (this is the usual method of film directors) to promote the audience's thinking to expand in depth and breadth. It is by no means true, but it deduces a truth that is more true than the truth, and the infinite charm of the film is evident.
At the end of the film, Henry Young eventually died in the prison where his life was imprisoned, and the Arcaz prison died with it. The brilliance of human nature finally triumphed, but the question of how to prevent similar tragedies has not ended. Instead, it has become an open research topic.
The expression of the ultimate purpose of political philosophy in classical political philosophy can be summed up in one sentence: how to build the best order. Prisons, as an indispensable part of political life, play a vital role in shaping the best order. The ultimate answer to its propositions of political philosophy is to seek the teachings of philosophers and to restore the discussion of natural rights. Therefore, it may be an effective way to measure the institutional construction of prisons with the scale of classical natural rights. In view of my limited knowledge, it is difficult to prepare a full analysis, so I will stop here and not explore in depth.
In the film, the scene of Henry Young approaching the prison again after winning the trial is extremely sensational and hard to let go of (personally, the director's grasp of this scene can be compared with Wong Kar-wai's portrayal of the blind warrior before his death in "Evil in the East" There is a great similarity): his staggering and arduous steps gradually pick up speed, his back, which has been crushed by years of torture and darkness, rises again, and the implied symbolism is not difficult to guess: the justice of justice, the justice of lawyers. Friendship, passionate support and sympathy make this suffering child who has long been indifferent to human relations bathed in the warmth of the world, and humanity ushered in a glorious return at the last moment. Here, the director uses the unique yellow and warm light of dusk and sunset to set off this belated tragic return, and at the same time imply the inevitable death of Henry Young.
There is one detail that the director clearly shows, but not distracting to the average audience (even the director may not be aware of it): The place where Henry Young is imprisoned is a cave in a prison. The most profound symbolic meaning of the cave is the "cave theory" of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato that shocked the past and the present. The cave in the film does not seem to rise to such heights, but it still forms a true concrete expression of Plato's "cave theory" within the overall layout of the film. In the Utopia, Plato positioned the ignorant state when he did not leave the cave as "ignorance", and the return of the philosopher who came out of the cave to the cave was regarded as the duty of the philosopher. And Henry Young was tortured in the cave. When he was reborn, he walked into the cave again and could be seen as the embodiment of justice to eradicate the inhuman torture in the prison and the injustice of the judicial system. Both of them deeply experience the dark conditions in the depths of the caves. They obtain a power to expel the darkness outside the caves and return to their original places to sweep away ignorance and darkness to save more people. They are both preachers of justice or truth. The author also admits that Henry Young's cave is inconsistent, but both the former cave and the latter's prison can reasonably refer to the prison system. Therefore, the flaws of this stealing concept can be completely ignored without affecting the integrity of the argument.
Of course, the formal analogy here does not imply that people should follow Henry Yang’s footsteps to experience the cave and then lash out against the darkness of justice, but a limited value-free and purely philosophical analysis of Henry Yang’s role. Henry Yang It is only a temporary sign of justice that emerges in extreme circumstances (he died shortly after being re-imprisoned), and do not ignore that the drama of his rebirth is dominated by a brilliant lawyer and a dozen people living in In a country with a strong legal atmosphere, jurors who uphold justice, faith and conscience.
Movies provide us with multi-directional and multi-angle pictures. It is obviously difficult for individuals to experience and complete such a synthesis of perspective effects alone. Therefore, although the pictures are unreal, they can more prompt the audience to think. ,
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