If "Cherry" or "Ten" still has a strong Islamic background, then "Five" and "Ticket" have been completely internationalized. Of course, Abbas's internationalization is not to give up his individuality, but to always reflect his artistic pursuit and value at a high level.
Watching Abbas' films has always been pointless in the past. Although I thought it was interesting, I didn't realize it was interesting. Until one day, I saw the "Lumiere Project" that he participated in, and made a movie with an imitation Lumiere-era camera to shoot a very limited frame for a period of time. Dozens of film masters show their magic, but Abbas' film is just a picture of a fried egg. All messages are from a voice-over telephone answering machine. So I realized that the voiceover is the unique charm of Abbas' film art.
Going back and watching his feature films, whenever the phone rings, the nerves will be particularly excited. In "Like a River of Love", the answering machine, voice messages, and the noise outside occupy nearly half of the pages. Even when the two characters are in a dialogue, he still deliberately only shoots one side, allowing the audience to speculate on the speaker's demeanor and behavior through the listener's performance.
The fascination with this speculation extends further into character design. The protagonists, including the call girl, the old professor, and the fiancé, are a standard stage play triangle relationship. All three characters are inexhaustible for some reason, and the words don't make sense. Watching the performance of the three of them will keep the audience's mind running with excitement. Instead, auxiliary characters such as retired cops, neighbor moms, and pimps all twitter. It is possible to pick out extremely important information in the cluttered language.
This kind of fun of guessing and finding is really unique to Abbas' films.
Also, I always feel that Abbas's sense of space is gradually changing. He was dodging the open exterior and going deeper into the narrow. The taxis in "Ten" and the dining cars in "Tickets" are superb examples of using a small space to limit the scope of performances. When he arrived in Japan, his preference for small spaces must have been like a duck to water. Even so, he kept the outside space as small as possible. A lot of the scenes take place in the car. The fiancé said to the grandfather: Can I sit in the car? This is probably the cramp that Abbas wants. The neighbor aunt even said a lot of nonsense from a small window where only half of her face could be seen.
Maybe the brick that flew at the end of the film has the intention of breaking this inner blockade? But in the face of the open space, Abbas will be addicted and indifferent to watch the scenery, right?
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