Like "American X-Files" and several of Tony Kaye's documentaries, "Transcendence" has the courage to confront society's intractable ills, as well as the surging anxiety. The film selects Henry, a substitute teacher, as the protagonist, through his eyes, he gazes deeply at the suffering of all beings in work and life, and Adrien Brody's frail and sad shape just assumes the image of a compassionate person. The scene of tears on the bus is like a savior in suffering.
As far as the social significance of the film is concerned, it involves the education system, youth psychology, drugs, incest and other issues, and the director chose to record and write in a desperate and powerless situation. The film is translated as "detachment", but its original English name also has a meaning of "alienation", which can better convey the repressed emotions that pervade the film, just like Camus' words in the stop-motion animation at the title: "My soul So far away from me, yet my existence is so real.” The
film expresses the alienation between various expectations and reality—failed education, poor communication, the savior who cannot redeem himself; Alienation - indifference to others, numbness to death, indifference to love. Henry's deathbed conversation with his grandfather implied that he was the child of his mother's rape by his grandfather, and he was also in constant pain because of the fact that he acted in uncharacteristic hysteria when he was suspected of assaulting a student by a colleague A self-defense counterattack. The scene of his mother's naked death by poisoning lingered in his mind. The unbearable pain made him choose to live in a state of constant escape. However, small memories always came to his mind at every moment, and the fragmented memories were interspersed in the scene. In the whole film, the childhood that he couldn't bear to look at was put together in pieces.
The social issues involved in the film are only presented. The creators did not point out a way out. They just let the audience unknowingly be soaked in despair in a state of peeping and guessing, and they couldn't stop watching for a long time. The end of the film visually presents the suffocating desolation written by Edgar Allan Poe, which brings people the feeling of not detaching from it, but sinking into it forever.
The fat girl who loves dark arts ate the dessert with the crying face pattern and fell into the crowd, and the wild and unruly young prostitute in the past warmly embraced him in the sun. They all fell in love with Henry, but it wasn't because they saw him as their savior. Fat girl Meredith has long lived under the discrimination and confusion of others, and her father appears in the form of a scolding voice-over, forming an absent but deadly oppression. The young prostitute was originally indulged in wandering, and Henry introduced her to a family of some kind. The later relationship between the two is the only bright spot in the film. For the two girls, Henry tried to save them, but in the end, one had to be separated and the other was sent away. Henry found that he was not the savior, and the two girls also chose diametrically opposite ways to save themselves.
Consistent with the ambiguity of the theme, the filming techniques of this film are also very uncertain, adopting a documentary style. Rough grainy images, swaying handheld photography, abruptly large elevation angles, interspersed interviews and animations, messy jump cuts and flashbacks... The frequent defocusing and zooming are just like the disturbed hearts of the characters. Tony Kaye still maintains an independent attitude that is neither humble nor arrogant. The "dream-making" mechanism of the movie was brutally rejected by him, and the cruelty and coldness of life were vividly displayed. The sharp and cold texture is similar to "American X". Archives" in the same line.
In terms of structure, the film does not follow the dramatic commercial laws. The branches are scattered and dissociated, and the conflict is deliberately played down, just like Henry's life of wandering and unable to stop.
After the film was released, it was unexpectedly widely acclaimed, and the starring Adrien Brody finally escaped the curse of the movie king and returned to the peak of his acting career. The Hollywood actor who once won the throne of the youngest Oscar winner in film history with "The Pianist" is surprisingly consistent with the temperament of the protagonist in the film: fragile, sensitive, compassionate, and powerless.
"My soul is so far away from me, and my existence is so real." After Henry greeted the man clutching the iron net, the man asked excitedly, can you see me? I seem to reconnect with the world. Many times, the individual is clearly there, and liberation requires only one proof—a beckoning or a hug.
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