————Anthony Burgess "A Clockwork Orange
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” form to wrap up an unbelievable absurd story. Although very few people have seen it, it is a work from "Citizen Kane" followed by "Forrest Gump". Through the life of the fictional character "Zelig", it is not difficult to see the satire of the American dream. It makes people realize that people without personality will inevitably become lambs to be slaughtered in the age of consumption.
It also uses a large number of voice-over narrations. The narrative mechanism of "Xili Biography" can be roughly divided into one category with "Suzhou River" and "Murder of Green Toes", while Wong Kar-wai's works are another category. Alberta Fei put forward the concept of the "big videographer" of the film. Its formation is unconscious. The reason why the audio film can complete the self-narrative without the "narration" of the silent film era is its existence. It exists in the form of an omniscient and almighty God and is often hidden [sometimes disguised as the focus of a certain character's point of view], and it is more typical that the perspective changes in the first and second half of Bergman's "The Virgin Spring". In "Suzhou River", "Murdering Green Toes" and even Abbas' "Close-Up", the director does not implicitly admit the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent narrator, which is not exactly the same as the former two, as in many documentaries. The narration of "Xili Biography" is the narrator of the different story world outside the story, while the narrators of the first two appear in the story world, although they do not participate in the narrative.
'(The picture above is "San Simeon" in "The Legend of Xili", and the picture below is the famous "Sanadu" in "Citizen Kane". It is not difficult to see the camera angle and style design of the two almost identical)
Orson Welles briefly introduced the life of Xanadu and the protagonist Kane in about 13 minutes in "Citizen Kane", and "Xili Chuan" also used a lot of voiceovers and familiar compositions and scenes. schedule. Especially the "San Simeon" section of about 50 minutes is the most obvious. We have good reason to believe that "West" is a tribute to Orson Welles, it pays 70 minutes to Citizen Kane's first 13 minutes, and combines Woody Allen's always good black humor and Stylized imitation.
The subject matter of the film can easily be thought of as the self-protection mechanism of individuals being assimilated by the group. The director does indeed discuss these. In order to make people identify with him, Zelig has to become the people around him. But Woody Allen is not just content with one-sided discussion, but gives a two-way context like "A Clockwork Orange", that is, two absolutes that are either black or white belong to the same person. It is immoral to cater to and to oppose in one way of fresh oranges. This was the case in the United States in the 1930s. Today, some individuals in some areas that take "collective" as their standard and believe that "the collective is greater than the sum of the individuals" suffer from this extreme thought of "pushing oneself over others" [for details, please refer to Wang Xiaobo et al. In this way, we unknowingly go from disgust to obedience, and even feel its benefits and become its guardians, individuals being “absorbed” (i.e., controlled by the principles they define) of people, being institutionalized. THEM: Those who stand on the high platform and beside us, their purpose has been achieved.
The repeated changes in the public's attitude towards Zelig is one of the important conflicts in the film. In the eyes of the public's "sharp", he sometimes becomes a buffoon for making fun of, and sometimes he becomes a shameless gangster QJ prisoner and is demoted by the holy court. Worthless, and in the series of transformations that have become a "national hero" after returning from Germany, public justice and the mass media have played a role in fueling the flames. As public opinion changes with the shift in the mainstream of society, do the impulsive and unconscious vulgars remind us of Le Pen's definition of a group in "The Crowd"? [Unconscious, low IQ] They think they are free to define others. In fact, their values and tendencies are also set by others, and they are also clockwork orange. The right to speak "public opinion" never belongs to "public opinion". ". It can be seen that the narrative of "Xili Biography" is a nested structure like a Russian nesting doll, which is comparable to "The Truman World" in the future.
Woody Allen is good at telling stories, and he is also a unique joker in film and television. He often shows the deformed and dislocated modern society from the perspective of a socially disabled person similar to a clown. In "Xili Biography", he threw a proposition, After all, who is the real lunatic in this era of Zelig that is consumed by people and people in the age of consumption who are making a name for themselves and entertaining to death?
A series of subtitles at the end of the film replace the video to narrate the ending of the characters, which is the mainstream expression of documentaries and biographical films. "The Legend of Xili" seems to end with the traditional Hollywood "reunion". "Before his death, Zelig told the doctor that he was very satisfied with his life...." There is nothing wrong with this sentence, but it feels very untenable, and it is this unfoundedness that constitutes black humor. As a public The outcast, Zelig of a Clockwork Orange in the jazz age has never had a "self", and he doesn't even know what "satisfaction" is. A pair of invisible hands chose everything for him, and chose a similar fate and ending for us, just more mediocre and nihilistic. , but essentially the same.
Woody Allen
Steven Raymond Lynch
Bingshen Year Guisi Month Xinhai Day in Beijing
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