In the film, when bidding farewell to the brothers, Lusia told them: "Life is like the foam of the sea, you must plunge into it." I think this sentence can be used as the finishing touch of the film. What is a bubble? Foam is a white wave that is constantly rising and inevitably disappearing. It is not the sea, but just a bunch of rapid growth and disappearance on the surface of the sea. The director used the heroine in the film to express his thoughts on life: there are too many people living dizzyly, they can not see their voyage, maybe they have never thought about what is. The life that a person should really have is such a similar problem, just blindly following the trend of the public, floating in the ocean of life, drifting through the years, drifting through every stage of life, including the most free and uninhibited youth years. For example, the two male protagonists of the film, Tenoch and Julio, are dissatisfied with the courses arranged for them at home. They think that rebelliousness and all-day hip-hop are the freedom they advertised. However, they are still blindly following the slutty peers around them, and they are still in one. In a state of "vertigo". Their youth is not sober, revealing the recklessness and unrestrained aggressiveness of young people everywhere, whether it is for friendship, love, school work, or family. Socrates once said: "A life without consideration is not worth living." However, for a wanton and ignorant teenager, it is too high and unrealistic to consider life calmly.
After consulting the information, I learned that the film implies the director’s metaphor for Mexico as a country: "The director believes that Mexico as a country is also in its teenage years and is looking for the feeling of adulthood. The environment in which the country is located has caused people to be lazy, lazy, An enjoyable life. Just like a teenager lacks a plan for the future, it doesn’t look like a mature society from top to bottom.” (Netizen comment) Combining the scenes of the Mexican people’s lives that are interspersed in the film, and briefly understand the mentions in the film. The arrived PRI Party (PRT Party, the Mexican Revolutionary Institutional Party, was established in 1929. It ended the history of Mexican warlords’ melee and military intervention, and united the various popular classes to form a unit including the Ministry of Workers, the Ministry of Peasants, and the Ministry of People Organizational system of professionalism. The Revolutionary Institutional Party has been in power as an official party for 70 consecutive years. It has led Mexico to achieve great economic construction achievements and maintain long-term political stability. Since the 1980s, due to errors in economic policies and changes in political programs As well as the decline of the official party committee structure, the Revolutionary Institutional Party has fallen into an unprecedented crisis. The Mexican party system has gradually evolved from the original non-competitive hegemonic party system to a competitive multi-party system.) I think this "vertigo" The state not only belongs to the individual, but also to the society projected by the film.
Although the story of the film always revolves around the story of three young people, the camera lens is like a wandering eye, leading the audience to see a large number of social scenes in Mexico. For example, carpenters and onlookers who were hit on the street, mass demonstrations attended by Julio's sister, roadside police beating the driver, and so on. Because this is exactly the director’s intention, his purpose is not only to tell the story of the three young people, but also to reveal the current social situation in Mexico: after entering the 1980s, especially in the Salinas ruling (1988～ In 1994), the Revolutionary Institutional Party gradually abandoned and betrayed revolutionary nationalism, and replaced it with the name "social liberalism" but actually neoliberalism. Social liberalism overemphasizes economic freedom and lacks attention to social issues, resulting in excessive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people and increasing impoverishment of society. In terms of social and economic policies, extreme liberal economic policies have replaced the closed inward-looking economy. The drastic changes have exceeded the limit of society’s ability to bear, causing severe economic turmoil and social chaos, and repeated outbreaks of debt and financial crises. In addition, the party’s system is rigid, lacks intra-party democracy and supervision, corruption is serious, and factional struggles are fierce. The voice-over revealed that the president left the wedding an hour later and participated in the executive committee to discuss and determine the candidates for the general election. The next day, CV was assassinated. We can imagine the shady in it. In movies, sometimes there is a separation of sound and picture. For example, in the time period of 01:12:00—01:12:18, the sound content is Lusia's rules for the brothers, but the screen content shows the car. The Mexican police and people outside the window also prove that the director has always paid attention to the current state of social chaos and expressed something. (The processing of sound and pictures will be explained in further detail later.)
Kundera once defined "vertigo" in "Talks on the Art of Fiction": Weak, it will remain weak, and will fall to the ground in the eyes of everyone, on the street, and fall to a place lower than the ground." Below, I will make a specific analysis of the dizziness of the characters in the film. .
Theoretically speaking: a proposition that is admitted to be true is the premise, set as B, and after correct logical reasoning, a conclusion that is contradictory to the premise is not B; on the contrary, if it is not B as the premise, it is also Can be deduced to B, then proposition B is a paradox. Of course, non-B is also a paradox. Paradox emphasizes not one-way existence, it is the wholeness embodied in each item.
Having sex with a friend's girlfriend is a paradox for Tenoch and Julio. It has an uncomfortable way of expression, but behind this form, it is full of strong confrontation and tension caused by inaccessibility. This is a strange madness, but it can make them yearn for unbearable burdens. Obey desires and be intoxicated. The heaviest burden has also become the image of the strongest vitality. They feel ashamed and self-blame for it, and feel the fascination and dizziness caused by the truth in the naked exposure. The smiles on each of them were filled with incomparable sincerity released by the paradox. They entered into the Charrolastra treaty, in which Article 5 does not apply to other people's girlfriends not so much as a restraint on them, but as a protection for them. Under this protection, even though the two committed crimes one after another, they did not doubt each other and maintained the stability and harmony of the relationship. Isn't this another kind of dizziness? Unable to make a calm and correct understanding and judgment on both sides. It is true that life is neither B nor non-B, but the intertwined paradox of these two states. The practice of making a clear distinction can only be troublesome, but people always want to use their only remaining rationality to try to organize it. It, as a rule, can only be submerged in the end, dizzy. It is a negative discovery for them to find that the other party and girlfriend both betrayed themselves. At the same time, they also mark an awakening and a break. Through this rupture, consciousness devalued what was still holding it back then (such as the friendship in the film), and thus completely detached itself. It reveals in a possible way a vast space that is not yet known, and in this space, new characters and character stories will be constructed. This process is the growth and transformation of the characters.
Some people think that one promiscuity is equivalent to another promiscuity, but this is obviously wrong. In the film, both Tenoch and Julio can talk about women, make various jokes, and sleep with many people, but they will not think that both parties are disgusting, and they will not cover up these sexual intercourse; but this time is different, this time they know it. Nature. Friendship and trust are declining in a non-serious land. They have no illusion of love, and nothing else can guide them. Perhaps, in the days to come, there will be only the eternal regeneration of new and changing desires. What inspires them is only the love of beauty and the pleasure they get from the thousands of surprises in pornographic games. This pleasure is in their eyes. Simplified to the unpredictability of existence, the frivolity of existence. This kind of "awake and awakened" consciousness does not necessarily reduce their sexual desire and harm their pleasure, but on the contrary it is likely to increase this desire and this pleasure and increase their value infinitely. Since they will each have a new girlfriend in the future, we can guess one or two. Therefore, even if they suddenly wake up from one type of vertigo, they turn into another type of vertigo. This may be a bit of existentialism. Life is just the useless frivolous foam of the sea. As Kurt Vonnegut said: "We have come to this world to just mess around. Everything is nothing more than that."
So, did Lusia, who is relatively older and mature, escape from the vertigo state? the answer is negative. In fact, I think Lusia is the most dizzy of the three. She said, "Life is like the foam of the sea, you have to plunge into it", that is, she is deeply plunged into the dizziness, which is both conscious but inextricably painful. She was dizzy. She had long known that her husband had an affair and had tolerated it again and again, and she also took the initiative to put herself in an unreal and unconscious situation. So when her husband called to inform her, she sadly asked her husband why he wanted to tell her and sabotage her to make for herself. The protective vertigo state. She is dizzy. She and her husband have different personalities. Her husband always attends some cultural gatherings. However, she is a clumsy woman who only knows the names of all her teeth. However, she still keeps herself in dizziness and convinces herself that she is very similar to her husband. Look for the similarities where they both lost their relatives at a young age. She is dizzy and her married life is not going well, so she is interested in psychological tests like "Are you a happy woman?", but in front of outsiders, she still shows the illusion of being inseparable from her husband. She is dizzy. She knows that there is not much bad news about her life. She will watch the funeral of others on the roadside for a long time, but she insists on believing that the dead still exist, and she wonders how long she will live in other people's memory. She was dizzy, she was sorrowful for her husband's cheating. Sexuality was undoubtedly a fearful threat to her. However, she frequently took the initiative to inquire about men's genitals and sex, and took the initiative to make love with two boys. The nineteenth voice-over of the film deeply reveals Lusia’s dizziness and pain: “They thought Lusia was asleep. They didn’t know that she was in a panic and could not fall asleep. It was not because of the darkness or the things around her.” It was the dizziness that she never got out of.
Every character has his dizziness, even the pursuit of "Heaven's Gate"-this ideal pure land. In the film, every time they drive to find heaven, the director arranges a hazy and beautiful halo. It looks beautiful, but doesn't the round halo symbolize the dizziness they are in? On the journey of finding the place of dreams, all the way was accompanied by the fresh and warm sunshine in the suburbs, but it was the charming sun that caused the dizziness. The place you want to go is actually unknown, fantasy, and the journey is dizzy. Isn’t this just the feeling of youth or growth?
However, Alfonso Cuarón not only wants to reveal the vertigo of people’s lives, the chaos and confusion of the country and society, but also focuses on keeping the audience at a distance from the truth he presented through the film, and frequently interrupting the audience. The possibility of involuntarily sinking into the plot perfectly inherits Brecht's tradition of alienating theater. He played the role of voice-over very cleverly, thereby creating a kind of "bring out", a kind of sobriety, the soberness of the narrator and the viewer. This is exactly his intention to make the audience dizzy and stay sober.
The use of a large number of voice-overs is undoubtedly the narrative feature of this film. Let's take a closer look at how the voice-over plays its role here. As we all know, voice-overs can play a role in explaining events, introducing characters, revealing their inner activities, changing the time and space of film narrative, and promoting the development of the plot. For example, the voice-over of the first paragraph of the film: "Anna’s mother, a divorced French woman, a teacher at an international school, she does not object to Tenoch sleeping with her daughter, but Julio’s situation is different. He stayed with Cecilia until dinner time, and then Come again the next morning...", the second voice-over "Anna's father is a journalist who has just turned to politics recently..." The fourth paragraph "Three Tenoch brothers, he is the second child..." and the following part The voice-overs directly expose the differences in the backgrounds of the two male protagonists through the introduction of voices. As teenagers who are in the same period of youth and have similar hobbies, their differences are naturally the shadow of class differences. This voiceover not only introduces the characters and their background, but also implies the main theme.
At the same time, the effective use of voice-over can expand the space and time of the film. On the one hand, the scene scheduling in the screen can be used to break through the limitations of the screen frame to achieve an open composition. The camera moved from the three protagonists of the conversation to the woman passing by them, followed the woman into the inner hall, and then moved to the female boss. This long shot vividly shows the life of the Mexican people, not just staying at it. Three young people. The same is true for sound processing. The voice-over often introduces to insignificant people, such as revealing to the audience that the fisherman's family will move out before the end of the year. Two years later, he will become a hotel cleaner and stop fishing. This approach seems to dissociate the main line of the story, but it is exactly the director's intention. His eyes are not on the story itself, but aim to show the vertigo state of the entire Mexican society and the country. Then, the voice-over perfectly compensates for the picture. The limitation expands the time and space outside the painting, and shows the rich life experiences of the Mexican public (naturally also including the family of three people, the president, the old woman met on the road, her granddaughter, fisherman, etc.), thereby staggering the reasons A complete picture of social life constructed by all classes.
If the image turns the audience into passionate witnesses, then the feature of this film-a large number of voice-overs, turns the audience into sober thinkers. At the same time, it involves the issue of viewpoint and person in film and television creation. Undoubtedly, the voice-over in the film adopts the third person ("he" not in the film) and an omniscient, objective statement perspective. This non-characterized voice intervention not only plays an important role in providing knowledge and background vision in the overall sense of the story, and constructing the story structure, but more importantly, the image controls the audience to follow the narrator (the invisible author—the camera—the narrator). An objective and calm attitude and emotional tendency. Not only makes the audience “engaged”, and at the right time allows the audience to “draw away”, it not only allows the audience to see the dizziness of the characters’ lives, but also takes the audience out of this dizziness, staying awake and even looking down on the real social situation in Mexico. And reflection, see the big from the small and metaphor the whole with one, leave a profound association and sense of completeness to the audience.
In addition, it is difficult for the director to only use images to show the vast social scenes of Mexico. He circumvents this approach. On the contrary, even if the audience sparsely sees many street scenes, the director still deliberately arranges the protagonists in one place. The vehicle is fast driving in an independent closed vehicle relative to the outside world. , Let the social scene pass them and the audience. This kind of background and the protagonist’s detached manner, the rapid shift of the camera, and the visual and sensation left a strong impression of dizziness and uncertainty. Although the crowds are crowded, the police are coming and going, the parade is mighty, but it cannot constitute the audience. A direct visual impact, because the audience is also a person who is not sober about the truth of society and the nature of social life, a real "vertigo", and a person the director attempts to awaken.
Above, the dizziness and sobriety on and off the screen of "Paradise Lost" has been explained from the perspectives of the film content, sound and picture processing, and the perspective of the drama, and made personal thinking and understanding of the main theme of the film. Based on the study of dramas this semester, and at the same time limited by space and time, I also want to briefly talk about the two issues of plot setting and character creation.
We know that a general film is divided into three parts: "building-confrontation-ending", and the plot point is the key to hooking the character's action and turning it in another direction. Here, I took Lusia’s phone call from her husband as the first plot point. This incident (cooperating with her knowledge of the health report) changed her mental activities and tried to get rid of her family and traditional moral and ethical concepts. Fettered, pursuing freedom belonging to an independent self, decided to embark on a journey to find the gate of heaven with the boys, which led to a series of incidents. Therefore, in a true sense, this event is the beginning of an unknown road for the growth of the three people. The climax of the film begins with the sex between Lusia and Tenoch, the ups and downs between sex, conflicts between friends, sex, and temporary reconciliation. This is not only the visual climax of the film, but also a huge psychological impact on the characters and the audience in the film. The most dizzying moment of the three people. The so-called most dizziness is often when you start to become aware of the dizziness you are in, and there is no way out or no way out. At this moment, the psychology and actions of the characters are always the most abundant and complete, the most intense struggle, and the most dramatic. Regarding plot point 2 of the film, I hesitated, and finally I locked it on the three-person 3P event, which caused the male protagonist's psychological changes and announced the end of the journey. However, can the three people find the gate of heaven as plot point 2? Because Lusia seems to have found her answer here, and found her way out of the dizziness. Although this method is pessimistic, it is to "dive one head" into the vertigo, and it will follow the ups and downs of life. Because after this kind and helpless woman made various attempts, she found that life was a bubble, no matter how hard she tried, dizziness was inevitable. Perhaps being lost in vertigo is an unwise frustrating but also a clumsy way to at least get rid of the vertigo caused by vertigo. She then called her husband at the hotel and made the decision not to return. Before, she brought very little money, and she was still concerned about the trivial things at home, which showed that she hadn't completely found her way out, and she was still hesitant. Therefore, I can only make the above two guesses and thoughts about plot point 2.
The film is a complete and clear linear model in terms of plot setting and structure. And the character construction is also outstanding. If conflict is the driving force of all stories, then the needs of the characters are the driving force, and the obstacle to be overcome to achieve the needs is conflict. Hegel analyzes three conflict scenarios: (1) Conflicts caused by physical or natural conditions are harmful, such as disease disasters, etc.; (2) Psychological conflicts caused by natural conditions, which are themselves positive. But for the mind, there is the possibility of difference and opposition, such as family origin and class relationship; (3) The split caused by spiritual differences, such as personality conflict.
As 17-year-old teenagers, Tenoch and Julio are similar. At this age, they face the contradiction between self-unification and chaos in roles. Mainly manifested as lack of goals in life, hesitation and loss. For example, they don’t like the curriculum prescribed by their parents, rebellious, chaotic life, etc. However, due to differences in family background and social status, there are conflicts between two similar characters. Once ignited, this conflict broke out. For example, during the quarrel, Tenoch blurted out that Julio was a farmer, and Julio looked down upon Tenoch's father as a "stealer" politician. This is actually a confrontation between the two classes, reflecting the social estrangement between the middle class and the political leaders. This once again proves that director Alfonso Cuarón has cast his vision on the broad and three-dimensional Mexican society, and not just three young people, or the gorgeous and hypocritical official banquet, or the miserable and miserable street scene so narrow and one-sided. That's it.
It is really limited by time and space, so I can only put the pen here roughly. Finally, I will give an overview of the film and this article: the film tells the story of three young people on the way to find the door of heaven. It shows the vertigo state of youth growth. It also alludes to the chaos of Mexico as a country in its growth period. The confusion of life has no real meaning; and the director tries to make the audience sober, especially the use of voice-over to make the audience alienated, reflective and sober, showing the director's skillful sound and picture processing, plot setting and character construction ability, and concern about the current social situation And worry.
(Just homework for our class)
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