It wasn't necessarily progressive, but it seemed like his destined destination. It can only be said that narcissism has always been deeply rooted in Refn's heart and is an innate temperament. Obviously what we are discussing is not the narcissism of Caravaggio and Michelangelo. What the director shows through the film is more like a arrogant carnival, the self-consciousness of adolescence. He said that he made movies for young people, and he also said that a 16-year-old girl lived in his heart.
If there really is such a girl, she must be more beautiful than the heroine of the movie. Although Elle Fanning is sweet and sweet, it is not a beauty that is absolutely stunning. Combined with another earlier casting target, Carey Mulligan, it is not difficult to see that the director's positioning of the role of Jesse has always been "naive and ignorant, harmless to humans and animals", citing the words in the film, it is a kind of daze of deers in the headlights . Fortunately, Carey was not chosen in the end, and her several roles in recent years have accumulated green tea for her.
Jesse in the movie symbolizes the ultimate beauty, the ultimate form of beauty. In layman's terms: Jesse is "beauty" (the accent is on "yes"). Everyone's definition and understanding of beauty is different. Since no actress can represent the beauty in the eyes of all audiences and make everyone buy it, it is better to find a relatively not so beautiful girl. This is a neat way, and it also conveys a good message: the film discusses beauty in a symbolic sense, not beauty in a narrow sense.
In the modern context, "beauty" is always superficialized and cheapened for no reason. When we consciously or unintentionally choose to ignore the beauty in front of us and cast our eyes on the so-called profundity in vain, what we miss is not just the pleasure of the eye. As in "The Portrait of Dorian Gray", Wilde expressed his views on beauty and ugliness through the mouth of Lord Henry: "Only superficial people do not judge people by their appearance. The secret of the world lies in the appearance, not the inside." The director said in this film He spared no effort to celebrate and praise, pushing beauty to a new level.
Perhaps some readers will have different opinions here, thinking that the film is actually a satire of beauty. I personally think that the film satirizes the accessories of beauty from beginning to end: vanity, jealousy, greed, withering, etc., and never evades the inevitable connection between beauty and these accessory ugliness. But for beauty itself, the director's attitude has always been firm.
So I have to mention three female characters other than Jesse, who symbolize the purest and most instinctive response of human beings to beauty. Sarah is jealous of her beauty, Gigi tries to get her beauty, and Ruby is attracted to her beauty. It's not hard to understand why they eat Jesse in the end, Sarah simply wants to ruin her, Gigi is delusional to get her beauty, and Ruby gets the ultimate orgasm in her icy love.
Jesse is surrounded by the three, and the relationship of the four has formed the symbol of the four small triangles forming the big triangle that appears repeatedly in the play. In this spiritual symbol, the three restrict each other and reach a state of equilibrium. And once this stable structure is broken, it means destruction. The leopard in Ruby's family reveals her predatory nature, and she is the culprit in breaking the balance by looking at her prey and waiting for an opportunity. Uncle Keanu's earlier rebuke to Jesse for opening the door and causing disaster can also be understood as warning the fledgling girl of the dangers lurking in the city, although he didn't necessarily mean it well.
The director's use of color is not limited by the fact that he is colorblind, but is more exaggerated and bold. The neon tube flashes strong and extreme lights to form a rather subtle beauty, which is disturbing. The different states of Jesse represented by the red and blue colors have been widely interpreted, and I only want to mention a few images of red here. Because after all the movie is called
There are quite a few places worth interpreting in the film, but when the obscurity of the art film makes the audience feel that it is solving a mystery, it is probably difficult to be established as a good film. If "Desperate Drive" still takes into account the integrity and smoothness of the story, "Only God Can Forgive" is a personal expression of the director's 100% immersion in his own aesthetics and philosophy, then when it comes to "Neon Demon", anyone can I won't take it seriously (except Liv), as long as I'm happy... I'm looking forward to how off-line the next work will be.
This article was first published on the subscription number of "Three Familiar Movie Reviews": MediumRare
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