One original address
Film director Chris Marc, as a representative figure of author films in the French New Wave, presents a unique and personalized style in the film. In the film "Dike", which is called a sci-fi future prophetic poem, Mark uses the method of combining real film and personal discussion to complete the whole film in piles of many still photos. In this film contradiction full of the director's clever individual metaphors and philosophies, while breaking the audio continuity of the original film images, Mark minimizes the conflict of the film's visual inertia, and strikes a balance between images and language narration.
From the story level, the protagonist's dream is divided by the director into two seemingly divided, but unified monomers. Dreams in real life are separated from the dreams with purpose given by scientists. The separation of these two dreams brings about a fragmentation of memory, and even affects the viewing experience of some audiences at certain times. But it is the separation of the film's story level that makes the film's language more plausible. At the textual level of the film, the video clips originally composed of montages are divided into frame-by-frame black and white still photos, and these constantly appearing photos become another kind of division, and they are extended in the film as an anti-traditional film and television narrative method. . At this moment, the two divisions related to the content and text of the film are unified at this moment, that is, the content and form of the film reach a certain fit. And this unity is embodied in the film, which highlights the huge dynamic of the story. As a result, while the linear understanding is frustrated, the traditional narrative chain is truly liberated. It is important to note that the still photo at this time seems to have become some kind of functional structure with the director's aggressive attempts, allowing us to achieve the director's expectations in a passive and indirect way. When these skeptical-labeled images are in front of them, the audience is no longer a mere moviegoer. The real space in which the audience exists seems to be in line with the sense of space created in the movie to a certain extent, so that the audience is watching the whole accident in the attitude of the creator. The pictures of the characters appearing in the film form corresponding labels in our minds, and the two periods of time depicted by the narrator are connected in our minds. Under the fragmented memory space and time, the audience as the viewing object is indirectly brought into the narrator's time game chain. In many photos, we try to put aside the minutiae and arrive at the truth and reality. But the film puts characters, relationships, backgrounds, and stories into action in a simple way. "Less is more", the simpler the means, the more confusing the public is. When people wanted to draw more plot in the film, the film stopped abruptly. The thinking under the shady scene is reminiscent of Dai Jinhua's words about Nolan's personality. The real movie doesn't set you up with suspense at the beginning, but when everything is revealed, new suspense comes back.
On the other hand, because of this dreamlike voice-over (we call it the discourse of the knowing and indifferent bystander), we know this fragmented memory and reality. But as far as the absence of the photo's own attributes is concerned, the audience's absence gives the voice-over a strong confidence. Can the narration of the voice-over be attributed to the truth when it is perceived that the plot of the entire film is dependent on the narration of the voice-over, rather than the witness of the moving video? Even, assuming that the stacked photos are arranged in a different way, is the story told by the voiceover in another direction? Just as John Berger said: "Photography carries a kind of testimony, and human beings are implementing their own choices under given conditions." Then in the film, the photos presented to the audience serve as a kind of on-site witness of the director, he is explaining a At the same time, is there something hidden? The whole film is full of clear narrative, but full of skepticism of absence. The characteristic of photos is that they cannot convey the information of the time 100%. When photos are used as another means of presenting the film, or a composable story sequence, Mark brings more interesting thinking about the film itself. Even when it comes with the philosophy of structuralism, the structure and language of the whole film can be studied under the huge film system.
The postwar setting assumed by the film coincides with two postwar scenes of the 20th century. It is hard to imagine how those who survived the war will survive in the days to come. And the film just took advantage of this psychology of the post-war masses, turning the survivors into another round of time machine victims. At this point, the definition of existence becomes blurred. When the irrationalism of the twentieth century had a great impact on the traditional rational way of thinking, all kinds of art extended from it boldly subverted the laws of traditional art and broke the logic of classical narrative. People's belief in the "humanities" and "advanced" civilizations promoted by the West has turned from belief to doubt, and thinking about the meaning of personal existence has become the theme of the times. At the same time, when Western art creation was gradually homogenized and politicized, under the background of art domination, artists were eager to break away from the ideological attributes they were originally endowed with, and then formed their own independent language of power to fight against tradition. In the film, life is turned into a symbol of art, and in this environment, it is reduced to the conferment of scientists, and freedom becomes unrealistic and absurd. In the eighteenth century, atheistic philosophy rejected the concept of God, but not the idea of essential existence. At this time, most of the people living in this world ignored the concept of authentic existence, similar to Kant's concept of the thing-in-itself. Under the absurd society formed by the two world wars, people with individual existence began to doubt the Western democratic and civilized culture, and people once again began to think about the meaning of individual existence. Individuals existing at this time need philosophical theories as the spiritual support for their survival. Existentialism developed in this way, which led to a new round of thinking in the philosophical circle. The existence of the protagonist in the film just conforms to the existentialist thinking about the existence of the individual. When the concept of survival (existence) is redefined, how far can the individual go? We don't know. At this moment, freedom has become a contradiction. There is no so-called freedom without restraint. All freedom is based on restraint. At this time, as the symbol of freedom and hope of the protagonist, the woman in the dream that exists like the Statue of Liberty becomes the driving force for the protagonist to keep going in and out of the dream. At this time, the film reproduces Mark's contradictory tastes, and the contradictory opposites of each thing can be transformed into each other. From her own meaning, the woman who seems to belong to the messenger of light represents death. When the protagonist was killed by some unknown force and fell to the ground, the original dream image was overlaid. The images of the man running and the woman waiting at the airport gradually became clear in my childhood memories. It turns out that the death the protagonist often dreamed of when he was a child was himself. The so-called fate is just a continuation of the dream. A dream about his own death. We can't imagine what kind of experience it is when the body's death becomes a subconscious imprint in one's mind, nor can we perceive the mood of the protagonist when he falls to the ground in front of the woman he loves. The exile given by the desert island is probably just a joke, and in the complex background of the times, the peace given by the government is impossible to talk about. To a certain extent, the two have achieved a certain unity. In the movie, which seems to be an entertainment and pastime, the duality is called out in the hypothetical plot, which is more virtual and incomprehensible. It seems that the words are a little less serious, but instead become one Kind of black humor. When we questioned the narrative of this frame by frame, the seemingly two layers of dreams began to overlap slowly. A dream memory that cannot be erased from memory, a dream memory that is given. The two kinds of memories imprison the hero's mind like a labyrinth. Like "Brain Hell", they gradually collapse in layers of self-doubt and spiritual domination by others. The passive protagonist in the film will always sink deeper and deeper in cognition. The black and white pictures carefully created by the director establish a non-dynamic spiritual maze. The voiceover at this moment has become a cannonball wrapped in an indifferent language, and it is loud.
This kind of narrative with a strong sense of fragmentation and subjectivity seems to contradict the authenticity of the film, but it is actually appropriate. The protagonist has the free attribute of the individual in the dream time and space, but it comes from the endowment of scientists. When the scientist becomes the god of survivors, the survivors evolve from free individuals to dominated slaves, or experimental subjects. From another point of view, before the advent of Darwin's theory of evolution, religion, as the god of human beings, controlled the human spirit and material. After this, science appeared. When science appeared as the truth verified by scientists, people became a new round of admirers of science. In this process, people themselves are incapable of verifying scientific theories. In the film, the scientist, as the leader of the underground laboratory, holds the power of life and death for the survivors, which is a kind of divine existence. When God and science are combined into a separate being, he has more power than imagined. Survivors under the rule of this combination seem to have forgotten themselves after erasing their memories. The underground base in the film is reminiscent of a desolate and helpless island. In the definition of reality, desert islands are often understood as uninhabited, isolated islands that can exist independently. This is somewhat similar to the underground base in the dirty, crowded environment in the film. When we question whether the environment is suitable for human habitation, underground bases with survivors are the first to break this law. Become a symbol of a dirty, free-for-all desert island. As a result, it has become a kind of alienation of a desert island, even an inhuman existence. Like the discovery of the American continent, and then accepted the cruel colonial rule. The original individual life has become a luxury existence.
The seemingly 27-minute short film "Dike", this article only collects a few aspects for analysis. Not to mention whether the director's creative intention is to practice the entire film as an imprint of the times, or to reproduce his own dream. Film criticism is inherently personal appreciation and commentary. Among the creators and recipients, the more skeptical it is, the deeper it can be. When "Dike" is placed in the ever-developing film history, the different interpretations brought by different historical and cultural environments must be what it expresses, and it is related to the true breadth of the film's content and form.
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