I've been waiting for a movie that can move me. It finally came, and it made me feel that no matter how many bad movies I watched before, it was worth it.
I'm glad I got to know the Romanian director Mungi with hindsight. When I come across a director I like, I will definitely make up all the works by year. I want to get a glimpse of the director's style change from the early days to the recent past, or it has never changed. But I didn't find the resources for Mengji's debut novel "Happiness in the West", so I gave it up for the time being.
The first film I watched was "Graduation Exam", and I formed a personal pre-movement premise from the film poster and the story outline: this probably won't be my favorite film. I still watched it. The version is dubbed in French with Chinese and English subtitles. This kind of collocation is very confusing. During the process, I constantly struggled whether to concentrate on listening to the dubbing or watching the subtitles.
The film starts from a college entrance examination and extends to the story of corruption caused by the intertwined abuse of power in Romanian society. Such a short sentence is not enough to convey the connotation of the film. The middle-class family relationship, mid-life crisis, and the timeless communication between parents and children are all in the film, both in the director's script and in the camera. outside.
I have never liked too complete stories or too smooth shooting techniques. All the built scenes seem to have been shot specially for exhibiting or winning awards, such as this year's "Three Billboards", but Mungi's films include Cut off, there are blanks, and there is no answer. The camera sense is excellent, and the scene setting is not only coordinated, especially in "Beyond the Mountain".
The second is "April Three Weeks Two Days".
A similar sense of camera, the script is complete, the story unfolds slowly, one thing is narrated after the next, and it is not rushed. In my heart, this film surpasses "Graduation Exam". It also reflects social reality, and it is also Romania, a place familiar to the director, like Jia Zhangke's Fenyang. This time it's about an abortion story. The actors basically have no trace of performance, they are all ordinary and real faces, and the director's camera is just a recorder. In the first act, the two main characters stand opposite each other, and the camera slowly recedes. I was overjoyed: Ha, my personal style is very strong. Some directors never make only one movie.
I like to lean towards the documentary style, while Mengji focuses on social issues, and even the helplessness of the bottom. After reading these two films, I have a vague idea. This director may have experienced the relative solidification of the class in small countries and small places. All kinds of discomforts caused, and then starting from these discomforts, with the power of his lens language, he tried to present Romania as a society to the world.
Next, is the movie I've been waiting for mentioned at the beginning: "Beyond the Mountain". Half a year has passed, and I haven't seen any movies that touched me, most of them were mediocre, except for "The Big Buddha" and "Beyond the Mountain". The film revolves around the question of "whether religion can bring salvation" through the story of two childhood friends reuniting after many years. I think the director gave his own answer at the end of the film.
The photography in this film is beautiful. It is a winter twilight and snow. In a remote church in Romania, the nuns and priests are all black and shuttle in the white. And the sudden intruder - the heroine's childhood friend - brought a different color, this kind of collision was especially abrupt, and it was because of this abruptness that everything happened later. In the film, the intruder repeated several times, trying to take the heroine away, and then pretending to be reconciled to stay, then resisting through violence, and being suppressed again, the heroine finally became suspicious and slowly loosened, and such an inner change , the director guessed through the lens, put all the chaotic scenes close, blurred, the heroine stood in the center of the farther lens, witnessed everything, and her eyes wandered. In the end, the heroine changed into the nun's black clothes and sat in the police car opposite the priest, which is also the director's answer to the theme.
I like religious themes, and it reminds me of "Silence" by Shusaku Endo. Lord, if you can bring salvation, why did you choose to remain silent after witnessing my suffering. This is the theme of "Silence", paragraph after paragraph of psychological description, tangled, and I have forgotten Endo Shusaku's answer.
Going back to the director's style, although the camera shakes occasionally, it doesn't cause physical discomfort, and it's not like an empty mirror. The story is smooth and unintentional, keeping more than two hours from being dull, the rhythm is well controlled, and there is enough blank space for the audience to answer, these are the reasons why I like Mengji. Of course, nothing is as good as the "documentary" reason. I don't like things that don't have anything to say. The empty beauty is fake. Face the conflict of reality, even if it is extremely ugly.
It has not been completed yet, but the three films so far have made my movie viewing for the past six months not too wasteful. Speaking of waste, it is limited to movies. I love the documentaries I have seen, especially "The Salt of the Earth". The shocking feeling brought by this documentary is beyond description.
For me, movies are not a casual pastime. I will deliberately set my viewing volume, and I will start with the director in a planned way and slowly fill in the blanks.
But on second thought, it might be just a pastime after all.
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