"The First Lady," a Hollywood star biopic, is prone to two waves of relatively extreme, quick reviews:
One is from the audience represented by "May Pie" (Meryl Streep) and diehard fans. They follow the awards season movies, and they may only watch these movies a year, while being convinced by the The acting skills of the actors, on the one hand, are carefully woven by the film, and more are moved by the beautified characters' faces. They will cheer for Natalie Portman's actress-level performance, and of course they will also connect with reality, for Jay who lost Kennedy. Quinn looked sad.
In this way, it is too quickly bought by industrialized type products.
The other type sees through the tactics and tricks of traditional biopics early on: rushing to the Olympics, dramatic, magnified star performances, historical characters chosen for political correctness... "The King's Speech", "Iron Lady", "The Theory of Everything" ", "Hidden Figures", etc., these mediocre films with utilitarian purposes will cause them to fall into the halo effect with the first impression and stereotype, so as to conclude the "First Lady".
In their eyes, Natalie Portman's performance is artificial and soulless.
Even if "The First Lady" is not a masterpiece, it cannot be simply judged as a vulgar Hollywood biographical film. Viewed in a dialectical manner, it has many points that have been ignored and misunderstood by mainstream critics. These points are also in the film's dialectical about the identity of women. Processing, the dialectical writing of history, and the dialectical game of close-up and performance emerge one by one.
It was Darren Aronofsky who first worked on the script, and then as a judge in Berlin, director Pablo Laraine, who entered the competition with "The Club of the Priests," was chosen. A Chilean obviously brings a different interpretation and intrusive perspective to the Americans.
Coincidentally, Darren's "Mother! " and "The First Lady" have something in common: about an "ordinary woman". The former is a narrative disguised as a traditional housewife who is the defender and guardian of the home. Inside, it refers to and deconstructs the political metaphors and religious symbols that fill the entire film to demonstrate ideological stance; the latter uses political The identity is wrapped and entangled with a woman who is eager to hold the desire for self-love and power tightly.
"Mother! ” is a game of interpretation, a paranoid face, and leaves no aftertaste. "The First Lady" is a mystery, a fog, and it is necessary to stare at the understanding and misunderstanding, approaching a person, a complex, living and historical person, not any simple symbol.
The Churchill portrayed in the biopic "Darkest Hour" is essentially structured in a eulogizing tone, and the screenwriter is also very experienced, constantly adding pen, writing about his character weaknesses, explosive and arrogant personality, and hesitancy when faced with major decisions. Wait, this is also the usual handwriting for biopic scripts in general. A genius, madman, and celebrity should gradually reveal a bad, flawed, and not so approachable side in the beginning and end of the narrative, and finally end with "great light", earning cheap, deceitful touches.
"The First Lady" is slightly different. The character Jacqueline has almost no character growth arc, nor is she a character that is superior to her shortcomings. On the contrary, most of what we see is her stubbornness, a little unlikable and inaccessible of. Her complexities should be gradually understood in the continuous entanglement of her dual identities, the difficult mediation of acting and re-acting.
In the filming of the White House documentary, she is the master of the family and the mistress of the country. She is nervous, excited, eager to share, and carefully plays the prescribed public image. When Kennedy was assassinated, she was terrified, alone, and wandered like a ghost in the empty White House. She wanted Kennedy to be remembered in history as Lincoln, "More soldiers! More crying! More cameras!", in a rant to reporters, no doubt.
She knows how to disguise better, is a hypocritical politician, and warned reporters to delete all her selfish words. She also vented her confessions from time to time, blurting out "Don't marry the president" in the interview, and she made no secret of the conversation with the priest, "Jack and I basically didn't spend the night together."
A woman's war, the more stubborn, the more tragic. The more she wants to hold the power and the right to hold a state funeral for her husband Kennedy that is equivalent to Lincoln's status, the more she pretends to be noble and proud in front of reporters, the more it highlights that she has lost her family's support, her support, and her love. Helpless and weak situation. Therefore, the audience's empathy is no longer directly triggered by the sadness of death, but indirectly understood. Behind the scenes of death, a woman will face the fading of her idol status, the departure of the center of power, and the tragedy of losing her love forever. .
Therefore, it is not so much that she is running around for Kennedy's historical status and legacy, it is better to say that she is trying to keep the identity she has just had and learn to play the role: the TV screen, the public, the family, the family, as a woman's. She wanted to seize on the vanity of the moment before the disillusionment. "Cinebook" pointed out quite astutely, "It seems that the decisions and actions made now are holding the wrist of the past to support the future that is doomed to collapse."
The movie contributed an excellent scene: after Jacqueline left the White House, she looked at the model in the woolen suit in the shop window outside the car, and the soundtrack played "Camelot", which was very symbolic. The gaze cast on Jacqueline's replica model and Jacqueline's suit (The Jackie Look) is her inadvertent nostalgia and sadness. The removal of the "first lady" status means her short-term glory - "Karen The myth of Milot, and the myth of Kennedy's love, will also dissipate in this night. This is the tragedy beyond death and tears.
Another question, how should images write history?
Documentary provides the best way. The hand-held photography, depth-of-field shots, long shots, and film-like texture of the film make the fictitious plot paragraphs and the real footage edited together indistinguishable, intentional or unintentional, It has embodied the documentary aesthetics and insisted photographic ontology that Bazin advocates: images are the artistic carrier and tool as the historical complex of the mummy and the complete film myth.
The director also knows that the truth of history cannot be restored. Through the mouths of reporters, he conveyed, "History is a story."
The recorder-reporter of history has become the writer and editor of the story, while the recorder of film-image is wandering at various nodes of time, intermingling and crossing four main narrative lines. This is not chaos and nonsense. The appearance of history, the collapse and collapse of the order of life, why shouldn't it look like this?
The first line of interviews with reporters runs through the whole film. The writers of history and the participants confronted each other at first, then compromised, then covered up, and then delayed until the two sides could not fully understand. If you look closely, the reporter and Jacqueline are both front and back at the beginning, but they do not cross the shoulders. But in the end, when the reporter accepted the myth and wish of "Camelot" insisted by Jacqueline, Jacqueline crossed the line and approached the reporter. The film also gave a double shot - they conspired to write history, Shared emotional space. On the contrary, Jacqueline only took care of the priest, so from beginning to end, whether it was panorama, cross-shoulder, or panning, the two were almost in the same shot.
This is the unnoticed, ignored lens language.
French critic Eiffel believes that "the film purification effect of close-up makes the face, an object composed of muscles, into the most exciting performance place for inner drama." "The First Lady" uses close-up, large close-up Gaze at Jacqueline, approaching Jacqueline's portrait shape and inner landscape.
Unfortunately, the close-ups give an excuse for criticism, many people think that the close-ups in the film are to show Natalie Portman's superb acting skills - good, evil, happy, angry, sad, happy face. Emotions, and that lame accent that mimicked the real Jacqueline. Based on utilitarian purposes, this is to boost Portman onto the Oscar throne.
The magnified and emphasized image function has become a derogatory accomplice. What needs to be corrected is that the close-up shots are not rare, and they are not abruptly inserted before and after other scenes, just like those biopics deliberately use one or two close-ups to make the stars Hurricane acting. Instead, it's a majority, exhaustive, and occupies almost the entire film.
Therefore, I believe that the director has truly understood the image semantics of close-up. When he continuously observes a woman through this lens, he actually creates a screen-like physiognomy, creating an almost immersive experience. It is the close-up that makes a portrait of a woman. For example, "The Chronicle of the Death of Louis XIV" keeps a distance from the medium and close shots, and calmly watches the whole process of Louis XIV's death, which also creates another great image of men.
It's just not extreme enough, reaching the extreme of "The Passion of Joan of Arc", like the microphysics praised by Balazs: "We entered the realm of the expression of a person isolated on the screen... only to see him thoughts, feelings, emotions and intentions”.
Isn't "First Lady" Jacqueline alone? Isolated from the world of politics, the world of power, the world of emotion and the world of the screen.
The close-up is reasonable and meaningful.
If the performers are not star Natalie Portman, Hollywood Natalie Portman, method Natalie Portman, maybe the public will not seriously ignore the self-consciousness or the first lady. Unconscious close-up aesthetics.
【Deep Focus DeepFous】First Release
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