I have always liked Wong Kar-wai's movies, especially the urban movies represented by "Chongqing Forest" and "Fallen Angels", not only because of the erratic emotional relationship shown in them, but more importantly, the expressions in his movies. The " urban aesthetics " created is very much in line with my appetite. In my impression, the traditional Chinese film portrays the city more realistically, while Wong Kar-wai used his unique aesthetic style to create his own urban space, in which lonely men and women performed different things. story.
In terms of content and style, "Blueberry Night" has inherited a large number of elements from "Chongqing Forest" and "Fallen Angels", such as the rich tones brought by Fujifilm, the slow motion generated by the frame, and the repeated but just right The soundtrack, familiar city railways, bars, and fast food restaurants are all important components of the "urban aesthetics" in Wong Kar Wai's movies. However, I always feel awkward during the filming process, and I always feel a sense of "disharmony". But I don’t know why. After a period of thinking, I summarized a few points: First, although there are many similarities with the previous work in terms of aesthetic style and text content, there are also certain variations on the theme. The emotional logic that underpins its change has not changed, and it is still Eastern, so it would be strange to apply it directly in the context of Western culture.
Secondly, the depiction of several emotional relationships in the movie is too simplistic. Although small props like keys are also used in it, it is far not as light and agile as in the previous movies, such as "Chongqing Forest" and "Fallen Angel". Here, there are some impressive ideas about the relationship between the characters, such as Faye Wong sneaking into Tony Leung’s house to do whatever he wants, the close and alienated relationship between Liming and Li Jiaxin, etc., but in "Blueberry Night" It's hard to find the passages that make me feel brilliant.
But none of these answers seem to answer the "disharmony" I experienced. What is it that makes me feel this way?
After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the human voice in the movie, including the pitch, timbre, accent, rhythm, and human words of the characters, has lost the taste of his movie.
The city in Wong Kar-wai's films is not only sensual and symbolic, but always reveals a strong sense of locality to express his care and love for the land of Hong Kong, and Cantonese has become the aesthetic style of the city in his films. important parts of. At the same time, the characters in his films often have a lot of inner monologues, and these monologues are pronounced with a Cantonese accent with a sense of prose-like rhythm, which brings a unique temperament to the movie. When Wong Kar-wai applied this aesthetic system directly to the American urban environment, he did not have a good grasp of the language sense of English, which made his best voice-over monologue also lost its charm, and the voice of the characters did not work well. It brings out the overall atmosphere of the movie, which makes it a bit boring.
On the other hand, the story background in Wong Kar-wai's movies is generally an alienated and indifferent city, and the protagonist in the movie often has an introverted but not good at expressing personality. Therefore, the use of a large number of voice-over monologues in the movie has not become a narrative burden. Instead, it has become an external expression of this loneliness and introverted emotions, and has become a means of characterizing characters with very personal characteristics. The protagonist in this film is still lonely and isolated, but the narration used in the film has been significantly reduced, and the line text is not good enough, and this sense of alienation and the loneliness of the characters are not well represented in other ways. Feeling has only become an appearance.
These two reasons are considered to have solved my doubts, but after these thoughts, I realized that in Wong Kar-wai’s films, not only the image style, soundtrack and sound effects, but even the human voice has become an important part of his film aesthetics. Both the textual content of the lines and the language accent of the actors have reached a highly unified state with the overall aesthetic style of the film. It was also through this experience of watching movies that I began to realize that the voices of characters in movies can also play an important role in expression.
Taking this as an opportunity, I also tried to review the history of film to simply sort out the role of movie vocals (movie sounds are mainly divided into music, sound, and vocals) in movies. This division is not scientific and Strict, even a rough note:
As a supplement to film expression, movie vocals replace subtitles to achieve narrative purposes.
Since the birth of sound film, it has completed a reconstruction of the film itself, and also made the film more technically complete, closer to the "asymptote of reality", and the use of human voice better realizes the "realism". ", and highlights the main role of people in the movie. However, the use of the element of sound is not achieved overnight. For a long time, sound is only used as a commercial gimmick to attract audiences, and the role of sound in movies is very limited.
In the first feature sound film "Jazz Singer" in history, apart from some musical accompaniment, only two lines of dialogue appeared (still inadvertently retained), but it achieved unexpected commercial success, which also made Warner The brothers filmed the first "all dialogue film" "The Lights of New York" in 1928. With a cost of $23,000, the film earned more than $1 million in box office revenue.
Although it has been a great commercial success, there are still many restrictions on the use of movie sound at this time. For example, the bulky soundproof booth makes it very difficult to view the movie. At the same time, the noise when the camera moves is too large, which also limits the movement of the lens. In use, the photographer can only perform a brief translation through the window of the soundproof booth to keep the character's movement in the center of the picture. The flexible use of sound comes from the emergence and prosperity of the form of song and dance films. Different sounds are beginning to be used in editing to create a certain kind of disharmonious effect. At the same time, camera movement begins to appear in sound movies. middle. But in general, the sound of the movie at this stage is only used as a supplement to the form of film expression, its role is only to replace the subtitles to complete the narrative role, and its aesthetic characteristics have not been further developed.
Contrary to Hollywood, at this time Soviet film workers Eisenstein and others put forward the film concept of "sound and picture counterpoint". The use of counterpoints associated with montage segments can provide a new potential for the development and improvement of montages", that is, opposed to the use of sound and picture synchronization. It is believed that this simple form will damage the performance potential of the film, and sound should not be It is just to set off the background of the characters or things on the screen, so that the dramatic situation of the film meets a certain authenticity (this concept was mistranslated when Yu Hong Shen was introduced into the country, resulting in the opposite meaning to the original meaning), not Xu Xu The sound of the environment can generate more possibilities. It is worth mentioning that although the "sound-picture counterpoint" theory has further expanded the expression and role of film sound, Eisenstein himself did not pay much attention to human voice and environmental sound, and only music was used. Incorporate into his theory.
By 1933, multi-track mixing technology began to be used in film production, enabling the film to add non-narrative ambient music in certain passages after shooting and production to achieve lyrical or other effects. It can add different sound effects to the movie, and it can also match the pre-recorded song fragments with the mouth shapes of the actors in the movie, so that the sound performance of the movie is richer, and it can better promote the creation of the atmosphere and the sound combination. It's easier, and it has more expressive effects.
In China during this period, due to the turbulent social and economic environment, the development of sound films has gone through a long process. Early sound films did not pay attention to the matching of sound and visual elements (not a conscious "sound-picture pairing"). The aesthetic style of “position” is caused by the defects of aesthetic concepts and technology), and at the same time, influenced by the tradition of “shadow drama”, large sections of theatrical lines are often used in movies, and the interspersion of songs is very abrupt and is rarely considered. The need of the plot. At this stage, neither the human voice nor the music played its true aesthetic role in the movie. It wasn't until 1934 that "Tao Li Jie" was a film that matured the use of sound film creation rules, but it only conformed to the "art rules", and the creative use of movie sound was hard to see.
In the following time, a film narrative method centered on the classic Hollywood narrative system has been formed, and the narrative function of film vocals has also become more complete. Generally speaking, film vocals can achieve two purposes in narration: 1. Shaping the image of characters. ; 2. Perfection and development of the storyline;
One of the means of realistic aesthetic style
By the end of the 1940s, in the pursuit of authenticity and documentary effects in Italian neo-realism films, the language of the characters in the films adopted the form of dialects to better fit the narrative environment of the characters in order to achieve director's realism. However, due to cost reasons, the character dialogue still adopts a post-dubbing method, and in order to make the audience understand, the use of dialects has been restrained, but this choice has made the character’s voice begin to become conscious. One of the ways of expression of aesthetics. And as the lighter and low-cost cameras and recording equipment developed during World War II were widely used, it further promoted the development of real film and direct film movement. The simultaneous recording method was used to purely record reality or explore reality to achieve The respective aesthetic purpose. However, at this stage, the role of character voice is still mainly limited to the purpose of realism.
Way of expressing a specific subject
This was first reflected in Renoir’s films in my cognition. In "The Great Disillusionment," the four languages of German, French, English, and Russian were mixed. The conflict of languages not only strengthened the narrative of the film itself. Conflict, and the gap between languages reflects the differences in human identities, and highlights the criticism of war and the aristocracy.
Means to create atmosphere and film tone
I first saw this possibility in Antonioni’s films. His films usually show alienated people in modern society in an indifferent and alienated environment, focusing on the empty and lonely spiritual world of the characters and emphasizing the subjective perception of the protagonist. From the discussion of the reality of the external environment to the reality of the psychology, it is also called "psychological realism". In the movie "Night", Jeanna Moreau's slightly indifferent tone reflects the character's sense of emptiness after the passing of feelings, while in "Red Desert", Monica Vitti is slightly weird The performance, in conjunction with some of her seemingly illogical lines in the movie, produced an excellent sense of absurdity and alienation. This atmosphere also sets off the expression of the theme. In the early films of contemporary director Wes Anderson, I also saw similar effects. For example, Owen Wilson’s tone of voice and some nonsensical dialogues in "Bottle Rocket" are very consistent with the confusion pervaded in the film. This kind of application is even more common in Wong Kar-wai's films. Taking "Chongqing Forest" as an example, the beginning of the film is a large monologue by Takeshi Kaneshiro, creating a slightly depressed and dull atmosphere.
Get rid of the dependence on the picture and expand the expressive power of the film.
In "Last year in Marienbad", the language of the characters completely got rid of the subordinate status of the film screen in the form of voiceover, and extended the expressive power of the film beyond the lens, allowing the audience to understand the inner meaning of the film and play Has a creative effect. In traditional movies, both the lines and voice-overs in the film maintain a dramatic relationship with the video content, but in "Last Year in Marion Bad", this relationship is broken. The monologues in the voice-overs and the film The content has an "uncertain" relationship. We can neither determine whether the narrator is a character in the film, nor whether the content of the narration has occurred in the film. The voice-over seems to create a time and space parallel to the film. You can't judge which is true and false, you can only wander repeatedly in the multiple time and space created by the movie, and enjoy a stream of consciousness experience full of ambiguities.
Limited to my experience of watching movies and reading, the above summary is very simple and rough, and the role of human voice is far more than that. More aesthetic characteristics need to be further studied by me.
View more about My Blueberry Nights reviews
