The theme of the 1989 Cannes Film Festival seems to be to pay tribute to the film old man, not only warmly commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chaplin, but also the grand screening of David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" as the opening film. But the result of the film festival is the victory festival for young people. The main symbol is that Soderbergh's debut work "Sex, Lies and Videotape" won the Palme d'Or.
Soderbergh’s award was not very smooth, and the jury was divided. Chairman Wim Wenders asked everyone to re-watch "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" and another movie with great hope, focusing on this. Wenders expressed his own point of view at this time: For him, the most important thing to judge a film is whether it has personality. "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" has a distinctive personality, which makes people excited and right to watch. The movie is confident.
Soderbergh had a hard time in Cannes. He had to spend seven or eight hours answering reporters’ bombarding questions for the film, which took four weeks to complete the film, which was only 100 minutes long. Tired to fall asleep on the carpet.
It is not difficult to interpret the film itself. Soderbergh admitted that it is related to his own sexual experience. At the same time, the title of the film clearly shows the author's point of view. "Sex", "lie", and "videotape" are not only the three basic elements that constitute the film's narrative framework, but each has its own broader symbolic meaning.
Since the birth of Freud’s doctrine, people’s views on sex have greatly expanded. The issue of sex is not only an issue involving human nature, marriage, and family, but it is also considered to be a foundation of human spiritual life, sexual life. The quality of sex and sexual satisfaction directly affect people’s emotional life and social behavior. "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" does not expand the broad meaning of sex in the scope of narrative. It is limited to the sexual intercourse between men and women. However, the film's treatment of the fate of its four characters is not difficult to see the author's sexuality. The value judgment. John was hypocritical and frivolous in his sex life, and in the end he had an unexpected relationship with his career-it can be said that he lost his wife and broke down. His opposite, Graham, finally gained the desire and ability for sex.
Lies are mainly for John in the film. He lied to his wife and had an affair with his sister-in-law. He relied on beautiful lies to maintain the superficial relationship between husband and wife, and he also relied on lies to support his hypocritical image of an upright gentleman. However, in the broad sense of "lie", Ann and Graham are not completely unrelated to "lie". Mr. An wants to appear in a ladylike posture. She can tell the psychiatrist or Graham about her unsatisfactory sex life, but she has to give people the impression that she doesn’t seem to have high demands on sex. Or she is very different from the romantic Cynthia. In essence, Ann is still using a stale moral code to suppress her normal sexual demands. Graham is a bit perverted. He obviously has desires, but he can't communicate with the opposite sex normally. The video tape has become his subconscious channel of catharsis. His escape is also a kind of "lie." Only when Ann completely confessed his heart in the video, only when Graham destroyed the camera and the video tape, they sat on the small steps in front of the house, listening to the quiet nocturne, feeling the taste of inner love and the dearness of the skin. , They bid farewell to the "lie".
The video tape is really Soderberg's trick. If “sex” and “lie” have already been expressed by many modern writers (literary, dramatic, and film), then it takes extraordinary observation and power to complete this revelation through video tapes—image tools. Artistic thinking. People have heard a lot of the view that modern people rely on images. Sitting in front of a small screen thinks that they have mastered the world, but they don’t know that they are becoming more and more blinded by images; or they think they are manipulating the camera, but in turn they are manipulated by the lens. ; Otherwise, like Graham in the movie, avoiding living people and hiding in the world of images, you can only confess your heart to the screen. Soderbergh’s outstanding feature is not only the use of “images” as a narrative structure, but also his views on this. He does not think that modern man’s manipulation of images is inevitable. In his opinion, it is just An abnormal psychological state and behavior of modern people. After all, images are neutral, they are tools. Interpersonal communication can be through images, but not necessarily through. People should also be able to communicate directly through language, actions, and expressions. The destruction of the video tape is not only an inevitable link in the film's narrative, but also a necessary ideographic signal. Only through this step can Graham truly gain the confidence and ability to communicate with the outside world.
The above-mentioned themes are reflected to varying degrees in some European commercial films (such as "Shards" in recent years) in Hollywood commercial films. Soderberg’s original spirit lies in his choice of "the third "The approach is called "American art film", or more accurately, it is a personalized variation of certain models of American commercial films. Compared with Hollywood commercial films, it appears alienated and calm, repelling a lot of commercial elements; compared with European author films, it does not reject a certain dramatic framework or character relationship. The beginning part of "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" is likely to be seen as a recurrence of a certain pattern, such as a couple's disharmony, a husband cheating, being discovered by a wife or an outsider breaking into a originally "good" family. Storms and so on, but soon, the progress of the narrative departed from people's viewing inertia and took on some forms that were different from the conventional ones.
One of the morphological characteristics is that the film basically constitutes the overall situation with dialogue scenes. With Ann as the center, there are about 20 dialogue scenes including Ann and Psychiatrist, Ann and Graham, Ann and John, Ann and Cynthia, John and Cynthia, Graham and Cynthia, among them, especially Yi'an and Psychiatrist and Graham’s several conversations were long, long and eloquent. It was easy to make it dull, but because the conversations involved secret topics such as sex and interpersonal privacy, the audience’s interest and attention was drawn, and the actor’s performance was grasped. In addition to the complex psychology of the character, coupled with the effect of live recording, the tone and emotional reaction of every dialogue of the character are interpreted in great detail. The audience is more than just an observer to these conversations, they are very likely to make comparisons and judgments based on their own life experience, and even become a participant in this "case". While people can observe the subtle psychology of both parties through dialogue, they are also attracted by the implicit "taste" that these dialogues collide with.
In the design of the character image, the film also sings a certain inharmonious tone to Hollywood conventions. Two honest and kind characters, Graham and Ann, one is sexually perverted and impotent, the other is sexually depressive and cold, and both have mental illness; but the author wants to expose John is healthy, chic, energetic, and has a career. Cheng, compared with Graham, he is undoubtedly a "normal person". If Graham is a pathological liar (unwilling to face his own psychological problems), John is a "normal" liar, and their contrast shows the despicability and ugliness of the "normal".
In the use of shots, including scene transitions or transitions, the film uses a large number of parallel montages and separate sound and picture methods that are different from the conventional ones. Take the beginning of the film as an example. When the audience’s attention is still on the screen when Graham is driving the car, a female voice "garbage..." is suddenly cut into the audience, which causes the audience to feel at a loss. Try to find the direction of the narrative on parallel lines. The following series of similar structures allow the dialogue of the latter scene to enter the end of the previous scene. The purpose of this narrative strategy is obviously to deprive the audience of their status as the subject of the narrative, and force the audience to act as a participant rather than an omniscient. Bystanders use their own eyes and ears to observe and discern carefully, and to comprehend the complex and secret connections between characters or the author's calm sarcasm in the coupling of sounds and paintings in different time and space.
Another way of conversion is the repetition and echoing of dialogue. Ann asked John if he had an affair and said, "You never said fuck before." Next, I switched to Cynthia's house. John was scolding Cynthia that he shouldn't go to Graham's place. "Fuck" did not leave his mouth. This can be regarded as a character. The continuity of emotions in the upper and lower scenes also reveals John's hypocrisy (the contrast between the beautiful appearance and the curse).
In the choice of viewpoint, the film is single and changeable. Taking the explanation of the content of the two videos as an example, Cynthia’s videos are narrated in a normal way. The photographer and the subject are simultaneously observed from the author’s point of view. People feel Cynthia’s bold narration of her own sexual experience. Openness to sexual problems and strong lust. In contrast, the narration of Ann's video adopts a rather complicated strategy. First, in the sequence of narration, the beginning (ask the name) and the end (an leaves) of the video for Ann was shown, but a suspense was left. The audience saw the intimacy between Ann and Graham at the end of the video, and they didn’t know. What happened during the recording. The revelation of this will not be completed until John breaks in and forcibly watches the videotape. In the large segment of John watching the video, the author arranged three perspectives: one is the author’s perspective, he is watching John watching the tape, this perspective is of course also the audience’s perspective; the second is John’s perspective, what he sees It is the picture from the videotape; the third is Graham's point of view, which is the point of view of the camera, and he is shooting Ann. These three points of emphasis are unified on the observation of video tapes. This more emphasis allowed the audience to understand the content of the video tape while also seeing John's reaction to the video: nervousness, embarrassment, irritation, etc. But this kind of composite viewpoint did not continue to the end. It had a turning point when Ann and Graham exchanged their Q&A positions. After that, people saw Ann and Graham not through the video tapes that John watched, but directly. The scene was observed. This back-narrative paragraph excludes John's point of view, leaving only the author's point of view. Although there are shots from Ann’s point of view (she manipulates the camera), the main point of view is that of the author, the audience, who can see both of them at the same time or freely observe them. Obviously, in Soderbergh’s view, it’s no longer enough to show the most important dialogue scene in the whole film in a way that it is shown on TV. It must be replaced by a live narrative; at the same time, the depth of the dialogue makes both parties The more intimate the camera's single point of view (only one person can be captured) can no longer adapt, so the camera is also put on hold, although it is still working, it is aimed at two people. When Graham finally turned off the machine, it happened to be connected to the ending footage of the video in the previous sequence narration. This is how the film breaks up and recombines a video process, and finally gives the audience a complete impression of the video. Such a narrative strategy is not only for the need for a certain "dramatic" effect, but also not only for the final completion of the image of John (his reaction to the content of the video), but also for placing the highlight in a structural climax. Close to the idea of the film.
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