Text/Tianpei Zhou|Columbia University Film Master Candidate
Official account: put aside the book
The two-week New York Film Festival came to an end last weekend. The highly anticipated popular films and filmmakers have all appeared and met with enthusiastic New York audiences. The closing film of the festival, the new film "The Brooklyn Secret", directed and acted by Edward Norton, began its official screening at Lincoln Center.
Perhaps because the film festival has a long time span, everyone has become tired. There are not many media friends who came to watch "The Brooklyn Secret" today, and there are still more tickets on sale at the audience screening in the evening. But what I have to say is that after two and a half hours of watching the film, the book's small note selfishly believes that this film is one of the three films I played in the opening, halftime, and closing of this film festival ("The Irishman", " "Marriage Story", you can check the previous book New York Film Festival report) favorite one.
The story is set in New York in the 1950s. "The Brooklyn Secret Case" tells the story of a detective Noel (Edward Norton) who suffers from Tourette Syndrome. After being killed, he is determined to launch an investigation and embark on the road to find the truth. The plot of the story is tortuous. Behind a murder is the entangled power struggle. It is also the complicated social environment that was surging before the race movement in the 1960s in the United States.
The detective part presented in "The Brooklyn Secret Case" is actually not that complicated. The interlocking story line can only ensure that it becomes a qualified detective movie. It is it that really makes this movie out of sight. As the core of the period drama.
The "Brooklyn" in the film title refers to Knoll's nickname, and it also refers to the location of the story turmoil-Brooklyn in the 1950s. At that time, the development of Brooklyn was lagging behind, and it was not closely connected with the main island of Manhattan. Most of the people living here were impoverished African Americans and Hispanics.
In order to further develop Brooklyn, the Municipal Construction Bureau and real estate developers need to relocate the indigenous people and then sell or develop their land. Because of apartheid and racial discrimination, coupled with complete inequality in rights, such land development is often accompanied by violence and inequality at the same time. Therefore, under such a special background, there will be homicides in "The Brooklyn Secrets", and there will be interlocking and downward pressure on government secrets and social scandals.
Therefore, although the main line of the movie is Knoll's investigative journey, we followed him to unearth the truth of the incident a little bit, and at the same time unearthed the true face of American society in the 1950s beyond the incident itself.
So we saw that this film is not just a detective drama. Under the shell of a detective drama, the director Norton has the freedom to complete the theme and narration of a period drama that needs to be completed.
And what is most worth sighing is that in addition to the angularity of the zeitgeist, the "face project" of this movie is also very well done. Norton has restored many New York landmarks through perfect special effects technology, coupled with his unique soundtrack, fascinating lens language and color scheme, the era of New York in the 1950s is vividly on paper.
With the lining and the top, and under the influence of the emotional jazz, the audience is easily indulged in this rich New York landscape painting, which makes people feel that the two and a half hours of viewing time seems to be a white horse.
In addition to the brilliant content of the film, Norton also contributed another classic screen image of himself in the film. In every scene, you can feel his dedication to this role. As the screenwriter, director and actor of this film, Norton once again showed us his admirable artistic talent and dedication to the film industry.
On the file where Xiao Ji went to the toilet, he happened to meet Norton himself, who was about to come on stage to do a question and answer. He smiled at me very shyly. After preparing for nearly ten years and finishing such an excellent film, Uncle Norton is still so humble and sincere, and people really have to sigh his personality charm.
The following is a quick review of other films at this New York Film Festival:
An undercover police officer fell in love with a gangster girl. The plot's direction was confusing at first, and after halfway through the midfield, it became weaker and weaker. People suddenly guessed the scene of the desperate mandarin duck. Generally speaking, it is a well-regulated love spy movie. Except for the mixed cut of several narrative lines in the first half, which successfully created a sense of conflict in the spy war scene, the whole movie didn't have many surprises. In the film, I have thoughts about the choice of music, but I always feel that I owe it. In addition, the part of learning whistle language in the plot is very interesting. Watching the male and female protagonists finally blow their whistle through the window, the romantic atmosphere is full.
The montage in the first half of the chapter is really well done. It has fully achieved the fictionalization of the film. The constant flashbacks and the switching between characters make people think that they are reading a stream of consciousness psychoanalytic novel. But the second half of the chapter collapsed very quickly. Basically, after the heroine "entered" her own novel and interacted with those characters, not only the plot but also the editing were obviously messed up. Of course, it may also be because too many laughs delayed the narrative, which affected the film's potential for thinking about art forms.
If you can have a perfect life, it must be a life accompanied by movies. Through this warm and moving documentary (or a master class), together with Grandma Varda, we re-walked her journey of film art creation over the years, and watched how she passed 35mm film lenses and documentaries. The lens, the lens of the film camera and the lens of the visual arts capture and explore the warmth and beauty of the world. Living, creating, and having fun, after a long journey in life, Grandma Varda bid us a deep but sudden goodbye.
Recalling his childhood when he is still old, Pedro's autobiographical drama, every frame and every second is infiltrated with his most sincere feelings for the movie. Although the old director in the movie was tortured by illness, when he always remembered his childhood, the bright village, the hardworking mother, and the midsummer when his lust began, the time would be brighter. After watching the whole movie, there is no complaint about aging. All you can see is an old man with a pure heart, combing his life and looking back at the touching moments of his journey along the way. There will be setbacks caused by aging, but as long as he can still create movies, the fire in his heart will continue to burn.
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