From my usual aesthetic point of view, "Hibernation" will not be a movie I like. As Rob Grille said, literature is vocabulary and sentences, and film is image and sound. So how can a film like "Hibernation" that takes up a lot of time and space by dialogue can bring out the charm of the film? However, I have now turned to another concept: since movies can carry text and language and use it to create artistic effects, why should I abandon it or belittle it? From this point of view, although "Hibernation" has no innovative significance in film aesthetics, it can be an excellent film. And it proves that movies can replace novels to a certain extent and form texts worthy of repeated reading.
"Hibernation" has a lot of dialogue throughout the film, but it mainly talks about the question: In the face of evil, if we do not resist, but actively sacrifice, can this make the wicked repent? Can evil be reduced? Is such behavior reasonable? We can summarize it in a more concise sentence, which is: What is the essence of kindness? This is actually not a new question. We can find the source in the Bible. Matthew 5:39: "It's just that I tell you not to oppose the wicked. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn your left cheek and let him strike." "Hibernation" uses two clues to talk about this issue: One line is the day-to-day chat with the protagonist’s family, and the issues discussed in the film are mainly revealed directly through the dialogue here; the other line is the car crash between the protagonist and the tenant, which provides a realistic case to interpret what the film discusses problem.
In the first line, the protagonist had three long conversations with his sister. The elder sister is an image of a rebel, she questioned the religious spirit, and her quarrel with the protagonist escalated one after another. But Ceylon adopted almost the same scene scheduling for these three dialogues: the same space (study), the same character actions (the protagonist sits on a chair to write an article, and his sister lies on the sofa to read a book) and the same front and back. Shoot the camera (the angle and camera position are basically the same). Here we can see that Ceylon completely uses dialogue to promote the narrative of the film, minimizing the rhetorical and ideographic functions of the image. He is no longer dedicated to the video art of "Three Monkeys", which uses a large number of virtual focus lenses to show the separation between husband and wife, but uses the language of the characters to express "literary".
In the second line, although there are action scenes like a boy smashing a car window, Ceylon still uses a lot of dialogue instead of directly showing the actions of the characters. The daily life content of the tenants is not displayed on the screen at all, but is explained indirectly through the language of the little boy's father and uncle. The most typical representative of this strategy is that when the little boy’s father took the money that the protagonist’s wife gave them, he counted the money and said something like this:
"This is for little Ilyas... he is ignoring himself to save his father's face." "This... is for my selfless brother Hamdi, who has been kneeling around for four months and begging for a bite of food." "This is... For the bad drunk Ismail, he was beaten in front of his son and lost the face of the whole family."
The narrative of this passage intensively explained the difficult lives of the tenants, immediately aroused the emotions of the audience, and the plot was pushed to a climax. Therefore, in this line, Ceylon also focuses on character language to create plot narration and artistic effects.
The father of the boy with strong self-esteem finally threw the money into the fireplace, expressing his refusal to accept the "charity" of the protagonist's wife. This is a question of her kindness. Ceylon used the interpretation of this case to give a negative answer to the question discussed in the film: treating evil with good will not necessarily resolve evil. Then, he turned the camera to the dialogue scene between the protagonist and the young teacher. The drunk young teacher said a Shakespearean drama line: "Conscience... is nothing more than a term used by cowards. They are afraid of the strong and use it as a prevarication. The copper and iron bones are our conscience, and the knives and guns are ours. Here, Ceylon directly used the character language to answer the question (what is the nature of goodness?) in the film: The nature of goodness is cowardice. Later, the protagonist also made a remark: "We are exhausted, making the illusion that seems to be promising. I have wonderful ideas every morning, but I am doing nothing all day." Here is the language of the characters to convey the meaning of the film. It conveys the film. The theme of the sublimation to another level: even if we know what the essence of goodness is, even if we know all the truths, we still cannot change this sad life.
In short, Ceylon constructed a "literary" expression strategy in "Hibernation". However, he still uses exquisite photography to attract the attention of the audience as much as possible, and to give full play to his image expertise. He wanted to show that he was not without image creativity, but chose to use character language as his main means of expression in this film. His aesthetic focus has completed the shift from video art to literature. [Declined to reprint]
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