When an object is sucked into a black hole, it is captured by its powerful gravity, accelerated and finally traverses its event horizon, that is, where the gravity in the black hole is so great that the escape velocity is exactly equal to the speed of light, and behind the event horizon is The realm that human physics cannot observe is endless darkness. Objects may be torn apart by strong gravity, or continue to accelerate toward the core of a dead star.
NWR's movie "Neon Demon" is a beautiful and dangerous black hole, and our audience and Jesse played by Elle Fanning crossed the boundaries of this black hole in the movie. Formalism is a prominent symbol of NWR and a reason for critics to attack. It’s true to label NWR with formalism, but we are faced with several of his works in recent years: "Desperate Driving", "Only God Can Forgive", to this "Neon Demon", we must ask, when When a filmmaker continues to break through the limits of form, is this still true? After all, no one can see anything in the event horizon, especially unreasonable critics, who cannot see the world that NWR has created under the surface of the movie's glitz.
In "Destiny", this trend towards form has only just begun, and it is revealed in a few specific shots and scenes; in "Only God", it is unscrupulously playing with lights and violence, slow rhythm and The lengthy plot is almost contrived; what about "Neon Demon"? Maybe it was the same at the beginning. A few veteran models were chatting about the new girl’s parents at a cliché neon party, how many boyfriends she had, and how beautiful she was, as if looking at an alien. ; When a model said "there will be a show at the party", then NWR showed us a weird bundling show; in the evening, the boy took the girl to see the night of Los Angeles on Mulholland Road, talking about inspirational films The lines like this show lofty ideals; the new model went to audition and lied that she was an adult, and she was “famous in one fell swoop”, the other girls shed jealous tears; the flowerpot smashed into the glass to create a cobweb-like spectacle, and Jesse is destined to step on the glass... Everything is particularly uncomfortable to operate in the so-called logic of reality, and it is even more clichéd in the exaggerated and bright colors of the "City of Philharmonic". Let opponents take advantage of the loopholes, but NWR can't manage that much.
So we might as well say that this is just the last struggle before the object is completely captured by the black hole: the protagonist’s parents and age are no longer mentioned, and the competition no longer exists until we completely break away from all the logic of reality. I'm talking about Jesse and the moment when all the audience crossed the "event horizon": Jesse's catwalk. Starting in the 55th minute of the film’s director’s commentary track (after the dramatic audition, Jesse’s photographer boyfriend Dean came to her house), NWR proudly stated that this is the longest piece of music he has collaborated with soundtracker Cliff Martinez , Up to 17 minutes. Although the music in the film is only 10 minutes in total, it runs through the most important situational transition in the three films-the beginning of the fall, the beginning of the unknown. Martinez's music for this film can be said to be the best electronic soundtrack work that has appeared in the past few years. There is no doubt that it adds another sense of ritual together with the large number of slow shots in the film.
"Neon Demon" may be the best-paced film in NWR. This kind of music that serves as a bridge between scenes and scenes has contributed a lot to it, and it even completely took over the so-called narrative of the film afterwards. Before the music started, Dean brought flowers to Jesse’s hotel room. Jesse fainted. At this time, the film showed its iconic symbol-"Neon Demon" for the first time, three blue inverted neon triangles. Obviously, The director deliberately placed this symbol here to herald its return. Going back to the soundtrack, this truly 10-minute piece of music is slowly entering. From Dean’s confrontation with the evil hotelier played by Keanu Reeves, we have heard it from the background, but also It's not very obvious; then the music gets stronger, and the movie is integrated into the fashion show, until Jesse is sent into the triangular abstract "entrance", and finally her transformation is completed.
The "fashion show" scene is so shocking that it has almost become a science fiction film. NWR does not bother to create a so-called real catwalk show-models, audiences, media, applause, sudden fame and fortune brought the excitement and crisis; we It must be understood that all reality is no longer valid at this time, and the genius of NWR lies in the fact that he condenses all these complex reality factors into one person-Allie Fanning, and two sets of seemingly abstract figures-" During those few minutes of visual confrontation between "Neon Demon". There is no longer any need for the protagonist’s complicated psychological struggles, no more long-winded murmurs, we have seen all of these, and now everything is only movies, only images: we see blue turning red, Fanning’s face changed from innocence and Frightened, the self-confidence and even narcissism that reached the other shore, the look that looked like a demon. That's it, it's that simple, the flower of narcissism appeared in her body. And when the music stopped, the power of silence was so powerful that we had come to a new realm, and Jesse came to the other side of the curtain in her new clothes, as if she was another person.
In the third act, when the film settled in the final duel of several characters, I saw the truly free NWR for the first time. In the documentary "My Life Directed by Refn" shot by his wife, we saw the depressed and nervous NWR who was filming "Only God Can Forgive", but that is already history. Just like Jesse, he completely embraced his conceit (2011's "Desperate Driving" won the Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award, sending NWR to the pinnacle of popularity) and narcissism (the first full force in 2013 "Only God Can Forgive" The blooming stylized NWR has received bipolar evaluations), truly freely releasing its own formal aesthetics.
This time, in 2016, he put the abbreviation of his name directly under the title and subtitles of his movie as DW Griffith did. ). He creates a closed parallel time and space, turns the new model into an "alien invader", and hangs the plasma and moon made by the computer on the screen; he kills the protagonist, and lets his "spirit" be inherited and buried as a bomb; he chooses Let the music become the sound of the real main body of the film, even without any real sound effects, and at the same time the number of lines has become a few lines. This is not to say that NWR has made the film a silent film, but that it has actually created a new world. After formalism has reached its limit and crossed the event horizon, NWR has created a new realism, and we have reasons to go. Believe in his world.
View more about The Neon Demon reviews
