For a nervous person like me, the most overlooked details of a movie are often at the beginning of the movie. Especially those movies that are expressed through metaphors that echo before and after but are not rigorously structured—for example, the movie "Dead Man" by Jamusch. After reading some online film reviews, I looked back and watched it a second time, only to notice that what I thought was a long title was hidden mystery-on the Trans-American Railway train, the scenery outside the window began to turn into a forest, with abandoned broken wagons, and then The towering Rocky Mountains, the desolate Gobi Basin, and then the green hills. The first passengers on the train were urbanites who were elegant and well-dressed; then, they changed into ordinary villagers, and began to look at the young man wearing a tailor-made three-piece plaid with a strange look-long hair , Gold-rimmed glasses, insecure in the restraint, and seemingly wearing lipstick; in the end, the whole room is full of red-faced, rough-looking gypsy guys, still holding guns in their hands, waiting anytime since childhood. Waking up from sleep to beat a bison. The gunshots of a bison, and then the well-known Neil Young electric guitar "dead man solo", jumped out a thunderous name-Johnny Depp, followed by the title "dead man" made of white bones ——The gunshot seems to be a hint to the title. For "dead man", this topic. The Chinese translations are different. Some people call "Dead Man" directly. Perhaps because these two syllables are not pronounced hard enough, they are not common; there is the translation of "Do you see the color of death?" in the movie subtitles—I think the meaning is beyond It is not suitable for the content of the movie; there is "death prisoner's walk", which has enough syllables, which is in line with the Chinese habit of translating movie titles. However, the word "prisoner" also exceeds the content of the movie, and the word "walking" is easy to be missed. The film’s people misunderstood the meaning of "leisure", probably the translator confused it with another movie "Dead Man Walking"; the one I liked the most was "Leaving the Soul", which means that the meaning is in place. At least it is in line with my own feelings about movies. Secondly, there is another movie called "Stranger Than Paradise" in Jiamuxu, which seems to have a contrasting taste. In the beginning, the soot-faced train fireman (there is actually a wood-burning train!) said to William Blake: "When you are on the train, does looking out the window remind you of the feeling of being on a boat? That night, you are lying on the bed and looking at the sky, the water Flowing by your side, just like the scenery, you will wonder: Why are these scenery moving, but the boat is still?" This clearly implies that Black, whose life is still hanging in the end, was put into a canoe to follow the flow. I have only watched two of Jiamuxu's films, and also used a lot of before and after. In "Mystery Train", the same scene appears in three stories: the suburban wall, the hotel, the elevated train outside the hotel window, the young black waiter in the hotel wearing sunglasses, gunshots, matches, and Elvis, these scenes The three stories of "Mystery Train" run through in time and plot. However, in "Leaving Soul", the application of this technique seems to be for metaphorical purposes only. For example, the analogy between the train and the ship just mentioned. William Blake came alive by train and went with a canoe when he died. It was hinted at the beginning; William Blake and the deer who were shot dead lie together in the same posture. , Seems to imply that the protagonist is doomed to escape. There are fragments of such anaphora in the film, and it can even be said that the main content of the film is completed by the metaphor of this anaphora. There are various ways to interpret the details of metaphors. For example, in my understanding: Tiel, the supporting actress played by Mili Avital, was pushed down in the mud outside the door by a drunkard in the bar. There seems to be a hint that something beautiful has been trampled on in this dirty town. A film critic said: The twin policemen killed by William Blake had exactly the same profile, with a branch under the head forming a ray of light, while the other did not. This just confirms William Blake’s verse: Some are Born to sweet delight, Night. This person is really staring! Similarly, the phrase "Do you have tobacco?" that Nobody repeatedly asked, there are different opinions. Some say that the metaphor of tobacco is vitality, and some say that it is a spiritual thing that makes people face emptiness. Some film critics noticed that Nobody took William Blake's glasses and said, "You can see more clearly without them." Blake, who removed the glasses with Indian face tattoos, was very energetic, changed his cowardly performance before, and shot two consecutively. Stupid policeman. There are similar metaphors in terms of the clues that constitute the whole film. For example: The film is full of descriptions of the invasion of Indian territories by whites from beginning to end, including burned Indian villages, discrimination against Nobody by white priests, and Nobody's description of his own miserable life experience-being trafficked to Europe since childhood and fleeing The Hui tribe was rejected by the tribe because of Western education. (Nobody's description of his life experience and the origin of his name reminds me of Said's memoir "Incompatible".) This clue also runs through the mockery of white people: white people are "stupid", selfish, chaotic, bloody, and sabotaged. , Even their priests are so polite; Indians love literature, art, romance, and peace of life. This clue itself can be used as a metaphor to be interpreted. Even the detail of Teal being pushed down in the mud by the drunk of the bar just mentioned can be imagined as part of this big metaphor. The explanation of metaphor itself is not important because it is important to discover the metaphor, and the connotation of metaphor may not be clearly expressed by the interpretation itself. Susan Sontag expressed a similar meaning in the article "Against Interpretation." What I want to say is: for a good allegory text, the metaphor itself can be produced by the creator or by the reader. The "Bible" is such a text. An important feature of the literary tradition initiated by Kafka is that from the beginning of creation, it is to provide readers with texts that are objects of imagination rather than comprehension. What they provide is not a finished work, but a jigsaw puzzle; not a world, but an entrance to a world. "Leaving Soul" should also be a product of this tradition. When commenting on the film, Jia Muxu himself said: "The film seems to be exploring an illusion, an illusion that drifts on the edge.... The human world is a world full of imagination and illusion, and my works are as full of imagination as this world. And illusions.” Most of its film reviews are the discovery and speculation of various metaphors. The creator has lost control of the text; the author and the reader are playing hide-and-seek games-neither want the seeker to find out, nor do they want him to be too far away from him. Rely on Considering the content of the metaphor and the space available for imagination, we must also care about the author's control of the story. In metaphoric works, the most taboo is that the author himself explains the content, or repeatedly emphasizes a meaning that has been sufficiently expressed. Just think about how nondescript the commentaries added by the posters at the end of each piece of "Aesop's Fables" are; the connotation of "We" is much deeper than Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", but it is always famous in terms of fame. After condescending, I personally felt that the reason was that Zamyakin wrote too many clever explanations in the book. There are similar failures in "The Alien". For example, one of the twin police officers killed by William Blake has his head down in the charcoal fire, looking like a statue of a god. This shot stayed long enough, I think It is enough to make people think of this aspect; if Jamush is worried that the audience is not aware of this symbol, the big deal is to repeat it when the two killers pass by, there is no need to use the killer's mouth to say it. This kind of question also appears in "Mystery Train"-the same gunshot appears in two scenes, but the characters in both scenes ask: "Gunshot?" At least one sentence is redundant. The audience has already seen that the movie has to emphasize it again. This feeling is like turning up something in the stomach and swallowing it back. October 2006
View more about Dead Man reviews
