General comment: The film uses a realistic language to create a poetic world with mottled humanities and philosophical thoughts. With symbolic brushwork, it shows the devastated Greece in the 20th century, its withered, decayed and out-of-control social picture and national destiny. The unique means of audio-visual infection is moving and thought-provoking, and finally provides a reasonable and idealized emotional space through the foreshadowing and rendering of the whole film.
Formal style analysis:
The Dialectics of Realism and Stylization
Realism lies in the use of medium and long shots to structure the whole film, long shots are used in combination with mise-en-scene and deep focus photography to highlight various details of the real background, editing is restrained, and short long shots are used to structure scenes, and only necessary visual switches and abbreviations are used. Used when there is extra time in the scene, the latter is often sharp.
In the film, the big vision is used many times to miniaturize the characters into giants or small existences in front of the landscape, strengthening the contrast of power or the nature of life, pouring out a sad and depressing atmosphere, and also implying the coldness between human feelings. When presenting the composition of a large perspective, it often brings out the contrast between the loneliness and inanimate features of the environment and the few living elements in the picture. At this time, the night also plays the role of cold, lifeless, mysterious and terrifying. Quality oppressors.
Here through color (suppressed heavy tones and warm and vibrant tones), light effects (large areas of shadow, dull night and little lights and faint reflections on the characters), vitality or temperature (inanimate streets, steel, sand, sand, The joint creation of the fog and the brothers and sisters, horses, etc. with the warmth of life, within the frame of the big vision, presents a society in which the vitality has been destroyed excessively, and the vitality and hope are gradually lost in the dark night or the gloomy fog. style painting.
For example, the weak and powerless brothers and sisters in front of the giant machinery in the mine, the hardships and misery of the highway in the rain are all adopting a big perspective to absorb excessive background information, showing the living spirituality in the face of the chaotic social structure. Violent, overwhelming crushing assimilation The fragility and grief displayed below.
The use of long takes as a technique brings emotional engagement and stimulates active thinking in the audience with an attitude and character that reinforces the action process. As a means of carrying the story, the information and visual elements of the surrounding environment are introduced to show the social climate in which the character lives and is influenced by it, and strengthens the relationship between the character and the environment.
When the younger brother got off the minibus and saw Lone Ranger's motorcycle for the first time, the shadowy figure in the background was slowly moving towards the foreground, and this process lasted for dozens of seconds. Their costumes were low-key, and they were silent and didn't talk to each other, obviously showing an atmosphere of loneliness and sentimentality. Before they were introduced to us as troupe actors by The Lone Ranger, everything showed signs of being weird and gloomy, prompting the passage of time. The audience thinks, and even has some kind of religious mystery or social symptom.
The audio-visual is more stylized, using high-contrast and low-saturation tones to make the whole picture appear dull, dull and inactive. Combined with the depressing atmosphere of the story itself and the relatively quiet and restrained depiction techniques, it infects the audience and produces depression. And sentimental mood, and constantly rendering this tone for two hours, can almost assimilate the psychological state of most audiences (except those who fall asleep).
In addition to the basic tone, the high contrast emphasizes the contrasting nature we have interpreted above, especially when the sister and brother are walking on the street leading to the railway station, there is a large volume of light around the street lamp, and when they successfully board the train for the first time , in the picture of the sister and brother hugging each other, the sister's head and arms clearly show the abnormal color quality of the highlights in the extremely dark lighting, which shows that the unusual contrast attribute of the light used strengthens the firmness in their hearts. immovable goal.
In terms of sound, the whole film is rendered with tactful and pharynx orchestral music, with philosophical, reflective, poetic and imaginative dialogues in some moments, which strengthens the aesthetic effect of detachment in hearing, vivid and full of charm, throughout the sound. A charming space for creating artistic conception in the painting scene. At the same time, it refers to the vivid and vivid life situations and attitudes of the characters (similar to the characters of melodrama).
For example, in a symbolic and imaginative moment, a broken sculptural giant hand that was swept ashore from the seabed by the waves was lifted by a sudden helicopter, but the process of getting on and off the helicopter and the process of hooking the giant hand on the hook was not shown. , Combined with the historical facts of a large number of ancient Greek sculptures salvaged by the Renaissance, this undoubtedly directly points to the current situation of the Greek cultural traditions being obscured by the thick fog of catastrophe, making this former center of civilization abject and hopeless. When the giant hand flew higher and farther with the helicopter, the giant hand seemed to be endowed with divinity, and was pulled away like the hand of God, even disgusted. The Lone Ranger at this time said "Who else cares about us" and half-jokingly "Does the Legion of Angels?". This self-deprecating ability in despair is already the most optimistic local youth mentality that we can see with the naked eye, but in the whole environment, this sentence also floats away, humble and frivolous.
Narrative Motif Analysis:
Due to the convenience of long shots, large perspectives and symbolic meanings, the time and space are kept as complete as possible, and marginal information is introduced into the main line narrative in detail, which greatly broadens the reference set of the film. meaning. And this is done by analyzing the motif.
The film's motif is an unfinished story about finding hope in the dark toward the light. At the beginning, the elder sister always told the younger brother, but was interrupted by the mother who never showed up. The second half of the younger brother tried to tell the elder sister, but couldn't. We will expand on the metaphor of characters in the follow-up, and here we will talk about the motif.
This motif, on the one hand, brings out the way the whole narrative unfolds: the chase, the search, the way, and the goal is the end of the story told by the sister, a biological father who has never been heard or seen, a model The vague destination is a faint light in the darkness, even a tree.
It can be said that the goal is not clear, but the action to the goal has never stopped. And these objects are related to life and emotion. The process of chasing is therefore poetic, that is, it is almost impossible to reach it, but the action itself interprets emotion and vitality, expresses the attitude of the characters and the humanistic concern of the filmmaker for the fate of the nation.
On the other hand, just as it became clear in the later period that the goal might not be the father who has long since left or even never met, but a tree, the motif has three branches, namely history, society, and human nature.
The historical quagmire is closely related to the wars of the twentieth century. The Turkish-Greek War in Turkey, the First World War and the Second World War have made this land a lot of war, and people's livelihood is difficult, which can be seen in all aspects of the background.
The economy is stagnant and inactive, and people lack the sense of trust and sharing. The old people are almost absent, and the middle-aged people, represented by the troupe and the people in yellow, show a depressing scene. Young people, even in bars or motorbike-ridden clearings, are talking about deals and rarely feeling real. The two protagonists have lost all the energy of life
Political and social imbalances, whether it is top-down politics or bottom-up social organization and social management, are significantly absent. There is no legal guarantee in society, and there is a lack of moral credibility. Fraud and violence are always present. It is inevitable to be thwarted if it is carried out alone, and therefore, the optimistic lone ranger has nothing in the end.
Culture and art are rejected and excluded. The violinist, dance, and drama in the film have all become objects of rejection. In a depressed era, people have no time to take care of themselves and can't be distracted to enjoy aesthetics.
Humanity is weak, family morality, trust emotion
The struggle of life and the only remaining struggle. The group portrait of the troupe is very representative. In the scene of selling the costumes, they are shot in a row, occupying a very small space in the depths of the big vision, the costumes are blown up by the wind, like people struggling to survive, that is, Starting from the symbolic moment of selling costumes, everyone in the troupe shielded the life/soul of their inner arrogance and struggle.
The moment when the lone ranger sells the car also has a similar effect, as well as the violinist who is performing, all of which are revealing the only remaining power of the emotional nature of the life that is obscured by the tragic reality, but the reality of this power is extremely weak, and it is the direction of power that cannot be changed. In the process of the disappearing trend, the vitality is bound to wither.
The combination of the spreading method attracts attention, and the follow-up process is expected, while the motif of the Trinity has a highly humanistic thinking depth, which makes the content endless.
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