Othello, Reivew on Landscape in the Mist

There are a lot of obscure details in the film "Landscape in the Fog", and it is worth sorting out the plot from the beginning. At the beginning of the film, the siblings, as always, failed to catch the train to Germany. They stood motionless on the edge of the platform, watching the train slowly exit the platform. The siblings who returned home told the story of creationism. But there is no creator in this story. The story was interrupted by the mother returning home. In this movie, the mother only appears in the shadow of the high heels under the crack of the door. She pushed open the door, and a strong light appeared in the darkness of the siblings, as described in Genesis.

The next day, among the rubble, an old man stood on a dirt slope with his hands outstretched to fly, playing the role of a seagull. He said to his brother:

It's going to rain and my feathers will get wet.

You talk about going to Germany every day.

Before the two left, the old man shouted:

What does Germany look like?

What is the identity of this mysterious old man? The place he was in was surrounded by barbed wire. At the beginning, there are suspected ambulances and doctors in the distant view, and there are people in white clothes jogging on the playground. This should be a mental hospital, and the old man is a mental patient.

The siblings came to the train station for the second time and finally gathered the courage to board the train. The train drove into darkness. My sister began to write letters to her father, who was nowhere, indicating that she was going to find her father. Because they were found to have not bought a ticket, the sister and brother were kicked off at the next stop. The train enters the station. The siblings stand far away from the camera. Originally a child, now the figure seems even thinner. The police car took the siblings to the factory to find their uncle. Huge chimneys rose from the ground like monsters. The camera is still very far away from them, and together with the huge monster-like factory, the two of them are as big as rice grains.

Uncle was kind when he first appeared, but he changed his indifferent face when he didn't want to turn his eyes to the police. He reveals the fact that the brother and sister's father was a lie in Germany, but the sister refuses to believe it. Just shouting repeatedly:

Our dad is obviously in Germany! you are lying!

It's a road piece that knows the destination doesn't exist from the start. The siblings' journey to find their father is doomed to fail.

The siblings came to the second floor of the police station to wait. All the cops just repeated "it's snowing" and rushed out the door. The woman on the side is also repeating a sentence of unknown meaning like a repeater

The rope around his neck fell off.

The girl was overwhelmed, and took her brother out of the police station. Everyone stood still and looked up at the sky, and snowflakes fell one after another. Time seemed to stop. The siblings went to the train station and took a ride to the next station.

The narration here reads:

We are like leaves floating in the air along the way. The world is so strange!

The content of the letter to my father at this time was quite optimistic. On the first leg of their journey, they did not yet understand what the world meant.

At the second stop, the two came to the town at night after the snow. A group of people are having a wedding ceremony. The bride rushed out of the door crying, the music and the noise suddenly stopped, the man chased her out and hugged her from behind, and took her back to the ceremony scene. At this time, a car pulled a dying white horse and passed by, cheerful music Go on, the ceremony goes on. The rope fell off, and the white horse lay on the ground, struggling and swaying in pain. The younger brother cried bitterly. The people behind the ceremony danced and came out. In the same shot, a strange wedding ceremony is being held on the side, the bride in white gauze flees and is taken away, and a dirty white horse dies on the side.

After dawn, the sister and brother were walking along the road in the mountains. They saw a young man repairing a scrapped passenger car and met Orestes, who was as slender and handsome as a Greek sculpture. The younger brother asked him curiously:

"what do you do?"

"I'm in charge of making people laugh out loud, or burst into tears. You know how hard that is?"

"What are you playing?"

"My role."

The theater crew appeared. A group of gentlemen and ladies in top hats, woolen coats, leather shoes, and long-handled umbrellas appeared as if they lived in the early 20th century. It has the feeling of a stage play, as if a group of people drilled out from behind the curtain. They said to Orestes:

We can't get to the theater, let's find a way.

Grandpa will die if we can't find the theater.

Times are different. All people and things have changed and are gradually destroyed over time. It's the same all over Greece...the same drama is always on.

The younger brother was alone in an empty street looking for a restaurant. The boss asked him to clean all the tables before giving him food. A gentleman playing the violin came in and played. The younger brother sat in the chair silently and listened, applauding earnestly after listening. And the boss only cares about expelling him.

The boy wandered the streets after getting food. The camera is zoomed out so far that the entire square can be seen. A group of soldiers passed by and lined up neatly to lower their flags. The second full-scale freeze-frame shot. Only the younger brother moved. After the flag was lowered, the boy shouted the seagulls and rushed towards the camera, but was stopped by his sister and Orestes halfway, and said, "The seagulls flew away."

After the three were reunited, Orestes said to his sister:

I know you're in a hurry, don't you? It may seem that you have no purpose, but in fact you have a place to go. Do you know where you're going? I'm nothing more than a purposeless snail that doesn't know where I'm going. I thought I knew it before. Where am I going?

After all, I picked up the film negatives on the side of the road. The first close-up of the entire film is the film negative. Orestes asked the crowd if they saw a tree in the fog. Everyone didn't see it.

The three come to the beach, an extremely long shot. This shot is perfect. Everyone appeared in order, each immersed in their own play, messy but not chaotic. Several time points appeared in a short period of time:

"In August 1922, the Turks took the city of Afyonkarahisar."

"In 1944, the British marched into Athens. The League of Nations formed the First Government. There was a lot of ardent rally movement. Because everyone believed in the power of the rally. Believed in the Confederacy, believed in the rally. And the British went to liberate the Nazi Allies. , and helped them get back together. We felt betrayed."

"I was arrested in late 1947."

"The times are so bad."

Everyone is immersed in the period of history they represent. Walking aimlessly, reciting his lines.

In the end, everyone lost the theater and walked towards the sea on the beach. Where are these people stuck in the past going?

The scene of the movie poster appeared in the torrential rain. The boy squatted down when he said he could no longer walk, and the girl reluctantly stopped the car on the side of the road. The truck that changed the girl's life appeared. The driver was bald, with a wretched temperament, and molested the waiter in the restaurant. In the end, he parked the car in the wasteland beside the road, circled from the left side of the car to the right side, grabbed the girl, and took the skinny girl into the carriage like a white feather chicken and snatched her virginity. I stopped here when I first saw this movie four years ago and couldn't bear to keep watching. On the road on the left side of the screen, a car stopped and another car came. After a brief conversation, the drivers of the two cars went on the road together. The music coming from the car is every night of last drive played at the gay bar at the end of the film. The younger brother called the girl's name from outside the car: "Ula! Ula!" The driver staggered out of the car, and the hem of his shirt came out most of the time. After a long time, the girl slowly crawled out of the darkness of the curtain. The first is her thin calves. The white socks faded to the ankles, revealing the dusty skin on the bottom of the car. Then came the messy hair and the numbness all over the face. Suddenly, a large amount of blood flowed out from under the skirt, covering the girl's hands. The girl's trembling fingers left a dark red mark on the carriage. Close-up again. Then came the backs of the siblings leaving the truck in the rain. The camera cuts to the train station. A white-feathered chicken broke into the waiting room. A bald man dressed very much like the truck driver approached it cautiously and took the chicken away. As the truck driver approached the girl cautiously from the other side of the car, another sprint grabbed the fleeing girl. It is the same as the action of the bride escaping and being taken away by the man in black at the beginning. The three actions are the same. The girl is like the white-feathered chicken, breaking into the unfamiliar territory, and she can only capture those who have bad intentions.

Since then, the girl's letter is no longer full of confidence. The siblings were hit hard. The younger brother thinks the trip is pointless and wants to go home, the older sister still stubbornly wants to go to Germany.

The noise in the waiting room suddenly disappeared, and the girl's voice in the narration read a letter to her father:

We look at the same world...the lights...the night...and you...

At this moment, four workers in yellow jumpsuits and holding shovels floated across the screen. They appear in both freeze frames. They appear to be shoveling snow in the first freeze frame. The second freeze frame seems to be sweeping the floor again. This is the third freeze frame, they stare at the girl motionless, look in the direction of the camera, and disappear into the camera again.

In order to avoid the police's ticket checking, the sister and brother got off the train again. Eight huge chimneys appear in the background of the picture. They ran towards a huge and terrifying machine. The huge gears turned and pointed at the siblings, so they turned back. At this construction site they reunite with Orestes. Here the director gave many shots of freight trains, coal trucks, and tractors. Even after Orestes drove the siblings away on a motorcycle, there were still dump trucks one after another. The trio rode motorcycles through the gap between the two cars quickly. They are the outliers, the fringes of this industrialized society, who are out of tune with their surroundings.

The three returned to the beach where the troupe was rehearsing. Had a great time. The girl has a strange feeling for Orestes. The boy wanted to teach her to dance, and the two ended up standing awkwardly facing each other, leaving a gap that was neither wide nor narrow. The girl fled, squatting on the beach, letting the waves wash.

After going to the train station to announce their farewell at night, the three came to the port. The troupe lined up the costumes in the bus. At the end are the actors of the troupe. They are no different from the costumes that are hung up for sale. They are all outdated and need to be discarded. After the two guests came to see it, they left in a hurry regardless of their stay. No one wants to sell their costumes, and no one wants to listen to their plays. Orestes was pissed and thought the costumes shouldn't be sold. He asked where Grandpa was. An actress replied, "He's in bad shape right now." Echoing the previous statement, "If we can't find the theater, grandpa will die." Before leaving the troupe, Orestes said "I don't like funerals. Goodbye!" Costumes And actors are already things that can be buried.

The girl woke up from the hotel in the middle of the night. In previous movies we only saw the siblings sleeping on the train, never in a proper bed. She finally slept once, but the girl didn't sleep well. She crept into Orestes' room, and the door was pitch black. Turn on the lights and see that no one is there. I wondered what the girl wanted to do. The last time she was completely engulfed in darkness was in the trunk of a truck.

Orestes didn't sleep, staring at the giant hand statue floating in the water by the sea. A military helicopter approached. Another freeze frame. There was another man in a yellow jumpsuit. This time they rode on bicycles, frozen on the side of the road. The military hung the giant hand statue away. The statues swirled in the air. The sight is very strange. Orestes muttered to himself after witnessing the spectacle:

If I shout now, who will hear it? Legion of Angels?

Then Orestes looked for a motorcycle buyer and led the siblings to the bar. The girl found out that the boy she liked turned out to be gay, and was shocked, so she hurriedly left the bar with her younger brother. Orestes catches up on his motorcycle and repeats "I don't want us to be separated like this", but the girl still doesn't appreciate it and just moves forward with determination. Eventually the girl broke down and cried bitterly in his arms. She didn't cry when she was stripped of her virginity by a truck driver, she didn't cry when she was driven off the train and displaced. Only at this time her tense nerves loosened. Orestes held her tenderly and told her slowly:

When your heart keeps beating, you think you're going to break it, but that's it, the first time...

On the empty road, the two of them stood face to face with their heads bowed again like they were on the beach, leaving an awkward gap in the middle, and the younger brother watched them. This time the girl really said goodbye to him.

At the train station, a girl who had no money to buy a ticket asked a soldier by the side if she could give her some money. The soldiers were astonished because of the girl's age. He couldn't believe a girl his age would suggest such a deal to him. After struggling a few times, he left the money and fled.

After ninety-nine-eighty-one hardships, the siblings finally came to the German border. There is only one iron tower in the dark picture. As the saying goes, it was dark under the lights, so the two hid under the tower, avoided the patrolling soldiers, and boarded a small boat. The boat sailed into the boundless darkness, and just as the two were swallowed by the darkness, lights illuminated their boat, followed by a gunshot.

In a thick fog, the figure of his younger brother Alexander appeared. He began to tell the story of Genesis again. With a wave of his hand, the fog cleared and the trees Orestes spoke of appeared on the hillside. The siblings walked towards the tree, ending the arduous journey.

The film is almost entirely composed of fixed camera positions and long takes. The speed of lens push and pull is also extremely slow. The plot is obscure and symbolic. The director's attitude towards industrial society is already one of the themes that is very straightforwardly displayed in the film. A few interesting details, or mysteries. One is the person in the yellow jumpsuit and the meaning of the freeze frame. I just read it, I think it refers to alienated people, replaceable, everyone looks the same, and people who can't tell the difference are common in industrial society. The base friend who recommended this film to me thought it was the externalization of the director's consciousness. The freeze frame is also a kind of attention to the siblings. But that's just attention, not help. Freezing the picture is like a privilege given to siblings, only these two can pass. The second mystery is the huge hand, as if it had fallen from a giant Greek god. In that scene, Orestes said, "Who would hear me if I shouted now? Legion of Angels?" Almost directly in cue Greek mythology Legion. In Homer's epic poems, mortals devoutly pray that the gods will hear them. I think the characters in the play are like mortals in Homer's epics, watched by the gods, the audience, from Mount Olympus. In addition, the plot of this film is also like an Odyssey, telling about a kind of journey. Jiyou believes that it is the concept of dimension, which is divided into upper and lower layers. People with low dimensions are watched by people with high dimensions. The third mystery is the ending. The boy who went through it all became the creator. The second half of him, who would cry sadly when he saw the death of the white horse, became a scrutinizer. Calmly watching the ups and downs of my sister's fate.