Feelings of watching "Landscape in the Fog"
"There is no grass and trees in the field, and the vegetables in the field have not yet grown, because the Lord God has not rained on the ground, and no one has tilled the land. But the mist rises from the ground and moistens the land." This is the expression at the beginning of the "Bible Genesis", The vast sea of fog is a world where people have not yet been created, which just fits the feeling brought by "Landscape in the Fog".
In this film, there seems to be a huge sense of separation between people, and the film also seems to use the mouth of Orestis to express this difference, "I'm just a purposeless snail, I don’t know where I’m going at all.” One type is like his elder sister Ulla and his younger brother Alexander, who knows his purpose, and the other type is a snail like a dead body. In addition to the siblings, there are two types of people in the movie, one is a mental patient and the other is an artist. They all have their own distances like the siblings. Psychopaths and artists are very similar in a sense. They both have a strong self-spirit world, but when they live in a lifeless world, they will seem out of place, just like the "seagull" in the patient's mouth cannot take off , just like the violinist of the hotel can only be swept out, just like the troupe can only be dissolved and sold the costumes in the end. In a cruel society, these poetic symbols are trapped in a cage, forced to face the desolation and despair in front of them. And the two children and the tree in the distance in the fog may be the only warm colors in the gray.
The rest are more like a symbol, living where they should be, and even they have lost their emotions. When the sister and brother were walking in the snow, a bride escaped from the marriage behind them, but was taken back by a man, and then a festive music played. But this marriage is happiness or disaster for the bride, no one cares. When a bride chooses to escape marriage, there must be complicated reasons and pain behind it, but no one will go into it. Because she was in the background, the audience couldn't see the expression on her face, maybe she was smiling at this time, but that was just the occasion she should be smiling. Alexander's wailing in the foreground is not only his pity for the dead horse in front of him, but also the director's use of his mouth to express the bride's true emotions. Some friends around me have confided to me a similar dilemma. For a certain period of time, they seem to be unable to make a correct emotional response. They only know that it is time to laugh at this time and cry at this time. . They become numb to everything around them and don't know what to do.
It cannot be said that the lives of these people in the film are aimless. They also have their own goals, but they are relatively more utilitarian and rational. In the scene in the restaurant, facing the performance of the violin player, Alexander gave him a respectful applause, but the restaurant owner ordered the player to evict the guests. For him, music is not art or enjoyment, but will disturb him to make money. noise. Their goals rely on external objects, and they have lost the ability to think independently. In the final analysis, with the progress of disenchantment and the announcement of "God is dead", people have long lost their inner beliefs. In the movie, a giant finger sculpture is picked up from the sea by a helicopter, but the index finger is broken and gone. In the gestures of daily life, the index finger is often used to indicate the direction and object, and the absence of the index finger is a metaphor for the loss of direction. The story told by the elder sister to the younger brother is exactly the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, but unlike the original text, Ullah omits the subject God, leaving only the action without a clear sender. The motivation of the siblings to find their father also echoes this wonderfully. In English, the lowercase father is the father, while the uppercase FATHER refers to God. They are looking for their own father, and they are looking for the origin of themselves. , the origin of belief. On their way to find their father, they were blocked by a huge bulldozer. The bulldozer is a product of modern industry. The film uses figurative pictures to show that the extreme industrialization process has hindered the healthy development of the world and paralyzed human beings. The cognition of the origin of the self . The troupe in the movie often refers to their "grandfather" who needs to treat his illness, but in a profit-oriented society, the theater does not belong to them, but only to dance performances that can be rented at high prices. The troupe is facing dissolution, and the "grandfather" who symbolizes the traditional spirit may die at any time.
Director Angelopoulos was born in Athens, Greece, and also experienced World War II. Greece used to be the birthplace of Western civilization, and it had an extremely glorious tradition in the past, but now it is no longer what it used to be. This extreme contrast between modernity and history is also reflected in the film. The motorcycle was sold reluctantly, and the troupe was forced to disband. These actions are full of nostalgia for the past and the pain and despair of having to face the reality. The world the director lives in brings him not only a huge sense of gap, but also violence and cruelty. During World War II, thousands of Greeks were slaughtered, then from the civil war of 1946-1949 to the dictatorship of Greece's military seizure of power from 1967 to 1974, humanity was lost in Greece. Philosopher Arendt put forward a concept "the evil of banality" when analyzing the causes of World War II, sharply pointing out that those inhumane acts in World War II were not based on their own evil motives, but because they gave up thinking and lost their thinking. Doing evil through ability is a brutal act without a brutal motive. The Nazis were not motivated by human selfishness, greed, vengeance, or sadistic desires, but simply saw the Jews as superfluous, and all those who did evil were ordered to do it, and they were not stupid, but bizarre and very real Lost the ability to think. This "thoughtless state" is the state of the rest of the masses in the movie.
When looking up information on the Internet, he learned that the director had his glasses broken by the suppressing army when he participated in a parade. He said that it was this incident that prompted him to stay in Greece. He may have wanted to witness how a violent country has become a free and democratic country, so at the end of the film, after the fog, younger brother Alexander sees a tree that symbolizes life and origin in the distance. In the long history of Greece, its highlight was during the Macedonian Empire under the rule of Alexander, and the Greek civilization shone with the expansion of its territory. It may not be a coincidence that the name of the younger brother and Alexander is the same. The younger brother is placed with infinite hope, and he insists on meaningless with his inner longing.
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