After watching "The Lover Under the Olive Tree", this together with Abbas's "Where Is My Friend's Home" and "Life and Flow" collectively called the country trilogy, the intuitive feeling of these three films is to The film's exploration of the boundaries between reality and fiction is very strong.
"Where Is My Friend's Home" builds a very real story with a movie, and in "Life and Flow", a director appears in the film, looking for the actors in "Where", so that "Life and Flow" "Everything seems extraordinarily real, but in "The Lover Under the Olive Tree", we find that the authenticity in "Life and Flow" is completely broken, all of which are arranged and shaped by the director. Among them, the impressive newlyweds in "Life and Flow" are completely arranged, and behind the acting, these two actors have innumerable entanglements in the story of "The Lover under the Olive Tree". Watching the actor acting as the director direct the play in "Life and Flow", in such a play-in-play, we deeply understand that it is actually Abbas, who never appeared, who controls everything.
The boundary between the real and the fictional is what Abbas explores, and experiencing the process seems to be what Abbas wants to say. At the end, a long shot looks at the protagonist from a distance, allowing us to experience real time with the characters and feel their mood. However, in the end, Abbas ended everything with a blank, as if to tell us that this is a fictional story, this blank is forever, and there will be no results, go and see your own real life.
The trilogy is undoubtedly great, the miracle of film history, and it is really emotional to watch it together.
In addition to the above, Abbas' narration through the off-screen space in the film is also very powerful. The traditional method of shooting is generally narrated within the screen, while Abbas will use the space outside the painting to present.
In the filming process near the end, a lot of off-screen space was used.
For example, during the shooting interval, when the male protagonist expresses his love for the female protagonist, he will use the sound to present the surrounding staff in the off-screen space, which greatly enhances the authenticity of the scene environment.
Also, during the filming process, the heroine said the wrong lines and was unwilling to say the title of "Mr.". When the "director" communicated with the heroine, the two often did not appear in the painting, and the male protagonist was often shot in the painting. The heroine is basically in the space outside the painting.
Abbas makes full use of the space outside the painting, explores the space outside the painting, and leaves it blank for the audience, so that the audience can understand that in addition to the frame, there are other spaces outside the painting that can be expanded and utilized. Outside the painting, the relationship between the male and female protagonists is also presented, which leaves an insurmountable gap between the two in terms of audio and visual.
This exploration of the space inside and outside the painting is also shown in Abbas's later films.
Abbas is great, and he never stops in his exploration of film art.
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