Bi Gan said that the hometown is too beautiful, and there was not enough filming of "Roadside Picnic", so there was this "Last Night on Earth". So with sufficient funds and "fully armed", we got to see an "enhanced" version of the Carey Blues. Undoubtedly, this is a miraculous work, as miraculous as the previous work, and it may really be recorded in the annals of film history, but while trying to "immerse" and appreciate it, I think there are still many things that people don't like.
Dennis Lim said in the pre-screening introduction that "Last Night on Earth" reminds you of many other movies and is very unique. I agree with this statement. From the inside to the outside, from the temperament to the theme, from the narrative to the image expression, the film has distinct characteristics, and it is also reminiscent of more than one work. But compared with "Roadside Picnic", the shape and pattern of the two are completely different. If it is said that the previous work is to let talent play under the condition of material scarcity, there are a lot of subtleties and "calculations" here, and the effect achieved is just the opposite. Unlike "Roadside Picnic", where inspiration "overflows" from the pale reality, "Earth" seems to first come out of a huge frame, and then fill it in - it feels like form precedes inspiration. Therefore, although the temperament is much more "fine", the movie is somewhat lacking in the natural charm of "Roadside Picnic".
Bi Gan's films have a distinct universe, which is why the characters in "Roadside Picnic", although unremarkable, exude a strange brilliance. The two doctors in the small clinic who looked like wandering spirits, their idle words were Chen Sheng's deceased wife, and the old doctor's old friend Lin's lover. Later, in Dangmai, we also saw Yang Yang reciting Carey's guide words carefully. Through the glimpses of these people, Bi Gan sketches a different time and space on the land of his hometown, which is understated but mellow in texture, rippling with the shimmer of primitiveness and life. I think the aesthetic success of "Roadside Picnic" lies in its balance between realism and freehand brushwork. The empathy when watching is not only derived from the author's lyrical and poetic treatment of the characters and scenes, but is truly based on these in the care of small individuals. From this point of view, "Last Night on Earth" is not as good as its predecessor.
Seeing him lift up the Zhulou, seeing him banqueting guests, seeing his building collapse. The parts of nature and poetry, confusion and nostalgia that I liked in "Roadside Picnic" were replaced by the overly free and personal intoxication in "The Last Night on Earth". The "Kerry Melancholy" in the previous work gave way to the director's personal aesthetics and his love for the art itself in this film. Emotions appear to be thick, but they are actually vague. We can't tell whether it is because the hometown is too beautiful or the movie is too beautiful, which made Bi Gan persistently take hometown as the motif to make this more ambitious work. Perhaps discussing personal style is not the best starting point for evaluating the author's films, but the ambiguity in the creative concept of "The Last Night on Earth" directly affects the look and feel of the film.
Huang Jue and Tang Wei in the movie must be just like us sitting in front of the screen. In the final analysis, they are strangers in the world of Bi Gan's aesthetics. On the surface, we were invited to enter the dream created by the director himself, but after walking around, we felt that the actual distance from him was getting farther and farther. Personally, I prefer Bi Gan, the person behind "Roadside Picnic", perhaps more cordial, more real, simpler and more beautiful. I also like this peer who is actually very cute in real life and has to go for a few drinks before every Q&A, and appreciate his boldness and courage. But in this new work with bigger layout and ambitions, the aura that should have belonged to him "from the point to the surface" and the gifted control of image expression are disappointingly gone.
Whether it is too hard or too meticulous, in general, the stacking of symbols and artistic conceptions in "The Last Night of Earth" is self-defeating, or it is insignificant. In the first paragraph, Wan Qiwen, played by Tang Wei, is as beautiful as the beginning of the lotus, but it is a bit strange to be juxtaposed with Kaili. Is it the overly glossy green dress, or her cold eyes and red lips? It is no exaggeration to say that Wan Qiwen's appeal in this film is far less than that of Yangyang, the girl who has never shown her face a few times in "Roadside Picnic".
There are too many meaningless scenes and settings. Take water, for example. This image, which symbolizes flow and impermanence, appears in almost every transition in the first paragraph, but it becomes "visual fatigue" when you look at it, and it becomes "a pool of stagnant water" in the end. And those freeze-frame shots that are impressive at first glance can't bear careful scrutiny and aftertaste. The white cat gnawed on the apple and wept, and the water glass slipped on the train, all of which felt more rigid than just the right inspiration.
If we don't talk about these corners and corners and look at the whole, Bi Gan's "dream aesthetics" is not well displayed, including the manipulation of memory, the relationship between images, the specific relationship between dreams and reality, and this Whether the dream is like the dream itself.
Time plays a vague role in this film. The twelve-year timeline spanned by the protagonist Luo Hongwu alone does not make us feel the inner strength or traces of this image. At first, I wanted to try to sort out the cause and effect in such a near-vacuum situation, but in the end, I became more and more confused, and finally gave up the investigation. This feeling of "powerlessness" made the whole "dream exploration" process staggered. The freedom, obscurity, and looming references to personal consciousness and history of the dream are seriously distorted by the clutter of clues and the obscurity of expression. The mutual reflection of the life experiences of several main characters does not reflect the level because of the time interval, but rather like two independent stories. In my opinion, the failure of intertextuality within the film is the main reason why its expressiveness is greatly reduced.
In other words, for a work like "The Last Night on Earth" that does not need to be understood with logic, the construction of imagery is only the beginning, and the meticulous weaving of its connections and explaining their roots in the real world is even more important. for the key. Otherwise, the film is a castle in the air, we have nothing to feel, but ruthless. Think about the works that amaze us (such as Mulholland Drive), and those that we may not necessarily understand but can appreciate (such as Tarkovsky's The Mirror), They've all done their best at this. The so-called casual and casual is a temperament in "Roadside Picnic", but in this film, it was further abused by the director in the plot arrangement. Carey's landscapes can stand up, but human dreams and memories can't.
I believe that many people feel the same way. The dream that Bi Gan created for us in "The Last Night on Earth" is like anything, but it doesn't look like a dream. Perhaps more accurately, it's not like the dreams we have in our existing memory that once appeared on the movie screen. Whether it's Tarkovsky's deepness, Buñuel's surreal, or Hong Sang-soo's repetition or Aaron Rainay's emotional expression, it seems that Bi Gan's dream is not so accurate, even if we only You can see the opposite of each of the above qualities. In the second paragraph, this is the longest night of the year, because the director's insistence on "one shot to the end" seems so unfree and unnatural. In the world of dreams, the accidental moments captured by this long lens are, in fact, extremely unintentional. Perhaps challenging the limits of technology itself is a very interesting thing, but it certainly affects the actual expression of the film.
Taking lighting as an example, the technically most difficult part of this long lens is not the specific movement, but "where does the light come from". This movie is a poem written for the night. How to show bright and moving colors in the dark night is the first thing the team needs to consider technically. The courageous "one shot to the end" is a limitation here, because every corner the lens sweeps needs the brightest possible light source. In addition to setting up some more indoor scenes, artificial enhancement of light (even through post-processing technical corrections) has become a must-do-just like another recent movie "The Favourite" that advertises the use of natural light. The defect brought about by this is the blurring of the cognition of reality and dreams. The too-fine layout of light not only obliterates the original and natural part of reality, but also makes the dream lose a lot of its own aura and floating. feel.
To sum up, from the strong cutting of the film into two, to the definition of the role of long shots, to the fragmented and illogical expression of the film, it reflects nothing more than Bi Gan's confidence and confidence in this work. Publicity. In this "Hands-on", the presentation of personal aesthetics is a bit too disregard for the overall consideration, at least compared with those directors who are also good at "transmitting feelings", it still seems immature. I think that if "Last Night on Earth" can put more effort into the poetic precipitation, the connection between the fragments, the explanation of the characters' plight, and the reality behind the dream, then it will undoubtedly become a real movie. Into the annals of history and outstanding works.
View more about Long Day's Journey Into Night reviews
