The film of the same name as Bolaño's novel, I marked "want to see" for over a year, deliberately avoiding all spoilers, analysis and reporting. In the past 12 hours, I first watched the movie, went home to sleep, woke up and went out to watch the second time.
Let’s first solve the so-called “unintelligible” problem. As far as the plot is concerned, the film can be divided into three parts: The first part begins when the male protagonist wakes up topless, and a woman asks him: Do you know that you have been talking in your sleep? This is the reality part, including his phone call at the night market, meeting with his stepmother, visiting prison in Guiyang, etc., all of which are true. Any scenes that appear during the day are the reality part.
The second part is all the scenes where Tang Wei in green clothes appears, which is the part of the hero's memories of the past. Of course, you can also regard it as his dream. Because at the very beginning of the title, he had a monologue: As long as I saw her, I knew that I was in a dream. This monologue is accompanied by a close-up of Tang Wei's hand holding the microphone and singing.
The third part is the long shot of nearly an hour, Tang Wei is wearing red clothes. This part is a dream that the hero had after falling asleep at the cinema (just like the hero in "Roadside Picnic", after the end of the long shot, there is a monologue prompt "It's like a dream"). All the inexplicable things in the long shot are explained later.
Before long takes, the whole film was actually very simple, the first part and the second part crossed over. In a vertical timeline, the story should be:
When the male protagonist was very young, his mother left her husband and son because life was too hard (Zhang Aijia has a line prompt in the long shot).
When the male protagonist grows up, he watches casinos in the field. He has a friend in Carey named White Cat. Underworld boss Zuo Hongyuan borrowed a gun from Bai Mao's father and killed someone for Tang Wei. Tang Wei, who is suspected of working in places like KTV, became Zuo Hongyuan's lover.
The white cat, who is used to messing around in the rivers and lakes and owes gambling debts, quietly fell in love with Tang Wei, and tried to "use a gun to extort a sum of money" (the actor's lines). As a result, he was killed by Zuo Hongyuan.
The scene where the white cat appeared eating an apple for a few minutes was the so-called "even eating the apple core when it was extremely sad". The reason why he was so sad was that Tang Wei, who was extremely afraid of Zuo Hongyuan, co-operated with setting up a situation and betrayed the white cat. The hint of this was because in the scene of eating apples, Tang Wei stood behind him and then turned to leave.
After a while, the hero returns to Carey and learns that his friend White Cat has been killed, and when he cleans up a carload of rotten apples, he finds a gun inside. This also shows that the white cat was killed in the scene with the apple.
Next, the hero's monologue is: "Then Zuo Hongyuan disappeared from the world, and I tracked his lover." This is the second part, when the hero and Tang Wei were in the same frame for the first time, he grabbed Tang Wei's hair. , the scene of fiercely lighting her a cigarette. Tang Wei's line was: "I really don't know where he is, and the police are looking for him recently."
The actor's monologue: "I thought the story was over here, but I didn't expect it to just begin." Yes, he thought about Tang Wei and drove a truck with Tang Wei in the long culvert, chatting, and Tang Wei said he wanted to eat wild grapefruit .
On the other hand, in the real part of the story, because of the death of his father, the hero returns to Carey to share the inheritance with his stepmother, the stepmother gets the restaurant, and the hero gets a truck.
The second time the male protagonist and Tang Wei are in the same frame is kissing. Every time the two are in the same frame, the second part of the story moves forward, such as "we cheat and watch movies" mentioned in the hero's monologue. In this scene, Tang Wei was eating wild grapefruit while crying. In the next paragraph, Tang Wei lied to him that he was pregnant and felt like a boy who could be an athlete when he grew up. The hero then said, I can teach him to play table tennis.
However, Tang Wei said that Zuo Hongyuan was going to return to Carey, and I was very scared. The actor replied, I have a friend who runs a casino in Myanmar, let's pack up and go overnight. In this section, a cup slowly slipped from the table, and the sound of the train outside the window was full of urgency, which once again proved that Tang Wei in green clothes is the memory of the hero.
In the next paragraph, everything failed, Zuo Hongyuan sang K arrogantly, the male lead was caught and hung up, Tang Wei was helpless.
At this point, the thread of the movie has returned to the real part (of course, part of it has been interspersed before), and the male protagonist begins to find Tai Zhaomei through a note, go to Guiyang to visit the prison, take a car to Panghai Town, and find Chen Huixian, the purpose is to find Wan Qiwen played by Tang Wei.
So, this movie is a story of finding a lover.
The male protagonist searched and searched all the way to find the performance venue that was about to be demolished before the start of the long shot, like the ruins of the auditorium. A prostitute told him that Wan Qiwen (Tang Wei) would appear in three hours. You can go to the cinema next door to watch a movie and wait for her. The male protagonist went to see a movie, put on his glasses, fell asleep with his head tilted, and began to dream.
So, the audience watching "The Last Night on Earth" also put on 3D glasses here, and the long shot began:
The male protagonist holds an oil lamp and walks through a long tunnel. After a little thought, we know that this imagery is one of the common forms of dreams, including the long-shot midsection of the hero and Tang Wei flying, as well. Who hasn't dreamed of flying?
The male protagonist got lost in the cave, met the little boy, and said to him, I can't get out tonight, and I may never see her again. As a reflection of real life, this proves that the male protagonist is actually quite desperate to pursue this matter, which will be discussed later.
In fact, in this long-lens dream, there are reflections of the hero's real life everywhere:
The little boy in blue sportswear and playing table tennis appeared because when Tang Wei said he was pregnant, the actor said that he wanted to teach the child to play table tennis;
On the floor of the simple billiard hall, the remote-controlled toy pickup truck is because the hero's father's inheritance is a truck;
Zhang Aijia, who was waving a torch, dyed his hair red because in the reality part, Zhang Aijia asked the hero what color he wanted to have his hair permed, and the hero replied that if it was my mother, it would be red. In fact, in the long shot, the scene in which Zhang Aijia and the man quarreled across the door was a reenactment of the scene where the mother eloped with another man when the hero was young.
In the long shot, the name of the song and dance troupe is "Wild Grapefruit", which of course echoes Tang Wei's Wild Grapefruit. Even the must-order songs in nightclubs such as "Flower Universe" in the performance are very in line with Tang Wei's previous work attributes.
Of course, from the perspective of film structure, the mapping of this kind of dream to reality is an echo and a tight structure. Every thread is drawn together, and the whole film fits together like gears.
Even within the long shot, this rigor exists: the boy's motorcycle, carrying the hero, stops because "the road ahead is blocked." We saw that the traffic jam was actually the man who eloped with the red-haired Zhang Aijia and his car.
Zhang Aijia questioned the elopement man, how long are you going to hide from me? The male protagonist kept asking Zhang Aijia (mother's reflection): Are you really leaving? Are you really leaving?
Zhang Aijia really wanted to leave, so the male protagonist cried, turned around and left, eating apples while walking (he was extremely sad in his dream).
At this point in the long shot, the male protagonist has found Tang Wei (Wan Qiwen) who he was thinking about in his dream, but she is called Kaizhen in the dream and wears red clothes.
The two play billiards, spin ping-pong bats, fly together, separate and meet again, exchange gifts that symbolize ephemeral and eternity (fireworks and watches), light fireworks, and walk to that house.
The male protagonist asked himself and answered: "Do people know that they are dreaming? I suddenly regret it, this night is too short."
As we often do at night and in the early morning, the male protagonist realizes that he is dreaming, so he asks himself this way. Therefore, when the house really spins and the male protagonist and Wan Qiwen kiss, the male protagonist is very desperate, a hopeless despair. Whether it is for Tang Wei or his mother who leaves without saying goodbye, he wants to live forever, but life and life itself are doomed. Of course, love itself is another form of despair. After all, the little joy in life is still something you and I cannot give up.
At the end of the movie, the long shot returns to the empty backstage, where the safety fireworks are still rustling off. This is even more desperate. Kind of like the forever spinning top in Inception.
Speaking of movies, like "Roadside Picnic", "Last Night on Earth" also has the imagery of clocks and watches many times. Different from the sixth-generation directors' obsession with "time", Bi Gan continued his exploration of "time" itself.
For example, taking away the father's clock from the restaurant may mean entering the father's time, taking the note to visit the prison in Guiyang, and making a phone call with Tai Zhaomei across the iron net, the whole iron net is like a mirror. In terms of time, this The scene is very Tarkovsky.
Marked by the heavy rain and mudslides mentioned many times in the film, the whole film is filled with a fluid, uneasy smell, everything can collapse, like a dream, including long shots, like a combined Rubik’s cube. This temperament is very Cortazar. Throughout the movie, even the subtitles will have reflections, and the end subtitles are also clear to blurred from left to right.
For me, "Last Night on Earth" is the kind of movie that is so-called "great stamina", that is, I may not be able to watch other movies in a short period of time. Seriously, everyone uses long lenses, but dreaming with long lenses that are extremely difficult to shoot is so romantic.
I think that at this stage, the domestic box office of this kind of movie is only a few million at most. "Pre-sale over 100 million" is unimaginable. The first time I watched it, a lot of people around me didn't know they needed 3D glasses until the beginning of the long shot; the second time I watched it, I saw a girl who put on 3D glasses when the dragon logo appeared. I don't know whether this marketing is led by the producer and whether the creative team has sufficient say.
However, the so-called incomprehensible is only because we live in a country that is used to legends and storytelling, and prefers linear narratives. In fact, movies are often the same as real life. There is no easy-to-understand logic, and it is not always "because and so", and it is not always as clear and unobstructed as playing pool.
Life is long, and you will always have the opportunity to see the shower in your home turn into a waterfall, or see what the director said, the stars in the sky are like birds, parachuting on their chests.
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