1
Everything Bi Gan wanted to shoot was not easy to shoot.
"Roadside Picnic" filmed "time", "Last Night on Earth" filmed "dream", they are all things that are difficult to capture.
It's not easy to put the imaginary into reality.
The 42-minute long shot and the small town Dangmai in "Roadside Picnic" together constitute a surreal time and space through the past, present and future.
When Chen Sheng entered Dangmai, it was like stepping into the time axis. He said goodbye to his deceased wife here, and saw the dawn of the future in the adult Wei Wei.
Everything about Dang Mai is like a dream, but not a dream.
As for the real dream, Bi Gan plans to save it until "The Last Night on Earth".
At the most popular level, "Roadside Picnic" is about a middle-aged man's reconciliation with the past.
"Last Night on Earth" is, to some extent, too.
It's just that the reconciliation in "Roadside Picnic" is to give the protagonist a moment of respite in the torrent of materialized time.
And "Last Night on Earth" is to redeem all the past with a complete dream.
What is a dream?
Dreams are the release and satisfaction of realistic desires.
From this perspective, the plot of "Earth" is actually very simple, which can be summed up in one sentence: a middle-aged man bids farewell or embraces the two most important women in his life in a dream.
It's a very romantic story.
However, unlike the natural de-carving of "Picnic", Bi Gan designed "Earth" as a sophisticated intellectual game.
Although it is moving, the moving is hidden behind reason, and it is not like "Picnic".
I believe that even if you don't understand "Picnic", you will definitely be moved by the plot of Chen Sheng singing "Little Jasmine" to his ex-wife under the sunset.
But in "Earth", all emotions have become secret and repressed, and even the last affectionate kiss cannot completely overcome the barrier of reason and obtain the release of indulgence.
This is also doomed to the fate of "Earth" box office plummeting.
Of course that's another topic, and today we're just talking about the movie itself.
2
"Earth" is divided into two parts in structure.
The next 60 minutes is a 3D long shot, showing the complete dream. In order to highlight the temporal and spatial continuity of this dream, Bi Gan deliberately fragmented the narrative in the first 80 minutes, splitting the relationship between the shots. The whole process is like throwing out pieces of a puzzle, hoping that the viewer will reorganize everything in the final dream.
This really brings a certain threshold to the viewing. Moreover, following the principles of art films, the film does not have any shots that exist purely for "explaining", and it will not let Xiao Li lead the girl into the dreamland and explain the rules of dream-making like "Inception". No, Bi Gan relies on the language of the camera to lay out information, which will bring great exploration fun to active audiences, and will naturally become a nightmare for passive audiences.
So what exactly was said in the first 80 minutes?
I have no intention of repeating the plot here, just talking about the key logic.
Let me throw a question first, is the first 80 minutes a reality or a memory, and whether there is a dream?
My answer is clear, all three.
First of all, Luo Hongwu returned to Carey after his father's death, and followed the clues in the photos to find Wan Qiwen's line, which was the reality line.
Secondly, all the passages in which Wan Qiwen appears are dreams.
This point is clearly told to us by the narration at the beginning of the film: " As long as I see her, I know that I must be in a dream again. " And the next scene is Luo Hongwu sitting up from the bed.
OK, so is it just a dream?
Not right, the film also mentioned: " Dreams are forgotten memories. "
So Wan Qiwen's line becomes extremely ambiguous, it is both a memory and a fiction, it is Luo Hongwu's imagination, and it is more likely to be the plot recorded in the green book.
In short, it represents the sum total of Luo Hongwu's fascination with the image of Wan Qiwen.
Where does this infatuation come from?
Here comes the important prop: a picture of my mother .
"Photo" runs through the first 80 minutes. It is first of all the clues of the coherent plot. It has experienced Luo Hongwu, Wan Qiwen, Tai Zhaomei, Luo's father, and finally returned to Luo Hongwu's hands.
What's more, the way it was rediscovered, was found by Luo behind a stagnant clock.
This image is very clear.
A stagnant clock, like a photo going around and back, represents a perpetual stagnation.
What is this trouble?
It is Luo Hongwu's lack of maternal love, which is prematurely absent, and his fascination with the image of his mother.
Borrowing from Lacan's mirror image theory, the first time a child faces a mirror is usually in his mother's arms. Since he can't distinguish the outside world, the child will mistakenly think that his mother and himself are one, and thus fall into a lifelong Oedipus complex.
For Luo Hongwu, his mother eloped with a beekeeper when he was very young, leaving only a vague photo.
So Luo Hongwu's fantasy and thirst for his mother fell on this photo, which is a transfer of the mirror infatuation.
Later, Luo Hongwu met Wan Qiwen and soon fell in love with her, which was another change of mirror infatuation. Although in the eyes of others, the two are actually not alike at all.
But for Luo Hongwu, Wan Qiwen has become an unreachable figure.
Because of this, in order to get Wan Qiwen, he did not hesitate to kill people. After Wan missed the appointment, he fled alone.
The plot is a lot like Hitchcock's Vertigo, about a man who falls in love with a woman who doesn't exist, or at the extreme, he's just in love with his own desires.
Well, from this we can say that the first 80 minutes were a psychoanalytic sleepwalker monologue.
Wan Qiwen's line is Luo Hongwu's subconscious "self".
There are endless desires hidden in it, endless nights, wet mines, and wild cooperation. All the symbols of desire marked green are also in it, including green skirts, wild grapefruit, green paper, and swaying water plants.
and a murder. If the male power represented by the gang leader Zuo Hongyuan is understood as a kind of patriarchal power, then Luo Hongwu's murder itself has the tendency of "killing his father and marrying his mother".
And Luo Hongwu's line to find Wan Qiwen again after 12 years is obviously his "self".
You can clearly feel that this ego is in a deep contradiction.
Let's look at another detail. At this time, the face in the mother's photo was burned and the image was lost, so Luo Hongwu's mirror-image infatuation, which has not yet escaped, can only be obtained by looking for Wan Qiwen again.
Another point, you can sort out the first 80 minutes according to the above two lines, only one paragraph is more special, that is the much-criticized "white cat eats apples".
It does not belong to Wan Qiwen's dream line, nor does it belong to Luo Zitu Suoji's reality line.
So what is it more likely to be?
It was a picture that Luo constructed in his heart. The protagonist of that picture is the white cat chewing on his pain.
In this pain, there is not only the pain of Bai Mao losing his father, but also the projection of Luo Hongwu's guilt. It was his negligence that caused Bai Mao's tragic death before, but in the process of seeking revenge, he fell in love with the enemy's lover again. .
Therefore, the white cat's critical gaze constitutes Luo Hongwu's "superego".
He has been living in this judgment.
Therefore, the plot of "Earth" seems to be understood in this way.
In the first 80 minutes, Bi Gan showed us a man (ego) who was driven by desire (id) and morally condemned (superego).
In the next 60 minutes, this man used a deeper and more three-dimensional dream to complete the final reconciliation of the "three selves".
3
Well, now we can finally enter the 60-minute dream.
Dreams are like crime scenes arranged by the dreamer, leaving no traces on the surface, but hidden secrets in reality.
However, with the previous clues, this dream is actually not difficult to understand. Although there have been many refractions from reality to dream, the purpose is very clear, to help this man explain and accept all the past.
So how many layers does this dream have?
There are at least three layers.
The film also continued to sink with Luo Hongwu, to intuitively show us the level of dreams.
The first floor, of course, is the mine, which is the entrance to the entire maze.
A map of the labyrinth is drawn on the door here, symbolizing the veins of Luo Hongwu's entire subconscious mind.
In a cave, Luo Hongwu found a boy wearing a mask of animal bones.
What is worth noting here is the process of discovery: Luo Hongwu pulled out the table tennis racket inserted in the hole, and then the boy showed his head.
The "ping pong racket" is clearly the symbol of the father. Whether it's the eagle pattern on the boy's racket that indicates the father of the white cat, or what Luo Hongwu once said to teach his children to play table tennis, it all clearly implies this.
Then the process of discovering juveniles can be understood as the process of intercourse and reproduction.
There is of course a "rebirth" in the film. Because the teenager is obviously a combination of the dead white cat and the child wan Qiwen knocked out.
From the paragraph of the hotel, we know that wanqiwen is likely to be infertile by birth, so she lied that she and Luo had a child and killed her, which is likely to lie to Luo to help him kill.
Despite this, there is still an obsession in Luo Hongwu's heart. He hopes that this child really existed. He hopes that his love with Wan Qiwen is not a conspiracy, but a reality.
So in the first layer of the dream, by playing table tennis with the teenager, he dispelled his guilt against the white cat in disguise, and also fulfilled his responsibility as a father.
More importantly, he became a man again.
Remember that dog named Carey who ate eggs? In his hometown, Luo Hongwu once lost his dignity as a man and went abroad.
And this time, he finally regained the ping-pong racket that symbolized the phallus in his dream and became a real man.
Just like what the young man said when he took him on the ropeway, "You are a big man, what are you afraid of!"
Sliding down the ropeway, Luo Hongwu entered the second floor of the dream: the billiards room.
Here, he finally has to face the most secret desire in his heart.
And the whole process was as embarrassing as when he first saw Wan Qiwen. Although Wan Qiwen had already changed her name to Kaizhen in her dream—the treasure of Carey, which symbolized the precious memory that Luo Hongwu wanted to get back—she still said the same teasing Luo. "Your opening is too old-fashioned".
And Luo Hongwu was no longer like before, just a man who was chasing the back of the goddess, but became extremely active.
He first chased away the troublemakers, and then fulfilled the promise that was not fulfilled in reality.
Wan Qiwen once said to him, "If I find a wild grapefruit, you will fulfill one of my wishes."
And in the second-level dream, this wish was said by Kaizhen, "I want to get out of here by plane."
Then, the surreal flight sequence was staged, and the one who started the flight was still a ping-pong racket with a male symbol.
With the landing of this flight, the dream also came to the third floor: the wild grapefruit karaoke hall.
Remember what Luo Hongwu did at the very beginning of this dream?
Burn pictures of mothers.
Yes, the key to this dream is whether the man can break free from his infatuation with his mother and regain his love.
Then the action of burning the mother's photo is like an admission ticket to the maze, and it is also the unveiling of this ceremony.
So what happened next is very clear.
At the iron fence that was a metaphor for the edge of the subconscious, Luo Hongwu sent away the red-haired girl who symbolized her mother, and borrowed the words of the red-haired girl, "The person I care about, he is still young, he will soon forget me", relieved mother's abandonment.
Only by truly saying goodbye to his mother can he meet a purer woman.
Then, he found Kaizhen again. At this time, there was no sign of her mother on Kaizhen's body. She was just a young woman, a sweet love object.
Two people came to the house of the lost green book, which is the deepest part of the subconscious.
Here, the past has been burned to ruins by a fire, Luo Hongwu chanted a spell, the house began to rotate, and the two kissed affectionately in the dark green night.
At this time, the camera found the fireworks again, the inexhaustible fireworks.
It turns out that a moment can also be eternal.
If this night is really the last night on earth, Luo Hongwu will stay in this dream forever and never wake up again.
4
Desire is the trauma of reality, and dream is the outlet of desire.
In fact, the song that sounded in the deepest part of the dream has already revealed all the secrets of "The Last Night on Earth".
The song is called "Dark Green Night", and the lyrics are as follows:
The dark green night faintly reveals its unique beauty. It brings us ethereal thoughts. People are all asleep. People are wandering leisurely in their dreams, looking for them. They look forward to tomorrow. Small hopes and ordinary visions may be able to accomplish
Luo Hongwu said, "Tomorrow, I must find that woman."
I don't know if the reality is what he thought.
I don't know if there will be a tomorrow after the last night on Earth.
It doesn't matter, this is not a multiple-choice question between broken reality and illusory beauty, it just shows us the beauty that belongs to the dreamland.
Have you counted the stars in the sky? They, like birds, always skydive on my chest.
In the question and answer of Zhihu, someone asked "How to evaluate Bi Gan's "Roadside Picnic"?"
Bi Gan answered this question with this poem.
So how do you evaluate "Last Night on Earth"?
I think it might be this poem by Bolaño:
Only fever and poetry bring images. Only love and memories. Not these roads, or the plains. Not these mazes. Finally, my soul meets my heart.
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