Recently this weekend, I watched two about time movies, theaters heat sink "creed," and in the film Netflix quietly on the line, "I want to end it all I'm Thinking of Ending Things"
- In "Creed", time can be rewinded;
- In "I Want to End All of This", people are static, while time is flowing, blowing on people like a cold wind;
Although the two films have a lot of barriers to viewing, they will definitely be subject to many doubts and even abuses, but I still want to applaud the two films, applaud the original spirit, and applaud the novelty .
Watching film and television works, in addition to pure enjoyment and "coolness", if you can be intellectually challenged, or even look at movies and the whole world from another angle, it might not be a joy to broaden your horizons and experience a different life.
PS. "I want to end it all" is too top, I just wanted to write a simple comparison with "Creed", but the more I analyzed it, the more I was touched, and I couldn't stop the car. The first time I was confused, and the second time I burst into tears.
[Codewords are not easy, welcome to like and support~ ]
Let's compare:
Although "Creed" seems to be wrapped up by various terms, it is prohibitive, but its core is still a U-shaped story structure formed by rewinding time. Because of this, when the story turns at the “U” corner, if the audience moving in the reverse direction can quickly associate the content of the forward movement, the direction of the story becomes predictable. Therefore, from the perspective of the story structure, because the "first half" is the spoiler , "Creed" is Nolan's most unsuspicious and predictable movie In the first half, the spoiler is almost the same.) In short, no matter how time is reversed, the story still develops linearly, and the behavior of the characters is still logically connected.
In contrast, "I Want to End All of This" is a movie that really needs to be spoiled, otherwise it will really come in with a daunting expression, and go out with a daunting expression . I don't know what the hell is talking about ... …The main story is actually very straightforward:
On a snowy winter day, the male protagonist Jack drove his girlfriend and hostess to his parents’ house for dinner. The car was driving in the snowy countryside. The girlfriend looked out the window and said to herself "I want to end this." Strangely, the male lead seemed to be able to hear her talking to herself. The two chatted to the ground, and soon they arrived at the male protagonist’s parents’ house, and strange and strange things began to happen one after another...
Does the beginning of this story feel like a horror story? No, it's really not a thriller.
Personal experience : If, like me and many viewers, watch the trailer, I feel a bit like an A24 thriller. Among the actors is the heroine of "Genetic Doom" and Professor Lupin of Harry Potter.
So without reading the original novel and without background knowledge, just came in out of curiosity. It was really a 130-minute movie, and 120 minutes was in the state of a black-faced question mark emoticon.
If high-intensity dialogue raises the threshold of viewing movies (easy to be incomprehensible and boring) , then fortunately, the non-linear narrative of flying and jumping directly shuts the door (strictly speaking, the perspective of the heroine is linear, but she Around and their identities change non-linearly)
who am I? Where am i? what is this? (Hahaha don’t be scared off, listen to me explain slowly)
How to open this door?
First key
The host, the hostess, and the cleaner are all one person
To be precise, the male and female owners are all alter ego and multiple personalities imagined by a single cleaner. The film is divided into two branches, one is the main line, the heroine goes to the boyfriend’s house dinner, and the other is the dark line, the life of a cleaner.
The two lines meet at the end of the school where the cleaner is. In the original novel, the male protagonist rushes into the school angrily after learning of the green hat, while the film is left blank. After the final weird dance, the male and female protagonists part ways and disappear into the snowy night.
Evidence for the same person includes but is not limited to
1) Between men and women:
- The male lead seems to be able to hear the self-talk in the female lead’s mind. If they are the same person, this is easy to explain-I am hearing my evaluation of myself;
- The female protagonist recites the poem "Dog Bone" written by herself, which the male protagonist has read when he was a child;
- The female protagonist saw the picture of him when he was a child on the wall of the male protagonist’s home, it was actually herself;
2) Between the cleaner and the host:
- The host met two high school girls who laughed at him-the ice cream shop watched the host laugh at his two waitresses;
- The cleaner saw Oklahoma musical-the male protagonist talked about this musical and he knows all about classic musicals;
- The cleaner saw the ice cream clown & pig in the car-the shadow of childhood mentioned by the male protagonist;
- The cleaner is a physicist (the little pig said at the end)-the physics background of the male and female masters;
There are countless, just waiting for you to discover.
So what does the male and female master symbolize as the "clone" of the cleaner? My opinion is that the male lead is the reality and the female lead is the ideal. In other words, the male protagonist is what the cleaner looks like in real life, and the female protagonist is the ideal that the cleaner wants to be.
- The male protagonist is a farm boy, rooted in the countryside, closely connected with his parents, but can't hide his disgusting face;
- The hostess is an urban girl, with all kinds of skills, and is tired of the countryside (always saying to leave soon);
The key point is that the field that the female protagonist is good at is covered by the male protagonist -photography, poetry, science and even knowledge competitions.
Unlike the female protagonist who is full of confidence when discussing these topics, the male protagonist is more like a quiet listener, and even a little cowardly (proposing to eat ice cream but staying away from the waiter), so when the hostess is talking about the earth When not in the car, the male protagonist left angrily and broke into the school.
Maybe the hostess is what the cleaner wants to be, expressing her opinions confidently, leaving the parents and the countryside that bore him, to pursue those ideals that he once missed, and become what he might once be.
But in fact, this ideal, when talking to the poet and the character of the same name as the heroine, already hinted at the ending: an idealized and beautiful woman who died young-the ideal turned into ashes early in the face of reality.
In fact, if we can bring in the point that "the male and female masters are different personalities of the same person" early, many weird and inexplicable plots in the movie will make sense.
For example, the female protagonist is leaning on the shoulders of the male protagonist’s father. It looks weird, but combined with the cold greeting of the male protagonist and his father, if the female protagonist is what the male protagonist wants to be but can’t become, the female protagonist The reliance of is actually a symbol of the male protagonist's desire to get close to this estranged father.
For example, those blue slippers . When the hostess arrived home, the host gave the hostess his blue slippers and said, "My slippers are yours." Finally, at school, the cleaner took out the exact same blue slippers for the hostess to put on. The hostess declined and said "These are your shoes", waving goodbye, the cleaner burst into tears. ——Why is he crying? Because the ideal he just found back is going away from him again.
There are many similar echoes and foreshadowings, so I won't list them one by one. If you have any touched details, please leave a message in the comment area to share.
Second key
People are still, but time is flowing, blowing on people like a cold wind.
If multiple personalities are the first key to the puzzle of content , then this sentence is the second key to the puzzle of form . What form? Film expresses and presents the form of story. Multi-personality is actually not a new topic, such as "Fatal ID", "Split" and so on.
So how is this movie different? The biggest difference is the non-linear, stream-like manifestation.
How to understand this line?
1) People are static and time is flowing
"People are static", which means that the hostess is relatively still in the house, while time keeps flashing back by her side. People are static audiences, and time projects memories like a projector.
The relative markers are the scene and the parents. In such a confined hut, turning around and looking back, the lighting and the scene suddenly changed, and the parents suddenly became young and energetic, and suddenly aged rapidly, and were even dying. And all of this seems to have no logical connection.
2) Time blows to people like a cold wind
The change without logical connection, and the switch without following the routine, reflects the metaphor of "like a cold wind". The cold wind blowing from all directions suddenly turned south and then west. From time to time it was childhood, and sometimes it was old age.
Not only the audience, but the heroes and heroines as the central figures, have to be at a loss in the cold wind. There should be at least 30% of the time in this film, with the male and female protagonists driving in the ice and snow.
The cold wind roared outside the window, and they driving in the cold wind at this time did not know what kind of memory fragments were waiting for them.
Third key
Although your sins are like scarlet, they will become white.
Seeing this, you should roughly understand the content and form of this movie. But one question still lingers in your mind for a long time: Why? What is the significance of this story? Why is the story called "I want to end it all"?
In my understanding, I have to return to this sentence that appeared in the movie momentarily:
Although your sins are like scarlet, they will become white. -"Isaiah 1-18"
Appeared in the movie at 6:30, radio broadcast on the cleaning truck.
What is vermilion? Opening wallpaper (home), heroine (ideal), ice cream shop.
What is snow white? The white snow flying all over the sky.
Whether it is a family that is tired and can't leave, or the beautiful ideals and infinite possibilities of premature death, or the pain of being bullied, isolated and ridiculed, they are all "crimes" that old cleaners cannot let go. Even if his deadline is approaching, his heart is still haunted by these scarlet sins.
So on this snowy night, he chose to redeem, choose to repent, choose to be relieved, and choose to "end it all" . Use the flying white snow, chaotic time and memory to solve the happy knot. In fact, it was indeed his choice: it was he who urged to leave home, it was he who burst into tears and waved goodbye after hugging the hostess at school.
The beginning of the film is a continuous vermilion wallpaper, and the ending is a land wrapped in silver.
From Vermilion to Xuebai, he really "ends it all".
Of course, if you don’t agree with this explanation, I will provide a spare key:
Brain fantasies-old age is like this, memories of life
The old cleaner let go of his imagination, based on the things he saw in his life, imagined such a drive and dinner, chatting to comfort his ordinary life. After all, not everyone’s life is like a stage play, with graceful and graceful dancing and magnificent heroes.
The cleaner's father suffered from a brain disease that caused amnesia, and perhaps he inherited the root cause. And when he ended this wild dream, he returned to the car and became ill. For a while, he blurred reality and fantasy, followed the pig to accept the award, and sighed for his life.
Maybe this is the spiritual world of many old people ? They have degraded memory, sometimes like children, sometimes like adults, with a trance. Maybe they are like the cleaners in this film, going to the snowy world.
Some other details
1) Who is the third waitress in the ice cream shop?
My guess is that the cleaner himself, but his subconscious. The injured arm symbolizes that he is being bullied, and warns the hostess that he does not need to go any further (the school where the cleaner is located) is actually subconsciously wanting to stay away from this premature death ideal, so as not to touch the situation.
2) Did the cleaner finally die?
I don't think so. 2:11:30-2:13:00 During this time, you can hear the sound of cars driving away. Maybe the cleaner woke up after falling asleep in the car and drove away.
There are a lot of details in this film, I still can't justify it, and it's by no means a conclusive conclusion. A movie with such a huge amount of information can do too much analysis. If there are details that you are still confused about, please leave a message to discuss.
Some last talk
1) Director Charlie Kaufman
I didn't say straightforwardly about the director because I was not familiar with him, but when I watched the trailer at the time, the comment area was full of praise for CK, which aroused my curiosity. He has heard of his work "Warmness with Light" and "Becoming John Malkovich", but I haven't seen it yet. Quote what others have said about him:
He used wild imagination and dazzling symbolic metaphors,
The nested structure of the set in the set, the play in the play,
Destroys the brain cells of the viewer,
Burning the brain nerves of the viewer,
Humans can no longer stop Kaufman’s anti-human behavior.
Save this screenwriter!
Although the film is adapted from a novel of the same name, I have never read a novel, but I guess the movie is a novel with a major change.
Such a presentation form of letting go of oneself and frightening the audience will squeeze the emotional backlog of the story to the last ten minutes, but it is really "persuade to retreat."
Is it the same for his other works? Welcome friends who are familiar with CK to leave a message!
2) Living on the tree :
Some people compare this movie to "Living on a Tree", haha, it can be regarded as a hot spot. However, it still depends on the context.
I think the "stacking" in this film is not outrageous, because it is a daydream of a cleaner, and his graduation knowledge flashed in a flash. The content is multi-topic and the span is wide, and it is fully in line with his intellectual background as a physicist. . Although I also admit that I am confused about many of the contents mentioned, it does not prevent me from being able to grasp the general framework of the whole story and be able to justify the idea. As for the knowledge points that are in the wild, those who are interested can just clarify it, and hope that the great god can analyze it. But for us as ordinary viewers, we choose the essence, get rid of the obscurity, and choose what we need.
3) Lighthouse
As mentioned above, the trailer of this film gave me a strong A24 style. Although it is not at all horrifying, it still reminds me of the most uncomfortable and incomprehensible movie produced by A24. "Lighthouse" (also starring Robert Pattinson, the supporting actor in "Creed")
When I watched the movie for the first time, the two films felt basically the same to me- at a loss, like a throat in my throat, with a bewildered look ; but after watching other people's analysis to help me understand, the two movies gave me completely different feelings. Although the name of "I Want to End All of This" looks like a suicide monologue, the story does examine self and repentance and salvation. Although the name "Lighthouse" shines in the storm, it still feels pain and suffocation.
I think the reason is probably that the core of the story of "I Want" is hope, while the core of the story of "Lighthouse" is despair.
All in all, to summarize the two movies I watched this weekend:
- "Creed"-"Earth: A man named Neal decides to die"
- "I want to end it all"-"Daydream Rhapsody-I invite me to eat at my house"
If you are accustomed to watching various remake and sequel routines and clichés, it is better to find a "challenging" movie like "Creed" and "I Want to End It All" and look at the world from another angle.
View more about I'm Thinking of Ending Things reviews
