Every creator is looking for a grammar of their own. After Hong Sang-soo's debut, "The Day a Pig Falls into a Well," is a dramatic critical reality theme, including erotic entanglements and murderous deaths, he gradually enters the To the increasingly bland narrative, there are no more deaths of characters in his films. The iconic Hong Sang-soo film focuses on the emotional confusion of the literary and artistic middle class. The plot unfolds in natural life-like scenes, with special structural forms to enhance the drama of the film.
The most attractive thing about movies is always the story. Hong Shangxiu always focuses on the love between men and women. In the love stories he designed, love always maintains its momentum. In "Time Wrong", it is the first meeting, "On the Beach at Night Alone" is the reunion of old friends, and in the view of love, not only the difference between men and women, but also the complex life background, which makes a single theme also Different movies show different expressions. This dynamic of love is also manifested in that Hong Sangxiu always chooses the paragraphs of love. After the film ends, love still maintains an open ending. Corresponding to real life, of course, love does not always have a beginning and an end, and the process is the focus of love. .
Hong Sang-soo's love stories always bring a sense of reality to people. The superficial part is his extreme "life flow" way of expression, live-action shooting, focusing on dialogue, reducing editing, and weakening the drama of American films, but the deeper part is Hong Sang-soo. Actively participate in the creation. The male protagonist of Hong Shangxiu's films is generally a director or a similar literary and artistic worker, and other roles are also fixed in the middle class to which he belongs. Although it is also a depiction of the middle class, Woody Allen is a satirical criticism of the outside world. Hong Sang-soo, on the other hand, puts his sincere emotions into the characters. He understands the desires and powerlessness of the middle class, and accepts their hypocrisy and vulgarity. I know, there is occasional sympathy.
From the private love story of Hong Sang-soo's infidelity in marriage, we know that he seems to know everything, but he is devoted to it. In "After", the male protagonist met his lover, and the other party hugged him and said, let's love each other to death. On the one hand, such dialogue shows childishness, but on the other hand, it may contain true feelings. In love, innocence And childishness are two sides of the same coin. In Hong Sangxiu's films, the hero and heroine are like this. They not only play on the scene, but also put their childish truth into it. Because of the truth, they are pitiful and cute.
In those male protagonists, it is easy to find Hong Sangxiu's personal projection. His parents divorced when he was in elementary school, and his mother is said to be a well-known courtesan in the Korean cultural circle. Strong motherhood and lack of fatherhood may lead to Hong Sangxiu wanting to be sensitive, delicate, gentle and affectionate. In the film, on the one hand, male characters have obvious attachment to women. In "After", the male protagonist leans his head on his lover's shoulder twice to obtain warmth and comfort; on the other hand, Hong Sangxiu's film maintains With a high degree of scrutiny of men, they are eager to try, dissatisfied with the status quo, and hope to obtain only one or more emotions, but they are clumsy, hypocritical, and irresponsible.
From a technical point of view, Hong Sangxiu’s shooting uses only one camera, and the lens is mainly panning and pushing. While sacrificing the sense of substitution, it always reminds the audience of the onlooker’s perspective, which further strengthens the authenticity of the story. Hong Sangxiu's narration method, which is talked about by fans, is actually not important to the narration. In a very life-style movie, these methods are like "matrx animation version", the children of the game found the vacuum, those time and space interlaced. The way of telling is just for added viewing and fun. This is the same as his movies always have drinking scenes. Alcohol is to enhance the drama of real life, amplify the character characteristics of the characters, and provide the possibility of explosive performances, such as "Wrong Now", the director made a confession by drinking Or stripping naked, if it's just restraint and temptation in a sober state, it's too boring.
If you compare the film to making friends, Hong Sang-soo’s film is just like himself, wise, sensitive, affectionate, with a bit of self-deprecation, and full of sincerity. There is often no answer, or there are new ideas from time to time, but this proposition itself has no answer, this clumsy interpreter, because it is true and cute.
In addition, another huge charm of Hong Sang-soo's film is that it highlights the ambiguity of interpretation and rejects the art of turning film into a unique drama. On the surface, in his films, there are no front and back shots of the characters, and the most familiar bystander perspective is the male and female protagonists sitting face to face at the wine table, and the camera lens is shot from the side. The camera looks directly at the actor's face, it is too easy to get the eyes and all the expressions of the character, and it is easier for the audience to read the character's heart. In other directors' intentions, this may be an important way for the audience to understand the characters and characters. But Hong Sang-soo obviously hopes that the audience can figure out the character's psychology through personal feelings and anticipate the character's actions.
Hong Shangxiu deliberately removed the traditional dramatic refinement. The audience can experience the character's heart according to their own experience and personality, so a seemingly everyday expression and a dialogue actually contain countless possibilities. Hong Shangxiu revealed in an interview that he has gradually abandoned the creation of a complete script. He gets up early every day to complete the story frame and dialogue. This method is actually to complete the basic structure and materials of the film, to speculate on the details of the film, and to allow the audience to form interactions. , become part of the screenwriter, so the deeper you go, the more you get.
For example, in the opening scene of "After", the wife and her husband have a conversation at the dinner table. The wife asks "Have you had a woman recently?", and then asks ten consecutive lines of dialogue. The husband is stunned, sneered, hesitated, and bowed his head, but he never spoke. , In this way of shooting, the inner expression of each part of the husband presents different possibilities.
The non-uniqueness of drama is an important theme of Hong Sang-soo's films. The most popular and most watched of Hong Sang-soo's films is "Right Now, Wrong Then". It is not the only representative work of drama and represents the greatest charm of Hong Sang-soo's films. It is precisely because the theme and personal style are highly integrated. , it is easier to be accepted by the audience. Although the story can be regarded as two paragraphs, many people are keen to observe the difference between the two stories at a certain point to deduce the butterfly effect on the ending, but this method actually focuses on the surface and is more suitable for the analysis of other directors' works. The ambiguity of character responses in the details of Hong Sang-soo's films is reinforced in the two-part ambiguity of the story, a form that serves the subject of subtle emotional shifts.
The love story between Hong Sang-soo and Kim Min-hee is already well known, because Hong Sang-soo integrates himself into the movie extremely realistically, so through the movie they cooperated, it is completely possible to discover the emotional trajectory of the two in real life. The two fell in love because of "Right Now, Wrong Then", and Hong Sang Soo's love for Kim Min Hee reached its peak in the next movie "On the Beach at Night Alone". At the beginning of the two paragraphs, Hong Sang Soo used his own movie There are particularly rare close-ups in the movie, including the warm scene of Kim Min-hee holding a flower in the sunset, and when Kim Min-hee smokes at the entrance of the cafe, she is given a tearful-eyed a cappella song, with the sun shining warmly on the character. On the body, "Can you see my heart? Do you know why I live with this feeling?" And the theme of the whole film is also to describe the slightly lonely state of a woman involved in an extramarital relationship, full of Sympathy and pity.
During the filming of "After", it can be guessed that the two should have been in a state of breaking up. In the film, Jin Minxi was slapped several times in the face. For a director who does not focus on the plot, even for the sake of Dramatic effects, if you are deeply in love, will not arrange such a plot. And the theme of this movie is probably that the previous hot love will eventually pass.
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