Taking advantage of RitzCinema's re-release of a series of 35mm film films, I went to revisit the Coen Brothers' "Frozen" yesterday. The local Ritz cinema in Sydney is a bit like an independent cinema chain, otherwise it should not have the schedule of old movies. A series of re-screenings include Bruce Willis' Die Hard and Quentin's Pulp Fiction. Fortunately, in the episodes I went to, I was the only Chinese, and the audience around were Australians, which was slightly different from the last time I went to see "Dunkirk", but in the atmosphere of foreigners , I can try to understand what their cultural jokes are, and what is the difference between their cultural background and my own opinion.
Without a doubt, this is an anti-genre thriller crime movie. Friends who are familiar with the Coen brothers know that the Coen brothers are good at discovering story ideas that go against the paradigm. For example, the most typical paradigm of crime and detection films should be commercial films, but the story atmosphere of this film is dull and honest. Although the villains in the film are evil, they have no professionalism and organization, and the heroine, the female police officer Maggie, is still a A pregnant woman with limited mobility, when she was looking for clues, she often got vague witness descriptions. The interspersed teasing made people feel that the story of "Frozen" itself did not convey the traditional value concept of confrontation between police and bandits. , but pure jokes and farces like a pot of porridge, full of black humor. The background of the story is set in a icy winter in a small town in Minnesota in the 1990s. Jerry, a car salesman, intends to extort money from his capitalist father-in-law in order to obtain funds to expand the parking lot as an investment business. He worked as an intermediary through the car work in the auto repair shop, contacted two gangsters who did not know each other, and asked his father-in-law for a hostage ransom by planning a false case of breaking into the house and kidnapping his wife. But after that, the development of things got out of control, the wife who was supposed to be fine was murdered, and most of the people around were implicated.
Snow days in Minnesota should be exceptionally cold. I have been to Wisconsin in the United States, which is just southeast of Minnesota, and I still remember the sight of waiting for a taxi in the cold snow when I came out of Walmart in January. In that cold, any activity is inconvenient. Many long shots and wide-angle shots in the film show that the road in Fagao town is empty and barren under the snow cover. This vast and silent surrounding shows a sense of despair, just for the later gangsters to chase and kill witnesses. Foreshadowing, there is a shadow of the killer in "No Country for Old Men" who committed murder in the Texas wilderness without being caught by the sheriff. The killer in "No Country for Old Men", when he walked into a wild grocery store and questioned the owner, the audience broke into a cold sweat for the store owner. The crumpled candy paper he put on the counter table and slowly stretched out is undoubtedly the history of film. one of the classics. The killer itself has no personality gaps. In other words, it is impossible to get why he committed the murder from the perspective of criminal psychology. He arbitrarily decides whether a victim should end his life by flipping a coin. That kind of evil is pure evil. It is also the evil that can best reflect the aging and decline of the police officers who are the embodiment of justice. In "Frozen", the gangster's unorganized and unorganized evil is like a headless fly, a stressful evil, which also fits the absurdity of the script.
Why do you say this is a heroine image? This has to start from the setting of the atmosphere of the whole story. But let's talk about how the audience feels about the protagonist female police officer, Maggie. Such an important role did not appear until the film was about a third of the way into the film. What we saw was the conspiracy and hypocrisy covered up in the cold winter of Minnesota. Jerry, a car salesman, entered a bar by falsely reporting his name and met two casual accomplices who did not know each other. He desperately asked them to kidnap their wives without telling them why he needed the ransom. Even the gangsters didn't understand, You kidnapped your wife to get ransom from your father-in-law, and in the end you got the money from your own family and returned it to your own family. What's the point of committing the crime, but Jerry didn't tell them why, just said that he had a private matter and needed money urgently, and his father-in-law was in urgent need of money. quite rich. Back home, we see the delicate relationship between father-in-law, wife, husband Jerry, and children, which is already out of balance. The husband is always smiling and polite to his wife and father-in-law, but he thinks of his own parking lot investment business; the wife is a slightly stupid, submissive, unassertive housewife whose strong Minnesota accent has become an audience The laughing stock, and the gangster's panic move into the house afterwards is full of black humor to illustrate her clumsiness, which is in stark contrast to her husband's cunning and shrewdness, suggesting that their marriage relationship itself is in crisis; the father-in-law is bald, with sideburns and With a white beard, a ruddy face but always a straight face, the corners of his mouth are curved downwards, he wears a metal ring on his hand, and his tone of voice is hyperactive and arrogant, which is the image of an iron rooster capitalist. During the conversation with Jerry, my father-in-law misunderstood the "parking lot" he heard for the first time as needing to invest "a lot" of money, because in English a (parking) lot and a lot of money have the same syllable. Feeling reluctant to give money, even after his daughter was pretended to be kidnapped, Jerry mentioned that the gangster wanted to add a ransom. He was reluctant to give more money and wanted to report to the police. In addition, his father-in-law didn't care about Jerry's status in the family at all. He always mentions his daughter and grandson together and ignores Jerry's name. So what we see is a family with alienated relationships, with various ethical crises lurking around money worship and deception.
Then, from the very beginning, the police patrol car went to the abyss of doom. The two temporary accomplices themselves do not trust each other, the short gangster is talkative and playboy-like, and the tall gangster is taciturn, ruthless, and courageous, which seems to indicate that they are unable to control the situation of the story. . In the road murder, three innocent people, including the patrolman, were injured. This scene is actually quite bloody and cruel. It shows the desperation and crampedness of having nowhere to ask for help and escape.
From here, the film has gone one-third, and we see female police officer Maggie receiving a call from a patrolman in the early morning, struggling to get up in a daze. We need a protagonist too much to maintain normal order, and the previous stories are all gloomy. However, it is unforgettable that there are two more inversions here. So I would say that the Coen brothers' film language is unique, and the two of them are very good at anti-genre narrative. First, we have seen the cruelty of the murderer, the hypocrisy and cunning of the perpetrator Jerry, the indifference of family relations, the basic tone of the first third of the film is that the white snow of Minnesota is covered with potential Crime and crisis, we need a positive protagonist to solve problems. This is the usual feature of crime thrillers, and it is also the best paradigm for Hollywood commercial blockbusters, but at this time, we see a Minnesota accent, because of pregnancy. And the female police officer with limited mobility. This female police officer has a conscientious and professional professional attitude, and also treats her husband with a supportive, respectful and caring attitude, which is in sharp contrast with the previous family, but we can't help but worry, can she catch the murderer? Her mobility is so inconvenient that even the most sophisticated can be dangerous. And her image of a pregnant woman also made the audience feel a suspense of sympathy and curiosity. She should be fine, right? The atmosphere of the story is set off from the anti-paradigm of the characters. The second, and very interesting one, is to look at her husband. It was a slightly naive and frustrated man. His job was only to paint by himself, and let the post office choose his own paintings, which were then used as alternative patterns for stamp design. His tone and actions were very slow, as if he was not well-mannered, but he was also a kind person, gentle and considerate, and offered to make breakfast for Maggie before she was about to go to the scene of the murder on the highway, and brought Maggie a working meal. Here, the antitype emerges in the family structure. The female police officer Maggie is a hidden husband personality, while his husband is the opposite, more of providing emotional support and life care of the wife-type personality. We see that in Jerry's family, there is no family role reversal, but it is full of crisis and deceit, but in Maggie's family it is not the case, why? The Coen brothers are very cunning and explain to us through imperfect settings that money is the key factor in alienating family ethics, and the exchange of family roles makes marriage seem ridiculous, but the two are still as good as ever, even if this is a key flaw. Without destroying the ethic of the family, this teasing and absurd setting just underlines the corrosive effects of money. In English, money walks, money talks, and money destroys. Maggie's husband is also bald, the same as Jerry's father-in-law, but they have completely different social status and personality traits, but the common objectivity feature of "baldness" is exactly a line that draws the two families who mirror each other. String together to form a contrast.
Then we see that the female police officer is just an ordinary person with due diligence. She also made a lot of black humor in the process of going to the reconnaissance. Yes, but there is no specific clarification of the ability of language description. Another example is her initial professional diagnosis of the case when she went to the road murder scene for the first time. I heard the laughter of the Australian audience in the theater. This is an obvious absurd treatment. The atmosphere setting of the story can basically show Maggie's character characteristics here. The Coen brothers once again used the principle of back-and-forth to establish a paradigm and type from the anti-paradigm and anti-type. . The heroine's family is an absurd reversal. Her image is not strong and determined, but she is sincere and conscientious, and even if she is pregnant, she must do a good job as a police officer. Her character setting is a bit out of the story itself. Dark conspiracies and crises lurk under the white snow of Minnesota. The people around her seem slow and friendly but lack sharpness and sense of smell. However, she is like a snail, bit by bit Looking for clues, the dark humor in the middle of the story makes the audience laugh every now and then. Does she also look clumsy? It seems that she has no scheming to blackmail her father-in-law, no superhuman skills, and she has squeezed out a glimmer of hope in the investigation process of seeing flowers in the fog; she is pregnant, and her husband can't come up with ideas, and he doesn't know as much as his wife. . But just like this, in the laughter of our audience, we still desperately hope that she can solve the case, catch the culprit, and don't make any mistakes, after all, she is the one with the child in her belly. So, at the end of the story, an absurd coincidence led the story to a climax. Maggie looked at the robber in the snow, holding a gun and having difficulty moving. She wanted to remind the robber to stop quickly, so she quickly pointed to her hat nervously. , and immediately returned to the state of standby with both-handed guns aimed at him. We see a ruthless tall robber trying to destroy evidence, confronting Maggie by the snow lodge, their power disparity contrasts, while Maggie raises her pistol to aim, turns hard to face escaping on the ice The gangster, missed a shot, damn it! Why can't we beat that robber! The second shot finally hit the leg, and the robber fell. The climax of the story quickly subsided after the pregnant policeman caught the tall robber. Then, Maggie told him in the police car that the robber was escorted back, for tens of thousands of dollars, how many lives were involved, and for what? Isn't it just for the money? Today is still a good day. She watched more colleagues' police cars on the side of the road and said.
Therefore, the establishment of this heroine image is not formed by the audience's heroic worship and hope for the protagonist. She is not the Spider-Man or Superman in the paradigm, but an ordinary person who has no money and no ideal husband but tries her best to do well. The image of the female police officer in everything is formed by breaking the strongman paradigm, and the audience has empathy and protection for the heroine, and a new type is established. The heroine Francis McDormand won the Best Actress at the 69th Academy Awards for this. The Coen brothers are actually quite professional in casting, because Francis' face is slightly tough and angular. , it is easy to show the perseverance performance characteristics, but it does not have a strong beauty-style heroic spirit, so as to avoid the formation of paradigms, and it is easy to portray an ordinary person who works hard and upright. In fact, the whole movie is a popular face, and some film friends complained that they couldn't watch it because of the funny and exaggerated Minnesota accent, and because there was no handsome guy or girl, the whole group portrait was also set up to escape the paradigm. The background of the story is placed in a real environment, and it is a good choice to choose ordinary people who look like ordinary people. Here, Jerry's boss seems to be a little lazy and likes to watch ice hockey, but he doesn't pay much attention to performance; Jerry's customers are full after being deceived by Jerry. The face is full of resentment, but there is nowhere to turn it, it seems that he is being bullied because of lack of culture; the waiter's professional smile to the gangster has a trace of indiscriminate simplicity; the toll booth staff was washed by the short gangster because of their rigid and conscientious work. ; When the sex workers told Maggie about their experience of dropping out of school, they didn’t seem so lost because of the progress, but accepted the attitude of letting it go. Both they and the sweepers were unable to describe the appearance of the short gangster clearly. This is a successful black The humor sets the point, the helpless cop meets a more ignorant witness, unable to catch two headless accomplices who can't control the situation. Visitors who have been to Minnesota will say that Minnesotans are carefree and hospitable, simple and warm, and the Coen brothers' story atmosphere is set quite close to the local folk customs, which just excavates the relative disadvantage from this positive indication, and expands accordingly. This farce-like story is that the local people have no insight and discernment because of their carefree enthusiasm. Their dullness cannot see through the huge crisis and conspiracy lurking behind the winter snow. Ji worked hard to solve the case as an ordinary person, and the image of the heroine was upgraded from a relatively low starting point to a story background setting, through horizontal and vertical comparison and mobilizing the audience's empathy, to become a pregnant hero.
The Coen brothers' use of film language is adept and unique. In the film, the iconic sculpture of Fagao Town, a farmer with an axe appears several times in the film, and he has multiple dimensions. The image of this simple farmer is endowed with another dimension because of his possession of violent tools. It also shows that the residents cannot see the new violent order behind their daily life, because the kidnappers broke into the house and smashed the glass and then used an axe for internal fights. The element of the axe has been endowed with elements of violence and danger from the beginning of the film. Later, it appeared once when the gangster was about to commit a murder, and once again when Maggie arrested the tall gangster and drove back to the police station, marking the end of the violent bloody crime. . In addition, the film is full of dark humor, absurdity, and irony. For example, when Jerry called his father-in-law during rehearsal to say that his wife was kidnapped and he was helpless, the voice appeared first, then his profile, and then the audience realized that he did not take the phone. So burst into laughter. Also, the short gangster got the money and wanted to bury a large part of it in the ice and snow. Then he went back and fooled the tall man and said that this is all the money I got, and we will share it, but he looked around and couldn’t find it. A marker to identify the burial site had to stick a red shovel above the money box, and the audience laughed too. Jerry's office is full of sales performance trophies, which is an ironic comparison; his sales work photo frame is in the center of many colleagues, and his smile is extraordinarily exaggerated and inappropriate, and the local Australians here are laughing, will it be a little " There is no silver 300 taels here", the consciousness is to say "Look, I am an honest and considerate customer salesman, I never lie"? After kidnapping his wife, Jerry met with his father-in-law. While pretending to be helpless and sad, he hurriedly asked his father-in-law not to call the police, and the father-in-law called the police and rescued his daughter just to not lose his large sum of money; Jerry himself planned the kidnapping. The whole set of events of his wife, but to coax the trust of the really frightened child, he pretended to be calm and composed, forced a smile to the child, and when he closed the door, behind the door was a comedian facing the child. The poster with the exaggerated smile on the accordion is, of course, a great irony, and it also fully reflects the precision and subtlety of the Coen brothers' story-building skills.
Finally, the use of symbolic imagery in the language of the film is also subtle. The Coen brothers are good at setting a symbol that radiates the whole film, such as the uncertainty symbolized by the gentleman's hat in "Miller's Crossroads" and the grim piano sound in "The Absentee". Here, the female police officer Maggie watched the animal world before going to bed when she was not solving the case. There was a scene of insects hunting in it, while her husband was expressionless. This is also a symbol of the lurking crisis. The heroine is given justice tasks. People who are kind-hearted and slow like their husbands are unaware of the danger. Moreover, insect hunting itself is a naked competition for survival, symbolizing the perpetrator's unscrupulousness for money. Using the animal world to represent human society is often used in movies, especially in some stylized, freehand, and subconscious pioneering works. Darren Aronlovsky, the director of "Black Swan", should like it very much. In Johnny Depp and Al Pacino's "Faithful Traitor", Pacino's character "Old Left" is a gangster with a warm and righteous character, he likes watching the animal world very much Those warm pictures in the gangster jungle law are also a symbol of such a flash of personality traits in the gangster jungle law.
In short, if you like the Coen brothers, there are still many films worth exploring and analyzing, such as "Murder Green Toe", "Blood Labyrinth", "Serious Man", "Barton Funk", they are all excellent examples of the use of film language.
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