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[Famous all over the world, slander will follow]
For ten years, Nolan has been the hottest director in Hollywood, and he is also the most mixed praise from fans. film creator. Those who love are worshipped as gods, and those who hate are scorned. Although Nolan had made several films that were well-received in word-of-mouth and box office from the industry to fans before the "Batman" series, the one that really made him famous was the 2008 movie "Batman". Batman II: The Dark Knight. This film not only boosted the box office of superhero movies by several notches, but also profoundly affected the narrative style of almost most superhero movies that followed.
However, the reputation spread all over the world, and slander also followed. Beginning with "The Dark Knight", the two camps of Nuofan and Nuohei began to rapidly differentiate among fans. Fans of Nolan see him as a new hope in the well-known Hollywood industry line, a restrained narrative innovator, and his nostalgic attachment to the traditional film technology (film, special effects) that has gradually been marginalized. It's fascinating, too; Nolan's people think his films are artful, flashy, feigned deep, emotionally thin, with cluttered action scenes and fresh soundtracks.
In 2008, there were even absurd scoring and anti-scoring actions around "The Dark Knight": Nuofan, in order to push the idol to the throne of the first IMDb score, frantically gave 1 point to "The Godfather", which was the first on IMDb at that time. , I hope that the score of "The Dark Knight" can be ranked first on IMDb. However, one fan is top ten, and those who dislike the behavior of crazy fans began to give "The Dark Knight" 1 point. "The Godfather" and "Dark Knight" snipe and clam compete, this absurd farce among fans, and only one beneficiary is "The Shawshank Redemption", which later became IMDb's number one and remained stable for nearly ten years.
It is said that there is a good thing this year. Movie fans took out Nolan's director rating sheet on IMDb, and removed all 10 points and 1 points (similar to "remove one highest score and one lowest score" in many competitions to avoid extreme scoring) , Nolan's director's average score has risen by 1 point. Although in terms of social psychology and statistics. This may not explain anything, but Nolan has achieved good box office and reputation after "The Dark Knight", "Inception" and "Interstellar", but at the same time he has not lost his personal style and pursuit, although some are inevitable It is cliché, but it can still maintain a stable level. There are almost no missed works in the overall sequence of works (except for "Insomnia", which he participated in the least, I am afraid there are no works that have a mediocre response in the general sense). No wonder he is now the number one darling in Hollywood's eyes, and has become the new Hollywood ICON in the hearts of more and more fans.
[Invisible enemy, invisible self]
One of Nolan's great skills is that he can shoot a lot of conventional things out of convention. For example, the one-hour parallel editing of "last minute rescue" in "Inception" was originally a routine that has been abused since the Griffith era, but Nolan chose to use a Russian nesting doll-style plot structure to This kind of cliché is gripping; the time and space shuttle in "Interstellar", which has been filmed indiscriminately, is sung and sighed by the plot setting of his father and daughter's deep love, as well as the imaginative space design.
And in "Dunkirk", Nolan plays a psychological fear battle. In the film, the German army is almost completely invisible. Except for the plane with the driver that cannot be seen, we hardly see any German soldiers in Nazi uniforms. Only the bullets that are waiting for the British soldiers are flying out of nowhere, and they are on and off in the water. The torpedoes, and the terrifying roar of the Junkers-87 Stuka dive bombers - the audience, like the British and French forces in the movie, who are desperate to retreat, have no idea when the Germans will attack, and they don't know if they can. Can't escape the hellish Dunkirk; adopting the God's perspective that shows the movements of the British, French and German forces at the same time will only destroy the depression and panic that Nolan constantly wants to accumulate in the hearts of the audience with the Allied soldiers. .
This is exactly the same technique as in Der Untergang, another film depicting World War II, except that the object of the panic was not the Allied forces, but that Berlin was about to be captured and could only be The leaders of the Third Reich huddled in bunkers.
But is it only the enemy that is "disappeared"? In fact, in addition to the German troops disappeared in "Dunkirk", there are also No. 10 Downing Street, the combat headquarters located in the underground fortress not far from the Prime Minister's Office, and the British wartime chief departments of Bletchley Manor- —Neither the soldiers on the beach nor the audience in front of the screen would know how the top British leaders who were standing in front of the simulated sand table and deduced how they would move the puppet line "kindly but not the soldiers" and come to the left and right beaches. The fate of different soldiers. For everyone, the roaring bullets from the opposite side and the dropping bombs from the sky are the enemies who do not see the face but can see the butcher's knife, while the realist and utilitarian leaders who "take everything as a dog" are the Another type of destiny controller who can neither see his face nor see his decision to kill.
Coincidentally, in the blockbuster sci-fi film "Gravity" a few years ago, director Alfonso Cuarón rejected a large-scale studio request to film the NASA headquarters race against time to rescue the space crash. The camera, instead, completely focused all attention on the core of the story of the astronauts in space who are extremely lonely but indomitable to save themselves. The complete disappearance of the Houston Aviation Center in the movie allows us to follow the protagonist Sandra Bullock to experience the helplessness and fear of being alone in the vast space . Just imagine, if "Gravity" is full of the clichés of NASA's ground rescue, not only will the audience not be able to appreciate that "complete" loneliness, the film will eventually become "The Martian" (The Martian), "Apollo" A good but cheap "rescue" movie like Apollo 13.
"Dunkirk" is almost identical in design to the films mentioned above. Nolan is well versed in the fear and depression brought about by the unknown. filmed), it has also been used in many war movies before - "Saving Private Ryan" and "Full Metal Jacket" both try to avoid showing the enemy to a large extent, and highlight some accidental events in the war. tragic consequences. However, this method is adopted throughout the article, which isolates the enemy's side and the higher leadership perspective of its own side, so that the soldiers (and the audience) with completely asymmetric information live in fear, thus becoming the core driving force of the film's narrative. Although this method is not uncommon, Nolan used it just right and perfect.
【Fuye soundtrack, Chengye soundtrack】
After the release of "Dunkirk", the most emphasized point among many film critics is the ubiquitous and almost overloaded soundtrack of the film. From the moment the guns go off, the film is filled with the ubiquitous Hans Zimmer's signature soundtrack: simple rhythmic patterns, rhythmic changes that signal the direction of the plot. , All kinds of sounds that ubiquitously remind the passage of time (such as the ticking of clocks that everyone talks about). However, most film critics have criticized the film's soundtrack for being excessive and extravagant.
But has anyone asked why?
Nolan is not a freshman, and Hans Zimmer is not a composition graduate who has just learned orchestration. Both of them are giants in the film industry who have worked together for many years. Even "The Avengers II" knows how to arrange some scenes without soundtracks, so that the audience can get the space to breathe on the nerves of watching the movie. Do Nolan and Zimmer know each other? Don't even understand the common-sense technique of "blank"? The extravagance of the two in the soundtrack is of course anyone's comment (whether it is a film critic or an audience), but the operation of the two is undoubtedly intentional.
Nolan used a soundtrack technique previously used in "The Prestige", called "Shepard tone", in the famous celestial book "The Great Completion of Different Stones" [GEB ], Douglas Hofstadter has introduced this composition technique, see the Chinese translation on the following pages of p.948). This method is actually similar to the composition method of minimalist music. Several different music progresses spirally at different rhythms, and finally achieves synchronization at a certain node (in the movie, it is "air battle + sea rescue"). ' climax paragraph).
If there is a "blank" in the soundtrack of the movie, the "Shepard scale" will be difficult to really establish, and the tension, continuity, and the sense of oppression that drives people crazy throughout the film will also follow the "blank". ” appears and disappears from time to time. In fact, while countless critics have criticized the ubiquity of Dunkirk's soundtrack, if Nolan dropped the Shepard interval, or deliberately left a "no soundtrack" paragraph for the sake of so-called filmmaking conventions, then in the last paragraph The spiritual comfort brought to the soldiers and the audience by the nearly 1,000 ships spontaneously launched from Great Britain will never be as great as it is now - in other words, the "relaxation" and "exhilaration" brought by the film's final climax. "The effect will be greatly weakened. The soundtrack without blank space actually provides the audience with a coherent arc of "plot-emotion". The director has always hoped that the audience will feel the emotional oppression brought about by this uninterrupted parabola. Only in this way will the parabola land at the end. For a moment, the audience's psychology can be relaxed to the greatest extent.
And leaving it blank will only ruin the parabolic design of this "plot (intersection)-mood (soundtrack)".
On the other hand, Hans Zimmer himself took his famous score to the extreme. Zimmer was not a composer known for his emotional score (in other words, not the melodic, clear-key, emotionally charged creator of John Williams). In Zimmer's "Dunkirk" soundtrack, you can hardly hear the melody. All the soundtracks are all rhythmic patterns of different timbres and densities, and finally form a dynamic rhythmic counterpoint, and rarely try to express positive emotions. This coincides with the tendency of modern music to be better at expressing negative human emotions: constant tension, pervasive anxiety, and an ominous acceleration of rhythm that hints at an impending crisis.
The film has only two appearances of "melody music", which represents the relief of crisis and consolation of victory. Once, the general saw countless civilian boats on the embankment with hundreds of miles and thousands of sails, and they spontaneously sailed to Dunkirk. This is probably the most uplifting part of the film - Hans Zimmer used a string unison at this time. Although the melody was not clear and beautiful, it relieved everyone's nervousness for nearly 80 minutes. untie.
The second time was a last-minute rescue by sea and air. The moment when the crisis is over when the royal pilot played by Tom Hardy shoots down a German bomber—the same strings, the same melodic music appears, represents the film’s final climax. But the melody of this climax was so short-lived—and perhaps also because the retreat itself was a failure, the crisis and grief were far from over, and Hardy's rescue from the air was a mere victory.
Zimmer himself has never shown much talent for composing melodies in his works, but he is an unparalleled genius in grasping the negative emotions of movie characters. Although the melody of his two strings in unison is very short (probably less than 10 bars each), but under the foreshadowing of nearly 100 minutes of dense, melodyless polyphonic rhythm patterns, it has become extremely heartwarming. , which is why the audience and soldiers can feel at this time the "imagined community" of the British Isles, which is a civilian heroic epic that belongs to countless ordinary people, who are united in one mind, share the same hatred, and be honored even if they are defeated.
Of course, objectively speaking, audiences and film critics complain that the soundtrack is too full. This is not only the objective situation of the film, but also conforms to the subjective feelings of the audience. Of course, technically, there is much room for comment. But behind "Dunkirk" there is indeed a soundtrack trick that Nolan and Zimmer have painstakingly managed and designed for the film's narrative. If the defeat of "Dunkirk" is the soundtrack, then in fact, it is very likely The success of "Dunkirk" is also the soundtrack.
[A shrewd craftsman, or the road to a master? 】
Nolan also made his debut from the independent film festivals that advertise "artistic films", "niche films" and "experimental films". Participated in the more "independent", "niche", "primitive" (sundance-ridiculed) Slamdance film festival in Park City, Utah, like Sundance .
But Nolan has never had much of an art film director's temperament (except for his debut "Following"), and has never shown much of an art film director's intentions. He has never indulged in personal expression, personal style, social criticism, As a deep art film director. Even if his fans push him to the altar, and even compare Kubrick's "A Space Odyssey" to "Interstellar", this has never changed Nolan himself as a clear-minded and savvy commercial film director fact.
Nolan's film techniques are certainly not perfect, and the pioneering is extremely limited (of course, there is actually a lot of pioneering in equipment technology), and the editing of many core scenes has always been a weakness. Although Nolan's ability to play with film narrative tricks is the same, but in a sense, this narrative trick also weakens the film's artistic level and "secondary visibility", because narrative tricks often focus on burying a stalk and selling it. A flaw and a mystery are solved, and some of the cores that the film itself is most concerned about are indeed not much ink and intentions (of course, this is probably not what Nolan is pursuing!) - but most people have to admit it Nolan's film is really wonderful!
In this regard, Nolan may be more like his fellow novelist Graham Greene or William Somerset Maugham. Green, for example, whose novels range from popular espionage stories ("The Commissioner of Havana") to equally artistically ascetic journeys ("Power and Glory"), but maybe neither popular nor artistic is what they're after. Nolan is similar to them. There are many readers and many likes. Every new work release can attract countless topics and discussions. When history selected new gods, he often rejected them as "popular", "commercial", "lack of depth", or simply forgotten.
But what Nolan is striving for is actually a polished and beautiful story: with scenes, actions, stories, characters, and a core motif that runs through, the only thing that is not needed is artistic depth - whether it is video Above, or conceptually.
However, Nolan is undoubtedly the most astute director in the world, and every time, he is very tactful to capture his audience: in the early days of his unfunded directorial career, he won the whole house with brilliant narrative blindfold. With a huge amount of money in his hand but inevitably being constrained by the big studio, he introduced dark style, counter-terrorism issues and sociological thought experiments into superhero movies, making the gang look cool, but in fact funny, well-developed limbs, simple-minded The superheroes of the world have to face complex (in fact, not complex) social ethical and political philosophical propositions. After becoming famous, he is still stable, never misses, and has a good screenwriter's creativity, and he can bring it into full play.
However, in "Dunkirk", Nolan's transformation can be clearly seen.
In the past, there were fewer lines in large sections, and instead, the story was told in a more audio-visual way: sound, composition, scene scheduling, like the 4-5 minute manual-like dream explanation in the first hour of "Inception" Hard to find in Dunkirk.
At the same time, the protagonist of "Dunkirk" is no longer a person, or even a group portrait, but an "escape", an "escape" full of helplessness, waiting but also desperate to go home, but in the story In the narration, the main axis of the story gradually changed from "escape" to "family and country unity" full of patriotism. Although the traces are deliberately obvious, the craftsmen's axe is not seen. In the end, Tom Hardy landed calmly in the enemy-occupied area under the setting sun, burned down the fighter plane, and was generously captured. It is full of poetry and heroism, full of sensationalism, but not indiscriminate.
Nolan has made his name almost a brand. Although he is also on the assembly line, he is not a workman who follows a gourd and draws a scoop. In the past, Nolan was a craftsman. He had his own play and creation, as well as his own shrewdness and calculation. Even as a craftsman, he was the kind of constant exploration, meticulous work, keen sense of smell, deep understanding of the market, and striving to be in the Hollywood industry. A craftsman who is outstanding in the system.
And now, "Dunkirk" may become Nolan's turning point. This blond Londoner may be moving from craftsman to master.
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