If you go a little further, "Ella Valley" and the closer "Fahrenheit 911", the further "Forrest Gump", and the further "Coming Home (1978, Hal Ashby)" and "Deer Hunter" ", "Taxi Driver" and other Vietnam War movies are a context. It deals with the "psychological trauma" of soldiers-called PTS in this film, post-traumatic stress syndrome. This is not a new thing, it has been repeatedly told to the extent that it is abusive. In American movies, there are usually three expressions of war: 1. Various positive expressions of "human values" such as justice and sacrifice, see "Saving Private Ryan"; 2. The alienation of people on the battlefield, see "Modern Apocalypse; 3. Various forms of war wound healing; and a mixture of the above. Of course, the judgment of war is also related-usually positive for World War II, negative evaluation for Vietnam War and Iraq War, these have become some kind of ideological expression. The strength of Paul Haggis lies in his handling of the story, so that he speaks a few rare new ideas in abusive way.
As far as the structure of the story is concerned, "Ella Valley" is a "Shawshank"-style story. When it finally came back, all the details of the previous layout suddenly had a meaning reversal. Another example is "The Unspeakable Secret". "——This film is a little stupid, and the "re-telling" is a solid one; "Ella Valley" is much smarter. From this perspective, "Ella Valley" is a very good reasoning movie, which is roughly a fusion of New Benge and the social school. There are four groups of detectives-the military, the police, the female police officer, and the father of the deceased. The latter two are tougher, and the father is the strongest. This narrative method is Paul Haggis’s signature action—both in "Crash" or "Flag of Fathers". However, it should be pointed out that Paul Haggis unavoidably adopted the American-style two-line structure-a vulgar to boring technique, such as "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Dog of the Tower of Babel". The technology of the best-selling text puts suspense on the secondary line of gradual revealing. If the protagonist gets a diary, it is certain that he will not finish reading this diary before the end of the novel. In this film, the same is true for the video on the phone, although the most important video is very early. It is released, but it does not produce meaning. The meaning will not gradually be revealed until all the videos are repaired and seen by the audience. Of course, although vulgar, this technique is undoubtedly quite effective.
So we can see that Haggis’ narrative strategy is obviously a technique from mystery, which constantly provides information and organizes meaning, and then constantly overthrows and reconstructs, and gives the so-called "truth" when it comes back. . A variant of this method is a "multi-threaded" type of text, such as "Pulp Fiction", "City of God", "Tower of Babel", "Crash", "Stone" and "Racing Car", etc.— -Of course, there are still differences in subdivision. What I need to point out is that the significance of this narrative method is an attempt to break through the classic narrative.
On the other hand, Haggis’ strategy is to adopt a relatively left stance, with a certain degree of criticism, such as the racial issues discussed in "Crash" (of course, it was also criticized that the final reconciliation was too idealistic"; "Fathers" The issue of the ideological state apparatus discussed in "The Banner of" turns the undoubted "narcissism" in the original work into an even less moderate criticism); and here in "Elago", although not as radical as "Fahrenheit 9/11", However, critical thinking still exists, including the war, as well as some discussions of gender order from the side of the female police officer. Probably this is the reason why the film was not even nominated for the original screenwriter in 2007-see the best screenwriter of the year "Juneo", how conservative is an expression, probably we know that this film has indeed stepped on the line.
However, it should be further pointed out that Haggis is still falling into ideological abuse. About these two things are things that he is not aware of. One is psychoanalytic language. When the United States and even Western society have already When psychoanalysis is used as a daily expression, its paradoxes are no longer mentioned, because we see that everyone in the film easily refers to their behavior as a reaction to some kind of mental trauma, no matter Is it the murderer or the victim; the second is-the child, this Western "invention". If David caused a mental breakdown because he killed a "child", abused prisoners, took drugs, and used prostitutes, so that his father gradually found that his "good boy" collapsed into a complete bad boy, can you deduce Come to a conclusion: the life value of a child is much greater than the life value of an adult—the soldiers and civilians who lost their lives in the invasion of the US military? This is undoubtedly quite funny and ridiculous. So in the end, Haggis attached the theme to the legend of King David and Goliath, and what he expressed was: 1. Those American soldiers who went to Iraq were children; 2. What they wanted to overcome was fear—though The term is also suspicious. So we see that the effectiveness of psychoanalysis is to provide an escape route. What Haggis can do is to give "confession" but not "salvation" or "healing." Maybe this It is the offense of this film. Just like what the flag that hangs upside down at the end of the film refers to. This is probably a view that has been continued from "The Flag of Fathers". Perhaps these critical expressions are more appropriate for "foreigners"-Uncle Dongmutou from Italy and Haggis from Canada.
There is nothing else to say about this film. One is because the play is too good, especially "adapted from real events"; the other is because the audiovisual and performance are relatively regular, and because of the story itself, the editing is not as good as "Crash." "And "Flags of Fathers" are so brilliant. The only thing worth mentioning is the mobile phone video, especially the use of the unusually fuzzy mobile video in the film. This provides an interesting visual element, especially at the last moment of turning over-the "reality" outside the frame of the mobile phone video. "The moment of the scene's reappearance is particularly powerful. In my opinion, this film is much better than the Oscar winner "Old Nowhere". So the conclusion is that Oscars are nothing but Oscars. If you are not an American, don’t care too much. There are many good movies that did not get the Oscars-such as "Citizen Kane" which is a bit further away; for Imdb, Tommy Lee Jones's Cannes actor is not as valuable as an Oscar for best supporting actor.
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