As the narrative deepens, the lonely life of a young man is revealed to the audience. He doesn’t have a job, lives alone in a filthy bachelor’s apartment, reads Plato, wants to be a writer but doesn’t even have the courage to admit this dream, and has sexual fantasies about a blonde beauty like Monroe (the dream is posted on the head of his bed). Lu's poster), without friends, is "a poor worm who lacks social interaction". When loneliness exceeds a certain limit, psychopathic behavior is prone to occur. Our protagonist begins to follow strangers, peeping at their lives and work, and reveling in some unexpected discoveries. In fact, in the first few minutes before the plot unfolded, I had regarded this young man as a character in Dostoevsky’s writings; later, when his stealing coach appeared, I easily regarded this young man It is linked to Bresson’s "Pickpocket"-both movies contain the motif of a lonely young man committing crimes with non-utilitarian motives, and they both have a coach who guides them in crime; if you say "Following" The young man in "Crime and Punishment" and "Pickpocket" lacks the philosophical motivation of the protagonists to commit crimes. He is very close to Martin Scorsese’s "taxi driver". Move beyond the norm.
Because the British director Christopher Nolan’s debut work was too prominent in narrative style, it created a Nolan style of narrative, and it was thought to pave the way for "Shards of Memory" that later brought this narrative style to the extreme. On the road, film critics often touched on their themes. In fact, while playing with the narrative form, Nolan never forgets to inject his views of the world and people into the film, which makes the film's grasp of the human connotation much higher than those mediocre works.
When the police asked Bill why he wanted to follow others, Bill said that he was a writer, and then changed his words to say that he wanted to be a writer. Following others could find material for his writing. This is a high-sounding reason. While Bill answered this way, the director told the audience another answer with a rough black and white picture: this is an extremely lonely young man who is excluded from life. He was almost completely cut off from the world because his eyes had been staring deep into his heart and neglecting to communicate with the outside world. However, human beings are always social creatures, so "following" has become his minimal way of participating in life. Realizing that his behavior is on the verge of mental perversion, Bill tries to prevent himself from losing control by establishing rational norms, such as being completely arbitrary and not having pre-defined goals; following an object for too long; not allowed to stay at night. After dimming, followed a lady and so on. The norm worked very well at first, but when "it stopped this randomness, things started to slowly go bad."
The first interruption of this randomness was the appearance of Cobb. Cobb was the one who was followed by Bill, but he discovered Bill's trailing-later the audience realized that this was a scam carefully planned by Cobb. When the two came into contact, they immediately found that despite the different methods, they were considered like-minded: "Both of them are interested in'people'." It turns out that Cobb and Bill have almost the same perverted hobbies: housebreaking, stealing personal items such as CDs, diaries, underwear, etc., although they sometimes steal money, they are not the main purpose. Cobb explained that all the joy of doing this is to interrupt other people's lives and get some kind of psychological pleasure. Next is the whole process of Cobb teaching Bill's stealing skills, which can be regarded as an imitation of "Pickpocket" to some extent. Cobb asked Bill to join his stealing operations, and at the same time kept telling Bill his theft experience. For example, he found that everyone has a box. Of course, most people only have a shoe box, while a few people’s boxes contain their worthless but most personal things. In Cobb’s view, every one of them Everything tells the most secret story about its owner. He always looks for this box first and takes it as his own. Once, Bill deliberately led Cobb into his home to steal. Unexpectedly, Cobb could tell at a glance that the owner of the house was a "traveler in his twenties, fantasizing that he was a writer", and was very angry, what? I left without taking it. Of course, the audience later learned that Cobb had actually followed Bill in order to realize his conspiracy, and he must have known that it was Bill's home. Nolan even offered a middle-class advice to the audience through Cobb's mouth, "When they go home and buy all these things from the shelf with insurance compensation, they will consider buying these things for the first time a long time ago. What is the purpose of time?"
At the same time, under Cobb's intentional arrangement, Bill began to follow a charming blonde. Together with Cobb, he stole the blonde's home, took a lot of personal belongings, and gradually became interested in the blonde. He finally met this woman in an underground bar, and she hinted that the owner of the bar had an old relationship with her, and there were still some entanglements. When he found out that he really fell in love with this woman, he confessed to her for her stealing. She told him that the owner of the bar possessed some personal photos of her and was blackmailing her. These photos were kept in the safe of the bar, and she knew the password. Of course Bill wanted to use the stealing skills he learned to put some practical uses, and immediately volunteered to help the blonde get back those photos. Just as Bill was stealing in a bar, the night watchman found him. In a hurry, Bill hit the night watchman with a hammer, and the night watchman fell in a pool of blood... What Bill didn't know was that he had become Cobb and the blonde married. A victim of misfortune, and what the blonde does not know is that it is not Cobb's "accident" that is to blame for Bill, but the murder of the bar owner and Cobb to get rid of her.
This is a series, a story similar to Paul Newman's "Cheat in Cheat". Underground bars, thefts, assaults, psychopaths, Nolan added enough black elements to this story to make the style of the entire image between Tarantino and Cohen brothers. Compared with Ta’s, Nolan’s characters have more literary depth, which may be related to his major in English literature, and his narrative method is more stylized; Tarantino is also a director who frequently innovates in narrative methods. His characters are often stereotyped underworld people, but his most unique feature lies in the extraordinary richness of black elements throughout the chaotic narrative process, in order to show the aesthetics of black and violence.
Nolan once said: "I decided to organize my story in this way, focusing on the audience's inability to have a complete understanding of each new scene, as if it were seen by people for the first time. "
Both the defamiliarization principle of literary theory and Tolstoy's novel art emphasize that things should be observed and described as if they appeared in front of you for the first time. Nolan obviously wants to try in the movie. His main way of "defamiliarization" is embodied in the way of narration. Traditional linear narratives or simple flashbacks have appeared to be as regular in movies as they are in literature. In fact, since Kurosawa's "Rasho" developed a multi-threaded tension mode, the film's narrative mode has been stagnant. In 1998, two movies broke this situation, one is "Lola Run" and the other is "Following". In "Following", the narrative style of "Memories" has begun to take shape. The basis of Nolan’s narrative is based on subverting the traditional concept of time in movies. In Nolan’s view, time is like fragments of memory (as the Chinese translation of his masterpiece implies), so he The original natural time in the movie is completely shattered, and the event is presented in fragmented fragments. The audience needs to deduce a whole in their own minds. Nolan’s narrative method adds an “objective basis”: the story of “Following” is mainly told when Bill surrenders himself. Bill is reminiscing about what he has experienced. In Nolan’s view, the memory is like pieces of fragments. Emerging up, and sometimes sinking into the dark, but there is no rule to follow when appearing and sinking, and sometimes their authenticity will be questioned. The last mid-range shot of the film-now that Bill's self-reporting frame has been shed, the camera is equivalent to recording everything in front of the camera with a completely objective third-party perspective-Cobb, who has reached a conspiracy, stands among the crowds. , The pedestrian in the foreground blocked the camera. When he walked away, Cobb was no longer there, he disappeared. In Nolan's view, the events shown in front of the camera are like this, appearing and disappearing irrationally. This is the essential way things present themselves.
However, Nolan's most original and most successful place is also his limitation. As far as art is concerned, it always pursues the complete integration of form and content. And Nolan's narrative method is so stylized that the thematic connotation of the movie has almost disappeared in its form. The same stylized narrative, Tarantino knows more about moderation. In this regard, Nolan is very close to his predecessor Hitchcock. Nolan once evaluated himself like this: "I am Christopher Nolan, a typical Englishman, like my predecessor Hitchcock, not only a director, but also a person with whimsical ability."
It is the same British, who also prefers film form language over interest in content or truth, and also casually spread (but not irrelevant) thoughts and opinions in the various cues and metaphors of the film, which may be the British director’s Fate.
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